Latest / Virtuous Leaders with Dr. Johann D'Souza / Ep.13 - Katy Faust Defends Children From Selfish Adults

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Ep.13 - Katy Faust Defends Children From Selfish Adults · Virtuous Leaders with Dr. Johann D'Souza

0:00
Katie Faust, thanks so much for joining us today.
0:03
It's my joy. Thanks for having me on.
0:06
Yeah, it's really a pleasure to me.
0:08
I know you do a lot of good work and I look forward to hearing
0:10
more about it. So can you, before we jump into
0:12
it, can you tell us a little bit about what what you do, where
0:15
you come from, what your background is?
0:18
Yeah, I would never have thought I was doing any of the things
0:21
that I was doing. You know, we I was just a stay
0:24
at home mom with four kids. Pastor's wife, my youngest, is
0:29
adopted from China. And a couple years after that,
0:33
the same sex marriage debate heated up.
0:35
And what I heard proponents of same sex marriage arguing was
0:39
that kids don't care if they have two moms or two dads, which
0:43
functionally means kids don't care if they've lost their mom
0:45
or dad. And my husband and I had been
0:48
working with kids in a variety of different ways for a couple
0:51
decades. And to me, like, that was one of
0:54
the greatest lies that you could say about kids, that they don't
0:56
care because what what I had seen in my work, you know, at
1:00
the adoption agency or in youth ministry or working with kids or
1:05
just getting to know the friends, the children of my
1:08
friends or what I remember from my own childhood and what my
1:11
husband experienced in his childhood was when children are
1:14
not raised by their mother and father, when one of them is
1:16
gone, not only is it a challenge, but very often it
1:21
creates somewhat of a primal wound, you know, a wound that
1:24
goes all the way down to your core that then sometimes you can
1:28
resolve through healing or therapy, but sometimes is never
1:31
resolved. So that was enough for me to
1:34
say, OK, I am going to get involved in this public debate
1:38
about marriage, whereas before I had been very hesitant.
1:42
I am more of a grace giver than a truth teller by nature.
1:45
And I didn't want to rock the boat.
1:46
I didn't want to lose friends, but when I saw what was very
1:50
obviously the weaponization of childhood wounds to advance a
1:53
political goal, that was enough for me to say now you have to go
1:58
through me. And then the more I started
2:01
writing about why marriage is a matter of justice for children,
2:05
the more I saw how all of the marriage and family issues, from
2:10
divorce to reproductive technologies to the promotion of
2:14
all kinds of modern families, even to the way we think and
2:18
talk about adoption, all of them were obsessively focused on the
2:21
desires of adults. And it was always the rights and
2:24
well-being of children that suffered because we were
2:27
misidentifying the victims in those questions.
2:30
So in 2018, I started Them Before Us, which is a global
2:36
nonprofit to prioritize children, their rights to their
2:39
mother and father in all matters and all conversations about
2:43
marriage and family. So that's currently what I'm
2:46
doing is I am currently a crusader for kids.
2:52
Well, they need it, and thank God that you're doing it.
2:55
So before we get further into that, can you give us a little
2:58
bit of sense of the other things you're involved in?
2:59
Because I also saw you on the ARC initiative.
3:04
Yeah, man, 2023 was, you know, all of these things that we
3:09
start. It's like a snowball.
3:11
You work so hard in the early years and it looks like there's
3:16
very little momentum, but the more you go and the more you
3:19
build, the faster and the more velocity it takes on.
3:22
So I I think that's what 2023 was for us.
3:25
It was the year where we really saw how much Velocity had been
3:29
involved in, you know, where all of our work for the first couple
3:32
years have taken us. So I've always been involved
3:35
ever since I started writing with Canevox, which is an
3:38
initiative of the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton.
3:42
Very grateful for the work they're doing, have helped them
3:44
develop some projects, especially for teens, you know,
3:47
looking at marriage, gender, sex, relationships from a
3:51
natural law perspective in a way that's very digestible for
3:55
middle schoolers and high schoolers.
3:58
I also this last year was invited to be on the Advisory
4:01
Board for Ark, which is the Alliance for Responsible
4:03
Citizenship. Jordan Peterson's new project,
4:08
which, you know, the way that I put what Ark is, is it's the
4:12
righteous inverse of the World Economic Forum.
4:14
That's what it is. We want that same level of
4:16
global influence, but we want to do it in principles grounded in
4:20
personal responsibility and human flourishing and
4:23
understanding the dignity of humans, rather than viewing our
4:27
species as a blight or a parasite on, you know, Mother
4:30
Earth or whatever. So it's been a joy to be a part
4:33
of that. Then before us has quite a few
4:37
initiatives that we're developing for next year, which
4:39
are very, very exciting. And it was just amazing to be
4:44
able to reach new audiences on platforms last year.
4:49
You know, it was on Tammy Peterson's podcast and I got to
4:52
be on Tim Poole's show. Thank God.
4:57
Wonderful. Been on with Alex Clark, a
5:00
Turning Point USA host, and Allie Beth Stuckey.
5:02
I mean these two women have such clarity on issues that seem to
5:06
elude a lot of other pundits out there.
5:10
So I'm just so thankful for the way that this child, this child
5:13
centric message, is reaching not just your typical audience of
5:18
sort of Christians, but broader audiences too, of conservatives
5:23
who I think I've had a hard time articulating exactly what the
5:26
problem is, especially if you come from a more libertarian
5:29
background. What exactly is the problem with
5:32
normalizing or promoting what they view as just consensual
5:36
adult decisions? And the answer is those
5:39
consensual adult decisions always force children to
5:41
sacrifice their fundamental rights so adults can live as
5:45
they please. And that is that is a recipe for
5:47
an unjust society. Well, do they do such a good job
5:51
of controlling the narrative? I don't know if you're familiar
5:53
with this concept of persuasion, which is a market.
5:56
It's a psychological marketing concept by a renowned
6:00
psychologist. And the idea is you, you
6:03
persuade, you persuade them before they even realize they've
6:06
been persuaded by just setting the terms of the discussion.
6:11
So it's just assumed when we're discussing that, Oh yeah, it's
6:14
about like individual rights and you know, the mother's right to
6:16
choose and and whatever other application.
6:19
But just presuming from the outset that we're not, we're not
6:23
going to consider the rights of of the child and you're just
6:27
flipping the narrative there. OK, I love that.
6:29
I love it. And you probably saw my eyes
6:31
like, wow, light bulb moment. Because the other thing that I
6:35
got to produce in 2023 was a parenting book co-authored with
6:41
my Co writer Stacy Manning. And it's called Raising
6:44
Conservative Kids in Awoke City. And it really is just how do you
6:48
inculcate your world view when everything is against you?
6:51
So one of our principles is persuasion, but that's not what
6:55
we call it. But that's such a good term.
6:58
You know one of our principles we call the Founders principle,
7:01
which is you have to get to your kid first.
7:04
Whoever gets to the kid first with information about something
7:07
that is controversial or salacious or really just any
7:12
distorted idea, if you get to your kids first about it, you
7:15
really establish yourself as the default authority in their life
7:19
and they will come back to you right?
7:20
But if it is the 4th grader who holds a smartphone up into your
7:24
kids face and that's the first time they learn about porn, your
7:27
kid will not go to you. When they have questions about
7:29
porn, they will go to the 4th grader.
7:31
So pre suasion is is probably a better term for what what we
7:37
sort of narrate in one of the chapters of our book on
7:40
effective world view transmission.
7:43
You do need to pre suede your kids with narratives that are
7:46
good, true and beautiful. And then you have to kind of cut
7:50
off the opposition at the knees by telling kids what the other
7:53
side is going to say to them about the good, the true and the
7:56
beautiful. Nice.
7:58
Hadn't thought of that. And that's why these
8:00
collectivist ideologies, whatever form they come in, they
8:05
work on having basically the, the government or the ideology
8:10
have the quickest access to the child and removing the family,
8:14
the parents from that equation, right, Even like mandatory
8:17
education. Yeah.
8:19
And you know, I I there's a lot of big questions going on in the
8:22
world today and we obviously look at all marriage and family
8:26
issues from the perspective of the child.
8:28
But one of the biggest questions, the most fundamental
8:31
questions that our society may be at, well, #1 is what does it
8:35
mean to be human? That's number one.
8:37
But #2 is probably to whom do children belong?
8:41
Once you answer that question, a lot of the other issues are
8:44
going to resolve themselves, right?
8:45
Everything from transgender treatments to what can they be
8:49
taught in school to, you know, let's what about drag queen
8:54
Story Hour? Where and when and and who pays
8:56
for it? And all of that.
8:57
I mean, what about who should get vaccines and what?
9:01
What do kids need before you're allowed to, like, send them to
9:03
school and experimental vaccines and all of that kind of thing.
9:07
So, like, first you answer the question to to whom do children
9:10
belong? And there's a rival, very
9:13
consequential, different answers.
9:15
You know, the left would say they belong to the state, they
9:18
belong to the village, they belong to all of us.
9:21
And we say they don't belong to you.
9:22
They are not your children. They are my children.
9:24
They belong to me. You don't even know their name,
9:28
so they don't belong to you. They belong to me.
9:31
So that that fundamental fissure along those lines, right, you
9:35
are going to answer an awful lot of the big world view and
9:37
political questions we're asking today.
9:41
Yeah, that's key. I've never heard a phrase like
9:43
that to him that Do they belong? That's I mean that's just
9:46
another form of presuage and that we come into the argument
9:51
thinking that Oh yeah, it's already guaranteed that every
9:54
kid has to be educated, otherwise you're breaking the
9:56
law. They have to be put in the
9:57
school. But if they belong to the
9:59
parents, then shouldn't the parents be making that
10:02
reflecting prudentially making the judgment based on their
10:04
circumstances and their knowledge of the kid and what's
10:06
good for him or her and deciding well, what is that?
10:09
Is that what's best? So it you're doing, you're
10:14
involved in kinda box them for us Arc, you do a lot of
10:18
speaking. What are you most excited about?
10:21
And let's take let's start with them before us.
10:24
What are you most excited about? Well, there are things that I'm
10:29
good at when it comes to running a nonprofit and getting on
10:32
podcasts and talking to people and connecting and writing
10:36
articles and speaking is. I love that.
10:40
But having a big vision and knowing how to apply these
10:44
principles is an area where I've grown, and thankfully I now have
10:48
a very good team around me who have helped me be creative about
10:52
OK, We've got this critical lens through which we look at all
10:55
marriage and family issues, and that is children have a right to
10:59
their mother and father. All adults, single, married,
11:03
gay, straight, fertile and infertile, must conform to those
11:07
fundamental child rights. And in all situations, whether
11:12
it's a struggling marriage or dealing with infertility or
11:15
experiencing same sex attraction or unwanted singleness or
11:19
whatever it is, in all of those situations someone is going to
11:23
do the hard thing. The question is, will it be the
11:26
adults or will it be the child? So at them before us, in our
11:31
world, it is the adults who do hard things because the only
11:35
alternative is for the child to do hard things on behalf of the
11:38
adults. And that is an injustice.
11:41
We don't in this society. We do not force it in a just
11:44
society. We don't force the weak to
11:46
sacrifice for the strong. And yet that is exactly how all
11:50
these conversations about marriage and family have gone
11:53
for decades. It is always, hey, the adult
11:56
priorities, their sexual identity, their feelings, their
11:59
longings, their losses, their hopes, their dreams.
12:02
That always takes precedent. And then whatever the kid, the
12:06
kid just has to live with whatever the parents decide,
12:09
right? So at them before us, we flip
12:10
that around. So then how do you apply that to
12:13
the world in terms of different projects?
12:15
And So what we're going to do next year is we've figured out
12:18
several ways that we need to apply that.
12:21
We talk at them before us about how we've always talked about
12:25
how there's three major threats to the rights of children,
12:30
cultural threats, legal threats and technological threats.
12:34
So the cultural threats have been going on since the sexual
12:37
revolution, you know, through. And it's embodied through these
12:41
phrases like if the adults are happy, the kids will be happy.
12:44
You know, more recently through phrases like biology doesn't
12:48
matter, love makes a family. Or this notion of, you know,
12:52
kids don't need a mom and dad, they just need to be safe and
12:54
loved. So you've got all of these very
12:58
powerful, like cultural ideas that have shaped the way we
13:02
think about marriage and family and really they've normalized
13:05
mother and father loss for kids. That's really what they're
13:08
doing. And then there are the legal
13:10
changes, right Beginning with no fault divorce where we legally
13:15
said marriage no longer needs to be a permanent union.
13:18
We moved into same sex marriage where we said marriage no longer
13:21
needs to be a complimentary union and we will soon hit
13:24
polygamy that says marriage no longer needs to be a monogamous
13:27
union. So we've got these legal changes
13:29
that are deconstructing the rights of children.
13:32
And then we have these dystopic technological changes creating
13:36
babies in a Petri dish, buying one or both of their genetic
13:41
parents out of a catalog, and now commercially gestating that
13:45
child in the body of a third person like a unrelated woman
13:49
who's the quote UN quote surrogate.
13:51
We are moving towards the creation of artificial wombs
13:53
that are striving to now create egg cells out of skin cells.
13:58
So in the future, you know, a man can be both mother and
14:01
father to a child. I mean, the technological
14:04
changes are such a grave threat and they don't get an awful lot
14:08
of attention. Well, a little bit more in the
14:10
last couple years. So at them before us we see
14:14
these three major areas that have functionally reduced
14:17
children to accessories. That's really how our cultural
14:21
and legal and technological imagination works.
14:24
Now kids are just objects to be owed to whatever adult has the
14:28
money and means to acquire them according to their identity and
14:31
their desires and their longings, right?
14:33
And a lot of the times we just validate it, like that's just
14:36
progress, right? Or that's liberation or whatever
14:39
it is. So next year we've got projects
14:43
that are addressing all three of those areas.
14:44
We've got places where we're fighting back against the
14:47
cultural narrative and we're doing that in two ways.
14:50
Number one, we've got a church curriculum that is coming out,
14:53
like everything we do with them before us is natural law based,
14:57
leaning heavily on the stories of children who have been raised
14:59
in these modern families. So you can look them in the face
15:02
and and see that indeed, it did not matter that two mothers
15:06
loved them, they still hungered for a father.
15:09
But what we're doing in the church curriculum is we're
15:11
actually saying there's threats within the Protestant world and
15:16
the Catholic world to diminish or reduce or be silent about or
15:20
to compromise on God's design for the family.
15:24
And we make clear in our church curriculum, which is about 7
15:27
videos with an accompanying workbook, that if you abandon
15:32
God's prescription for sex and marriage, you are victimizing
15:36
children. Those two things go together in
15:38
100% of cases. You can either protect children
15:44
or you can compromise like those are the two options.
15:47
So we work through all the different manifestations of
15:49
Modern Family, and we look at the connection between God's
15:53
priorities from his meta story of the strongest of all coming
15:58
down to sacrifice for the weakest and most vulnerable and
16:01
most wicked, Which is in our case.
16:03
And how we as Christians are supposed to go and do likewise
16:06
when it comes to defending the defenseless.
16:09
You know to looking at how he insists that his people care for
16:15
the fatherless. All throughout the Old Testament
16:18
especially and when we compromise on what scripture
16:21
says, we're actually incentivizing and endorsing
16:24
fatherlessness. So it's like we just really want
16:27
to draw a straight line between what the Bible says and these
16:30
principles of child first family formation.
16:35
So we've got that happening. We also are going to be Co
16:38
producing a massive documentary with Focus on the Family that is
16:45
going to be distributed globally and available on, you know
16:49
Amazon or Hulu or whatever. And it is going to be the child
16:53
centric case for not just not just man, woman, marriage, but
16:58
really pointing out the harms of these other cultural, legal and
17:01
technological changes. So we've got those projects
17:04
happening. We are working with a lot of
17:08
global coalitions to attack a big fertility right that is not
17:13
a benevolent nonprofit. This is not a an adoption agency
17:17
that's trying to rescue children.
17:19
This is a marketplace. Big fertility is a marketplace
17:21
that is buying and selling children.
17:23
So we have several national and international coalitions that we
17:27
are forming and participating in to fight back this global
17:31
threat. We're also starting a legal
17:35
department to not just continue to fight the bad child
17:39
commodifying bills popping up in the United States and abroad,
17:44
but we also are have a strategy to retake ground on the marriage
17:48
issue. So that's very exciting and I
17:50
don't know if any other organization that is working to
17:53
overturn Obergefell. So we're going to give that a
17:55
shot. And then we also are going to
17:58
move into the corporate world. In terms of the corporate world
18:02
has done quite a bit to undermine marriage and family.
18:05
You know, from legitimizing same sex partnerships to paying for
18:10
adult transition or children's transition through their HR
18:12
benefits or flying people to get abortions out of, you know, or
18:17
funding IVF and the use of sperm or egg donors and subsidizing
18:22
surrogates. I mean a lot of the ways that
18:25
the corporate world recruits and retains their employees is
18:28
through these health benefit quote UN quote health benefits
18:32
that actually violate the rights of children.
18:34
So we are going to create a children's first HR benefit
18:38
package for any business that wants to use their corporate
18:42
heft to protect children and elevate their dignity.
18:49
We're going to tell them exactly what that looks like.
18:51
And we've got a satirical video that we're in the process of
18:54
producing that is going to reveal how these corporate
18:58
benefits that, you know, help their ESG scores so much,
19:02
actually do so on the backs of children.
19:05
So we've got a lot happening. Excellent.
19:08
So inspiring. How did how did you develop this
19:10
collaboration with folks on the family and then with the other
19:13
groups you're talking about? I've got an inside man at Focus
19:18
on the Family. There is a guy there whose name
19:20
is Glenn Stanton and he's written so many books.
19:23
In my opinion, he is the national, maybe international,
19:27
expert on maternal paternal differences in terms of, like,
19:30
caring for and interacting with their kids.
19:33
So I've learned from him for a long time, and he's been on my
19:36
Advisory Board. He's a vice president there.
19:38
So he has been. I don't know.
19:42
You know, there's so much of this process of starting a
19:46
nonprofit and trying to create a global movement.
19:48
It looks like it's the Katy show, but it's not.
19:53
Oh my gosh. There's so many good people who
19:56
have helped in so many different ways to move the ball forward,
20:00
to show me where I'm headed in the wrong direction, to
20:03
encourage me in a new direction. And he's totally been one of
20:07
them. He's always just offered his
20:11
insight and his practical help. So we went to Focus on the
20:14
Family because of his connection there and he's been a big part
20:18
of helping that to come to fruition and then arc.
20:24
John Anderson is one of the top the BIG4 founders of Ark.
20:29
He is the former Deputy Prime Minister of Australia.
20:31
And I would say they're preeminent conservative
20:35
statesman, like statesmanship has kind of gone out of style.
20:38
But not with John Anderson. He's he's got an incredible
20:42
podcast, incredible video show, interviews, amazing people.
20:46
We got to be Stacy and I got to be on it about a year ago.
20:51
And he said something like, has Jordan Peterson read your book?
20:54
And I was like, ha, ha, Nope. And he's like, well, maybe I can
20:57
help with that. And I'm like, OK, John.
21:00
And you know, a few months later, he's like, you want to be
21:02
on the Advisory Board for this big new global project.
21:06
So I just feel again like what a gift, what a gift to be in a
21:11
place where we have the ability to collaborate with and work
21:17
shoulder to shoulder with so many people that are that are
21:22
done rolling over. They are ready to fight for a
21:25
renewal, for marriage, family, for Western civilization.
21:29
And honestly most of them are doing it because of and in the
21:32
name of Christ. It's amazing to me.
21:35
We were at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship
21:38
conference in London. The first kind of gathering of
21:41
everybody together, 1500 people, 1500 global leaders from I think
21:45
75 different countries and and you could not get there without
21:49
an invitation. So those of us on the Advisory
21:52
Board, we got to invite all the people that we felt were
21:55
adhering to the six principles that ARC had set out as their
22:00
fundamental values. Nobody set set out to just
22:03
invite Christians and Jews like we just were inviting the people
22:06
that were doing the best work, the best work on energy, the
22:09
best work on social fabric, the best work in terms of renewing
22:12
education, the best one in terms of like purifying the
22:16
administrative state, the best in terms of defending free
22:19
speech. I mean we just invited the
22:22
people that were actually putting forth not just
22:24
critiquing but putting forth a new vision of flourishing.
22:29
And when we were at the conference, I think the moment
22:32
that's going to stand out for me the most was Jonathan Pagio was
22:35
giving a speech and he's an Orthodox believer.
22:38
He he's an iconograph. I'm sorry.
22:41
An iconographer. Sorry.
22:43
And he asked how many people in the audience adhere to a formal
22:47
religion. And 95% of the hands went up in
22:52
the room, 95%. And I asked him later, I said
22:56
how many were you expecting? And he said I thought it was
22:59
going to be 5050. And I actually felt bad then
23:03
saying, oh, OK, how many of you guys don't adhere to a formal
23:07
religion? And you know, there was maybe 25
23:10
hands total in the room. And I mean like what does that
23:13
tell you that there is good work happening.
23:16
I am so amazed that I get to partner with some of the people
23:19
that are doing it. And largely the people that are
23:22
doing it are serious about God, are serious about following
23:27
Christ and letting him change the way that they operate in the
23:31
world, whether it's vocationally or personally.
23:33
And I'm, I'm so inspired by it, by it all.
23:38
You know, people that are saying I will not hide my faith, it is
23:42
not a private, it is not just a private matter.
23:45
It is going to be public in all the ways that God tells me for
23:48
it to be public. So I mean, I I think that in
23:51
many ways you're doing that in your work, like you are allowing
23:56
those timeless principles to inform how you serve your
24:02
clients and that is the way forward.
24:05
That is the way forward. Yeah, it is striking how much it
24:10
seems like it's Abrahamic religions or Christianity
24:15
specifically against the world. And maybe that's because God
24:18
alone is good. That's all goodness we have
24:21
comes from him, and without him we're not capable of very much.
24:25
And we see the consequences of that, of the atheist regimes.
24:31
Yeah. At the same time I do try to
24:33
emphasize the natural law principles which at least in in
24:36
theory are accessible by reason. And there have been philosopher,
24:39
non religious philosophers like Socrates, Plano, Aristotle who
24:43
have discovered these. But then in practice, it's
24:48
unless you have the luxury of being a aristocrat and can spend
24:52
your entire life studying things and practice, having a formal
24:56
religion really helps. That helps you come to these
24:59
truths. And then we have the the grace
25:03
to be able to witness to them in spite of fear of suffering and
25:09
death. Which, you know, that's
25:12
something. This is the purpose of this
25:13
podcast, in part, is to inspire the next generation of virtuous
25:16
leaders. So I'd love to hear what advice
25:19
do you have for them for how to either start an initiative like
25:23
you're doing, you join something, like be someone who's
25:26
capable of being invited to something like Arc and overcome.
25:29
I think the fear it takes in order to do that.
25:34
Good luck overcoming the fear. I I mean, like, I'm still
25:38
afraid. I still worry about what people
25:41
will say if I tweet this or if I don't say that I was.
25:45
It was fear that kept me from getting involved in this,
25:47
especially social fear. And I and I do think that that
25:50
is one of the greatest weapons that the left has wielded which
25:54
is the threat of isolation in that they will isolate you, that
25:57
you will lose the people that you are the closest to.
25:59
And the reality is you might, you might.
26:03
You just have to figure out, you know, everyone's going to fear
26:05
something. What do you fear?
26:07
And And ultimately for me, thank God.
26:10
God had brought me through a process of He tutored me to hear
26:14
his voice and and he made it clear that this is what I was
26:19
supposed to be doing. And so that kind of clarity
26:21
helps because then when you do lose the friends, because you
26:23
will, when it does create family tension because it does, you at
26:28
least don't cower. And you don't go back and say,
26:31
did God really say, which is always what happens when you get
26:34
to those dark places. OK.
26:35
So you have to know what God is telling you to do.
26:39
And if you don't know God yet, take a look.
26:43
It will be the adventure of your lifetime.
26:47
You will be so powerful because it is an otherworldly power, but
26:54
it is high risk. Like I I tell people I've got
26:56
two different halves of my Christian life, my safe and
26:59
comfortable Christian life and my high risk Christian life.
27:02
You know, my safe and comfortable Christian life
27:03
happened after I had kids, and I was very biblically illiterate
27:07
and involved in all kinds of ministry.
27:11
But I played it very, very safe in terms of what I would obey
27:14
and what I would ignore. And then I was so desperate for
27:19
God's, for connection with him, to hear his voice.
27:22
I said, I will do anything you say, just so that I can be near
27:26
you, just so I can hear you talk to me.
27:28
And so then I started to obey everything and things got crazy
27:32
like crazy things happened, high risk things, you know?
27:36
But now when he speaks, well, now I know that when I ask, he
27:42
will talk to me and he tells me to do crazy things.
27:45
You know, he tells me to start a blog.
27:47
He tells me to, to. He told me to start them before
27:50
us. He's led me to all of these
27:54
incredible opportunities. So if you're trying to figure
27:56
out what that looks like, like you feel in your heart that you
28:01
are made to do something great. Because you are.
28:06
You are. When you think I made for
28:08
something huge and great and wonderful, that is true.
28:13
So now your next question is, what is the incredible thing
28:17
that I am made for? OK.
28:19
And so that I would say, first of all, ask God.
28:23
And the way that I do it is I've gotten a very ratty journal.
28:26
It's not a pretty journal. Some women have pretty journals
28:28
and I don't. I have a ratty journal.
28:31
I have a cheap notebook journal where I just spew, What do you
28:37
want? I'm worried about this.
28:38
Tell me about this. I get very, very detailed.
28:41
None of this help me be a better wife, Lord, no.
28:44
I'm the help me curb my tongue in situations where I'm starting
28:47
to feel threatened. Be very, very detailed with God
28:50
about what you're asking him, OK?
28:52
And then open the word of God and read until he tells you
28:56
something about what you just said.
28:58
And he will like if you're not BS ING him.
29:02
There's a verse in Jeremiah that says if you seek me, you will
29:04
find me. If you seek me with all your
29:08
heart, so don't give him half heart, don't BS him.
29:11
Don't say what you think he wants to hear.
29:13
Get raw, get honest and get detailed about what you want,
29:17
especially what he wants for you to do.
29:20
And then open the Bible. Maybe you're reading through
29:22
Psalms or whether you're you're in the middle of John or maybe
29:25
you just say, God lead me, lead me to a book and a chapter.
29:29
And then you open that and you read until he talks to you.
29:32
And then you underline what he said and you put it in your
29:34
journal and you obey, even if it doesn't make sense.
29:38
So he will probably start to do that with you.
29:40
It won't be. And now I want you to apply to
29:43
be the president of Harvard so that you can completely renew
29:46
that historical institution. It'll probably be smaller steps.
29:50
And then someday you'll be the president of Harvard who finds
29:53
that they have renewed that historic institution.
29:56
Your business is doing what he says.
29:58
So #1, talk and ask. Number two, you probably need to
30:02
look for two things, #1 the thing that you get passionate
30:07
about, and probably the thing that makes you very, very angry.
30:12
Most of us have a thing or two where we think I cannot abide
30:17
this any longer, right? So pay attention to that.
30:20
What are the things that make you angry?
30:22
Is it that there's that we're hemorrhaging money and the next
30:27
generation is going to have to pay for it?
30:29
Is it that you feel like there aren't enough channels that are
30:35
accurately describing what's happening across the world in
30:39
terms of, like, Foreign Relations?
30:40
I mean, like, what is it that makes you angry?
30:43
Like, why isn't anybody doing this?
30:46
Pay attention to that, OK? Because if you have that, why
30:49
isn't anybody doing this? There's a really good chance
30:52
that God is saying, because you're going to do it, you're
30:56
going to do it. OK.
30:57
So you've got to look for that intersection of the things that
30:59
make you angry and the thing that hardly anyone else is
31:02
doing. All right.
31:04
So then you kind of have a general sense of where you're
31:06
going. So then you need to start doing
31:09
it. That doesn't mean immediately
31:11
start the nonprofit, immediately start the YouTube channel.
31:14
It does mean do something related, maybe start writing an
31:18
article about that thing. Or at minimum, start listening
31:22
to great podcasts or reading great books about other people
31:26
that are somewhat involved in that sphere.
31:28
So you can see what's out there and then you'll really be able
31:30
to identify, OK, this person, this has this part of the
31:34
argument, these guys are doing this, but nobody's doing this
31:36
other area, OK? So it's going to show you what's
31:38
already out there. It's going to give you some
31:40
people that you can kind of follow in the footsteps of, and
31:43
then you'll see where their footsteps end and where yours
31:47
might need to begin. So what makes you passionate?
31:50
What is nobody doing? And then start doing something.
31:54
Start doing something related to it so that you can start to hone
31:57
your skills. Katie, your words are fired.
32:01
I'm glad you're speaking to a lot of people.
32:03
Well, I've. I've groped around in the
32:05
darkness for a while before I got here. 11 Fun question Before
32:11
we start wrapping up, what was it like to to meet Jordan
32:14
Peterson? Oh my gosh.
32:18
So it's so funny because we went to this planning meeting in May
32:22
where all the advisory, not all of them, those that could make
32:25
it, about half of them were at this dinner and Oh my gosh, it
32:29
was just this who's who you know you're going around the table
32:31
and be like, well, you know I'm so and so and I used to be the
32:33
national physicist for blah, blah, blah.
32:35
I'm so and so and I run this, you know this platform that has
32:40
2,000,000 subscribers. Well, you know I'm, I'm John
32:43
Anderson and I used to be the Deputy Prime Minister and my
32:46
government was the. I mean he didn't say this but I
32:47
know this my debt, my government was the last one to not run a
32:50
debt. I mean, like everybody in that
32:52
room was incredible. Like Eric Weinstein dropped in.
32:56
I mean it's just nuts. It's totally nuts.
32:59
And and you know, it gets to me and I'm like, I'm a nobody.
33:03
I'm a nobody. And so you know, I just said
33:06
I'm, I'm Katie, I run them before us.
33:10
What I really want is I want to read the Bible with everybody in
33:13
this room at some point. So I hope you'll allow me the
33:16
the chance to do that. Because ultimately, at my heart,
33:19
I'm a pastor's wife and I just want to I want to know you and I
33:23
want to love you wherever you are.
33:24
And then I said, but also, this culture is batshit crazy, so I
33:30
am also an activist. It has forced me to be an
33:34
activist for children. So that was sort of my
33:37
introduction. And then the next day we had an
33:40
all day meeting and you know, it's it's assigned seating
33:42
because of course if it's not assigned seating, everyone's
33:44
sitting next to Jordan, right? So I'm next to Jordan.
33:49
And so it was 8 hours of, you know, group discussion and then
33:55
smaller discussions where we would break out in groups of two
33:58
or three. So I had already made a
34:02
connection with and met with his wife a couple different times.
34:04
So I already knew Tammy. So it was fun to just very
34:09
briefly share some time with him.
34:12
But he is a man where there's a lot of his.
34:15
His attention is pulled in a lot of directions.
34:17
So yeah, it was fun. That's so cool.
34:22
What a privilege. Yeah, yeah.
34:25
It just strikes me that whether you said what you did with those
34:29
people, because one danger that we're never going to be able to
34:33
uproot completely from us is the danger of pride, right?
34:36
And that that might be the biggest challenge that people
34:39
who are striving to leave for a good phase.
34:46
Well, let's end by if you could just tell us what we can do to
34:49
support you, how people can find you, that sort of thing.
34:52
Well, you should follow them before us.
34:56
The best way is to go to thembeforeus.com and subscribe
34:59
to our newsletter like we are going to, we're going to light
35:03
it up in 2024. I'm so excited.
35:05
I can't wait to see what the documentary looks like and I
35:08
can't wait to see that the videos for the church curriculum
35:10
when they're done. And I can't wait to watch the
35:13
satirical video that is just. I mean, I just love, I love
35:17
satire. I love scathing, fighting, true
35:23
humor. So that's happening too.
35:26
I mean, I I can't. I feel like I'm on the front
35:30
bench watching the game and I'm like, what's going to happen?
35:34
And it's like, I know the game plan and I know how I want it to
35:36
end. But a lot of these things I am
35:38
also like, how what is this going to be like?
35:41
We probably, we are in conversation with Arc about
35:45
running a conference or or helping to organize a conference
35:49
for Ark specifically just about the social fabric aspect of
35:53
this. So I'm really excited about that
35:57
too. So there's just so many things
35:59
that are happening. Next year come subscribe, you
36:02
can find us on Twitter and Instagram and all of that.
36:05
Just follow us and get equipped and what we're going to do is
36:08
we're going to train you to look at all marriage and family
36:11
issues from the perspective of the child.
36:13
We are going to equip you to defend the defenseless.
36:18
And you probably, I mean if you're listening to this
36:20
podcast, you're probably pro-life and you probably are
36:23
pretty familiar with anti abortion arguments.
36:27
We are going to train you to take that child centric natural
36:30
law, children's rights perspective on to this side of
36:33
the womb and apply it to all marriage and family issues.
36:36
So come and just let us equip you and watch.
36:39
I just watch, sit on the front bench with me and and watch it
36:43
all happen over 2024. Well, thank you so much for what
36:48
you do. I just give you the most
36:50
encouragement I can to continue and I I find it personally
36:53
inspirational to meet people like you.
36:56
And maybe maybe I'll join you one day at ARC.
36:59
We would love it. Thanks.
37:02
Take care, Katie.