Aim for a B+ With Lee C. Camp

29:15This is interesting. Or is that, what does that look like? Yeah, well, first, I mean, we have really, really sweet relationships with our boys right now. And two of our boys were very difficult to raise. Wow. And one was often just angry because of various things for much of his life, and he was very difficult to raise. And another one went through a lot of difficulties, and that was really difficult to navigate. But one of the things that's just been so sweet is that we have such sweet relationships with all three of them. Wow. And we just love them so much, and they're so fun to be with. and um so it's really a sweet time parenting can I ask you a quick question about that were there moments in those relationships where it got easier where there was a real feeling of like wow there's a weight that's been lifted or was it like a gradual it got better and better yeah with with one um it was um he came back to Nashville during the pandemic and so then all of a sudden we were thrown together and um um and you know i don't think you would mind me telling telling this part of the story it's like when he called my wife and his mom to say you know they're shutting down where he was in southern california they're shutting it down we can't do anything and my roommates have they've moved back home i'm sitting here by myself i can't do anything i'm thinking about coming back so she told me and and i said i don't know wow and um Was he in school there or just living?

30:57He had already completed college. And I said, I don't know. And I said, if he were to come, we'd have to talk about boundaries. And she said, fine, talk about boundaries. But he's coming. Wow. And so he came, and we talked about boundaries. First two weeks were really difficult. And then it was like I got my relationship with my son back. Oh, that's great. No, it was just, it was the great gift of the pandemic in the midst of all the horror of the pandemic. Yes, so great. Was that sweet relationship with that particular son. And then, you know, another son had a lot of struggles, you know. He was always, he was very different.

31:37He was always sweet all along. We were just terrified that, you know, we might lose him. And because of choices that he was making. And so he would drive us crazy, but he was always sweet, you know. Wow. emotionally he was he and i are kind of most similar emotionally which is pretty emotional and so um so we always kind of connected that way but there was always a fear you know for for him and then our youngest was is just he's he's the easiest sweetest finest one of the finest human beings i know and he was you know you know he'll probably go through all his mess when he hits 40 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

32:16Hold on. That's right. But yeah, so there's definitely been different seasons with them. And I think by and large, one of the things, I mean, we learned a lot through parenting. And one of the things was to hold on. And you don't have the slightest idea what's going to come around the corner and what might be coming at you. And then another thing that I'm remembering is at one point when we were, my wife and I were doing one season of therapy during that time. And the therapist one day said we were talking about perfectionism or something with regard to parenting. And she said, well, just remember the 85 % rule.

32:58And I said, what's that? And she said, if you do it right with your kids 85 % of the time, that's good enough. And she said, the 15 % of the time you screw up allows you to do two things. one to teach your kids they don't have to be perfect and two to show your kids that you can apologize to them when you screw up and so i that just went away liberated that day because again i'm a recovering perfectionist and i was afraid what am i going to do to my kid because i because i screwed up today you know right and and see them in therapy you know yeah that's good to hear because the thing that I always think is, you know, you have random memories of your own childhood.

33:43You can't remember your entire childhood. So you end up remembering seemingly random times. And I'm like, you know, are my girls on a bad day when I go to bed? And I'm like, I did not do that right. I'm always like, this is going to be the day they remember. They're going to forget the last 99 days. They'll hold on to this one. And they'll be like, well, you yelled all the time. I'm like, I yelled that one time. You know. So that's very liberating to hear. Yes. Yeah, so I think the more I leaned into that, that was really helpful. And, you know, I think that one of the things that helped me also in my parenting was that as I realized how much I can screw up, then all of a sudden it helped me be much more sympathetic to some of the ways my parents screwed up you know it's like oh yeah this is hard yeah and that interesting and so let go of my own kind of unreasonable expectations of my own parents and i think as well you know if my kids um and you know they haven't communicated to us that kind of unreasonable expectations but if they if they are carrying any you know let them get kids and that'll yeah yeah some of that for them as well yeah yeah i feel that so i have to ask about that you sort of famously maybe this has changed since i read this but you famously don't own a cell phone is this still the case that is correct yes i mean what is that like did you have a cell phone at some point and then you got rid of it you just said like i'm gonna live a life i yeah i had this brand new really nice iphone 7 seven yeah arguably their best model yeah it was the first holy number it was the first big screen model oh yeah yeah oh yeah yeah yeah and so um i was i sat down in the car one day and i heard it crack because i had it in my back pocket and so i tried three times to get it fixed for for some odd reason i just couldn't get it fixed and so by that time it had been a month or two and I thought, man, this has been okay.

35:53Maybe I could just try this. And so, you know, that's turned into, I forget. I think I'm coming up on either eight or nine years now without it. And I will be the first to say it's sometimes just a pain. You know, it's a real pain not to have a phone. And travel makes it difficult. Now it's like almost impossible to park in a city without a blasted phone. Oh, yeah. And so that's frustrating. I was in somewhere traveling in the last couple months in Minneapolis or somewhere maybe. And there's this line of very angry cars backed up behind me because I couldn't pay to get out of the gate because of the phone, because I didn't have a phone and all this kind of stuff.

36:37And I'm arguing with the guy. I'm arguing with the attendant about I already did this. I took care of this online. So it's often inconvenient. but for me, and I'm not an evangelist about it, different people need to do different things, but for me, it just contributes to my serenity. So I think of the inconveniences as a serenity tax. Serenity tax. One of the taxes I have to pay to be a little more serene. Yeah, that is so good. Do you feel like I'm going to hang on to this for as long as I can, but I would imagine it's getting harder and harder. It is getting harder and harder. and my wife's been very patient about it, but sometimes she'll get frustrated.

37:20The poor guy that has my old number. I mean, that guy, I've never met him in person, but we've texted. I can text on my computer. And so I communicate on my computer, on my iPad, and I've learned to kind of work around. You know, I've got GPS stuff on my iPad, so when I have to travel somewhere, I know how to get somewhere and stuff like that. But that poor guy, I mean, he still gets messages. and he was very funny when it first started. When he first got the thing and he would get messages from me, he was so profane. I can't, you know, if you were R or NC-17, I could tell you the jokes that he pulled on people that were just so embarrassing.

38:01Oh, wow. And do you know Andy Gullihorn? Mm-hmm. One time I was traveling and Andy and Jill were at the same thing that I was speaking at, and so Andy didn't remember that I didn't have that old number and so he texted on the way back and he said, Hey, Lee, Jill and I are at Gate A7 at such and so restaurant and do you want to eat with us? And so he texts my number, you know, and he gets a reply back and says, Yeah, I'll be there in a bit. Send me a picture of the menu. And so Andy sends him a picture of the menu and then he says, the guy says, yeah, give me the prime ribs. The prime ribs. Oh, no.

38:43The whole side of fish tacos. This I'm completely on board with. I think this is great. And then finally the guy apparently started feeling bad and so then he followed up. He said, no, I've changed my mind. Just give me a cup of water. And Andy was like, are you sure? And he said, yes, just water. And he says, what does Laura want? And he said, I don't give a damn what Laura wants. And so then Andy was all upset with me because being so cavalier about my wife. I haven't seen Laura in weeks. I don't know where she is. I've never seen Laura, some would say. One of my favorite jokes I ever played on a friend of mine, Jeremy Cowart.

39:20Do you know Jeremy? Yeah. So Cowart is one of the most creative human beings God ever made, but he would admit he can be a little flighty about things. And back when I went to go pay my Sprint bills at the Sprint store, they had phones that were operational. as examples. And so one time I went in because it was like, that's going to be a 15-minute wait to pay bill. So I put his phone number into this phone that was just like the store phone. Oh, my. And I texted and I said, hey, man, where are you at? Which I knew for him would send him into a panic. And he was like, parking right now. Oh, man.

39:56Did I forget something? And I was like, yeah. I thought we were good for lunch. The board is here. I said, I thought we were good for lunch. Been here a few. and he was like, oh my gosh, who is this? And I said, Bob from church. And he was like, oh dude. And I was like, he said, where are you at? I'll jump in the car. And I was like, Baja Burrito. So then I was like, hey man, just kidding. It's Barnes. I'm using this phone. But it was like, man, you have some serious power, especially over a certain personality type that would be like, you know, bite on something like that. I can't imagine, maybe you're doing this too, but I'm sitting here going like, there are so many ways, forget texting and social media, all that stuff, that just to pay or like, you know.

40:37I mean, it would be like, you know, when you lose power at your house. Yes. And you just, you know the power's out. And then two minutes later, you're like, you're doing something. You would be constantly, it would be such a transition for me to get out of that. Well, I realized how deeply it had wired me physiologically when my last phantom buzz, you know, when your phone's not in your pocket, but it buzzes. Yes. but my last phantom buzz in my pocket was one year after i had stopped using a cell phone and so i thought oh man this stuff's that's it's in deep yeah i mean i i think it's awesome i i think it's i think probably most people would have a fantasy of throwing this thing in the ocean you know it reminds me of when tiktok last year was maybe gonna shut down you remember that yeah And as it got closer, there were all these kids on TikTok that were like, I'm happy.

41:33Like, I'm glad that I want it to be shut down. And then, of course, it came back, and then everybody's back. I mean, I would encourage people. Again, I'm not an evangelist for it. People have to do what they need to do. But at the same time, people who say they want to do it, you can do it. Yeah. You can do it. And so you don't have to talk yourself into thinking you can't do it. If you want to do it, then do it. You can figure the workarounds and things that you have to do to do it. And I think that any sort of practice where we can unencumber ourselves, unencumber ourselves, disencumber ourselves from the madness of the claws of technology, the better.

42:17Yeah. So you teach at Lipscomb. I actually stepped away from teaching two years ago, but I taught theology and ethics for 25 years. 25 years? Yeah. So I was thinking today about a philosophy class that I took in college. And it's funny because I was not a philosophy major. This was not a class that I think of often. But I thought about it when I was listening to your podcast. And the thing about the class that I remember is basically just the vibe of the class. The professor had done a great job of creating an environment where whatever we were talking about in any given class, it was completely acceptable to say anything that you wanted, to take any viewpoint on any given issue.

43:12I do remember him being really harping on how we said things and how we presented our ideas, you know, down to the words and things like that. But you could say whatever you wanted, which I really appreciated about the class. I took this class, you know, 20 plus years ago, so I'm decades removed from college. But I have heard that that kind of an environment has been harder and harder to achieve in universities. Was that your experience? My experience is definitely that it's increasingly difficult to have that kind of freedom. and I think at least anecdotally it's a presumption that everybody's afraid of getting shamed and called out on social media and all that kind of stuff.

44:07I think that there's been higher education in the US is under great duress and it's under duress for lots of reasons. Financially, it's under duress. It's under duress because a lot of people think that what higher education is about is just about figuring out how to get a job But at its best, higher education, at least in terms of the humanities, is asking the question of what kind of life is a life worth living? You know, there was the great social critic W.E.B. Du Bois who was here in Nashville at Fisk, African-American social critic, early part of the 20th century. There's a statue of him on the Fisk campus.

44:48and in his famous book, The Souls of Black Folk, he has this essay where he's critiquing the New South and its commercialization and so forth. But the heading, I think it's the heading in that chapter, he says, the true college will ever have one goal, not to earn meat, M-E-A-T, not to earn meat, but to learn the sort of life which meat rightly nourishes. and I had that on my syllabus for years because it's like especially classes like philosophy classes, theology classes, literature classes, history classes, at their best what they're asking you is what kind of life do you want to live and what kind of life is a life worth living and that's the questions everybody cares about but because we're so obsessed now with the so-called practical which is often translated into what can be made sense of in consumerist contexts.

45:45We don't make space for people to ask these big questions. But everybody cares about these questions, right? Everybody cares about happiness. Everybody cares about meaning. Everybody cares about what you're going to give your life to. And so you still can do that kind of stuff. But as far as students, they're often much more increasingly distracted because of phones. They're much more increasingly distracted because of social media. and there's often a lot of distance that has to be traversed to get people to open up and to talk honestly about what's going on and sometimes because of their fear of their classmates about what will happen if they are really honest about what they think about things.

46:25Hi friends it's Annie F. Downs here and I am so beyond excited to share with you that I have a brand new tv show called I Gotta Ask that begins airing Thursday, May 28th on The Wonder Project, which you can find through your Amazon Prime video app. You may have heard of The Wonder Project because they're the ones who brought you the House of David. And I am so honored and honestly have zero chill that I get to partner with them to make this dream come true. I love how Wonder Project is not only creating great original TV and movies that audiences can experience together, but also curating content via their subscription on Prime Video filled with meaningful stories.

47:07The first two episodes of my talk show, I Gotta Ask, premiere on May 28th, followed by two episodes each on June 4th and June 11th. In every episode, I sit down with a group of friends, some experts in their fields, and some thought leaders, some just my real life people. And we talk about things like, why is dating so hard in 2026? Or how do I build a business? What do I do with fear and anxiety and so many more questions that I just had to ask? I cannot wait to hear what you think. You can subscribe today at Igottaask.com. Yeah, it's tough. And I feel like you, correct me if I'm wrong, it seems like your role at the university was to, you know, have to analyze and criticize the church maybe, people of faith kind of a thing.

48:07You said in one of your books, I wrote it down, Christianity is neither left nor right nor religious, which I want you to maybe explain what you mean by that. But in a bigger sense, did you feel like you had the freedom? How did you feel like you had the freedom to do that at a university that is a faith-based university? Well, one of the reasons I had the liberty to do some of that at that particular university that I was part of, Lipscomb University, is because David Lipscomb, the namesake of the school and who founded the school, he was this fascinating southern radical agrarian who was a religious reformer in the late 19th century.

49:00And so he was a pacifist. He was critiquing racist forms of Christianity in the Jim Crow era. He was critiquing the robber barons. in the early part of the 20th century, and because he took Jesus seriously. And he knew that the kingdom of God, if you take it seriously, is going to butt up against, push up against all of the kind of nationalistic stuff. It's going to critique sort of indulgent forms of Christianity. It's going to critique forms of Christianity that are employing violence against your enemies because Jesus teaches you to love your enemies and so forth. And so he was just a remarkable person.

49:47And so when I would talk about things like nonviolence or I would talk about things like justice or I'd talk about things like critiquing nationalism, and a lot of times, strangely, from my perspective, that gets dismissed as liberalism or wokeism and all that kind of stuff. It's not liberal at all. It's very conservative because that's the way the early church was and its way in our movement, the 19th century was and this founder of the school. And so if people wanted to dismiss me as being liberal or woke, I could just say, look, seriously, I'm conservative. I'm much more conservative than you because I'm just trying to conserve the tradition here.

50:29And this is what our tradition said in the 19th century and the larger Christian tradition said on a lot of this stuff in the early, first, second, third centuries. So that seems like a recent sort of criticism of that kind of stance, that it gets dismissed as woke and progressive. But in your experience, has that not been recent? That's been years and years and years going? Well, no. The kind of critique of seeing that as left or woke, that's definitely a much more kind of recent development. and you know a lot of people forget obviously Americans we have a very short historical window right we don't have a very long historical memory but if you look back say early probably 20th century a lot of times it was Protestant liberals who were the more nationalist types Woodrow Wilson you know was a famous

51:26very nationalistic extreme nationalist Christian nationalist and he was a Protestant mainstream liberal, right? He wasn't a conservative. And most conservative Christians, up until about the middle part of the 20th century, they just kind of kept hands off of all the politics stuff. And they were just focusing on saving people's souls and letting them go to heaven when they die, which that's problematic myself as understanding Christianity. But they weren't involved in all this nationalistic kind of stuff. But then that begins to change in the 50s, 60s, 70s, especially the time you get to the 1980s with the so-called moral majority, Ronald Reagan and so forth.

52:03and there's this huge sea shift. And then all of a sudden, the conservative Christians get, in my mind, co-opted by people who see them as a voting block and they trot out certain issues and they say, we can get these people on these issues to come vote for us. And then we're off and running, off to the races and it's just been a mess ever since. Or so I see it. Yeah.

52:30I do not speak on behalf of the hosts of Danville no I think it feels like such a slippery slope because it's like when you follow that nationalistic trend especially in Christendom it's it can sort of present in these ways that really tickle your fancy because it feels yeah I mean that's a long conversation But I feel that. I have to watch the things in me that are fear-based that tend to trigger those responses where it's like, we got to do this to maintain the thing. And I'm just like, man, I'm hard-pressed to find anywhere that Jesus would ever co-sign some of these methodologies. But like you said, that co-opting is such a way, because it turns into a spam of things that if you're not careful, you're kind of like, oh, maybe he's losing the original juice here.

53:23something that feels a little more. Yeah, that's a fascinating thought. I was going to say, so when you mentioned sort of the good life, which I know is a big thing that you think a lot about, you have this phone that you've sort of, you know, sailed to the wind, you've hauled it off and shot it with an arrow in the sea as it's Viking death. And I will say that my wife would be rolling her eyes. Oh, yeah. Yeah, of course. We assume that. I get tired of hearing everybody talk about you not having a cell phone. She's like, when I'm trying to call you at the grocery, you're holding your iPad.

54:03If I ever see you doing that, it's going to give you a lot of joy, by the way. But when you think... I do use it as my camera, by the way. Oh, I love that. There's nothing more dad. My son. Yeah, I was going to say, there's nothing more father than me. In the context that we're in, because this is what we've kind of been talking about, that you were just speaking to. And you have college kids that come to you and kind of say, how would you define the good life? What does that look like to you as you're getting older and thinking about this more? Well, I have one definition from a philosopher named Alistair McIntyre who just died in the last year, but he was one of the great moral philosophers of the last 100 years.

54:43And McIntyre, in his famous book, After Virtue, He says something like, the good life is the life spent in seeking for the good life for humankind. Wow. And I love it because it's obviously a very flexible definition. And he's beginning with this space where all of us can step into and step into it right now by simply saying, I'm at least going to ask the question. Yeah. Because a lot of people never ask the question. You know, as I often say, you know, a lot of people spend more time thinking about planning their vacation than they do thinking about what kind of life they want to live. And so what McIntyre's pointing to there is saying, if you want to live a good life, this is the place to start.

55:26What does a good life mean and what does a good life entail? And then he says, the follow-up to that is to say, and then they pursue the virtues that make that pursuit possible. So it's like, okay, if I want to be X, then you say, okay, well, what kind of human being do I have to be to pursue X? and then, okay, well, if I'm serious about it, then I've got to start working on things that are going to get me toward X, right? And so then it also is an iterative process. So you can figure things out at 20 and you can think, okay, I know what a good life is going to mean for me and start working on it.

55:59And at 25, you realize, oh, there are some things about that that are quite helpful and some of that was really idiotic, right? And so let me adjust. And then 35, you're going to do it again. 45, you're going to do it again. 59, you're going to do it again, right? But it's this beautiful iterative process that can continue to grow and so forth. And the last thing I'd say about it is that, well, maybe the next to last thing I'll say about it is that, sorry, you're giving me professor mode, is that I do a lot on the so-called virtue traditions. And so, you know, a virtue, a skill, a habit, or a disposition that constitutes a good life.

56:38And so we go back and look at somebody like Aristotle and somebody like Aquinas in the Christian tradition, they're going to say there are four cardinal virtues, and they're courage, prudence, temperance, and justice. And the notion of a cardinal virtue goes to the Latin word cardo, which is the word for hinge. And so the idea is your whole life is going to turn. Hinge on these things. It's going to hinge on these things. And if you don't have courage, I mean, we know this, right? If you don't have any courage, your life is screwed. If you're always a coward or if you're always reckless, because virtue is always a mean between two vices of excess or deficiencies.

57:15If I don't have enough courage, I'm a coward. If I don't pay enough attention to fear and I've got too much courage, we might say, then I'm reckless, but courage is going to find that space in the middle. And you can screw your life up over and over and over again if you haven't figured out how to be courageous, right? Courage, prudence, temperance, and justice. Temperance is obvious, right? Especially if you go to the overindulgent side, the destructive nature of that. And so forth and so on. So it's trying to figure out what are the practices and habits that can make a good life possible. And then working on trying to become the kind of person that is characterized by those things.

57:54Yeah, which I feel like as a parent feels like another whole job. It is. Do you know what I mean? It's like as you're having kids, managing your family and your household, and then also trying to go like, how do we? which sort of leads me to I wanted to ask you about this to being where you are now empty nesting if you think back to that season of life where the boys are still in the house what would and you could tell that dad something now be it about the good life wherever you are in your life what do you think you would tell Lee then or let's just say there's two guys in the room right now you could tell that too for fun um well i know sometimes when i would have undergraduate students ask about you know what should i be thinking about when i'm thinking about getting married um i'd often tell them just work on your own crap yeah and if you work on your own crap that's going to serve you really well in your marriage yeah and i think the same thing for parenting you know the degree to which i don't work on my stuff it's gonna it's gonna leech out somehow in the family and if i haven't if i if i refusing to deal with my own stuff no matter how well i think i'm hiding it you're not hiding it it's coming out somewhere or the other yeah and so i think prioritizing working on my own stuff and and for me it was um i try not to live by regret and I don't think I do live by regret but I if I think about it too much I can be I can feel sadness about the fact that I was so anxious and you know and that came to me through family systems um it came to me through attachment styles blah blah blah blah blah and so I inherited it honestly you know I was dealing with a I was treated for a ulcer when I was in seventh grade I learned to worry very early.

59:59Wow. And so it took me, it's taken me decades to learn not to be so anxious. And so I do feel some sadness about kind of what that robbed of me when I was in my 30s, when I was raising kids. But, you know, I've learned, and I'm grateful I've learned, and I'm better than I used to be, and I'm still not perfect, but I'm a lot better than I used to be. And so just accepting it. And also, going back to the 85 % rule, when I step into, I don't have to do it perfectly, we love our boys and our boys love us. And I can't get over sometimes the sweet affection they will express to us, knowing the ways that we often messed up.

1:00:50but the fact that they could learn to feel safe and know that their mom and dad, when they messed up, we're going to say, I'm sorry. We really screwed the pooch right there. And I'm sorry. Did y 'all do that when they were growing up? Yeah. Pretty, pretty early. Yeah. We learned to do that early. Yeah. What are, what are some things looking back that you think, I think I did this really well as a parent. That's a good question. Yeah. I think just trying to show up, you know, and to be present as best as I was able. and also to let them express themselves and not shut them down, even when it was very, very painful sometimes to hear what they had to say.

1:01:34Because I think for me, one of the things that's happened is that because we learned to let them say whatever they felt like they needed to say, there wasn't stuff left unsaid. Wow. Which meant that there was an ease in the relationship. You know. And so I think anytime, obviously, we have unsaid things, you simply can't have an ease in the relationship, right? Yeah. So if I can let my kids say whatever it is that they feel like they need to say, then all of a sudden everybody can breathe. Even though, again, it can be just so very hard sometimes. Yeah, hard to hear. but it's not like there's skeletons in the closet that have sort of creeped out 15 years later.

1:02:17Yeah, so if you play the long game, you face the difficult pain in the moment. Yeah, that's a great word. I love that. This is kind of a dumb question, but I'm so curious. Do you find that with your boys, and I assume this is yes, but I'd love to hear you speak to it, but do you find that each of those relationships with you and your wife are really different? That my wife and I have different... no this sorry as you two as one as y 'all relate i'll just speak to you as you relate to your son sorry that's what i meant to say it's my relationship with my son yeah they each pretty different very different really yeah yeah i mean they're yeah they're quite different um and just because they're all three very different i mean it's how do you manage that like what does that look like um from like an expectation or like okay i know when i with this son this is sort of the way that we relate, which is I need to get in that headspace or know, like, okay, this language is not going to work with him, this is, or, you know, what does that look like with each other?

1:03:21Um... I mean, it's funny. I mean, they're just like, you know, I have one son that he's just profane as the day is long.

1:03:40And we were sitting, he was on the deck last night. We were talking about something. He just, you know, popping off. And I've just generally just tried to accept that this is the way he is. And to be fair, he probably got some of it from me because I can be profane. And that's my form. I hope he didn't leave with that. That's my form of my adolescent rebellion against the sort of moralism that I got raised in the Bible Belt. Yeah. Because, man, I would never have talked like that as a kid because I knew I would go to hell for it. And so, but anyway, he just profanes it as long as it drives me crazy.

1:04:16And so, like last night, he's popping off. And I just said, look, can you please just reduce it just a little bit? And so he said, you know, Dad, that the people who use profanity are shown to be smarter than people who don't use profanity. I said, yes, I know the studies. But just back down a little bit and give it a rest a little bit. And so we can talk that way with each other, you know. And so then he lets off for a little bit. and then I'm sure next time I see him, he'll probably be piping off again. But I don't know. It's just trying to learn to pay attention to the fact that they're all different and they all have these beautiful things about them and they have their weaknesses and they have their strengths and try to pay attention to them.

1:05:02One of the things that we've talked about on this podcast that I think is just so interesting is growing up in the Bible Belt too, there was sort of a methodology in Christendom at the time that I think was well-meaning, but it was sort of like, hey, here are general ways to parent as Christian parents. Like, do these rules with all of your kids, and you'll have good kids. And I think something that, you know, we had an author on that wrote one of his books who said in retrospect he wished he could go back and change now, and he has. We all learned that with BS. Well, and it's kind of what I love about what you're saying is, you know, each of your kids need different kind of attention from you, which is a lot harder because you can't kind of go like, hey, these are the general rules of our home that I'm going to lay over all of our kids where, you know, God bless them, but like focus on the family 20 years ago, 30 years ago, I said like, hey, if you want to be good parents, Christians, do these five things.

1:06:00All of your kids need to respond to those five things. Where now it seems like, you know, that's changed a little bit in Christendom where people are saying like, hey, I mean, thanks to David and Sissy and, you know, people that are doing this work, Daystar or wherever that are going, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. this kid's going to be this this kid's going to be this so you need to kind of like be attentive because that kid this discipline or this encouragement is going to just land so well with this one but then you turn to your second child and do it and it pisses them off and so I think something that's harder as a parent is you realize like gosh I can't just sort of lay these rules over my kids and be like cool I can clock out but you really have to sort of Like, oh, okay, this kid responds to this differently than the other.

1:06:45No, that's exactly right. And, you know, and sometimes, unfortunately, I think it's kind of some trial and error. And you just have to sometimes try different things. But I was thinking about the particular one I was just talking about that is so funny about his profanity. And he was the one that was so angry when he was a kid. And he was the one that we kind of got our relationship back during the pandemic. um but i mean he was so difficult um that he would just drive us crazy and um i mean one of one of the and he loves he loves this story that i'm about to tell on him um and he loves it anytime i tell the story so i'm going to tell the story but you know like he was so difficult that when he was like he was came up in that age where they're like handing ipads out at school and i'm thinking what the heck are you doing yeah and they're saying oh it's good to study show and I'm thinking, no, I don't care what the studies show.

1:07:38This is crazy. And so he got addicted to that blasted iPad, and he just loved that iPad, and we could not keep him from not getting on the iPad. So when we, like, take the iPad away from him, you know, I one day took his iPad up to my office at the school because he had lost his privilege. And a day or two later, he can't stand it, so he comes up there and talks to the departmental assistant and says, hey, I left something in my dad's office. Can you give me the master key so I can go to my dad's office and get it? so you know that so that's how addicted he is so we at one point we told the boys we said we're cutting off the wi-fi at 10 o 'clock and so if you got homework to do you get done for 10 o 'clock and otherwise you're toast you know you're done that's 10 o 'clock so one night the wi-fi had gone off and i was having to work late and so i had had an ethernet cable and so plugged the ethernet cable into my laptop and plugged it into the wall in the dining room so i'm sitting and there's dining room table eating.

1:08:34And 10 o 'clock has come and gone. And so this son walks past, and I can tell he's mad because the Wi-Fi's done. And so he goes upstairs to his room. About 30 minutes later, I hear him stomp down the steps, and I hear a drawer open in the kitchen, and then him rumble around in the drawer, and the drawer slams. And he steps rapidly around the doorway into the dining room where I'm sitting, picks up my ethernet cable and cuts it in two with scissors and i was just like i thought i was gonna lose my brain i was so mad holy cow so that was what we were dealing with you know and so i i finally told him when he was probably in his mid-20s i said i said i called his name i I said, do you realize that when you were like 16, I decided I was not going to correct you about anything you had to say?

1:09:32And if you said something that I knew was utterly stupid and ignorant, I was just going to ignore it and move on. And he was, what? And I said, yeah. I said, you were so impossible and you were so belligerent that nothing good could come out of me saying anything. And I said, so for right or wrong, that's what I did. And so he was shocked, you know. But it was like once I left him alone, some of the bad decisions that he was making, they turned just like that. Really? Yeah. Because there wasn't anything to push against. That's right. Interesting. And so, like, you know, he was eating badly. And I stopped saying anything about that kind of stuff.

1:10:08He wasn't taking schooling seriously. I would keep some stuff up, so I stopped saying stuff about that. And then all of a sudden he decided where he wanted to go to college. And then that stuff just turned just like that. Isn't that funny? Because he figured out this is what I want, so this is what I need to do. So he's trying to navigate all that stuff. It's just so hard. And, you know, you're going to screw it up one way or the other, but at least try and do the best. It's got to feel so good now, or whenever the day came, that you guys could laugh about those stories. Yeah. That day had to have felt so good.

1:10:42Yeah. Because when you're in the thick of it, you're like, okay, probably we'll laugh about this one day. Or we'll be visiting him in prison for the rest of his life. You know. For cutting like the government he just kept cutting things. Yeah. We had lots of episodes like that with kids. I mean another one of our boys he and his buddies they were always pulling pranks on people and they they pulled some hilarious pranks on people but one day they were just out messing around and they decided they were gonna to set off some smoke bombs in the playground at the local elementary school. And so they messed around with this stuff, and then they stupidly caught some of the mulch on fire.

1:11:31Oh, boy. And so the way they put it out was to kick more mulch over on top of it. I love that. I love that. And then they left, right? And so that was like on a Saturday. Because the thing kicking into the fire, the thing that's burning, is always a good idea. Yeah. So I come up Monday there at football practice, and the assistant principal shows up and said, boys, come over here. And were you at such and so school on Saturday? And thank God they told the truth, and they said yes. And they said, well, the fire marshal's here to talk to you. Oh, my gosh. And they burned down the whole playground.

1:12:05Oh, my gosh. And so, you know, it's just one blasted thing after another. but you know that is so the best stories yeah so you know next thing we know all of us parents are down there at the Davidson County Fire Department with the fire marshal who's done his investigation on arson and he finds him not guilty thank the Lord but yeah they're quite the stories you just take them as they come and do your best and it'll be okay yeah what a beautiful way to jump into the speed ramp it'll be okay oh What a beautiful culmination to jump right in the speedrun. Okay. First, we have a few. These are all over the place, but we felt like with your brain and diversity of what you do, these were great.

1:12:53So I'm going to start with this. What's a book you still really want to write? Ooh.

1:13:02I do still want to write a memoir. Wow. and I started started tinkering around with it but yeah a memoir a memoir yeah oh I'm excited about that do you have the title about you or oh my gosh about you yes that was a very Mark Twain joke yeah what's what's your favorite book to re-read oh okay I have a couple of those but one that I just re-read again recently is the book called Markings by a guy named Dag Hammarskjold. You made that up. That was either a king on Lord of the Rings or you made that up. It sounds like it. No, Dag Hammarskjold was one of the most well-known secretary generals of the UN in the middle of the 20th century.

1:13:53Wow. And he was kind of like, you know, some people have referred to him as something like an anonymous Christian because since he was in the role he was, he didn't talk about his faith openly but after he died they found this manuscript um that's just like a book of short anecdotes or aphorisms where he's just reflecting on life and i just find it beautiful and i go back and read it i don't know i've read it five six seven times or whatever wow so what's it called markings markings okay yeah um okay how about this is a generic one but we love to ask it if you could have dinner with four people alive or dead who would they be Oh, goodness.

1:14:32Thomas Merton. Dorothy Day.

1:14:42Will Campbell.

1:14:49And who's going to fit in that group?

1:14:59I'll throw Dag Hammerskjold in there because that would be a really interesting dinner. I love, I love, don't you love it when being, shut up. What's the second time I've heard his name today?

1:15:13Don't you love, I love when we ask that question because we asked another buddy earlier today that we had on and he was like, I'd want to, I tend to think like anytime I've been asked that I'm like, oh, here's just four people I want to meet. I haven't thought at all about like the actual dinner. Yeah. Yeah. And you're the second person in one day that Eric said, well, I just want to be my friends because any other combination, I don't know how it would go. And I don't get to see these. So I love that you thought about who would fit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, a book you love, people would be surprised by.

1:15:49Oh, a book that you love that people would be surprised by. Hmm. Hmm.

1:16:01I don't know. I mean, some people would be surprised. Some wouldn't. But, you know, I like reading stories about the history of flight. Oh, wow. I just got through reading David McCullough's biography, The Wright Brothers. Oh, man. I bet that was great. I read that kind of stuff. I bet that was great. Yeah. What a moment. I mean, this is the dumbest thing. But what a moment in the world when we figured out how to fly. Yeah, right. And it's amazing. I mean, those guys, like, I can't remember if it was Wilbur or Orville. I think Wilbur's the older one, and I could be wrong. But Wilbur, like, got in this fight, and he was playing a sport.

1:16:38And this guy who ended up being a convicted murderer, like, bashed his face in in some stick game. I don't know what they were playing. And so he was on it. He had been presumed to go to Yale, and then all of a sudden he can't go to college. And so he just, like, isolates for three years and reads like crazy. and then when he comes out of isolation he and his brother or will decide we think we're going to want to decide we'll learn how to fly and so they write the head of the smithsonian institute and they say will you please send us everything that's been written about the theory of flight and so the guy responds to them and sends them all this stuff and they just start reading and so two years by two years later they built their first glider and have flown it at kitty hawk and then two or three years after that they've built the first powered aircraft in the history of the world incredible it is incredible it's just astonishing yeah that they did that it's just nuts to think about and i hate that i know this about myself but i would have been one of the guys on the beach like dude look at these guys you're about to idiots and they had so much that even after they had been flying for a couple years people were mocking them and making fun of them of you these idiots who say they can fly down there and uh so yeah just remarkable it is remarkable Okay, two questions.

1:17:52We love asking this question. Knowing that you've done all these live events, this is one of John and my favorite questions, what is the biggest mishap, hysterical mess-up moment in the token shows? Is there a moment that we have a sick, twisted love of these questions with our friends? We should do a spinoff podcast. Just only these stories. Only these, yeah.

1:18:17Oh, I mean, there were lots. There were plenty of occasions where, because early in the token show world, we did humor kind of stuff. And that was always going bad. So many ways to screw up comedy. It was always going bad. And so there were just so many episodes. One of them was, I'm very naive. And I guess, you know, race and Bible Belt, I was very naive. And I don't even think I can tell you this story. Wow. Well, now we really want to hear. I was going to say, boy, color me interesting. I'll tell you the story, and then the listener will know if you don't include it, if you just cut out some silence here.

1:18:55They'll know what happened. That you decided that you could not include it. This is precious on Jason. And so we had this woman. She's a lovely, wonderful human, and she's hilarious. But she was going to come on and do this kind of shtick. but at some point during intermission she had oh what happened was that she was going to come up and was acting like she had just come to Nashville and she was a wannabe country star and was going to sing a song and so we said well we don't know the shtick was well we don't know whatever you want to sing she said oh I've got it right here so she was showing a lot of cleavage so she reaches down into her bra and pulls out the charts for the music and she hands them out.

1:19:46So then she goes on and does her song. But what she had actually done is she had written jokes on these slips of paper to each person in the band. And I unthinkingly, realizing what she's done, I just start reading these things out loud. And so I look at the one she's written to me and she says, can I how was it it was something like I want to teach you to drive your stick shift and so I say it out loud and then I realized oh wait a second I should not have said that because it didn't really hit me what she was the dirty joke she was doing until I had said it and so it was just like oh lord have mercy like did people laugh or was it kind of like Oh, it was very awkward.

1:20:39Oh, no. Yeah. Especially my mother. Oh, no. That's a double oh, no. She's like, well, he's been driving stick for years. No, Granny, that's not. She stands up. All right. If you wrote a book on being a dad, what would the title be? Oh,

1:21:05I don't know. let's go with redemptive screw-ups oh I'll also be in that band with if you want to start yeah Lee Camp and the redemptive screw-ups we'll see you on tokens very soon anything that you want to obviously just to plug you here at the end you got the podcast No Small Endeavor yeah please check out No Small Endeavor and then a new podcast we have on the same feed called The Subtext and The Subtext is co-hosted and so No Small Endeavor is more talking to intellectuals, psychiatrists, scientists, social scientists, all who have done all sorts of research on human flourishing, and that's the thing that's on public radio.

1:21:43And this other podcast, the subtext, is looking at the seldom discussed theological, moral, ethical implications of pop culture trending matters. Wow. And so that's super fun as well. That was really why we started Dadville, which is so funny of you to bring that, because that was exactly the same. We're getting around to it. Yeah, and so if people want to get in touch with Lee, you've got all his websites, just don't text him. That's our whatever you do, don't text. Whatever you want for dinner, text. It's good to be with you. I was tickled that when I saw on the appointment for today that we always ask, what do you all want to talk about with Lee?

1:22:22And then I saw on there that said, the hosts like to keep things open.

1:22:30That's code for a lot of things is what that means. We all know what that means.

1:23:02Thank you.

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