#241 Ruslan KD - Ex-Atheist Breaks Down Israel, End Times & Why 48% of Gen Z is Jesus Curious

19:24Shawn Ryan:And you have this really rich history of Christianity. And all of this is on the backdrop of communism and the Soviet Union. So you remove God, you remove faith, the government becomes God, communism becomes the religion. And in this weird post-1915 Armenian genocide with the Turks and Armenians, the soviet union decided to drop these weird parameters within azarboidjan so you got armenian you got azarboidjan and then there's this little region called the naboro katagak region and it's right uh on eastern azarboidjan but it's predominantly an armenian little strip of land and i don't know how you know the theory is like sometimes the quote unquote superpowers does this intentionally to maintain instability in the region and so what started happening was there It became rumors of Arzis getting displaced from that region, and then the Arzis supposedly getting displaced from Armenia, and then that led to this mass ethnic cleansing of all Armenians from the city of Baku in the late 80s called the pogroms of Baku.

20:27Shawn Ryan:So half a million Armenians are displaced and ethnically cleansed from the capital. About 500 of them brutally murdered, and we as a family end up applying for refugee status. We apply for Australia, we apply for Israel, and we apply for Armenia. Excuse me, America. and we applied for America. America were the first people that accepted us. Now my dad and everyone had to already leave because they appear more ethnically Armenian. Me and my mom were more fair skinned. So we stayed kind of handling the affairs and it ended up taking a little bit longer. And then we ended up transitioning, coming to the United States in 1991, May of 1991, a few months before the fall of communism.

21:05Shawn Ryan:Wow, how old were you? I was six. Six years old. Yeah, so I remember food rations, lining up to get a box of food. I remember - No kidding. Yeah, yeah. Lining up. I remember there was looking into our bathroom as a kid, and there was a tub of water. And I asked, what is that about? And they were like, we get water rationed for the family to bathe with. So you get water, and that's your water for the week to bathe with. Yeah, so very different. My first memory in America was coming from the airport and then pulling up to this beautiful, shiny, amazing store. And I thought to myself, how kind. my parents took me to replenish my toys.

21:44Shawn Ryan:I don't have any toys. They took me here to buy toys, right? I'd never seen anything like it. It looked like a toy store. It was a Lucky's grocery store off of El Cajon Avenue and the 805 freeway. The grocery store in America looked like an imaginary toy store. That's how colorful and beautiful it was. And it was like, they weren't coming to give me toys. They were just going grocery shopping because we didn't have any food. And so come to the United States. Mom and dad see a lot of stuff. I don't have a lot of crazy memories. There's a memory that my mom tells me. This might be a big graphic, but I'll share the story with you anyway.

22:17Shawn Ryan:I've only shared it once or twice. So, RZs are ethnically Muslim. Muslims get circumcised. Armenians don't get circumcised because we are like, hey, Galatians says you don't got to get Circumcised are culturally not part of the world. No circumcision. So we were the last ones there because we were fair-skinned. And everyone left. And they're starting to swarm in. And they have reports of where there are Armenian families. And they're going in and they're beating people up. They're harming people. This is explored in a movie recently released actually called Beyond Borders. This conflict specifically.

22:54Shawn Ryan:It stars Elizabeth from The Chosen. So people are coming in our house, right? And as a kid, this is probably going to be TMI, but I'm going to go for it. We're going to full send it. As a kid, I end up having a weird UTI infection as a kid. So they end up getting me circumcised. And then when they come in and they're about to bring harm to me and my mom, my mom actually is like, no, no, no, no, no, we're not Armenians. We're not Armenians. We're not Armenians. Armenians are circumcised. Look, my son is not circumcised. So she literally shows them my penis. and that is what makes them say okay these are russians and not armenians holy and they leave so my penis saved me and my family's life for you family jewels buddy but but um

23:44Ruslan KD:i mean so i'm just curious i don't know much about this i don't know i don't know anything about this so i mean if communism is cleansing you know were they just cleansing christians because communism is the religion. So were they persecuting just Christians

24:03Shawn Ryan:or was it any religion? So it wasn't that it was communism or the Soviet Union. It was the Arzis who had their own nation state within the communistic Soviet Union. And the Soviet Union just kind of stood back and were like, we're gonna let this play out. They didn't wanna interfere too much. So what they should have done is said, hey, you can't kill 500 Armenians in the streets. Like, can't do that. But they waited and waited and waited until it really hit the fan. and then at the end they stepped in in january so it wasn't a soviet the soviet union was doing it it was that the people and like they were looting and rioting and killing and you could people can pull up footage of all this it's it's horrific the stuff that happened and that area that in the borokarabakh region that area just recently got ethnically cleansed two weeks before october 7th the last 120 000 armenians in that autonomous armenian region within azarabijan just got pushed out uh september 2023 so the last hundred thousand armenian christians just got cleansed from ethnically cleansed from azar but no one talked about it because two weeks later you you had october 7th and then but you people can pull up videos and there's just i mean there's like a mountain of just armenians trying to leave that region man yeah yeah and so trump recently just is trying to negotiate a peace treaty and it's trying to normalize relations between the two countries like maybe a month or two ago.

25:22Ruslan KD:I don't know, man. It seems like we're seeing, I don't know if it's because of the internet or if it was always happening, but I mean, I've read about they're crucifying Christians today in Syria. I mean, it's happening all over. Israel has bombed several Catholic churches, probably an accident, maybe, but there's been no repercussions for that. And so, I mean, you're probably a lot more tuned into this than I am. I mean, how common is this in that part of the world?

25:52Shawn Ryan:It's very common in parts of Africa right now. Yeah, what they're doing to African Christians is just absolutely horrific. They're shooting up churches. They're killing women and children. It's really dark right now. From my understanding, Africa is probably the worst. I know North Korea sentenced a family to life in prison, a family with a two-year-old in it, in their concentration camp. Yeah, we just covered it on the channel because the Bibles are illegal in North Korea. And so, yeah, this is several years ago, but there was a two-year-old in the family and they're sentenced to life for just owning a Bible.

26:27Ruslan KD:What do you do about this? I mean, what do you do about this as a Christian? I mean, as a believer, when you're seeing your people be killed, persecuted for their beliefs? I mean, what goes through your head?

26:39Shawn Ryan:Well, one, I pray. I pray that justice will prevail. I pray that Jesus would make all things right. So when I pray, two, I look at what's in front of me right now and I say, well, how can I be faithful with what's in front of me? And can I contribute to relief in those parts of the world? Can I send Bibles there? Can I help get messaging out there? Can I fund folks that are willing to go out there and do some of the humanitarian work? So I think that. And then three, I think awareness, like just bringing awareness to it. Because it's not a trendy thing to talk about Christians being persecuted and killed, right?

27:15Shawn Ryan:It's not, there's not a good story arc to it. There's not an oppressor or oppressed narrative to it. It's just, this is really sad, right? But I think bringing awareness to it is also helpful.

27:25Ruslan KD:Yeah, I mean, you know, I interviewed this guy. I'm not going to say his name because he didn't want to talk about this on the interview. But, you know, they were doing missionary work at a very young age and going into parts of China. Yeah. And we're, you know, we're preaching the word and, and, and they would have people, they would have, you know, the Chinese communist party coming in and kicking in the door and looking for Bibles and what are you doing here? And very, it sounds like special operation shit. I was like fascinated when we were talking offline about it. And I mean, are there, are we, are Christians?

28:05Ruslan KD:I mean, are there missionaries embedded in North Korea that are in places like that still today?

28:11Shawn Ryan:I would definitely say China, for sure. For a fact, China, 100%. I can't speak to North Korea, but there's a lot of amazing underground churches in China. There's some churches that are kind of tolerated by the government in China, but they got to be connected to the state. But the underground church revival is huge. It's not just China. I mean, it's parts of Pakistan, parts of Afghanistan. They're broadcasting Bible teaching to Iran over the airwaves, and people are hearing it, getting saved, getting baptized. And there's tons of revival happening in parts of the world. It's like when you try to suppress the movement of Jesus, it flourishes, ironically enough.

28:49Shawn Ryan:And then here, when we have all this freedom to practice our faith in America, we're kind of taken for granted.

28:55Ruslan KD:I just think that's – I mean, that's like – that is throwing it all on the line right there. Yeah. doing that you know i mean you know there's lots of christians doing good things in places like haiti and they go all over the place right but i mean to do that that's a that is a that is a you're not doing a field trip there you know what i mean and i'm just i was just curious if you knew

29:18Shawn Ryan:of any of that going on yeah yeah my wife went to china for like a month-long missions trip maybe six months before we got married as a english teacher they weren't they weren't as locked down back then. So she went there and she said even just going there as like an English teacher, they had people following them around and keeping tabs on them. And it's kind of scary.

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31:58Shawn Ryan:What happens? Get to the U.S. This is amazing. It's a fresh start. It's beautiful. I'm in San Diego. You know, awesome. Don't know the language. Don't know anything. My only context of anything related to America, my dad would smuggle in video cassettes into our house when we were a kid. We had a BCR. He was like a bootleg smuggler. He's always a hustler. And my only context for American culture was Michael Jackson and American Ninja. That's it. Right on. And so I ended up trying to learn English through cartoons. Michael Jackson, American Ninja. A few months into being out here. So my mother and my father had a tumultuous relationship because they, they had to, he had to leave early.

32:44Shawn Ryan:And so he's living in Moscow, kind of trying to go back and forth because, because again, we're fair skin. So he stayed behind the longest. Long story short, I find these letters with kissy marks on them that I'm like, oh, these are sweet. And I take them to my dad. I'm like, look, mom wrote you these like beautiful letters. There's like she lipstick on them. Well, they weren't to my dad. They were to her boyfriend back in Baku. So that was the straw that broke the camel's back. Like they were kind of had a fresh start. They're starting over. He was like, I'm done, you know? And he had also a relationship back in Moscow.

33:14Shawn Ryan:And so long story short, a couple months into being here, my mother and my father split. My mother's dad dies. My grandfather dies. He fought in World War II for the Soviets, right? Awesome dude, English teacher. He dies. And my mom just goes down this dark spiral of depression, despair, anxiety. she's a single mom now we're on welfare i remember our check was 650 a month and our rent was 450 a month and so we have to stretch that 200 a month on food so no car um my dad tries to come around but my mom had a very toxic uh taste in men so he'd come around the the dudes that were there would fight him multiple times fights one time my mom like jumped in and grabbed like a heel and scraped his face.

34:04Shawn Ryan:The cops had to get called. And she told me, like, don't say I did it when the cops came. And my dad tried to be in my life, but he, you know, she made it very difficult for him. And we had this conversation as like men, like, what happened, dude? Like, where were you? Kind of explained his side. At the same time, we start going to the Armenian Apostolic Church, which again, I don't have any God. I don't have any Jesus as a child. I don't know anything about God. I've never heard anything about the Bible, the gospel, anything. But we come to America and And there's this beautiful diaspora of Armenians and the Armenian Apostolic Church.

34:34Shawn Ryan:So this is the oriental arm of the church. Beautiful liturgy, beautiful art. So simultaneously, I'm becoming an altar boy. I'm like, this is awesome. I mean, I love being an altar boy. We got to light the incense. People may not find this appropriate, but when there was leftover communion wine, you can't discard the communion wine. That's holy. So guess who they had finish off the communion wine? Right on. This guy right here. So I'm like, man, this is great. I love this. That Hyatt is awesome. There's a picture that when I do talks, I put up as me getting kind of christened as a little six, seven-year-old kid.

35:14Shawn Ryan:And then there's some older kids that are also altar boys. And they're 13, 14-ish. They were like the senior altar boys. I was a junior altar boy. But long story short, they end up sexually assaulting me, repeatedly sexually assaulting me, starting from showing gay porn and then doing the acts on me. And then in the midst of all that, it was framed as if I, as a seven-year-old, would initiate. Seven years old? Yeah, seven years old. Seven, eight years old that I was the one that initiated this stuff. So even in the way it was framed, it was very twisted. The church didn't do much. they didn't do anything um at the same time my dad remarries and my mom was bitter at the church because they remarried and they shouldn't have remarried technically according to her because they were i guess not divorced this is according to her so she's angry at the church because they remarried my dad i'm like this happened by these guys i met at the church and you guys didn't do anything and so like i was done i was like there is no god and and if there is a god he does not like me so i had to have been the youngest self-professed atheist walking around yeah damn

36:26Ruslan KD:man what do you i mean there's a lot of kids that go through this a lot more than i'd like to you know think about and uh i mean just on the show that we've had so many you know people that have been sexually abused, physically abused by family, by neighbors, by whoever. And so I'm just, you know, what's your advice to kids that are going through that? It's going to be all right.

36:56Shawn Ryan:It's going to be okay.

37:00Shawn Ryan:The grace and the mercy of God can do wonders in transforming our hearts and reorienting us back into a healthy place. There's going to be some work. I had to go to therapy. I discovered as an adult that I had onset PTSD that I got to die. I didn't know that, you know, as a, as a child, I didn't know, I didn't know why I was the way I was, but as an adult now married with a family and I'm like, I got to figure this stuff out. Like why, why don't I have these weird patterns and conflict and go to therapy, get, get treatment, get counseling, get, get, get around people that are, that are going to call you to more.

37:38Shawn Ryan:and you could either allow those things to defy you or you could persevere despite, you know, Dave Ramsey has this quote. He says, the only difference between successful people and unsuccessful people is there's a pile of poop all of us have to deal with. But those of us that are successful just figured out a way to stand on top of all the poop. And so that would be my advice. How'd you get yourself out of it? I, so something interesting happened. And I, growing up in San Diego, predominantly black neighborhood, my mom and me, and then there was another Armenian refugee family in the complexes, like an eight unit complex.

38:20Shawn Ryan:And I, so I get into music, I get into hip hop. I love hip hop. I love the graffiti. This is the early 90s. So this is a little different than it is. But you're talking about LL Cool J, Public Enemy, just a different time in hip hop. And then the gangster rap came on the scene. And so I ended up going down like just Doggy Style, The Chronic. Like this is who's discipling me at this point. Eight, nine years old, I'm listening to Doggy Style, The Chronic. Fourth grade, I got my ear pierced. And I remember going back to the Armenian church and they had nothing to say about the sexual abuse that happened to me.

38:58Shawn Ryan:But they were concerned that I got my ear pierced and I was listening to rap music now. Right. Which is like, where are the just scales? So I get into gangster rap. The manager of our apartment complex, her name's Cherie Jackson. I'm still in touch with her to this day. Cherie, me and her son were best friends. His name's Steven. And Cherie was involved in some street activities. One night when Steven stayed the night at my house, we would do sleepovers back and forth one night. He stayed the night at my house. There was a drive-by and bullet holes on his side of the building. So this is, I'm just painting a picture of who Cherie was.

39:34Shawn Ryan:and took me to my first concert. I was like nine years old, definitely one of the only kids in the audience, one of the only white kids in the audience. I saw Dr. Dre and Snoop in concert live. This is 93. And Cherie ends up getting arrested for going to jail for trying to move cocaine through the airport or a Greyhound or something. So she goes to jail, gets radically saved in prison, like on fire for the Lord, loves Jesus, comes out. and everyone in our apartment complex starts coming to church with her because clearly there's a night and day shift. And I, at the same time, I'm just completely unraveling.

40:12Shawn Ryan:I'm now in a gang, like I'm smoking weed, I'm drinking. This is all in and forth. I'm breaking into my schools and stealing karaoke machines because I want to be a rapper, like just a complete derelict of a kid. And I get arrested at the age of 11 for breaking into a house. Our gang leader. Damn, at 11? At 11, yeah. Our gang leader was in jail and we wanted to bail him out. And so we found out the same girl he was messing with told us she was messing with another dude and he had money and stuff in his house. So we're like, we can break into here and take the money to go bail him out. That was the plan.

40:49Shawn Ryan:Well, in the midst of that, I'm the smallest one. I'm in the window, the bathroom window, the little small little bat. I'm like in the window and our lookout gets put into this arm bar. It's like UFC arm bar. And he wasn't a great lookout at all. So it is an ex-police officer that saw everything that was happening. So I get arrested and go to jail for the night. My mom has to come bail me out. And I knew at that point, like, I'm not built for this life. Like I am not a tough guy. We weren't, thankfully we weren't playing with guns and that sort of stuff. But I knew like, this is, this is not for me at the same time, Sheree is coming to faith.

41:22Shawn Ryan:People were getting saved in our apartment complex. And now I have to do community service as a part of my probation. I wait till the last minute, of course. And the only way I can get the hours done is if I start doing it at Sharish Church and with Charles and Willie, who live next door to me. Blue collar guys. Charles had some kids that I was friends with. Willie was single. And in that, I'm starting to hear about Jesus and I'm getting softened to the idea of Jesus. I'm getting softened to the idea of God. I'm not a Christian. I'm still saying I'm an atheist, but they're just talking and just saying like, man, like, and it was this beautiful balance of like, we're going to accept you right where you are, but we're going to tell you the truth about yourself.

42:00Shawn Ryan:Like, we love you and you're welcome, but you have some issues and you need to get your life in order. And they were just talking to me like I was a grown man. They weren't coddling me. They weren't talking to me like I was a kid. And so through Cherie, through Charles, through Willie, I start hearing about Jesus. And it was weird because they would tell me stuff like, man, God's going to use you to do great things someday. You're going to reach millions of people for Jesus. I'm in like sixth and seventh grade, and this is now the environment I'm in. At the same time, I end up, I'm in seventh grade.

42:31Shawn Ryan:I'm a 1.0 GPA student. My mom sees all this stuff. Now we're getting a reputation as the kids that are breaking into houses and doing stuff, even after I got arrested. And my mom sees this. She wants to relocate us to North County, Oceanside, Vista area. and at the same time, there was a kid who brought a gun to school and told me about it. And then when he got caught with it, told the police it was my gun. So the police bring me in to the principal's office and they're like interrogating me. And I'm like, I don't, I didn't see the gun. He said he had a gun. I didn't see the gun. And they're like, well, he's saying it's your gun.

43:07Shawn Ryan:And I'm like, it's not my gun. They're like, well, we're going to run the fingerprints. And if it's your gun, like you're going down for this, you're already on probation. And I'm like, scan the fingerprints. Like, this is not my gun. Do it. And so they're like, we're going to do it. And so it's just the weirdest sequence of events. Long story short, the kid who brought the gun is expelled. One day I'm walking home. This is like the week I'm moving. I'm walking home. And this kid, this kid's walking towards me and Samoan kid. And I see him and I'm like, Hey, like, what was up with the, with the gun?

43:38Shawn Ryan:Why are you telling them that it was my gun? right? And I look and he has a knife in his hand and he says, why did you effing snitch on me? And I'm like, snitch on you? And so as he's walking and lunging towards me, thankfully he was a fat Samoan kid. I just jetted and ran for my life down El Cajon Boulevard with everything I had. A couple of days later, we moved to North County and now I got a clean start. I escape this kid attempting to stab me. I escape going to jail. I escape all the craziness in my life. Okay, this is a clean start. I'm not going to smoke weed. I'm not going to drink. I'm not going to break into houses.

44:17Shawn Ryan:This is a fresh start. And so I end up discovering basketball. I thought I want to be a professional basketball player. Like, this is my path now. That's my purpose in life. This is Michael Jordan's last season with the Chicago Bulls, that era. And I'm like, I'm going to be a basketball player. And then I start doing better in school. GPA goes from like a 1.0. I didn't think they would take me into the eighth grade, but I went from like a 1.0 to like a 3.8 my first year in eighth grade, just a different environment. And then more and more people around me are telling me about Jesus, right? And I ended up meeting a girl my freshman year.

44:50Shawn Ryan:I did a talent show where I rapped and I won this talent show at Bringo Terrace Park and met this girl. And the only way I could see her is if I went to church with her and her family on Sundays over the summer. school year was done. I couldn't see her. So I'm like, why not? Might as well, right? And I start going to this kind of seeker-friendly church and they're talking about Jesus and they're telling me about the gospel and I'm slowly softening to it. Now I'm still one foot in, one foot out. I'm still sleeping with her. I'm still kind of smoking weed a little bit on the down low, right? But I then start asking the questions, is Jesus God?

45:26Shawn Ryan:Is Jesus the only way to God? How do I know this? And me and a girl break up. I'm dating a Jehovah's Witness girl. I got Muslim friends. I got Mormon friends. I got all these different friends. And I'm just confused, trying to sort out the truth claims. My manager at Pizza Hut and the lead delivery driver, both devoted Christians. And I'm asking them, like, because I'm talking to this Jehovah's Witness girl, they don't believe Jesus is God. They believe he's a God. But I'm still going to church. And so they hand me a book and it was the new evidence that demands a verdict, a book this thick by Josh McDowell.

46:03Shawn Ryan:And as a sophomore in high school, I just devoured this entire book. And I'm just, it's like an academic textbook, right? Like, and now English is my second language. I'm not a great reader, but all of a sudden the light just starts going off. And all my answers, my apologetics questions, all those answers I got from just reading and researching. And so another year or so of wrestling, and then like my junior year, I'm like, all right, I'm done. I'm going to surrender my life to the Lord. I'm going to do it his way. I'm not going to have one foot in, one foot out. But it was a messy four or five years of going from atheist to deist to theist to Christian.

46:39Shawn Ryan:That was about a four or five-year process for me. Wow. With that young of an age.

46:43Ruslan KD:Yeah. How did you, thank you for sharing that. How did you, what I meant to ask was and we were going to get there but how did you remove yourself from the sexual abuse within the church

46:59Shawn Ryan:I just stopped going to church I can't be around these dudes anymore it's just weird it's awkward the way it was framed was that it was my fault and I initiated it how did they frame that? I had other people in the neighborhood come up to me and start asking me if I was gay Like I remember the word gay in Russian, that's my first language, sounds similar to the word baby blue. And so I remember someone coming up and asking me like, are you gay? The gula boy, the gula boy. And I was like, oh boy, that sounds like baby, what are you asking me? And then they had to explain it to me. And so they framed this whole thing as if it was me, a gay kid trying to initiate relations with these older boys.

47:44Shawn Ryan:And so that made me very upset. Wow. Damn. I mean, did you guys approach them? Did your mother approach them? There was this community town hall meeting almost in someone's house. And I remember they were screaming and crying and saying, it was me. It was all my fault. I was the one that did it. And I just kind of froze. I didn't know what to say. I just cried and was like, no. And that's all I remember from that. But yeah, it was like all the Armenian families in a neighborhood kind of got together or maybe maybe it was the other kids parents and maybe my mom i don't think my dad was there and it was this big meeting and they just made me look like i was the initiator did they ostracize you guys well i mean i'm now i'm the quote-unquote gay kid yeah yeah so yes yeah holy shit my mom doesn't have is a single mom so that's there's already that's already kind of frowned upon and now i'm the i'm the i'm the kid that you know they're viewing as

48:43Ruslan KD:the gay kid that's enraging man yeah i'm sorry that happened to him yeah yeah damn is this the

48:53Shawn Ryan:is this the same church that nathan went to no no no so this is armenian apostolic a part of the oriental arm of the church so uh this is oriental orthodoxy is the armenian apostolic the ethiopian Orthodox, this is that arm of the church. So this is very high church liturgical, apostolic succession. This is what their connection is pretty deep to the early church. Gotcha.

49:22Ruslan KD:Gotcha. And you had mentioned, maybe you didn't mention, maybe I was in the outline, but that you found a lot of darkness in the music industry that you're in. Is that the

49:36Shawn Ryan:darkness about the gangs and stuff or is there more yeah i mean there's one there's the there's the practical what is going to sell i i was talking to um dr anthony bradley and he said this point he said free markets without virtue get us only fans right and so if you have free markets and anything goes what is going to sell it's going to be lust of the eyes lust of the flesh pride of life so what was what would sales and music lust of the eyes lust of the flesh pride of life. So the music that I was consuming was very dark. I couldn't imagine being... My son is 10 years old now. I couldn't imagine him listening to Doggy Style by Snoop or listening to The Chronic by Dr.

50:18Shawn Ryan:Dre. It is just so, so, so dark. The content is so dark. Even when I started becoming a theist listening to DMX, It's Dark and Hell is Hot, 13 songs are all about just the most horrendous murders, the most terrible things. And then there was a song about Jesus at the end of the album, right? This was like DMX's thing. And so you're talking about people that have been traumatized making traumatizing music over and over. And then I am trying to do it for the Lord. And as I'm building this thing out, then I'm jumping way ahead, but we end up working with Interscope Records on a project for an artist that was signed to me.

50:54Shawn Ryan:And so going from these meetings from all the major record labels, they say they want to do something positive. They like what we're doing as Christians, because at this point I'm jumping ahead, I'm a Christian now, but at the same time, there's just a heaviness to the environment that even people who are trying to do the, hey, we like you guys, you guys are doing Christian music, there's a heaviness to it. And then there's a, hey, we're going to kind of curate this in a way that we can monetize it and make as much money from it as possible. So we can kind of feel better about ourselves because the other stuff we know we're selling to the public is just utter debauchery and and it's harmful to people man got quite the childhood yeah quite the quite the childhood wow dude what was it like

51:47Ruslan KD:going to church i mean when you might be that had to be that had to be quite the hurdle to get over with what you experienced as a seven-year-old and then you're back in a church. I think - Did you have any fear?

52:01Shawn Ryan:No. People make fun of like evangelical churches and are like, hey, you know, this is, there's no reverence, there's no art, whatever the critique is. And for someone like me that came from a quote-unquote high church setting, one, I didn't really understand anything. It was like beautiful paintings and art, but I didn't get it. And so stepping into an environment that like they're speaking to me plainly, we're not doing the liturgy in Armenian. We're doing it in English. You could understand what the message is about. And not only can you understand, it's actually relevant to you. Like they're talking about, hey, you could take this biblical principle and apply it to your day-to-day life.

52:40Shawn Ryan:And then the illumination of the gospel message was like, oh man, like even though I'm a sinner and even though I'm clearly broken, I knew I was broken, that Jesus offers me an invitation to something better, to something transcendent. That really resonated with me. And so it was as simple as like, man, I don't know about this whole church thing, but like, Jesus, if you're real, reveal yourself to me. And it was that simple. If you're real, reveal yourself to me and I'll do whatever you want me to do. So it just started there. And because the environment was so different, it wasn't a challenge, but it was a challenge intellectually trying to ask all the questions.

53:20Shawn Ryan:It was a challenge in that regard. Interesting. Interesting. Let's move into Nathan's interview.

53:28Ruslan KD:All right, let's do it. So a lot of people upset about that. Like I had mentioned, I didn't necessarily agree with everything he said. I do like the end message that is, I think that he wants transparency within the churches. I think that's a good thing. They should be transparent. but you know he's there was a lot of you know outlandish claims in there um according to your your talk on your on your youtube channel and so let's start yeah well one i mean again my my my

54:03Shawn Ryan:life experience that is my life experience the experience of a lot of my friends you're coming from an environment where your father's not in the home you're broken uh there's trauma and then you step into a church context that now I don't, I'm not just hearing good information. I actually have access to pastors and men who believe in me and are speaking life into me. And not only that, but I get to serve and learn stuff like expensive cameras and microphones. I'm being called to lead and teach other people as I'm now walking with the Lord. And so all of this has culminated, like the local church has culminated into me becoming who I am today, the husband I am today.

54:41Shawn Ryan:I mean, I discovered Dave Ramsey in the local church. I got out of debt because of Dave Ramsey, because of I was going to a local church, me and my wife for$100 ,000 in debt. And in 18 months, we were debt free. This is before I was doing YouTube, before I was doing music. So I am a testament of the local church and the goodness of what most local churches are. So to me, when I'm hearing Nathan, I would say, yeah, man, there's abuse. And we should absolutely call that out. And I do call that out. regularly. At the same time, when you start wanting to When you attack the institution, when you start wanting to say that anyone who's ever taken money as a pastor is not corrupt, then I start taking issue with that.

55:29Because I know hundreds, if not thousands of pastors.

55:33Shawn Ryan:And I see these men, and I see most of them aren't getting rich. You know, 47 % of pastors are bivocational. The medium pastor's salary in the United States is$61 ,000 a year. The average public school teacher's salary is$72 ,000 a year. So this notion that most pastors are getting rich, I think it's harmful because now what's happening is now we're utilizing very broad strokes, and it's impacting people like myself 20 years ago that really needed the church. Like the church was my lifeline to everything, to manhood, to masculinity, biblical masculinity, to financial literacy, to developing my skills, my giftings, to doing life with someone a season ahead of me that can speak into my life, right?

56:27Shawn Ryan:There's so many incredible, like practical aspects of a good local church community. and the way we're going, the way he spoke about it was, in my opinion, the epitome of a hasty generalization fallacy where you're spotlighting things that are true, but you don't have enough of the data to understand that that's not reflecting of everybody. And so I paralleled it to police brutality, which if anyone should look and say, hey, police brutality is bad. White people, black people, bad. Police should not misbehave. However, when you look at the data and you go, well, how prevalent is police brutality?

57:04Shawn Ryan:some studies say that you're more likely to get stung by lightning than you are to be killed by a police officer some say you're more likely to die uh die of a bee sting than you are to die of a police officer so now we took the police brutality thing and we said defund the police abolish the police and what happened when that happened in major stages when you mess up with the institution when you mess with the institution and you start defunding stuff there's there's ramifications to that are all police officers racist no are there some bad apples yes should those people be held accountable? Absolutely.

57:34Shawn Ryan:And so I think that same mindset of, hey, the system is corrupt. Policing is corrupt. You're tinkering with things that are going to have ramifications and they're not good. And so we saw it in major cities with law enforcement, the defunded police movement. And now everyone's kind of coming around now and going, ah, we probably shouldn't have defunded the police. We probably should better fund the police. And when you look at the data, most people in black and brown neighborhoods, actually, I want to say 70 % of them prefer more police in their neighborhoods. They want more order and protection from the bad guys, not less.

58:07Shawn Ryan:And so I think, again, you're tinkering and you're messing with stuff, but you don't understand the ramifications of what you're really saying. And so bad police, they should be held accountable. They should go to jail if they misbehave, absolutely. Bad pastors, they should be held accountable. If they break the law, they should go to jail. But how prevalent is it? How pervasive is it? That's my concern. And I don't think the data supports that it is as pervasive as Nathan has laid out.

58:31Ruslan KD:Do you disagree with his end message that churches and pastors should be transparent with their finances if they're receiving donations to run their church? Yes.

58:44Shawn Ryan:I think pastors and churches should be transparent, and I think most are. The question is, what do we mean by transparent? I worked with adults with developmental disabilities from 2010 to 2012. It was one of the most fulfilling jobs I had. I had to pick up a group of three folks. One of them had high-functioning autism. One of them had high-functioning Down syndrome. Take them to the gym. Take them to school. Take them just kind of do their day with them, right? It was such a fun job. And I remember we had an all-staff meeting. I remember we had an all-staff meeting. and our president and our vice president was there.

59:23Shawn Ryan:And I remember finding out that the president of this organization or the CEO of this nonprofit organization made like 150 grand a year. And the vice president made like 100 grand a year. And as a 25 year old kid that was struggling on the front lines doing this work, I was pissed. Like, what do you mean he's making 150K? We're doing the work on the front lines, right? Now, I didn't have to see those people again. I didn't have to see, I saw them once a year and that was it, right? Now, imagine if I, as a 25-year-old kid, had to do life with that person every single week and hear them preach every single week and get counsel from them every single week, knowing exactly what they made.

1:00:06Shawn Ryan:I don't think that's a healthy dynamic. So should churches be transparent and accountable? Absolutely. And most are. What Nathan is asking for is he wants to know what every pastor makes to the dollar, if he's a giving member. And it's just a different dynamic than in the nonprofit world, right? And so, no, I don't think pastors need to reveal what they make. I don't think every staff member needs to reveal what they make. I don't think that's helpful. I don't think when you're doing life on life for people is helpful. People naturally are going to deal with envy and jealousy, depending on what season of life they're in, especially if you're young and you feel like the world's against you.

1:00:41Shawn Ryan:So, no. So I think there's transparency, but I don't need to know everything about your life. Our church, Rhythm Church in Oceanside, you met my pastor earlier, we put out a magazine every year where you get to see exactly how much came in. You get to see exactly where the money went. You get to know how much was spent on staff, how much was spent on buildings, how much we give away to missions, how much we give away to the community. Every single thing is, but you're not going to walk in and find out exactly what my pastor makes. You're not going to find out what the admin makes. um and it's lumped in as a group something as a group yeah something as a group and i and i think that by the way the bigger the churches are usually the more transparent they are because they have external audits they spend less money on staffing they spend less money on um building because just sheer volume and they spend way more money on uh giving and missions and serving the community so and if people and if a church doesn't provide that sort of data people have the agency to go to a different church, right?

1:01:42Shawn Ryan:There are churches right now, the pastor who married me and my wife, the deacons and the elders vote on his salary. Everything is transparent. You know, he has a parsonage on site next to the church. Everything is full. So there are churches like that. And I would say, if you want a church like that, praise God, go find a church like that. If you want to know where every dollar is going and you want the deacons to approve every stapler that gets bought, it's like, cool, man, Mazel Tov, like, go do it. But when you give a, and this really happened, When you give a$20 donation to a church and then you email them or call them and say, hey, I want all your financial records and I want to know what your pastor makes.

1:02:17Shawn Ryan:I think you're a little out of pocket at that point.

1:02:19Ruslan KD:Yeah, you know, I don't disagree with that. And that's something that I thought about after that interview, you know, when he was talking about, I donated to that church. And I, you know, it's like, okay, but did you donate a dollar? And now you're demanding all these answers, maybe showing up at somebody's house with a camera crew. Blasting it and saying they're not transparent. Demanding transparency. I mean, I run a for-profit business, but if somebody was in my front yard with a bunch of cameras and a microphone and demanding my financials, it probably would have ended a lot worse than it did with wherever he was.

1:02:59But I don't know how you would do the – I mean, I don't know exactly how you would do the transparency.

1:03:06Ruslan KD:I like the grouping it in, all of the staff. This is how much staff we have, and this is how much is allocated to that.

1:03:13Shawn Ryan:And again, most bigger churches do that, and they get external audits. They do that. And the funny thing is with Nate, what happened to him was awful, man. What he went through with the pastor that mentored him and that dude being convicted of sexual assault against his own daughter that they adopted, that rocked our entire region where we live. Like everyone was devastated by that because that's a good church. Like that was, I don't even want to say the name of the church, but anyone from the region knows what church I'm talking about. That was a good church. And the pastor was a good pastor.

1:03:49Shawn Ryan:And my friend there is still one of the pastors there. And they do an amazing job of reaching the community and helping people. And they have one of the best mental health counseling programs in the area. That's like Christian counseling where you can go to them. But what happened to Nate and the pastor that then committed that is awful, and it rocked our entire area. But what happens is when something bad happens to you, like to me as a kid, we develop a schema for seeing everything through that lens. So I had a schema of church is bad, church is evil. Church just wants to harm me. This is all BS.

1:04:20Shawn Ryan:This is all nonsense. I had the same schema, and it takes a while to detangle that schema and say, well, let me not generalize and say all churches are this way. No, this was my experience. And what's the general data and the general consensus on it? And when you look at the data, the data just doesn't reflect this conclusion that churches are all stealing, churches are all unethical, churches are, not all, but most. And I think that the distinguishment is any abuse is bad. Any abuse is bad and any abuse should be called out. And I'll lock arms with Nate in a heartbeat and say, man, if Kenneth Copeland owns a$19 ,000 parsonage and like, no, that's not good, right?

1:05:01Shawn Ryan:But then what he's doing is now that's impacting young men who really need the church. And now they're looking at their pastor's side eye and they're looking at the institution's side eye, not understanding that, man, Jesus established the church. Like Jesus established both in a, where two or three are gathered, I'm with them, and in the local gathering and sometimes in large gatherings. We see all the above. We see home churches in the New Testament, and we see them gathering in Acts, and there's thousands of people there. So this idea that this is good, this is bad, it's like bad is bad. Good is good.

1:05:33Shawn Ryan:There are big churches that are doing great, great work. They're small churches that are not doing great work, that don't have accountability. They rewrote the bylaws, right? And so how we speak about these things has ripple effects. And if you want to tear down the institution, that's going to come with consequences. Mm-hmm.

1:05:49Ruslan KD:I mean, I'm with you. Minor correction, they're a 19 ,000-square-foot home, not a$19 ,000 home.

1:05:55Shawn Ryan:Excuse me. Sorry. Thank you.

1:05:56Ruslan KD:19 ,000-square-foot-plus. Minor difference there. Big difference. But, you know, another thing that I don't think that Nathan didn't highlight it, I think this may have been – I probably should have picked up on it. I should have picked up on it quicker. But, you know, one of the things that he had said is that, you know, the 14, I think he said it was a 14-point guideline on the IRS that they go into. It, you know, something that we didn't discuss is, and he said it, but we didn't dive into it, is that it attracts criminals to open churches as a facade. You know, I should have gone down that rabbit hole more.

1:06:43Ruslan KD:I didn't really broach it at all. Sometimes it just doesn't hit me until the interview's over. But, you know, I think one of the things, and I do think this is an important point, that the guidelines are so lenient and allow, you know, no transparency that it actually, and that's, I think, where he was going with the Hell's Angels, is that it can attract criminals to build the organization in the church is actually a facade. And so that alleviates having to be transparent about where funding's coming, if it's from, who knows, drugs, whatever. Money laundering. Exactly. Oh, yeah. Great money laundering.

1:07:26Ruslan KD:Yeah. Or a great way to launder money. And we did not highlight that enough. and it should have been highlighted enough. But, you know, what other, like I said, I've gotten a ton of text from people, emails, a lot of from people that I actually, that I really respect. And so I just, you know, I really want to dive in and get, you know, the other side of the coin here. So what other things did he do?

1:07:53Shawn Ryan:Can I read some data to you? Absolutely. Okay, so here's some data. So I already said this to you, average full-time pastor salary in America is 58 ,000. That's the medium, right? Average teacher salary is 74 ,000. So most pastors are making less than public school teachers. I love public school teachers. God bless public school teachers. I prefer pastors to get paid more than public school teachers. Lifeway Research reports that nearly half, 47 % of evangelical pastors are bi-vocational, according to a national congregant study done in 2021. Being a pastor is hard, man. 42 % of US pastors said they've seriously considered leaving full-time ministry in the past year.

1:08:37Shawn Ryan:So this is a study that was just released by Lifeway Research, Relevant Magazine just reported on it. Now here's the pros of church that don't get talked about enough. And again, as a kid that like, if it wasn't for the local church, I would not be sitting here with you right now. I don't even know if I'd be alive right now, right? Harvard's Nurses Health Study followed 74 ,000 women for 16 years and found those who went to church more than once a week had a 33 % lower risk of dying. Wow. It's a bigger effect than many medicines showing that faith actually adds years to your life. Wow. So me growing up poor on welfare, single parent home, right?

1:09:16Shawn Ryan:Man, the church gave me the framework for the healthy rhythms in my life, right? Here's another one. Harvard also found that women who went weekly were five times less likely to die by suicide. And both men and women had dramatically fewer deaths from despair, up to 68 % lower risk. So in a world where we know deaths of despair is rising, especially you're connected to a lot of the SEAL community. Man, there's a strong connection to deaths of despair and suicide being mitigated by people who go to church regularly. right and for me i had a lot of despair and i needed hope as a kid and that's the church was was a segue for that um you can interrupt on any of these if you want um 2016 study in the american journal of psychiatry showed that attending church reduces the risk of developing depression later in life even after adjusting for prior mental health issues wow right how many young people are dealing with incredible levels of anxiety right now astronomical amount 42 % of Gen Z say that they feel hopeless about the future.

1:10:25Shawn Ryan:47 % of Gen Z is higher amongst women, say that they constantly feel anxiety almost all the time. Damn, 47%. 40%. And I can send all this data to you guys, too, if you guys want to link it below. Anxiety is at an all-time high, man. And I'm not saying these are causations. I'm not saying these are one-to-one. But I'm saying there's very, very clear correlations of people who are going to church having less rates of depression, less rates of despair, less likely to commit suicide, you know?

1:10:54Ruslan KD:Yeah, you know, that is all these things, you know, when I was saying I had a, it was a big decision for me to do that, to conduct that interview. These are the things that I didn't want to take away from people, you know? And those are, you know, not to call them minor things, you know, the major one being And I don't want to steer anybody away from Christ because I think that's where a lot of people find Christ, you know, and that's where they learn. And, you know, another thing is regardless of, you know, regardless of the pastor's motives and what they're doing, it's still, you know, I think it's still a good message that they put out, whether they're, you know, overspending or overpaid or buying jets or living a 19 ,000 square foot home or not.

1:11:44Ruslan KD:Like people are, you know, they are being rejuvenated. They are turning into better people. they are leaning into Christ, you know, going to church. And so, you know, we had a discussion about, you know, what is the church? And I'm with him, you know. And I had mentioned one of my mentors, Todd Bell, you know, he lives here. We do, we haven't done it for a while, but we do a home Bible study. And that was one of the first things that I learned is that the church is, you know, according to him, I agree with him. The church is the living body of believers, not a brick and mortar. But Nathan doesn't, I don't think he steps foot in a church.

1:12:28Shawn Ryan:I think Nathan actually does go to church from a conversation he had with my friend, I want to say Jeff from Church Disrupted. So I think he goes to church like once or twice a month. I'm not sure if he goes regularly, but the idea about the building is interesting. It's the building. You're right. Church is the community. Church is the camaraderie. But church is also the local ecclesia. That word church means local gathering. It's almost like a governmental term in the original Greek. So the church gathered in big groups on Solomon's porch outside of the temple, and they gathered in homes. And then the moment they could gather in buildings, they did.

1:13:04Shawn Ryan:And that's around 175 AD. And this is not according to me. I'm going to butcher his name, but David Guzak did a whole lecture series on church history. And people can look up his series, and I can send that over to you guys as well. But it breaks down the eras of the church. And so around 150 to 200, the moment that it got a little more relaxed under Roman occupation and the church couldn't meet in buildings, they did meet in buildings for pragmatic reasons. We meet in the home, but we also meet in large groups, and we come together for corporate worship, liturgy, the reading of the scriptures, encouragement, so communion, right, those things, the sacraments.

1:13:38Shawn Ryan:And so I think it's on both. I don't think it's either or. I think the home church is where you're known and where you're connected. But I think the bigger gathering, there's nothing like worshiping with hundreds of other people. We saw Charlie Kirk's memorial. And how beautiful was it to see Chris Tomlin up there and my buddy Phil Wickham up there leading worship and 100 ,000 people singing to Jesus. There's a beautiful part about corporate gatherings and worship. Again, just because it's big doesn't mean it's bad. Yeah. Can I keep going to some of these stats? Yeah, keep going. Harvard's human, this is Harvard.

1:14:11Shawn Ryan:Harvard's human flourishing program found that people who attend church weekly are 30 to 50 % less likely to get divorced. And couples who go together are the most stable. Coming from a broken family, coming from a single parent home. My wife comes from a single parent home. The 2008 recession, we got married in 2008 in the middle of the recession. that the church was absolutely the backbone to help us build a stable marriage coming from utter dysfunction. People talk a lot about the divorce rate, right? We know the number one correlation to young men going down a dark path is not having a father in the home, right?

1:14:50Shawn Ryan:And what you see amongst churchgoers is they're more likely to stay married, to get married, to stay married, to have healthy marriages. And I think that's so crucial, you know, is just fathers in the homes with their kids and building solid families and 30 to 50 % less likely to get divorced. A lot of good coming out of there. Yeah. The National Ad Health Study used advanced methods to show the teens who go to church are less likely to use marijuana, drink, or smoke. Strong, strong decline in that. Long-term U.S. household data shows that regular tenders give three to four times more to charity each year than non-attenders, around$3 ,000 versus $700 a year.

1:15:39Shawn Ryan:So church ends up shaping our generosity. You become a more generous person. You keep that open-hand mentality because you're trained to be generous. You're trained to give. We look at the gospel stories. Jesus gave everything, gave his life for us. And so there's a byproduct. So folks who are in church are way more generous. $700 for the average person, 3 ,000 a year in charitable donation for the churchgoer. A 2022 study in the journal Nature found that communities with more cross-class friendships, and this is me, like poor and I'm around folks that are wealthy, poor and I'm around men that are stable.

1:16:18Shawn Ryan:So communities with more cross-class friendships often built in churches have much higher rates of upward mobility for poor kids so just access to a mentor just access to a bible study leader that's financially stable and i'm coming from welfare more more opportunities for upward mobility yeah um i could keep going man there's so many let's talk about tithing yeah let's talk about that that's that's that's

1:16:44Ruslan KD:that's uh something i didn't know about until nathan came here yep and uh you talked about that in that video as well so what is it where did it come from should we be doing it yeah

1:16:55Shawn Ryan:So the tithe is an Old Testament law, primarily around agriculture. And it wasn't just 10%. It was probably around 23%. And it's talking about, hey, the first fruits that are coming in, you should be giving to those. The what groups? The first fruits from your crops. You're talking about an agricultural society. So as they're getting grain and all that sort of stuff, they're tithing off of their grain. And they'd also take care of the priests. there was a component to it of like a almost like a civic use for sometimes infrastructure and stuff like that as well so it's to take care of the levites but then there was also stuff to take care of just the society as a whole um who are the levites the priests in the old testament okay yeah so the levites are the priests they would minister in the temple and so the tithe would go to them to care for them um and so it's an old it's a it's a it's a it's a one of the commandments in the old Testament, and it had multiple utilities to it.

1:17:54Shawn Ryan:In our modern day context, we as followers of Jesus, we don't follow the letter of the law for the Levitical law, but we do extract principles from it, right? And there are certain laws that are moral, there are certain laws that are civic, there are certain laws that are identifying markers for the Jewish people, right? Tithing, those sorts of things. And so today in our context, New Testament Christianity with the letters of Paul, we're called to radical generosity. We're called to give and be generous, open-handed, not under compulsion, but to be consistent in our giving. And so when most people are talking about tithing, they're not saying you have to give a literal 10 % or God's going to curse you.

1:18:37Shawn Ryan:Generally speaking, there are some people that do that, but generally speaking, when we're talking about tithing, we're using it shorthand for saying, hey, this is a great principle for you to walk out. There's something to this. In the same way, we would say Sabbath is good for you, right? Most of us, we believe in Sabbath. I'm assuming you probably take a day off at least once a week. Maybe you might turn your phone off. Maybe you may not turn your phone off. Maybe you don't do any work, but you practice the principle of Sabbath. Now, in the Old Testament, they got really gnarly with the Sabbath laws, right?

1:19:08Shawn Ryan:Like you couldn't do any work. You couldn't do this. And so we take Sabbath and we say, yeah, taking a day off is good. Yes and amen. Every single person should take a day off. And so in the same way, we use to tithe, we use it as a short form. We're not saying, hey, if you don't give a 10%, you are cursed and you're disobedient. We're saying, hey, this is a great financial principle to live by. Learn to live on 90 and give 10. And for me and my wife, man, we've consistently given above 10 % for decades while we were struggling. we just said, hey, we're always, we're going to carve out generosity.

1:19:40Shawn Ryan:That is a value of ours. And we're going to consistently give at least 10%. It's a rule of thumb. It's not a law. No one's saying you're going to go to hell if you don't give 10%. But it's a good benchmark to say, hey, you know, none of it is mine anyway. It's all God. God's giving me money and letting me steward it, manage it for him. So we're going to give 10. We're going to look for opportunities to give to other charities. We're going to give the single mom in our community and try to take care of them as well. And we're going to save and we're going to invest. And then we're going to enjoy the fruits of our labor as well.

1:20:11Shawn Ryan:And I think if you look at any financial expert, they would put together those four things, save, give, invest, enjoy. Whether it's Dave Ramsey or secular psychology would tell you there's something to giving. In the Christian world, we just says, hey, we're going to use shorthand or tithe. And we're going to say, that's a good principle to live by, but we're not going to condemn you to hell for it. If you don't give, okay, we understand, right? And so, but we've practiced it. We practiced it when we were in debt. We practiced it while we were getting out of debt. We practice it now and we give above 10 % now.

1:20:42Shawn Ryan:And then if you factor in all the charities and all the other stuff, because I think we give what we value too. So if I value my local church, if I value the communication of the gospel, I'm going to give to it. I want to support it. If people value your show, they partner with you on Patreon as they should because they value you. And so this idea of like giving is somehow bad or it's evil or you're not supposed to do it. I would agree with Nathan. I would say, yeah, I don't think it's a literal 10%. I think it's a principle that most of us say that's a good principle to live by.

1:21:16Ruslan KD:I mean, does it always have to do with money or I mean, can you give time?

1:21:20Shawn Ryan:Can you give? I think you can give everything. I think you give time. I think you give resource. I think you can be generous with so many different things. For us, it is money because I don't want, you know, there's a joke we always say, like the last part of a man to get saved is his wallet. You know, we're so attached to our money. We're so attached to our finances. And so I think it can be multiple things, but I think when you're willing to sacrifice financially and say, hey, these are my values, this is what I believe in, and I'm willing to contribute in this way, something unlocks. And I don't, I can't even put words to it, but something unlocks and has always unlocked for me.

1:21:57Shawn Ryan:Can I give you a quick tithing story? This is gonna sound so cheesy. Okay, so I come to faith, I'm trying to live this stuff out. This is like, I'm surrendered to Jesus. I had this 1987 Toyota Celica. This is back in the day. I don't know if you had any friends like me, but we would put the big 10 inch subs in the trunk and drive around, boom, boom, right? And had the Celica. And one day I come out and someone broke into my car and all of my sound system is jacked. It's all gone, right? And I'm like, man, this sucks. I call the police. The police come. The police run fingerprints and they do this whole investigation, right?

1:22:34Shawn Ryan:This whole thing. So I forget about it. I start going to church. I start giving. I'm just, I'm working at Pizza Hut. Like I'm not making any money. My little$250 check, I'm just going, I'm in faith. I'm going to practice this principle because I think there's something to the principle of giving. In fact, I'm not lying to you. A year and a half later, but it was the first month I started giving to my church, started being generous. I get a check in the mail for$800. They had caught the kid doing something else that broke into my car through the fingerprints, made him pay restitution, and sent me the money, didn't call me nothing.

1:23:14Shawn Ryan:I got a random check in the mail for$800. Wow. As a kid, to me, and I'm like, I just started doing this. And I'm not saying every time you give, God's going to send magic fairy money from heaven. That's not the point. But for me, it was like, I'm just going to be faithful with this little bit I got. And all of a sudden, that same week, I get an$800 check. And the weird part is, man, the more I'm generous, the more I give money away, the more I'm just willing to just go, Lord, it's yours anyway. What do you want me to do with this? I'm going to provide for my family. I'm going to save. I'm going to invest.

1:23:44Shawn Ryan:I'm going to do all that stuff. Lord, what do you want me to do with this, man? Is it being generous to that waitress that, man, you could tell she's had a rough week. And let me just be radically generous with her and just blow her mind. And then do that. They run and chase you out. The restaurant, they're crying because that mattered so much. I think that's the heart posture. It's not about percentage. That's how I like to give.

1:24:06Ruslan KD:Yeah. I like to – I mean, I'm very choosy on who I give to, both time and money. But, you know, I mean, we, a lot of times before the interview, we'll go to breakfast, stuff like that. And I always, always over tip because, I mean, I know where we live. It's hard to get by here as a waitress, you know. And so I always do that. I'm always looking. But I just, you know, I love to give. Almost, you know, I've been told by numerous people that, you know, I overgive and that causes that that can cause resentment. I struggle with that sometimes. But but, you know, I'm very I'm very choosy because I want to know that whatever I'm giving, whether that's time or money, that it's not going to be wasted, you know.

1:24:56Ruslan KD:And and so I'm always I'm looking for somebody that's going to that's going to that's going to use what I give them in the right way to better their life. you know and and you don't always see that with a church or a non-profit or you know and i'm not picking on those because there's a lot of good ones you know there's a lot of good non-profits out there a lot of good churches out there i've given to both but you know i like to see the direct impact and i like to see the you know i even with you know a lot of the people that i bring on the show i mean there's there's there's guys that have been watching and women you know for years like are they really trying to do what they say they're doing you know are they you know are they on the hamster wheel and they're not getting any traction you know are they going to give up you know is is is the money going to get to them you know when they do make it are they going to be you know flaunting all kinds of you know erotic shit all over the internet you know and that's that's that's not who i want to give to i want to give to the person that's going to appreciate it use it better

1:26:00Shawn Ryan:their life better their family life better the world you know and so i mean and in god's eyes

1:26:05Ruslan KD:you know does it matter who you give to does it have to be to the church can it be to anybody

1:26:10Shawn Ryan:can it just be generosity and in general yeah i i think yes i think it's asn i think you get you you're a generous person you know how fun it is to give i think for me man i'm so in love with my local church and i'm so in love how god is using us we do a thing called bless local where we just just give a lot away to our community and go above and beyond to be generous to the single mom, to be generous to those who are struggling. We give a lot away to missions. We do a lot with disaster relief in other parts of the world. And I want my pastors to do well. I want them to be able to afford a home and buy a home in the city they live in.

1:26:46I want them to be able to send their

1:26:49Shawn Ryan:kids to college without worrying about finances. I want them to do well because I value them. We I value public school teachers. I value my pastor a lot. And I value the men and women that are like, this is, they're laying their life down, they're preaching. And this is their service, this is their contribution. I want them to be well taken care of. And so I have a church that I'm so in love with and I love everything that's happening at Rhythm Church. And I would encourage people, if you're at a church and they're not transparent with the finance, like I just had a buddy that hit me up and was like, hey man, like my friend called this church and he gives there and they wouldn't share any of the information with him.

1:27:26Shawn Ryan:And I was like, oh, well, that sounds a little weird. Most churches do. But if that's the case, he might want to look for another church. If they're not willing to offer anything they're doing with the money, I wouldn't want to give either. And so I think the gathering of the local believers every week with the preaching and the teaching and the discipleship and the community that's happening, I value that. And I think the scriptures call us to value that. And I think we should give to that. Does it have to be a percentage and some legalistic thing? I don't think it has to. But to me, man, I have it by the grace of God.

1:28:00Shawn Ryan:And generosity is the antidote to greed. And I think we have a lot of consumerism and self-centeredness in America. And if I could be generous, and by the way, I give beyond just churches, just amazing nonprofits I partner with every month, there's missionaries I partner with every month. I give beyond just my local church, but I get to see the impact of what happens in my local church. I get to see the young men. We're next to Camp Pendleton, big marine base right there in Oceanside. Men coming in, they're broken, they're hurting. They start coming to church, they start getting discipled. People are pouring into them, and within six months, they're totally different people.

1:28:36Shawn Ryan:I value that, and I'm going to go above and beyond. My goal, and I'm not trying to brag or flex, and maybe we need to cut this out, but my goal is to be - They're not taking it that way. Yeah. Didn't come off that way. My goal is to be the single biggest giver in my church. Like I want to be the single biggest hero in my church. And that's what I'm shooting for. I'm not there yet. I'm not there yet. But I work hard because I value these things.

1:28:58Ruslan KD:Do you think that churches can overemphasize growth instead of spreading the message? Absolutely.

1:29:05Shawn Ryan:I think churches can do all sorts of goofy things. I think overemphasizing growth. I think overemphasizing, maybe overemphasizing politics. You know, I think overemphasizing the social programs. I think there's all sorts of things they can do. The idea is how many people can you be faithful with? Is it 1 ,000? Is it 1 ,400? Is it 10 ,000? Is it 5 ,000, right? What are people doing? You know, in our church, the church that planted my church is a church called North Coast Vista. And ironically enough, when I had a conversation with Nathan in January, I would love to hear if Nathan would acknowledge that he said this to me.

1:29:43Shawn Ryan:When I told him the circles I'm in and I said, hey, this is who my pastor is. This is the pastor who pastors him and helped plant our church. He told me, oh, bro, you're connected to the gold standard of this stuff. These are these, you're around guys that are doing the best at this when it comes to transparency. I wonder if he would say that now, but I used to think growth is bad, big church is bad. And then I went to North Coast and I met Pastor Chris Brown. And what happened was, man, one of my close friends, he lived in my studio. I used to rent two condos next to each other. Me and my family lived out of one.

1:30:15Shawn Ryan:I had my studio kind of like this, not as nice as this, but in the downstairs of the other. In the upstairs, we'd always have rooms, different rappers, creative people. Sometimes family would stay in the rooms. And one of my friends, his name was Tanner, Tanner Ross. He got leukemia. And I was downstairs. He came down and told me he was going to the hospital. We thought it was nothing. He got leukemia, and he beat it the first time. But the second time on Thanksgiving Day of November, November 2022, Thanksgiving Day, he came back and he died. And I watched for those several years how North Coast Church wrapped their arms, not just around Tanner, but around his wife, around his family, around his friends, how they showed up for them.

1:31:04Shawn Ryan:And I got to see a big church disciple and love and lead and pay and take care of and sacrifice for a dear friend of mine. And so I was critical of churches up until that point, critical of big churches. And now my scheme has shifted where I said, okay, yes, I'm a local church guy. But like, man, big churches aren't bad. They're doing good. And when I saw that and I saw Chris Brown and, yeah, man, I just, I saw it up close. You know, I saw the mercy and the grace. I feel good for you even crying about it because it's a good thing. It's a good thing to see churches do good things. And it's the biggest church in our city.

1:31:53Shawn Ryan:It's a$30 million budget. And Pastor Griswold is one of the most transparent people I've ever sat with. And I've seen him be generous to my pastor and plant us and take care of Rhythm Church. And I've seen him be generous to me. And that's when my mind, like, it shifted. Like, big is not bad. Oftentimes, they have more resources. And to see them lock arms and be there for this family. And I'm still, I just saw Tanner's parents. His dad just came to my book launch event. and they're still hurting, but the church is still with them. They're still next to them. We did a vlog on the church because I said, I got to highlight what God's doing here.

1:32:34Shawn Ryan:We did a vlog, and it was like investigating the biggest mega church in my area. We're being spicy with the societal. While we're doing the vlog, his mom is there, and she's just there, and they're just taking care of her and loving her, giving her something to do, giving her dignity after burying a child. This is years later at this point. So I got to see it up front. I got to see it up front and go. And they showed up. They showed up for my friend.

1:33:00Ruslan KD:Wow. Want to take a break? Yeah. Let's take a break.

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1:34:02Ruslan KD:All right, we're back from the break. I want to move into, you know, we're seeing this, at least I think we're seeing it. The internet makes it look like that, right? But it seems like, actually, it is happening. You know, tons, I told you the story about Eddie Penny earlier. You know, a big part of my journey to Christ and a mentor of mine. And, you know, we're seeing this big wave of the revival of Christianity. You know, and, you know, one of the things that I always bring up that's like a public display of all this is, I think it was University of Georgia where, you know, they showed this tailgate party and all these kids, these college kids are getting baptized in the back.

1:34:49Ruslan KD:It looks like a kegger. It looks like a fraternity party. And then you look, and it's people getting baptized. And I'd mentioned Eddie came on my show and shared how he got saved. And then, I mean, it was at least a year. Every single person that came in here on the show had brought up Jesus Christ and coming to the Holy Spirit and getting into the Bible and all that stuff. And these are, you know, these are these type of individuals that I'm talking about on the show. I mean, a lot of them have seen, you know, I mean, you've seen the worst of humanity as a seven year old, you know, but these guys are coming back from war.

1:35:29Ruslan KD:They've seen they have seen a lot of carnage, you know, and so for that kind of revival to happen, you know, amongst that, it takes a lot. And I mean, we're seeing it through the veteran community. We're seeing it in Generation Z. I mean, my parents went back. I mean, a lot of—I don't go to church, but I'm very into it. I want to learn. That's one of the reasons you're here. I want to learn from you. And I'm bringing on people like John Burke, Lee Strobel, Priest. Lee Strobel's awesome, man. I read Case for Christ. It dropped me. So good. He's one of my favorite people in the world. He's amazing.

1:36:07Ruslan KD:But he's got a new book coming out called The Case for Christmas this year. Oh, dope. Yeah, yeah. But anyways, I think we're seeing this huge revival in Christianity, not just in the country, but worldwide. And I wanted to get your thoughts on that.

1:36:24Shawn Ryan:Well, I think people have been faced with evil and discovered darkness. And when you face and you see darkness, you see COVID, post-COVID, you see how dark the world gets. I think that the natural reaction is, well, if there's evil, there has to be good. And I think it's honestly just walking through that paradigm. For me, I was coming to faith around the time of 9-11. So it was like, man, you see those towers go down. You see that sort of stuff. You see celebrating in parts of the world. And you go, ooh, there's some evil in this world. There has to be good. There has to be light. So I'd say that's what you're describing.

1:37:04Shawn Ryan:I think that would be my first assessment, especially folks who have gone to war and seen the the evil of of all of it the darkness of all of it i think you see that and you go there

1:37:12Ruslan KD:has to be it has to be the opposite of this and done it and done it too i mean you know i've talked a lot about this on the show but i don't agree with all the reasons that we're over there that one of the reasons i left the agency is i i i i didn't understand the mission anymore you know and and i think that a lot of things that went down were there was a lot of nuance to them and maybe we shouldn't have been in parts of the world. But not only, you know, I don't think it's just the fact that people see evil. I think it's also the fact that it is so hard to find actual truth these days. I mean, in everything.

1:37:54Ruslan KD:I think it stemmed from COVID, but I mean, right now the big thing, right, is Charlie Kirk's assassination. Who did it? What was it? What killed him? a lot of conspiracy type stuff around the sniper shop that may or may not be conspiracy. And so what I'm getting at is, I mean, it's with all these big events that happen, you know, COVID, the wars, Israel, Charlie Kirk's assassination. I mean, the list goes on and on and on, right? I mean, whatever, and there's multiple narratives around each one of these things, right? And so whatever narrative that you want to buy into, you can convince yourself that's what happened.

1:38:41Ruslan KD:And I mean, do you know what I mean? I mean, like Charlie Kirk's assassination, right? It was the far left. It was the far right. It was a trans person. It was Israel. You know, I mean, there are very compelling factors in each one of those different avenues of what may have happened, right? And so I think that for me, I'm extremely confused. You know, it's like, fuck, man, all these guys have very compelling arguments on what happened. And there's a lot of compelling arguments on COVID. And there's a lot of all of these things. And so it becomes almost impossible to find actual truth. Jesus says, you know, I am the truth, right?

1:39:34Ruslan KD:So I think that plays, the confusion on finding truth also plays a big role in why people are coming back. I mean, would you agree with that?

1:39:45Shawn Ryan:Absolutely. I think, I love that you pointed to that verse, right? John, Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. And that word for truth, the way Jesus in the Christian world view is the only thing that makes sense of reality. Because if you don't have Jesus, you don't have anything to anchor reality on. How do we know we're not in a simulation right now? Because I believe Jesus is the way and the truth and the life. So I think everything is anchored in Jesus being the truth. And then what we can know is I know through who Jesus is, through his time on earth, and then the good that's impacted that.

1:40:23Shawn Ryan:And I think that's crucial because to your point, we're living in alternate universes, it seems. It's like you can frame either anything the way you want to. Now, here's my deeper theory. And then I do want to come back to the idea of revival. This is what I think. I think post-social media, so many people have seen, you've dealt with this personally, but so many people now are so chronically online that they're consuming the most traumatic stuff that most people are not accustomed to seeing. The death of George Floyd, the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the crazy lockdowns with COVID, the deaths of despair and increases.

1:41:01Shawn Ryan:Is the medicine worse than the disease, right? In terms of the byproducts of the lockdowns from COVID, potential vaccine injury, all of these different things. And what I think has happened is we've consumed so much trauma that people's brains are cooked. Like they can no longer decipher reality. And so everything is black and white. Everything is binary. Everything is so polarized and so charged. And you're either deifying Charlie or you're demonizing Charlie. And it's like, dude, like, hey, let's turn the temperature down. But I think this generation is cooked, man. I think they've consumed so much media and they've seen so many traumatic things that the cognitive distortion is binary, black and white, all or nothing, thinking about every issue.

1:41:50Shawn Ryan:Name an issue, it's black or white. Israel's either the heroes or they're the villain. That's it. No nuance, right? And in your work, your line of work, and in my life as well, you start traveling and seeing, you're like, wait, there's more nuance to some of these things, that these things are complicated. They're not binary. That people are complicated. That we all have struggles and internal wars within our hearts that need to be redeemed and rescued, right? And so I think that's where we're at as a people. Like, I think as a people, we're just cooked, dude. Chronically Online, average American spends seven hours a day passively consuming media.

1:42:24Shawn Ryan:Seven hours? A day. That's not working. That's not learning. That's just passively consuming media, right? Whether that's YouTube, Netflix, fill in the blank, right? That's almost 50 hours a week. And so you could find any story you want to tell to yourself. But to your point, what story is true? C.S. Lewis says how the Christian story is the myth that's true, that it transcends everything. And by myth, he just means the story that's true. It is transcendent in the story of Jesus and what it's done to shape history and the good that it's caused. I don't think there's anything like it. So if you're not anchoring yourself in Jesus, you have no way to make sense of anything.

1:43:06Shawn Ryan:There's no epistemic basis for any, you can't know anything, right? Because that could be a deep fake, that could be a misinformation or whatever. And so I think that's where we're at. And so I think people rightfully so are going, I'm so disillusioned with all this. I need something more. I need something deeper. I need something ancient. I need something transcendent. And I think that's what we're seeing with especially young men are coming back to church. I say this is the first time, I want to say within modern history, that men are coming to church more than women are. No kidding. Yeah. Young men are attending church at higher rates than young women.

1:43:40Shawn Ryan:And this is the first time within modern history that this has happened.

1:43:42Ruslan KD:That's fascinating. Yeah. I did not know that. Yeah. I mean, is the biggest, do you have any insight? Is Gen Z the biggest generation that's being revived back into the church?

1:43:53Shawn Ryan:So Gen Z, from the data I've looked at. Not into the church, into Christianity? Yeah, from that I've looked at, I want to say 48 % of Gen Z, non-Christian Gen Z is Jesus curious. So they're very open to Jesus. They're very open to church. They're very open because I think we've came to the conclusion in society that like new atheism and secularism completely failed us. It's incoherent, right? Because the very same folks with new atheism, Richard Dawkins and these guys, they were the elites and they were the smart people. Now they're getting canceled for saying a man is a man and a woman is a woman.

1:44:25Shawn Ryan:Like the worldview that you championed has imploded on itself. And they've turned on you and they said, you're a bigot now for making biological statements about gender. So I think we've come to the place of like, yeah, it's new atheism and secularism. It doesn't work. It doesn't work. And so now people want something else. And I think that that is Jesus.

1:44:47Ruslan KD:Do you find yourself thinking about spiritual warfare often? All the time. is that what's going on with this search for i mean it's impossible to find it's not impossible but it's very very hard to find truth these days in anything yeah and so is that do you think that spiritual warfare plays a part in that confusion absolutely i mean you know ephesians 6 says we

1:45:15Shawn Ryan:don't wrestle against flesh and blood we wrestle against principalities and powers in an unseen world, that there's a realm beyond this world. That is, I think, is acknowledged by every civilization throughout all of society. There is something beyond this life. There's a realm beyond this life. And so if we're talking everything from this phenomenon of UFOs to just this utter, complete darkness of some people getting a hold, it's like there's a dark passenger in them to do what that man did to Charlie Kirk. Like there's an unseen realm that we don't see and it is real and it manifests itself in different ways.

1:45:55Shawn Ryan:And oftentimes it needs prayer, it needs fasting, it needs deliverance. And there's a spiritual world that like people are uncomfortable acknowledging, but I think we all sense it. Why does it need fasting? What does that do? Well, Jesus said that they were trying to cast out demons. The disciples were trying to cast out demons in the gospels and they couldn't. And Jesus said, some only come by fasting. Some only come out by fasting. There's something to, again, the spirit realm, where sometimes Jesus was casting out demons and the disciples were just casting out demons. Boom, it'd go. Other times Jesus said, no, sometimes this requires fasting.

1:46:28Shawn Ryan:There's a deeper stronghold that requires more to lift this darkness.

1:46:34Ruslan KD:Do you have any idea on how demons manifest in search for truth? I mean, is it a possession and social media influencers? I mean, you know, I mean, even with the Charlie Kirk stuff, I mean, the day, probably two or three days after that happened, it was like every single time I would scroll through X or IG, it's a slow-mo shot, you know, a slow-mo video of him being shot in the neck. And, I mean, and that desensitizes, it desensitizes everybody who sees that. And it's over. It's almost like a fucking brainwashing. You know, I mean, it's literally every post.

1:47:24Ruslan KD:And people should be seeing stuff like that, you know, in, I mean, especially kids. You know, and, I mean, to desensitize a kid that's on their line, I mean, my kids won't be on social when they're on social. But there are a lot of kids that are. It's desensitizing them. It's becoming normal to see that stuff. I mean, the week before that happened, or maybe it was two weeks, it was the Ukrainian girl that got stabbed in the neck on the subway. And before that, there was something else. I can't remember what it was at this point in time. But, I mean, it's just – I mean, so I'm asking, you know, how does this happen?

1:48:01Ruslan KD:How is it manifesting? Why is it allowed to happen?

1:48:04Shawn Ryan:Yeah, I think that I'm not an expert in the spiritual realm, but from my understanding, I definitely think there's demonic elements that are often hijacking people when they open themselves up to darkness to then cause harm against other people. I would say what happened to me as a child with experiencing sexual assault was a demonic thing that distorted my brain and my identity and my self-image. And I think when we're seeing the horrendous nature of certain things, I think there's a demonic component to then go out and harm someone or even to send something like that to someone. Like I was getting videos of the Charlie Kirk thing from Christians, you know?

1:48:45Shawn Ryan:And I'm like, I don't want to see that. And I was just alarmed. Like, why are we passing this around? And so I think there's something demonic that happens when someone is causing sin, like harming someone else. And then that is then propagated and passed around. And then now we're consuming it. We're becoming, like you said, desensitized to it. How it all is connected, I don't know. There's men like Michael Heiser that have done amazing research on the unseen realm. And he has a great series on that. And it's evident, though, it's everywhere, that there's something happening. And what happens, I think, from my limited experience is that you take these forces, someone then sins against someone else, that then causes consistent issues and trauma in their life.

1:49:36Shawn Ryan:They then pass it on to someone else. And then that can even affect people's epigenetics. Like your genetics, then you can be more predisposed to being an alcoholic, right? You can be more predisposed to being an addict. All of that is passed around and you're walking through this stuff. And so, and Jesus can break those curses, right? Jesus can lift those things, yet we still have work to do. You know, I don't think it's a coincidence that both my mother and my father committed adultery on each other. Both my mother and my father, my mother more so than my dad, struggled with alcoholism. And then like I have sexual assault committed against me.

1:50:10Shawn Ryan:And then I'm smoking weed at a young age. Like I think the enemy is crafty and I don't think that stuff is a coincidence. I mean, here's another question I have.

1:50:21Ruslan KD:You know, I mean, with how prevalent all this is in the search for truth, I mean, you could find yourself totally encaged in this kind of stuff by, you know, what the algorithm is serving you. You mentioned, you know, average is what, seven hours a day? Yeah, yeah. Consuming. The United States, yeah. Social media? Yeah. And I mean, it's so, you know, for those, you know, couple days and the week, week or two before that, every post I saw, it's Ukrainian girl getting stabbed in the neck. Week later, it's Charlie, you know, and I mean, so you can, you can, it would be very easy to entrap yourself in that dynamic for a long period of time, forever, possibly.

1:51:05Ruslan KD:Right. And so, you know, one of my questions I have for you is, I mean, to get to heaven, the only way to heaven is through, you know, Jesus. Right. That's right. And so it's on my mind on if somebody has not come to faith yet, you know, how could they be judged for not believing when they are entrapped in all of that? Everywhere, you know, it would be like being put in a room and that's all you're showed all the time, you know? And so, you know, I don't, it's, I mean, when I see that and how often it's, you know, you're exposed to these things, I don't know how he could blame me for not believing.

1:51:52Ruslan KD:I'm just being honest. Yeah, no, that's a great point.

1:51:55Shawn Ryan:What do you think about that? I think that that is a point that is often raised of like, how could a good God send people that have never heard or maybe have heard and just haven't understood, how could he send them to hell, right? When they're entrenched in that.

1:52:09Ruslan KD:When they're entrenched in that. It's almost, we have free will, right? But I mean, when you're entrenched in that, that can be very misleading.

1:52:21Shawn Ryan:I think it's a very valid question. It's a trap. I think the way, I look at it in a few different ways. One, Romans 3.23 says, for the wages of sin is death. So every single person has a degree of contributing with their own sinfulness, right? And the good news is that Jesus then comes and deals with that sin. Now, when it comes to the issue of hell and who's going to hell and how does all that work, I prefer C.S. Lewis's view on this. And if you've never read Mere Christianity, you would absolutely love Mere Christianity. This is timeless as ever, man. You read that. It was written during World War II, and it's just like, oh, my gosh.

1:52:58Shawn Ryan:It's like he's writing about it in our time. It's so trippy. But C.S. Lewis has this quote where he says, the gates of hell are locked from the inside. The gates of hell are locked from the inside. So the people that are going to hell are going to hell because they want nothing to do with the light, and they want nothing to do with Jesus, and they want nothing to do with goodness and beauty. The gates of hell are locked by people who are saying, I want nothing to do with this God. Now the question is, and this is a very deep question, is how many people are actually, that's their heart posture.

1:53:31Shawn Ryan:and how many people are misguided and how many people haven't heard yet and how many people is God going to redeem. In my life, man, I feel like God just kind of scooped me up. Like, man, I was spinning my own wheels and though it was four years of wrestling, he just kind of scooped me up. And I don't have the answer to that. I don't know. I don't know how many people are like middle finger to Jesus. I think those people definitely exist. Like, I think when you go down the rabbit hole of like the debates with the atheists and then you start getting to the bottom of it and they're like, they're judging God.

1:54:03Shawn Ryan:Like their position is, I'm judging God. And I think that's a very dark place to be because you have no basis for good or evil if there is no God. How can you judge God? Based on what standard is God good or evil if there is no God, right? Objective morality comes downstream of an objective standard. And you're an atheist, so there is no objective standard. So it's all subjective. Based on your subjective standard, you're gonna judge God. That's a dark place to be because you have no basis for making any of those claims. There's no truth claims if there's no God. So I don't know how many people are like middle finger to God.

1:54:33Shawn Ryan:I want nothing to do with God. How many people are deceived? How many people are, man, they've been sinned against so much that they're just stuck in a pattern of addiction, right? I do know that the wages of sin is death. I do know that God loves the world so much that he gave his one and begotten son. And Jesus comes and he doesn't run from the mess. He doesn't run from the darkness. He steps right into it and he comes in the form of a human body, a physical material body. And he lives amongst us and he eats food like us and he's tempted like us and he works like us and he experiences the full human experience.

1:55:11Shawn Ryan:And then through that ends up dealing with that issue of sin, right? That issue of, hey, man, on our own, like we're all cooked. Left our own devices, every single one of us is cooked. But there's something to this grace and this mercy that he creates a pathway to heaven. And again, not just heaven in the afterlife, but helps us usher in a piece of heaven on earth, helps us usher in his kingdom here and now.

1:55:35Ruslan KD:I mean, I think everybody's been deceived to one degree or another on the planet. But, you know, another question for you is, you know, the reward, the going to heaven. I mean, do you believe that there are levels of heaven, or are you rewarded more for being faithful your entire life? You know, what do you think about that? I mean, somebody that's been deceived that isn't given the middle finger to God and Jesus, I mean, but lived a very, very sinful life versus somebody that has been revived and is doing good and pumping good into the world and donating to good causes and spending time with people in need.

1:56:22Ruslan KD:You know what I mean? Those don't balance out to me. Yeah. So I think this is such a great question.

1:56:31Shawn Ryan:I think, one, there's rewards here and now, generally speaking, especially in the West, for living out God's ways. So if you take the Christian worldview and you apply it to your life and you practice the faith, you practice loving your enemies, you practice prayer, you practice reading the scriptures, you practice the principles on what it means to handle your money God's way, to lead your marriage God's way, that there's rewards here and now. You will have, generally speaking, in the West, in a state that's not oppressing Christians, and we're not under Roman occupation, generally speaking, there's a lot of fruit here and now that we get to experience by aligning our lives with God's ways.

1:57:12Shawn Ryan:So I say that's generally true. Then there's real persecutions of Christians getting beheaded for the name of Jesus in other parts of the world for doing the same things, right? So it's this weird dichotomy there that's tough to deal with. Now, when it comes to good works, I believe we're saved by grace through faith to good works. And meaning that faith is a confidence. I'm placing my confidence. I'm placing my trust. I'm placing that when me and you are organizing this conversation, my confidence is that it's happening. We're going to meet up. It's right. Like I have a trust in you. Even though I've never met you, I trust that you are who you say you are, that your team is who they say they are.

1:57:48Shawn Ryan:So I'm placing my trust, my confidence. And then by grace, it is a gift. That means great grace means gift. You didn't do anything to deserve it. I can't do anything to make God love me anymore, and I can't do anything to make God love me any less. In the same way, my 10-year-old, who's about to enter puberty, he can't do anything to make me love him any less. He can't do anything to make me love him anymore. He's my son. He belongs in my family. It's in his best interest to be obedient. It's in his best interest to live out his father's base because I'm a good father, and I have his best interest in mind.

1:58:20Shawn Ryan:That doesn't make sense to a 10-year-old's brain or an 11-year-old's brain. I think sometimes we're the same way. And so with regards to the works aspect, saved by grace, it's a gift through faith, a confidence and a trust. I'm gonna trust Jesus's ways, even though it don't make sense. When I got saved, I was like, I can't have sex with my girlfriend? Like, why can't I have sex with my girlfriend? Like, I like having sex with my girlfriend. It's like, nope, there's a standard and there's an ethic to how I am to treat my body. My body's not my own. It didn't make sense at the time, but goodness, it doesn't make sense in hindsight on why I shouldn't have been sleeping around, right?

1:58:50Shawn Ryan:Right. So there are then good works that I'm supposed to do here and now. And I do believe that those good works provide different rewards in heaven. Right. How that looks, I have. You do. Yeah. I think there's different, I'm not, not different levels of heaven. Okay. But he was faithful with little will be entrusted with much. So that Matthew 25 passage, we see that that is a, that is a foreshadowing towards heaven. This is a, this is the pilot, like this, the test pilot, it's a test drive that we get to try and see how we're faithful. And then in heaven, we get opportunities to serve in different ways.

1:59:24Shawn Ryan:And I think people think heaven is going to be this like, we're in the clouds floating like angels. Heaven's going to be more real than this. And there's going to be a new heaven and a new earth. And there's going to be a reality that feels and tastes and smells even more real. And it's not just going to be floating in the clouds like angels in diapers. There's going to be a real new reality that we're going to get to walk in. And there are then rewards for faithfulness here on earth. How that works, I don't know.

1:59:54Ruslan KD:I thought where you were going is the rewards happen during your lifetime. They do too. And I think that that's a perspective that I've not thought of, that if you lead a good, faithful life, then you will be rewarded in this life. and then maybe everybody's equal when they get to heaven.

2:00:12Shawn Ryan:I think it's in both. I think rewards in this life and rewards in the next life.

2:00:16Ruslan KD:The funny thing is I think everybody in the West ties rewards with money and possessions. But what comes to my mind is ever since I've come to faith, I've had a much clearer conscience and less mental suffering. More peace. more peace yeah great way to put it more peace your peace of mind and then i think back about when i was sleeping around doing drugs boozing fighting you know all that kind of stuff i mean that that does not create a clear conscience a clear mind that does not bring you peace that brings you mental suffering you know and consequences to that consequences to your body

2:01:06Shawn Ryan:from alcohol, consequences. I mean, to me, I think of the cool kids in high school, my buddies in high school, they're not doing so well in their 30s and 40s. They got a couple of different kids with a couple of different women. They didn't develop any useful skills. They partied a little hard. Their bodies are starting to break down. There's consequences, man. And they look at my life and they're now coming around to the faith. I was like, I was telling you guys about this 25 years ago, man. We could have saved so much heartache and headache by just getting aligned with Jesus back then. But that's the beautiful part about the grace of God.

2:01:40Shawn Ryan:Like every moment passing is another chance to turn it all around. Every moment passing, God's grace is extended and mercy is extended and we don't deserve it, but he gives it anyway.

2:01:50Ruslan KD:You had mentioned earlier, just a couple of minutes earlier, a new earth. What do you mean a new earth?

2:01:55Shawn Ryan:So in Revelation, when you're reading through the end days and how it's all going to play out, talks about a new heaven and a new earth, that this earth will be made new and there's a new heaven that's gonna be and it's going to be more real than anything we're experiencing. Paradise on earth, paradise in heaven. I don't know if we're gonna be flying back and forth in some sort of spaceship. I don't know how that's gonna work, but that's how the scriptures describe a new heaven and new earth. Randy Alcorn did a lot of really good work on the idea of heaven and really digging deep. And he has short books and long books and the way he describes heaven, And it's nothing like we've been conditioned to think about heaven.

2:02:38Shawn Ryan:What does he say? Well, he saw it's more real than this. It's physical. There's probably going to be food. There's all the things about this life and some in heaven, right? Like it's going to be better and more real and more transcendent. And there won't be any sin. There won't be any crying. There won't be any death. There won't be any despair. We'll be physically in the presence of God, right? And I don't know. I mean, I'm going to have some questions for Jesus when I get there. But I think it's going to be even more magnificent than we can imagine.

2:03:08Ruslan KD:Interesting.

2:03:09Shawn Ryan:You think that? I believe that, yeah. I believe that. I believe that. But I don't then become so heavenly-minded and I'm of no earthly good. Because I think that's the dangerous part, is that you can really start thinking about heaven, that you become disoriented with here and now. And here and now, I think, man, this is what an opportunity. As much as there's delusion and confusion and despair, what an opportunity that we get to communicate through these devices. What an opportunity that we get to have a conversation like this. And it goes out to millions of people that then will sit here and think deeply and ask questions.

2:03:48Shawn Ryan:There's never been a time like this in history. Yes, there's a lot of dark stuff, right? Unrestrained capitalism leads to stuff like OnlyFans and just the most dark stuff on the internet. And then you have goodness and beauty. You have transcendence. You have conversations that are pointing people towards something different, aiming at something more beautiful. That I think we take for granted as well. I think we forget what a stellar opportunity we have to just do so much good in the world.

2:04:19Ruslan KD:you know one of the reasons that i And like the home church or Bible study or whatever you want to call it, is that it gives you the opportunity, if you're with the right group, to ask questions with zero judgment. And that's something that I think that a lot of churches have wrong is, you know, that I don't think that there should be a – you should never be offended by a question, a real question. And I've asked a lot of tough questions to Todd in my Bible study. And questions that I would never feel comfortable asking at church in front of people or putting a pastor, priest, minister, whatever, on the spot like that.

2:05:07Because it's become, I mean, it's like a line that you can't cross.

2:05:13Ruslan KD:You know, I mean, do you think that most churches are open to all questions? The tough, tough, tough questions? I think most churches are.

2:05:24Shawn Ryan:You do? I do. I do. And I think that because the churches I'm connected to, the pastor is not hiding out in the green room in between services. He's out meeting people. He's conversing. He's having conversations with people. He's answering hard questions in between the services. So you met my pastor. every single week there's guys asking him questions in between every service every single week he's talking to people you know every single week we're engaging with the felt needs of what's happening in our church i think one of the things about what i what i get to do that's amazing is like i'll do live events now and we'll do kind of like a conversations like this in a live podcast format i might give a talk and then we're going to their questions ask us anything i'm not i'm not ashamed of anything, ask me anything.

2:06:08Shawn Ryan:And the quick answer might be, I don't know. I don't know how heaven works. And I don't know, but I have hope and I have trust and I have confidence. I think the hard part though, is people want answers for everything. And the reality is, there's a degree of tension that we get to walk through in life. There's a degree of tension we get to walk through in faith. I don't have all the answers. I could only have confidence and trust. And I think this is how the world works because this seems to be the most clear explanation of reality.

2:06:38Ruslan KD:Let's move into end times. Okay. I mean, we kind of touched on at the beginning of the podcast, you know, brought up the verse there or what I read in Matthew. And, I mean, it sounds like today. You know, there's another one. Shit, I can't even remember what it was.

2:07:01Ruslan KD:I can't remember the chapter. But it's basically talking about, oh, it's Romans. And it was talking about the fall of the Roman Empire and, you know, confusion of genders, all that kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah, pull it up. It's a crazy passage.

2:07:21Shawn Ryan:Man, I love your Bible recall. You're new, but you've got some good recall because you're citing books And I might find a chapter for you, but you got some great recall. You're describing Romans 1.

2:07:32Ruslan KD:You know, we wrote scripture on every exterior stud in this entire studio. I heard about that. Was it the Bibles that you guys put in the cornerstones? We put a Bible in each corner. And then we, as a team, we wrote scripture on every single exterior stud. Yeah.

2:07:49Shawn Ryan:That's so good. So you're referencing Romans. You want to finish your thought and I can read it? Go ahead. I'm finished. Romans 1, 18,

2:08:25Shawn Ryan:understood from what has been made so that people are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor give thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore, God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served created things rather than the creator who was forever praised.

2:09:04Shawn Ryan:Amen. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful acts. Even their woman exchanged natural or sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way, the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men and received in themselves the due penalty for their error. Yeah. What does that mean? I mean, it means what it says, which is like, man, instead of worshiping God as God, they started worshiping creation. And if you aren't aligned with creator, you will always worship creation. And worshiping creation could look like actually making idols out of stuff.

2:09:43Shawn Ryan:Worshiping creation can look like worshiping the human body, worshiping sex, worshiping pleasure. That can then look like what we see now with some of this wild ideology that says you were born in the wrong body. God didn't make you this way. And those are deeply theological statements that if you think about it, it's not that the, my pastor said this a couple of weeks ago, it's not that the churches became more political. It's that politics have became more religious and theological. Now we're talking about gender. Now we're talking about marriage. Now we're talking about, is that a baby in there or is that not a baby in there, right?

2:10:15Shawn Ryan:Well, it's a baby if you feel like it's a baby. And if you don't feel like it's a baby, then you can kill it. Like this is what happens when you don't put creator in his proper place and you start worship and creation.

2:10:26Ruslan KD:So is that going to happen again? Is that what that's saying? I think that's happening now. I think this has been the state of humanity for... What I'm asking, is Romans saying that this is going to happen again, or is this strictly talking about the past? Well, what this is really saying is that because this is happening,

2:10:47Shawn Ryan:that's evidence that God is letting people do what they want, right? The fact that this happened, God's just handing them over to their own sinful desires, right? And their own crazy, selfish, sinful, carnal base instincts, right? And if you think about like materialism and secularism, like at the end of the day, what are they telling people? They're not telling people you're created in an image of God. You have value, dignity, worth. There's sexual standards for you. There's life standards for you. No, they're telling young people, you're in a highly evolved animal and heat. So wear protection and have at it.

2:11:22Shawn Ryan:It's like, that's the worst advice you can give to young people. This is terrible. Anyone that's ever participated in hookup culture will tell you that it leaves you so empty and depleted. But that's the spirit of the air, you know?

2:11:35Ruslan KD:And so back to Matthew. I mean, we have that happening right now all over the world. And then, you know, like I had said, rumors of wars, earthquakes, all these things. so what i'm asking is i mean are we in your opinion are we approaching end times

2:11:58Shawn Ryan:one i don't know so let me let me because no man knows the day or the hour two there's there's an argument that could be made that we've been in the last days since jesus ascended to heaven and that we're patiently waiting for his return um three is it possible that these are all signs of the times um i think there's some other things that have to happen first i think there's a there's a strong argument that the third temple needs to be built in jerusalem um i think there's a there's a strong argument uh that the gospel has to go forth to every nation in tongue it hasn't happened yet there's still unreached people groups um so i think there's some there's still some room to go in terms of my understanding of the end times.

2:12:40So you got their temple.

2:12:42Shawn Ryan:We're not anywhere near having a third temple built. The temple mount in Israel, as I'm sure you know, is controlled by the Muslims. They're not letting Jews build a third temple up there. Now there's talks of red heifers being brought to Israel from Texas, and they're waiting to do the sacrifice of the red heifer to usher in this moment of their Messiah. But the third temple is nowhere near being built. They can personify it and talk about it a lot, but we're not there yet. And the gospel hasn't gone forth to every nation, language, and tongue. There's still unreached people. There's still people on earth today that have never heard about Jesus.

2:13:15Yeah.

2:13:16Ruslan KD:You know, also, I mean, I think it did, you know, I called a really good friend of mine, Congressman Eli Crane, about a lot of the stuff that's going on in Israel right now. And, you know, I had a conversation with him about, you I'm not interested in what people think. I'm interested in what the scriptures say. And I'm confused by a lot of the scriptures. And he had brought up, I believe it's Ezekiel 38, 39, several times to me. Reddit didn't really understand it. I don't know if he's talking about at the time or this is going to happen in the future, but it basically says that all the nations will rise against Israel.

2:13:58Ruslan KD:We see a lot of that happening right now. I am not happy with what's going on over there at all. October 7th was horrible. Gaza looks like a dumpster. 60 ,000 people killed. That's several months old, probably a lot more now. You know, bomb Catholic churches in Libya and Gaza, rumors of one in Syria. I mean, I'm not happy with what's going on over there. But, you know, at the same time, when we see the rise against Israel, and it's, once again, it's everywhere in my feed. You click on one thing, you want to hear what somebody says, the next thing you know, that's your entire feed. You know, and it is in every comment section, doesn't matter what the post is, you know, everything, you know, there are people out there that claim everything is Israel's fault.

2:14:53Ruslan KD:In Ezekiel 38, 39, it talks about these, I think it's 12 nations that rise up against Israel. That's where the Antichrist will come from. And so, you know, I'm curious about what are your thoughts on this?

2:15:06Shawn Ryan:so you're right in that ezekiel ezekiel jeremiah and daniel are being written at the same time they're all contemporaries of each other and they're being written to and about the children of israel who are exiled in babylon so that's the the backdrop of those three books and so it's very wild stuff right now babylon was the enemy and they were held captive taken out of the land And in those books, there's apocalyptic stuff in all of them. Daniel has some really wild stuff about the son of man. He's coming back. And there's all kinds of really cryptic stuff in there that is prophetic, but it's also serving two purposes.

2:15:47Shawn Ryan:It's also speaking about stuff that's happening there now, right? And so my thoughts on all of it, man, is I think October 7th was awful. I love Israel. I love the people of Israel. but on the night that happened and I got in a lot of trouble for this I'd love to hear your thoughts on it on the night that happened I said man this October 7th is so bad I said but I'm nervous because the IDF can be heavy handed with how they respond and I got torched by the Christians what do you mean you're a Christian how dare you say the IDF can be heavy handed and like I just got back from Israel less than a year ago and we landed the day Benjamin and Yahoo who got reelected.

2:16:31Shawn Ryan:And it was tense because they don't have a two-party system. He had to connect with the far right, the ultra-Orthodox folks to build a coalition. And they don't have a two-party system. There's multiple parties. So he already wasn't popular. And you align yourself with the far right in Israel. I'm not sure how much you know about the far right in Israel. It's a lot of the ultra-Orthodox. They don't work. They don't serve in the military. They just read Torah and pray all day. And that's their service to Israel. Everyone else in Israel has to serve two years in IDF. So they're already not, the coalition he made was already not popular.

2:17:03Shawn Ryan:And I could sense it. And I got friends in there in Israel that are Armenian. I got friends in Israel that are Christian. I got friends in Israel that are Palestinian. I'm hearing all of their different takes. Some folks that love Israel that are Palestinian, some folks that dislike Israel that are Palestinian. And so back then it was clear as day that, oh, like something's about to go down. Like there was a weight to that. And they were trying to explain all this to me. And I'm just like, I don't understand Israeli politics, right? But what we're seeing, I think, is the overflow of a government that is heavy-handed.

2:17:37Shawn Ryan:And they also have the backdrop of the Holocaust over their legacy. So it's never again, we're going scorched earth. And it's like, wait a minute, there's churches. We're going scorched earth. Wait a minute, there's civilians. We're going scorched earth. Now, if I give them the benefit of the doubt, are they intentionally blowing up churches? Are they intentionally blowing up civilians? Are they intentionally bringing harm? I really would like to say no. I would like to believe they aren't. I would like to believe there's more checks and balances in place. Do they have a right to defend themselves?

2:18:05Shawn Ryan:Yes. Do they need to clean it up and fix it? Yes. You guys got to clean that up. So, you know, I've been to Israel one time. I get emails all the time about going back to Israel. Ministries, KUFI, Israeli government. They want me to, I'm not going, I got to clean that up. Like I'm not going. Clean it up. Figure it out. Like it's been two years. This was supposed to be when we declared victory in Iraq and it stayed another 20 years. It's like, is this indefinite now? You know, how long is this going to go on? And so I say all that to say with, I can't speak to the policies of the IDF and if they're intentionally doing things.

2:18:43Shawn Ryan:I don't know.

2:18:44Ruslan KD:What I'm asking is from a scriptural standpoint, you know, we hear that they're, you know, they're God's chosen people. Are they God's chosen people? I thought there was a new covenant that encompassed all of us.

2:18:58Shawn Ryan:Am I wrong about that? I think, so what we're getting at is dispensationalism, which is a view amongst many Christians. I do not identify as a dispensationalist. So dispensationalists will believe that Israel and Jewish people are under a different dispensational period and Christians are under a different period, right? I had somebody on recently to really go deep on dispensationalism and to say, hey, is this stuff accurate? Is Israel under different periods? So like Andrew Klavan from The Daily Wire will say stuff like, I don't think Ben Shapiro, Andrew Klavan's a Christian. I don't think Ben Shapiro needs to come to faith in Jesus because he's doing great as a Jew, right?

2:19:36Shawn Ryan:And it's like, no, no, no, Ben Shapiro needs to come to faith in Jesus. I want Ben Shapiro to be a Christian. I'm not going to water that down. He needs Jesus. So you're getting at dispensationalism. I hold to the view that the church is the continuation of Israel, and God has something planned for Israel, and I don't know how it's all going to work out. There seems to be a lot with the prophecies and a lot with just the establishment of them as a nation, a lot with these things. And so, we've had these debates on my channel before. We've wrestled through the scriptures before, and there's a lot in here about all Israel will come to faith in Jesus at some point in Romans.

2:20:15Shawn Ryan:I think it's Romans 10. I'm trying to find the verse for you right now. How it all plays out, it sure does seem like, man, everyone's rising up against Israel, but is Israel being sloppy? Those are questions someone like you is way more equipped to answer than me. I don't understand the geopolitics. I don't understand just war theory the way you do. But it seems like, man, the church is the church. I would say it's the continuation of new Israel. And God has some sort of plan for his original people. And that's in scripture. That's in Romans. How that works? Oh, I wish I knew. I don't know. I don't know.

2:20:51Shawn Ryan:So Romans 10, I'm trying to find the verse for you. But not all Israel accepted the good news for Isaiah said, Lord, who has believed our message? Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message and the faith is heard through the word about Christ. But I did ask, did it not hear? So this is talking about Israel hearing but not accepting. Paul is talking about how he's so distraught that his people, Israel, aren't coming to faith. And then there's a verse that says, and all Israel will be saved. And I don't know what to do with that. I don't know how that all works. I would like to believe that there's going to be some sort of revival where the Jews will come back to faith.

2:21:34Shawn Ryan:right um here it is romans 11 25 it says i do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery brothers and sisters so that you may not be conceited israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of gentiles has come in so paul's going out to the gentiles the jews they don't like that he's writing to a mixed church in rome both gentiles and jews gentiles are just non-jewish people, non-Jewish Christians. Verse 26, and in this way, all Israel will be saved. As it is written, the deliverer will come from Zion. He will turn godlessness away from Jacob. And this is my covenant with them when I take away their sins.

2:22:13Shawn Ryan:As far as the gospel is concerned, they're enemies for your sake. But as far as election is concerned, they are loved on accounts of the patriarchs for God's gifts are irrevocable. There's a lot of tension there. It says all Israel will be saved. It says they're hardened right now, but it says that because of the patriarchs, because of Abraham, because of Jacob, that at some point it sounds like God's going to turn Israel to him, back to Jesus. I don't know how that works.

2:22:44Ruslan KD:Me neither. I don't know how it works either. I mean, you know, and then there's the other hand where you hear, you know, the only way to the Father is through me. Well, if they don't believe in him, how do they get there? And what happens to all of the Gentiles who didn't believe? I mean, is it a different, we're down a different system? Yeah. What do you mean by a different timeline?

2:23:11Shawn Ryan:Dispensationalism is the view that there's different dispensational periods and that God interacts with his people in different agreements. And so the Jews are under a different dispensational period. and we as Christians are under a new one. So sometimes that can look real wonky and saying like Christians are like really into Israeli stuff and just give Israel a blank check to do anything. That's how that can look, right? And I don't wanna name names on here. We've talked about this on my channel extensively. I had my friend on who's a dispensationalist and we were trying to kind of hash this out, you know, cause he was like, you sound like a dispensationalist.

2:23:46Shawn Ryan:I'm like, I'm not a dispensationalist. You need to believe in Jesus, right? Whereas covenantal theology, which would be, hey, there are different covenants that God has, and we are under the new covenant, and the church has replaced Israel as the new Israel. So I'm kind of in between both positions. I think God is going to save Israel, and I think God has a plan for Israel. I don't know how that works. At the same time, I believe the church is the new Israel, and I believe the church is God's people.

2:24:12Ruslan KD:Okay.

2:24:13Shawn Ryan:Okay.

2:24:15Ruslan KD:Well, I appreciate that. It's a tough conversation to have. I took a stab at it.

2:24:19Shawn Ryan:I took a stab at it.

2:24:20Ruslan KD:Let's talk about your new book, godly ambition. Yes. What are you discussing in there?

2:24:25Shawn Ryan:I think right now we're in a time where men and young women are conflicted about should they go after the things that they believe God's put on their heart? How do I get out of this despair, this quiet quitting, this hustle culture, all of this tension? And when I look at the scriptures, oftentimes Christians see the word ambition and they view it as a nasty word, ambition, ew, right? But when I look at the scriptures, I found out there's two words for the word ambition. One is edithia, which in the Greek is like a, it's a selfish clobbering by any means necessary ambition. And it's forbidden in the scripture.

2:24:59Shawn Ryan:But there's a second word for ambition, and it's found three times in the New Testament, and it's phileotiome. My buddy Wes Huff tried to help me with the Greek on this. And that word for ambition is found three times. And phileo is where we get the etymology for the word like Philadelphia, brotherly love. And filiotic, time it, time it. It's like there's a time in there. So it's an ambition that out of a brotherly love, I am going to be faithful to aim and get after the things that God has for me. And that word ambition is used three times in the New Testament. I make it my ambition to preach the gospel where others haven't.

2:25:37Shawn Ryan:Paul says that. Paul also writes and says, I make it my ambition to do what pleases God. And then in 1 Thessalonians 4.11, Paul writes, make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, working with your own hands, minding your own business so that you will not be dependent on anybody and so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders. And so I'm really trying to orient people to say, hey, man, hustle culture left us burnt out. Work your face off 18 hours a day. That just swung people to the other side of quiet quitting and I'm just checking out and I don't care anymore and the apathy and the nihilism and that there's a better way in the scriptures and it's called Godly Ambition.

2:26:14Shawn Ryan:And I'm trying to reorient people and say, hey, how do we get men and women, but men specifically, to see their time, their talent, their treasure, not as their own, their ambition is not their own, but it's to be managed and stewarded. That this is like, this is not mine's anyway. Let me manage it onto the glory of God. And so we open up with discovering your calling and your purpose, the difference between purpose, assignment, and calling. We talk about talent stacking, how to develop your skill sets. and we really are trying to get to the brass tacks because we were talking about church and what should the church do.

2:26:48Shawn Ryan:One of the scariest passages in scripture is 1 Timothy 5 and it's not about the end times but it is a very high call. And the passage is talking about widows in the church and who's to care for certain widows in the church. And in that context, widows in the church were the most destitute, most vulnerable people. And Paul says something interesting. He says, hey, those widows that are young enough to get remarried, they should get remarried. Because if they don't get remarried, they're going to be busy bodies and they're going to be causing a fuss. The widows that don't have anyone to care for them, that's who the church should be taking care of.

2:27:21Shawn Ryan:And then he has like a caveat. He's like, as long as they've been faithful to washing the apostles' feet and they've been serving in the church. He adds a caveat to the charity, which is really interesting. And then he says, but those widows that have family, the family is supposed to take care of those widows. And then he makes this bombshell statement. It says, for he who does not provide for the needs of his family, specifically his immediate family, is worse than a nonbeliever and is denied the faith. That's a gut punch in light of the economy, in light of all the uncertainty, the wealth inequality, all these issues.

2:27:57Shawn Ryan:We're still called to provide for the needs of our family, specifically our immediate family. So what does that look like? That means we don't ship grandma away when she's old. We don't wipe our hands of the person that's down on their luck. No, no, no. We have to take care of our own. How do we take care of our own? We got to have some godly ambition for that. We got to get our life in order. We got to get our finances in order. And again, men are struggling, man. They're chronically online. They want to play video games. They're being told by the left and the right that they're victims. There's a system out to get them.

2:28:26Shawn Ryan:They, them are going to destroy you. Israel's bad. These people are bad. The left is bad. Everyone's bad. The police are bad. and they're just growing in despair and nihilism. And I'm saying, man, there's a biblical framework on how we can get after it. And you don't gotta lose your soul, but you can get after it and serve God while serving your family and building some stability to do good for others.

2:28:50Ruslan KD:You had mentioned, you just mentioned, you were talking about single mothers. And you said, the way I took it is that they need to be in the church to be taken care of. Did I hear that correctly? That's what 1 Timothy 5 lays out, yeah. Okay, so wouldn't that be somewhat of a contradiction? And I mean, earlier you just said, I don't know who it was, but you said that you should be preaching the Bible where it's not preached, correct? Yes, yes. So why would it be bad to not take care of a single mom who is not in the church? Because wouldn't that also come with preaching the Bible? Yeah, you're right.

2:29:27Shawn Ryan:It's not bad to take care of a single mother that's not in the church. You're absolutely right. What we run into is a hierarchy of priorities, right? So there's a hierarchy in scripture of values, right? So a lot of people, as an example, loyalty, loyalty, loyalty. How a lot of these pastors get in trouble. They start calling for unmitigated loyalty. And loyalty submits the truth. Loyalty is not the highest value. Truth is the highest value, right? Love, goodness. So what happens is we conflate our values. And so we're more concerned about the single mother out there or what's going on in that country over there than we are within our own home.

2:30:06Shawn Ryan:And so you're right. It is good to care for the single mother. But there's a hierarchy of priorities. So what are those hierarchies? Galatians says, hey, do good to all people as you can, as opportunity presents itself, but especially those in the house of faith. So what we see in Scripture is that first and foremost, there's us now, me and my household, you and your household. We have to first take care of our own. your immediate family. Then it's your extended family. Then it's your local church family. Then it's your community. Then it's the nations. And what we do is we do the opposite. We want to go and worry about what's going on in other nations, other parts of the community, stuff we can't even really control if we're honest.

2:30:43Shawn Ryan:And then we neglect the things we can control. And it creates this weird upside down inversion of values. And the reality is we should care for those single mothers, but I should care for the single mothers in my church first. And then when I have means and when opportunities present themselves, I'm absolutely going to bless the single mothers that aren't in the church, and I'm going to preach them the gospel as well. Okay. So it's a priority list. It's a priority list. Yeah. And that's uncomfortable to talk about because people think that the church is exclusively a charity and the church does charity, but the church primarily exists to preach and teach the gospel, make disciples and cultivate godly community.

2:31:17Shawn Ryan:And the overflow of that is charity, right? And so I think we inflate these things and we say, no, no, no, the church is just supposed to give all their money away. It's like, no, no, the church was to preach and disciple people and care for the widow and the orphan within the context of the church. And then we go on beyond the church. But my big idea is if we just apply godly ambition and everyone just takes care of their household and then their extended family, that will solve a lot of our societal ills. If men say, I'm going to step up, I'm going to be the priest, provider, protector of my home.

2:31:47Shawn Ryan:I'm going to figure it out. It's hard. Finances, job market, AI, who knows where the world is going? It's hard. But I'm going to figure this out. I'm going to figure out how to take care of my family and my extended family. If that just happened in the next five years, all these men that are coming to faith, all these Gen Z, if they just said, hey, I'm going to figure this out. I'm going to figure out a way to take care of my own, take care of my extended family, and then be generous through my church. Because I don't just give to my church. I give through my church, right? I think we will see a radical change in society by men just showing up, being fathers, and then being father figures to folks in their family and their communities that don't have fathers.

2:32:22Shawn Ryan:The world changes within a short amount of time, in my opinion. I love that message. Yeah. Nice work. Yeah. So I think you're right, though. I think we should live for something bigger than ourselves. And I think the poor and the marginalized need help and need resources. I think the tricky part is you've heard of toxic charity. You've heard that sometimes charity can do more enablement than helping people, right? And so one of my favorite charities that I've partnered with is a company called Charity Water, where 100 % of what they get goes towards the actual mission of bringing clean water filtration systems in parts of the world that need it.

2:33:03Shawn Ryan:So we donated my birthday a couple years ago, and we were able to build a water filtration system in a part of the world that when you bring clean water to people, it changes everything. It's actually the best ROI because now they can farm. Now they have clean water. Now they have better hygiene. Just that alone, right? And so we should absolutely be doing that, but not at the expense of my family, not at the expense of my in-laws. So it's and both, but there has to be a hierarchy. There has to be priorities to that.

2:33:31Ruslan KD:Great point. Great point. Well, man, this was a fascinating conversation.

2:33:36Shawn Ryan:Man, thank you so much. This was great. You asked great questions. Thank you for coming. I got questions for you. What do you got? Can I really ask? Yeah. All right.

2:33:47Shawn Ryan:the war on drugs in the 1980s the war on drugs in the 1980s cia oh shit was the cia complicit in bringing over cheap cocaine to pay the nicaragos to fight to fight communism is that is that verified because i've heard they've admitted it and i but i haven't been able to find anything recent and then the whistleblower who uh actually you know self-deleted himself by shooting himself twice in the face um and then the turnaround and punish and have this crazy war on drugs and it's 100 to 1 coke to crack disparity which was supported by liberals and republicans and democrats so this isn't a you know a partisan thing but that ended up causing a lot of harm to a lot of communities so i was curious as a guy that you know is very connected and aware Did the CIA do that?

2:34:42Shawn Ryan:There's been movies, documentaries to fight those wars at the expense of poor communities. I mean, that is not my expertise.

2:34:51Ruslan KD:And, you know, I think a lot of people think that I was a lot deeper within the agency than I actually was. But, I mean, so I don't know. I would say there's a high probability that that is probably true. you know

2:35:10Ruslan KD:something that kind of skirts the line on that I had this interview with this guy Roger Reeves he was the most prolific drug smuggler out of Columbia just lots of trips back and forth he connected with this guy called Barry Seal do you know about this Barry Seal sounds familiar Barry Barry Seal supposedly worked for CIA. He was the plug. He was the connect, right? If I remember this correctly. Roger was flying cocaine out of Columbia, a lot of cocaine out of Columbia. Went to jail for a long time. He came in for an interview. He had met this pilot named Barry Seal. Some of this may be off, so you have to re-reference my interview with him in case I'm off on some things.

2:35:58Ruslan KD:But he, so Roger would fly the cocaine into Louisiana, right? And he would land on highways that are under construction. Well, when Barry went to work with him, he told him that, you know, that that's the plan. We land on the highways in Louisiana. Well, Barry said, no, I don't fly into Louisiana. I fly into Arkansas. Bill Clinton was the governor at the time. So maybe there's some ties there. but what i'm saying is he was protected by either state government or federal government or both to fly in the cocaine to arkansas you know for dispersion and so you know i think there's there's something maybe there to explore but um i was born in 1982 so so that's a little you know before my time there and you know the other thing about the agency is you know you don't you don't get access to everything everything is very compartmentalized segmented they call it a need to know basis and if you don't need to know then you don't get the information so that is that is that's not something that i've been read into uh not something that i've spent a lot of time exploring but i'm sorry

2:37:14Shawn Ryan:i don't know it's all right i've always thought about my my wife's parents were both caught up in the war on drugs. My mother-in-law was working at a company, sliced her finger, like the tip of her finger got cut off and she ended up getting a settlement. And man, they partied hard. They partied a little too hard and they both ended up going to prison. And then because of the drug laws back then and the war on drugs, they got some pretty harsh sentences. And then you just, then And the cycle starts of like, now my sister-in-law is trying to raise the girls at 12. She's robbing and stealing. She gets arrested.

2:37:57Shawn Ryan:She then gets pregnant at 15. So the cycle just continues of despair and fatherlessness. Generational trauma. Generational trauma. Yeah. Yeah. My wife, by the grace of God, she ended up going to live with her best friend when she was in high school. And that's how we met. We met in high school. and the best friend you know white evangelical christian family mother and father in the home they weren't perfect but they were great and uh and that kind of like removed her from um a lot of like being in these pretty rough environments and we met after that we got married and when we got married we knew it's like hey we are not going to repeat these cycles you know we're not going to continue the fatherlessness like we're gonna we're gonna figure this thing out you guys broke it Together.

2:38:39Shawn Ryan:Yeah. Yeah. So we've been married 17 years now. Together 21. Congratulations. I think she's the one.

2:38:48Shawn Ryan:Yeah, she's great. My wife is great, man. Yeah, we got two kids. Levi is 10. Zoe's four, and we got one on the way in November. Congratulations. Another boy. Oh, man, that's awesome. How many kids you got? Two. Two all day. Two and four. Two and four. Oh, man. I got a four-year-old. It's such a fun age. Boy or girl? Boy or girl. Boy, girl.

2:39:09Ruslan KD:Yeah.

2:39:09Shawn Ryan:Yeah. Yeah. It's kids are the best, man.

2:39:12Ruslan KD:They are. They are. They definitely change your perspective on the world and how you carry yourself.

2:39:19Shawn Ryan:A lot like the men I'm speaking to are coming from similar backgrounds, struggling. And a lot of what I'm trying to get them to understand is like, dude, you're going to get married one day and your wife is going to want to stay home and just be a mom and be with her babies. And the data supports that too. you know, Forbes did a study about a decade ago, 86 % of working women prefer to stay home if they were given the opportunity, you know, and then, and then this is not Christian. 86%. This is a little dated. This is probably around 75 now. Want to stay home for a season when they have kids. This is working women with kids.

2:39:52They prefer to stay home if they were given an opportunity to.

2:39:56Shawn Ryan:And some women grow resentment if they aren't. And that conversation is very unpopular, you know? And so my advice to young men is like, bro, there's a future version of you that's like depending on this version of you to make good decisions. And if you don't make good decisions, like you're going to pay for it later. That's great. I love that.

2:40:17Ruslan KD:There's a future version of you. Yeah. Depending on what you do.

2:40:20Shawn Ryan:No one told me this stuff. Like when I was 20, new to the faith, like no one sat me down. I was like, hey, man, like you got to go make some money, bro. Like you can't and you got to stop getting into debt. Like you got to clean this stuff up because at 28, 29, like your wife's going to want to have kids and she's going to stay home. You know, she's not going to want to be a boss babe in 12 weeks, you know, again, like after pushing out a human. No one told me these things. And again, by the grace of God and really through Dave Ramsey's stuff, like we were able to clean up our finances and got out of debt.

2:40:46Shawn Ryan:And it was so life-giving, you know, to have that stability and then transition into music full time and then YouTube. Yeah.

2:40:55Ruslan KD:That's awesome, man. Yeah.

2:40:56Shawn Ryan:that's i'm gonna steal that yeah yeah it's a good line right i love that you can you can sauce it up you can talk about sci-fi movies sometimes i'll talk about like my favorite movies or sci-fi movies time travel movies and you know the timeline continuum you know and so you can really sauce it up but yeah it's it's a i think it's so real because when you don't have the motivation you have all the time in the world when you have the motivation kids a wife people depending on you to provide, you don't have a lot of time. And so if I can say, hey man, while you have the time, let's make you an asset to your current employer.

2:41:34Shawn Ryan:Let's not go in and try to get the most amount of money for the least amount of work. No, no, no, no, no. You're going to show up and you're going to be the best dude. You're going to be the first to come, last to leave, most competent, working your face off. And in that, you're going to be a greater asset to your current employer. And I'm sure you appreciate that. You have an amazing team here of just studs that are crushing it. Those people end up being amazing in an organization, but they could also go on and do their own thing if they want to, because they're competent, they're stable, they're confident.

2:42:02Shawn Ryan:And people don't understand that. Like, they don't understand that. Like, man, you got a window of time from 25, from 20 to 25 before you're married with kids. I figured this out, figured this stuff out. You know, yeah. Well, man, awesome interview. Man, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you so much. That's a copy for you.

2:42:18Ruslan KD:So maybe you can take a peek sometime. I will. I will. And I just, I want to say congratulations on to you and your wife on breaking generational trauma. And, uh, that's, that's a huge thing. We talk a lot about that here. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being here. I learned a lot. All right.

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