King's Banner Podcast
Welcome to King's Banner Podcast. We got tired of the same ole answers when we started looking for help when it came to our walks with God. So together we go deeper than most would on topics that most people have heard or were taught but never fully understood. It is our way of simplifying concepts that we may have over complicated throughout our lives. Bringing theology and life experience into each episode. It is our hope and desire to help you in your Christian walk.
King's Banner Podcast
Fiction, Faith, And The Fight For Truth
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
What if the books on your nightstand are shaping your soul more than your to-do list ever could? We open with the reality of spiritual warfare, then trace how stories train our desires, sharpen our conscience, and equip us to stand firm when culture bends truth out of shape. This isn’t an anti-entertainment rant; it’s a field guide for choosing narratives that echo God’s order rather than numb us with noise.
We dive into why fiction and nonfiction both matter for Christian formation, and how Jesus’ parables model the power of narrative to lodge truth in the heart. From late-night dopamine binges to the quiet work of wisdom, we show practical ways to engage books and movies without turning off your brain: pause the scene, name what it’s teaching, and measure it against Scripture. We explore beauty, harmony, and resolution in music and art as signposts of a moral universe—one reason some modern stories feel hollow while others satisfy like a resolved chord.
Expect vivid examples: Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray as a mirror of conscience, the Odyssey’s sirens alongside Proverbs 7, and Tolkien’s vision of creation as music that can’t be ultimately ruined by discord. We talk Romans 14 maturity, why some should abstain in good conscience, and how others can read widely without losing their footing. Parents will find a blueprint for raising discerning readers—training kids to “smell” the story beneath the story—plus a starter canon that ranges from Little House and Lewis to Moby Dick and Tolkien.
Listen to build a wiser bookshelf, a braver heart, and a home that treats every movie night like a masterclass in truth, goodness, and beauty. If this resonates, subscribe, share with a friend who loves great stories, and leave a review to help more people find the show.
Spiritual War And Everyday Setbacks
SPEAKER_01Hey guys, welcome to Navigate Podcast. I'm here today again with Justin. What's up, my brother?
SPEAKER_00Not much. How are you doing? I'm doing okay. It's been a crazy couple of weeks, but I'm surviving.
SPEAKER_01I'm pretty sure it's gonna be a crazy couple of weeks up until probably a crazy couple of years, in all honesty.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. You know, but like everything, uh everything with like kingdom stuff, you know what I mean? It's like you get breakthrough and God's answering prayers and like cool stuff's happening, and then you have stuff like breaking and falling apart over here, and then you get this stuff done. And Satan just sucks, man. He does. I've been thinking so much about like the whole like Ephesians 6.12. Like we're we're about to go through it in ends this Friday. But like principalities, powers, you know, rulers of this, uh, this this present darkness, right? Think Frank Peretti, you know, every time I say that. But it's real. Like, yeah, the war is just real, man. You like stuff that shouldn't be going wrong, things that should be fine. You just gotta crank, you gotta get after it and know that you, in fact, do have an enemy. He's got schemes, he knows where to push your buttons, and you gotta like, you gotta be on.
SPEAKER_01And even when you have victory, know that you know things might get better in one way, but the enemy's still gonna come at you some other way. So you're gonna have good moments, though.
SPEAKER_00Goal is to know you're in the battles and you're gonna win and lose some battles, but ultimately knowing that you win the war. Yeah, you know, and Christ has already said it is finished, it's done, but man, you gotta you're gonna have to get your hands dirty in the middle. Gotta get that uh the trowel in one hand and sword in the other and build. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Nehemiah, for that juicy illustration. But what the heck are we talking about today, bro?
SPEAKER_01Well, it's funny actually that you brought up um Frank Peretti, okay, the famous author. Yes.
SPEAKER_00Um This present darkness is what I mentioned. Yeah. Fantastic book, best at uh your bedtime, I think.
SPEAKER_01Don't read that at bedtime.
SPEAKER_00Um it was high school, it might be fine now, but man, it was good. He was a good fair. What was the other one?
Why Stories Matter More Than Facts
SPEAKER_01Hangman's Curse. I read that one. He had some he had some really good profit, like young adult fiction, too. Yeah. Like some just crazy stuff. Um, but yeah, no, on on top of um talking about that, talking about we've had a couple of people in our men's group asking some questions recently about you know, is it a sin to read certain books or consume certain literature or or um stories? And so I wanted to talk about stories, um specifically fiction, specifically that's right up my body. That sounds fun, okay. Yeah, like and not necessarily even like Christian allegory, though there's certainly uh a lot of good stuff for that, you know, Narnia. All good allegory is Christian allegory. Oh, sure. Not even expressly Christian allegory. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, but like well, maybe let's start this way. Yeah, maybe let's not jump right into fiction right away. Let's let's um because I want to push some buttons. Oh, yes. The the tendency for most guys that I know is to expressly read nonfiction, um, or you are the guy that only reads fiction all the time.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And I would say whichever direction you go, you're gonna be one-sided. Either you're gonna be really top-heavy and all logic all the time, all data, all stats, or you're gonna have your head in the clouds non-stop and be uh trying to live an alternate life than the one that you actually find yourself in because you enjoy those better. Uh, so you don't want to, when you think about books, when you think about even entertainment in general, you really want to think about how am I doing both of these things? Yeah. Uh Chesterton had this quote. He said, How do you tell the difference between a poet and a logician? He said, uh a logician is trying to get his um uh a poet is trying to get his head into heaven, and a logician is trying to get heaven into his head. Yeah. I think I think the goal is a little bit of both of those things. Yeah, you know what I mean. So just a word to you nerds out there that are constantly reading nonfiction and its stats and its data and its philosophy. Um, man, uh, you would do well to jump into some fiction for a little bit and breathe and enjoy uh enjoy the stars and enjoy the creativity and ability God has given us to see things um from some creative perspective. And you guys that are constantly in fiction, um you you might just be in an entertainment phase and you're actually missing a lot of the value that's in there and you can't see the value of the story because you're more interested in the dopamine it's giving you. You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_01I've been there in my life for sure.
Entertainment, Dopamine, And Discernment
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And and even in that, like dopamine will, you know, uh enjoying something or it getting a rise out of you or pulling on you can actually take you into some books and some things that you should not be reading because it will produce the same stuff, but you uh you know, you're you're missing what you're consuming in the process of enjoying it. Yeah, absolutely. Oh man, I'm sorry, I'm thinking about all kinds of stuff now. No, go ahead. I know that old uh I don't even think it's true, but um when I was like in the I think I was like the sixth or seventh grade, this guy that everyone hated in like the middle school ministry, his name was Dave. All right. You're a good man. He drove a Corvette. Everybody hated him because everybody would like if you try to go to the bathroom or sneak out or anyone. I don't know, can you? I was the guy all the time that was like, I would ditch, I would go smoke cigarettes and do things that I shouldn't be doing. Um, and he was always getting people like going, finding them, bringing them back, not letting them just leave for whatever reasons they wanted. He was a real he was a real problem in my uh mischievous days. Everybody hated him because he was always like the the gatekeeper. He was the dad, right? Yeah. Um, but he he taught one time, never taught, but one time he taught, and he told this story about how like Eskimos kill wolves. You know what I'm talking about? And he talked about they would you know they would take like a blade and dip it in blood and freeze it, and then dip it in more blood and freeze it again, and then they'd stick it upward, and like a wolf would come and lick the blade, and um, you know, eventually it doesn't even know that it's consuming its own blood because it's in a blood frenzy and then it kills the wolf. And I think about that all the time. It's like the best sermon illustration ever. If you fact check it and it's false, whatever. I don't care. It's a great story, which is what we're talking about. But I do think entertainment can be like that. You know what I mean? Like you can you can be reading stuff and suddenly you're consuming things that you should not be consuming that are actually harmful to you, but you're so into it that you don't even care. And eventually it's doing stuff inside of you that it should not be doing, or it's or it's even doing things externally.
SPEAKER_01I've I recall, you know, in my late teens, early adulthood, uh, you know, getting so engrossed by a book or a story or whatever that I've suddenly looked at the clock and I'm like, it's four in the morning.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01What am I doing with my life?
SPEAKER_00Why am I still up reading a book? And you know what's funny is I think a lot of people have those moments and they're like, Oh, my life is crap. Might as well read another chapter because at least I'm enjoying this. You know what I mean? Like throw yourself back into the chaos of uh, you know, the distraction. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's real.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, oh, for sure. But also, like in moderation, uh, not necessarily moderation, but in in the right context, those stories, you know, as long as you're not destroying your your mind or destroying your body staying up till four in the morning, there is so much you can pull from some of these stories.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah, I mean, stories are the you know, one of the oldest forms of teaching. Yeah, right. One of the oldest forms of communication because they just stick better. The fact that I'm telling you about a story that a guy that I did not like told me in the you know, sixth or seventh grade or whatever it is, tells you everything else that you need to know. Let me tell you this. I don't remember a single other message that was shared at that place. I remember that guy's message, right? And that specific story, you know what I mean? Um, some things just stick with you better. Stories I think frame reality oftentimes in a better way than somebody just giving you the punchline.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00You need to, you need to see it like scripturally, this happens all the time. Uh we call them parables, yeah, right. But um literally, like in the Greek, parabolos literally means to throw next to or to cast alongside. So the idea is that it's like I'm throwing something alongside of a real life situation so that you could see both of them happening simultaneously. You're to you're to see this in light of this. So Jesus is walking around telling stories all the freaking time. Um, and it doesn't mean that that's exclusively the way that we should teach or communicate, but good night. If you're if you if you're paying attention at all, you should realize at this point the value of stories. And most people don't remember a lot of like uh this epistle or that epistle, or you know, you know, if you're a Bible nerd, you you you're more familiar with even if you say things like, oh, the passage on the armor of God. Yeah. All right. Well, that's something already that I can picture that's more palpable as storytelling already without having to say anything. But if I asked you to recite a text to me, well, you could tell me the parable of the sower. You know what I mean? But you may not be able to uh tell me explicitly what Jesus says after the parable of the sower. It's the stories that stick with us because those lessons catch us and throw us into things. So biblically, stories are incredibly important. And obviously, the biblical stories themselves, the narratives, are some of my favorite things in all of scripture. I I get irritated that they don't get taught on very often.
SPEAKER_01I mean, you you want to talk about what would be a huge blockbuster HBO show, would be going through, like we talked about a few weeks ago, the book of judges. Yeah, like that'll blow out of the water anything. Christians wouldn't be able to watch it.
Parables And The Power Of Narrative
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, it's just too much stuff in there that's unsavory. All the violence and killing and sex. Yeah, there's I mean, it very much is like it is a gritty book that is real with so much of what is going on in our world today. It's not separate or or telling something that you know is distant or out there. It's like, oh no, it's the story of people. Uh believe it or not, it's gonna look exactly like what's going on today. And even better, they're true stories, they're real things that happened that we can look at and learn from and grow from. But um, I think uh I think our culture currently, like our world, is constantly trying to rewrite, if you want to think about it this way, the Bible, the the moral framework that God has weaved into our hearts and our minds, um, the the 2,000 years of you know, uh civilization and the last thousand years of Western civilization specifically that has been crafted by Christendom and Christian thought. Our postmodern world and even post-postmodern world is is so desperately trying to take things like the you know, like the hero's journey, you know what I mean? The story that we see in the Bible that has been the the the stories that we champion and every movie that we love and every and and constantly trying to take it and twist it and warp it and change it just enough that they can begin to break down the things that we know in our guts are are not the way that stories are supposed to go. Yeah. Like there's a there's a real tempo, cadence, and arc to artwork in general. Yes, you know, uh, this is why I hate dubstep. All right, like to me, it's it's actually rebellion against God. Like God creates notes. Do you hear that? Dubstep lovers, and beauty, and and notes and and scales, and like, you know, you have you know, the the Lydian and the Ionian and the all these different ways to play music that flow naturally one into another, and they're supposed to follow a particular pattern, right?
SPEAKER_01And it's the reason why you can listen to a good song and then get to the end, and if they don't if they don't resolve their harmony, yeah, you can have a terrible last note.
SPEAKER_00It's awful.
SPEAKER_01Like it's the reason you can capture emotion with different emotions with minor versus major chords of like harmonic minors where you're catching a little bit of like music just has it's connected to the framework of life, yeah.
SPEAKER_00It's connected to the way that God made this. Is why Bach wrote on the you know on the back of all of his scores, like you know, to the glory of God. Like he was, if you want to think about it this way, writing down what already existed and the particular patterns that he was able to see and glean from. Like when we think about science, we're thinking about discovering the creation that God made and the the rationality to it. Um, even when you look at the arts today, you know, people taping bananas to walls and calling it art, or you have even things like piss Christ. You know, I don't know if you know about this guy took a crucifix and put it in like a jar of piss. And a lot of people tried to defend it. He was like, later on, he was like, oh, the guy was Catholic, and he was trying to show like the the grittiness of Christ in it or something. I'm like, dude, please, please stop. Like, please don't pee on the cross and then tell me that this is some edgy way to lead people to Jesus. There's so much um postmodern art. What did I see? Somebody, somebody sold uh an invisible statue the other day for I think, I don't know, like a million dollars or something like that. Some guy came in and was, you know, making an invisible statue, and somebody somebody bought that. That's okay. Talk about too much time in in fiction in unhealthy ways.
SPEAKER_01Can't you see it? The Emperor has no clothes. Who quote the movie Gone in 60 seconds? It sounds like there's too many self-indulgent wieners with too much bloody money.
SPEAKER_00Speaking of good stories, um, but yeah, so so I think um we're in a world today that is constantly trying to rewrite the truth with a lie and just plastering it everywhere. So from types of music that are in rebellion to patterns that are natural and right, you have um you have artwork that makes no sense and is saying functionally nothing. This is a consequence of type of of the types of philosophies and things that are coming out today or have been, you know, growing and progressing over time and revealing their ugly heads more and more and more. But there's um there is a God, there is truth, yeah, there is darkness, there is light, there is beauty, there is struggle, and it is purposeful. And the more we communicate to people that nothing really matters, all of it's illusory, all of it's perspective, uh, the more you're actually taking the heart away from people and you're allowing Satan to plunder um the good world that God has created and steal the joy and hope right out of it in the name of what? Yeah, you know, um, and and so when we look at stories, I I do think there's a lot of that currently going on and just artwork in general. Well, but that's the stuff that sucks. Yeah, yeah. Well, well, and you know, it's the it's the joke, right? Go woke, go broke. Yeah, but it's like, well, why is that happening? It's not just because people are boycotting something just because of a political view, although certainly you're gonna have some of those. Yeah, ultimately it's not engaging. Yeah, it's it's just not as good. Like the stuff is it doesn't ring true, it's not hearkening to what's actually in the individual, you know, what's in the um Amago Day connects with that ultimate story. And I mean people that enjoy those things are ultimately there because they're in radical uh rebellion against God, not because they're actually trying to create something beautiful. What they find beautiful is actually chaos, right? Yeah, yeah.
Art, Music, And Moral Order
SPEAKER_01And I mean it it it is true, and I think that's kind of the crux of good storytelling is a story that really captures you emotionally, gives you that catharsis in reading or watching or consuming it, and you get to the end of that story, and it like a good piece of music resolves on that chord that it needs to. Yeah. Um, the reason it's good is because it's capturing something that the Bible already shows us in truth.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's something that we know to be true internally, like it connects with your conscience, it connects with who you are in general and what you know to be how things are supposed to be, right? And I think for some people that causes them physical pain because their entire life is in rebellion to that. I don't want to believe that, I don't want to think those things, I don't want to go that direction. So I'm gonna try to recreate a world in which I don't exist. It's been pointed out many times that most of the philosophers that uh have rewritten um a lot of our education standards and the way that we think about things from Rousseau to uh Dirda, and um you have you know uh Foucault and you have um uh Freud and you have um gosh, I get you could just go down the list of Beauvoir and um but all of these people had a particular sin pattern in their life to start with. Um an attraction to young boys, or uh a twisted view of the self, or a radical desire to rewrite uh society to fit their own sinful hearts and patterns. And so they start with um a justification for their own sin patterns and their own problems, and then they build an entire worldview around it to help excuse themselves. It's that it's that David um not Berlinsky. I don't know what I was thinking, Berlinsky, David Wilkerson. He says, people who won't um uh forsake a besetting sin will eventually invent doctrines to excuse themselves from it. Yep, right? Such a great quote. But I really think most of the people who have invented so many of these different types of philosophy that are destroying, destroying generations and uh destroying artwork and destroying music and and so many of these things, even even buildings, bro, which is a whole nother station. Yeah, uh, started with a bunch of people who had a sin pattern and reinvented an idea of Eden or the beginning of man, and then wrote from there to try to convey the reason for you know the way things are. Hobbes is who I was trying to think of earlier. Um yeah, but it I don't know. For you nerds out there, you may not know any of those names. Highly recommend Calvin's yeah, highly recommend uh getting the great books of the Western world if you want to if you want a great uh stack of books that'll help you understand why you think the way that you do and what framed our world around us. Uh the great books of the Western world is a great place to start. It's a Cyntopicon on Western thought in general. It's fantastic.
SPEAKER_01Go ahead and find define the word Cyntopicon for me.
SPEAKER_00Uh it's kind of like a giant encyclopedia of all the different um all the different influential people from Francis Bacon and um, you know, uh Marcus Aurelius and uh all these different people and their writings and why it mattered. Okay. So if you're wanting to, you know, you're wanting to know more about Machiavelli and why he was important, well, you'll find him in there. You can read the prints and learn a little bit more about, you know, the way that he did things. And when somebody says you're a little Machiavellian, you'll at least know what that means.
SPEAKER_01Fair enough. Well, I want to dig into a little bit of specifics and kind of um, you know, one of the one of the cases that some people will make is well, I'll I'll read Christian fiction, or I'll I'll if something's designed to be from a Christian perspective, I'll read it. I don't need those non-Christian stories. And I I'm always um I always hearken back to a story you've talked about that was written by an atheist, but it tells the story of the depravity of man. And do you know what I'm talking about? No. Dorian Gray.
SPEAKER_00Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The um the picture of Dorian Gray.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, I and I so talk about why, like give a give a highlight for those who aren't familiar with it, and then talk about why this atheist can still write this story that eventually is just telling the story of the truth of the gospel.
When Ideology Breaks Storytelling
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so Oscar Wilde was a genius um and um wrote up wrote many, many, many, many, many things. But this one particular story is very interesting. He tells this story of this um young boy who's this beautiful, perfect, um, almost angelic figure, has a picture. And if you're super into this, feel free to write and correct me if I make any mistakes. But he basically um has somebody come in and take a painting or make a painting of him, uh, this beautiful young boy. Well, uh, it turns out that as Dorian, this child, goes on and uh lives his life, he becomes more and more and more depraved. And every time he goes out and does something stupid, every time he sins, if you want to think about it this way, um, the portrait of himself gets tarnished instead of him. So he continues to look beautiful, he continues to look put together and pristine and looks wonderful. And his picture is getting worse and worse and worse and worse. Well, one day he looks at it and there is literally only uh roughly one spot left that is untarnished on this thing, and it looks mangled and old and depraved and all of the things, and he brings a uh a priest in, you know what I mean, to to to to share with them, look at this. This is what's going on. And the priest basically says, Dor, you know, what have you done? And he says, what should I do? And he says, you should pray. You should pray. So he goes back and instead of praying, he grabs a knife and he stabs the priest. And the last mark, you know, the last spot on the painting that wasn't marred, uh, it becomes marred and disgusting. And he gets so angry that he takes the knife and he stabs the painting. And instead of the painting being torn and you know shredded, blood starts spurting out of his own chest and he dies. So the, the, the, you know, the parallels here are just uncanny. Oh like you don't need um you don't need somebody with uh you know more than like a you know a fifth grade education to tell you, hmm, there's some biblical truth here. Holy cow. And and this is part of what it means to have the Imago Day, to be made in the image of God, to have a conscience and to be human is to understand guilt, is to understand shame, is to understand cover up and to understand how we can put on these faces and act these ways, but ultimately what's going on on the inside is something else entirely. These kind of stories even when told by atheists betray the reality that God has um written his coding. You know what I mean? He's put his own image and he's placed his own moral law in the heart of every single man. You know, and I'm trying to remember um gosh who the guy was. Jean-Jacques Rousseau had this idea of the noble savage. I don't know if you know what this is, but his idea is that savages before they were brought into society and um you know placed in environments where they had to act certain ways were the most free and the most happy people and he he talked especially about sexual relationships, right? Because all these guys are creepers remember they have these proclivities and then they build worldviews around those proclivities and they're like oh sex was just a normal thing. And he was like look at the Samoan people they just they have sex and it doesn't matter who it's with or what age it is and they're totally happy and they don't have to stay with their kids and whatever. I think Rousseau put up like eight kids for adoption in his life by the way just like gave them away lived a terrible freaking life and we're like we should write how we should raise our kids from this particular guy, right? But there was a a big fan of um of Rousseau and he went out uh to this tribal village believing that it's like these people have the way this is the way to happiness and it was so shocking and so depraved what he saw that he made a painting uh of what he saw and then he shot himself afterwards because he believed that his own worldview was uh unlivable. Wow. Right and it's kind of the same it's the same side of the coin one of the one of the great stories that I love Victor Hugo Le Miz. Oh yeah right and you have Jalvert uh in the story for those of you that don't know he's this rigid law abiding he kind of represents the mosaic law in general um and trying to live that out bit by bit key by key and then you have um you know um oh goodness gracious 24601 help me out duh you're killing me right now that's okay it's okay I needed you to be there but uh for those of you that haven't watched layman is or read the book which it's so much better but is it isn't it always it's fantastic but he ends up realizing that his own um his own rules and his own way of thinking he could live takes him to an end where it is irrational and he's unable to deal with the circumstances of the life that he's built and the way that he's lived it and he kills himself he he takes his own life when you refuse to live out the way that God actually made you and what he intended the natural consequence is suicide. Yeah and and I mean this like in our society you see this with transgenderism. Yeah you see people who find the way that God has made them and what he has written into the heart of man and the music that he has written into the universe itself. And if they are unable to make their worldview, you know, opposed on top of it, either they will physically end their life because of hopelessness or they will try to change their they will delete themselves and come up with another identity to try to continue the ruse a little bit farther to make it more um make it more palatable for themselves. And and man, we see it everywhere and it's like okay so we should begin asking the question what stories are we telling our families? What stories are we listening to? What stories are we allowing to shape and mold the future are we constantly trying to integrate like Jesus did parables and show people this is this and this is that this is how we can learn this is the way or are we going to lead our families and our culture into the chaotic postmodern nonsense purposelessness kind of art that is so prevalent in our world today which way will you go Christian man?
Atheists, Truth, And Dorian Gray
SPEAKER_01Yeah you know well and it begs the question too because you've you've seen this countless times if you as a Christian man leading your household forbid stories that can actually do good in your child's life and guide them through what they're looking at and guide them through what they're reading and and what Christ is doing and showing up in those things if you forbid that if you forbid these ostensibly evil quote unquote stories um your children won't have the grounds to stand on to understand good and evil to under like I think about uh for example Harry Potter. Sure. So I know you get you get a lot of when it was first being written you got a lot of you know Christian households yeah that magic no no bad evil sure um when in reality you can look at these books as as an incredible Christology story of good and evil.
Conscience, Sin, And Failed Worldviews
SPEAKER_00Yeah there's a what's difficult for me is there's a maturity involved here too. Correct. All right so uh if I was going to take you to you know uh Romans chapter 14 um we could talk about this you know meat sacrifice to idols and it's like okay so if the originator of this thing was using it for something shady and they didn't necessarily have savory intentions but they did write Dorian Gray are we still able to enjoy that and learn from it as Christians well depends where your conscience is at so if you're like in a place in your walk with uh Christ where you're like you've you've come out of witchcraft you've come out of the occult maybe that's not the book for you and I'm okay with that I wouldn't I don't want to cast shade on somebody who's like dude don't read Harry Potter. There's real names of demons in there there's real stuff that people shouldn't be losing and it's a psyop from the darkness to try to infiltrate the church and convince it that it's a good thing. And and here's here's what I would say um with my kids, with my friends whenever we're walking through something the goal is to show the story of Christ in any opportunity that I can I want to I want to show them parables of the kingdom in every movie and every song like we frequently pause movies in our house and ask the question okay what is this teaching you? What is this trying to communicate to you right now good or bad I want them to have a good nose. I want them to be able to smell those things out and I would say if you're at a place in your faith where you can read something and not stir up some kind of sinful desire in you or something wrong um praise the Lord read through it and grow and and tell me what you see in there. Where does it actually match up with the truth of God's word? Where can you learn and and find stories that are like really good for your heart and what are the things right off the bat where you should be able to point out and say ah that's faulty theology that that's faulty philosophy and it's thinking in general and be able to expose those things because you know the true story and um and enjoy it. Like I realize that not everybody watches movies the same way I do. I know everybody doesn't read books the same way I do but that's part of part of the reason I do it that way is because I I enjoy books and I enjoy stories and I love the Bible. If you read the Bible enough you can read other stories and it does it's not uh it's not perverting the truth it should be amplifying it and also amplifying the darkness when you see it. Oh yeah you know yeah you're you're seeing where those things come up and uh you're able to walk through them and navigate them in in healthy ways. But even that is good because if if you read enough stories, if you're reading enough literature you see these things happen in life and you can smell a villain uh before you even totally know everything about that person. You know what I mean? I know this story. I know how this goes don't be an idiot don't touch the dragon's treasure okay don't don't eat um you know don't uh don't don't eat that particular sheep okay we've we've been we've been walking through we've been a kick in my house uh reading through um the Odyssey uh the Odyssey and my kids found a um sound yeah it's like the story of uh Odysseus and um the Odyssey in general from uh uh like a like a uh play by play songs kind of different things so I've been enjoying taking the different parts of the story and explaining you know biblical perspectives on this and why this is important. Why you know why do you kill a siren? Yeah why is that important? What does the siren do? Oh she pretends to be something that she's not to lure you to a place that you don't want to go to eventually devour you. Hey let's go to Proverbs 7. We should probably talk about this. Turns out that same kind of idea is in there and because God has written the music into the world around us we can see where other people even pagans even people who don't totally understand who Jesus is or what he has done are able to point out truths that exist because all truth is God's truth right all good truth is God's truth and we want to look at those things and we can be able to see them and teach these stories and and read good literature and uh look at good artwork and know the difference between crap art and good art um without having to pollute our hearts in that in that process. But yeah man I I mean I think stories like I said stories are going to stick with your kids um in my opinion far more than just uh like you should teach your kids the Bible I'm not saying don't teach your kids the Bible. I'm not saying don't walk them through scriptures exegetically I'm saying that all life is catechism. All life is teaching your kids what to think and what not to think. And if you are the guy who teaches your kids the Bible but doesn't have a way to show them how this pertains to the world or how to see other stories or how to weigh it up against what we're seeing and be able to think through what art is teaching you, uh you're in danger. Yeah. You're in because there is a whole world out there that is going to connect with their hearts that actually has something of the music that God has placed inside of them playing uh but if they're not able to sort out where it's good and where it's not good, you have woefully underprepared your children for a world that is going to try to communicate with them using half truths. You know what I mean and falsities or man so close to true not quite there, right? And uh the world is full of that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah well the world wants to um tell young young adults basically I mean children into adulthood but like you look at colleges you look at the school systems the world is trying to indoctrinate them. Yeah and a parent that says you know well I'm not going to teach my kids truth I'm going to teach them how to think is just saying they can be indoctrinated by the school. Right. Like indoctrination inherently isn't necessarily a bad thing because if you take a child and you indoctrinate them with the truth of the Bible and the truth of of good and evil yeah what you're doing is you're giving them the foundation doctrine just means teaching exactly just means teaching.
SPEAKER_00So it's like if somebody's saying indoctrinating them I would say well that means teaching them what are they teaching them exactly um I I I think you're 100% right and and if you notice um whenever somebody is trying to convince somebody of something shady they don't just tell you what it is that they're trying to convince you of they always give you a story to tug at your heart and to try to get you to uh to cave to uh something that is written right into the music but maybe off right so uh abortion okay uh do we know that murdering children is wrong yes yes we know this okay like if you if we were if Planned Parenthood was murdering puppies instead of babies the whole world would be in an uproar and they would already be shut down. Yep but babies is fine. How have we gotten to this place?
SPEAKER_01Because they're yeah well what about the the poor right 15 year old girl who was raped incestuous relations you want to be a young end her life yeah exactly exactly it's let me give you a story and this story is powerful and it's gonna shift the way that you're thinking if you don't have a good nose for stories.
SPEAKER_00If you don't understand the story that's being told inside the story. All right so um you know what I mean that a lot of times it's inception all right somebody's telling you a story you should ask yourself the question about the person the what's what story am I in where this person is telling me the story. Yeah you know I mean what's the what's happening behind the scenes here that I need to be paying attention to this is a siren song. That's what this is this is this is uh Penelope in the water trying to get uh who is not actually Penelope but is a siren trying to get Odysseus to jump into the water with her so that she can devour him right and if you're telling me that uh the world should change its perspective on murdering children based on a hypothetical scenario that somebody is coming up with um you would know right away oh this is a trap but if you don't know the right stories suddenly that music starts playing you get sucked into this person's delusions and now I'm I'm you know uh playing the song of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and I didn't even realize it this is why the Silmarillion is so cool because you have the story of Iru Ilouvatar and the the you know the IR or whatever they're called are are basically music emanating from him and they join the song that he's playing and Satan Melkor in this begins to change the music.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
What To Read And When To Abstain
SPEAKER_00Right? And it's like oh the song that he's playing ends up being destructive and blowing things up and all kinds of problems and and you don't um uh fully understand it but the music that's being played or sang together is actually the story of the universe itself and what they're singing and what is being played is bringing into existence the stuff that's happening. So when he is singing these off notes what you don't see is Middle earth being destroyed. Yeah you know like and but that's what's happening right and and so I I tend to think about these things in terms of uh and obviously the the story in the Silmarillion is though even though he changed these notes Eru of Aluvatar who is God right yeah has the ability to weave it in in a way where he can never fully rebel. Yeah he he actually somehow takes these off notes and he weaves it back into the rhythm in a way that makes it perfect again and it makes him even more angry and frustrated that he cannot escape what's happening. Well this is the story of God and the devil right like Satan is always trying to thwart the plans of God and throw something in and then God ends up taking it and making it absolutely beautiful and using it to paint the entire story of what it is that's going to happen, how it's going to take place and the ultimate redemption of all things. But that kind of narrative you have to see you have to understand as a Christian this is this is the tune. And I think our lives are even this song that's being played. You are a note being held in the hands of the composer precisely as long or as short as it was meant to be and you're not going to understand that song until you're on the other side and then you're going to get to see the beauty of the symphony that was played with the lives and the parts and everything that was involved. But um I think the Bible kind of paints it this way. The Bible itself is this grand story of good and evil and brokenness and mess and redemption and glory and the final thing you know the the the last days and the eternal state and everything that comes um into being it's this it's this beautiful story that we're a part of that we're supposed to be seeing. And if you don't see yourself as part of this unfolding story of the glorious thing that God is composing and putting together man read a book. Yeah understand that like it's a beautiful thing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah and and like the next time you are reading a book or you are watching a movie look for that. Don't just turn your brain off yeah look for the story that God has told through the truth of the Bible. Right.
SPEAKER_00Yeah right so the next time you're watching uh what was the horrible Star Wars movie that came out where the good guy um they paint out to be the bad guy he's like the the one who's trying to do the right thing yeah it's just that whole so bad and then it was like no no no the moms are going to come in and do it this particular way it was like oh here's the here's the Feminazi nonsense it they they injected it right into the scene as a as a gotcha moment and now we all hate the movie because you you messed with the music Melkor you broke it yeah okay and now we have to go back and watch the originals to wash our minds of this filth. Yeah just saying I don't have hard feelings about it or anything.
SPEAKER_01There's only six Star Wars movies change my mind. Yeah that's hmm mmm I see what you did there.
SPEAKER_00I like it. Yeah I like it. Yeah and I I would just say if you guys want a list of books that I think are good I I will give some credit to my mom on this because uh growing up we read a lot of books and then when we weren't reading books for school she was always uh reading to us while we were like folding clothes like it was a normal thing where we would all we'd take a ton of laundry there was five girls and three boys in that house and uh my grandma was there and obviously my mom and it was just a full house. So laundry folding was like it was war baby you know you're getting into it but every time we were folding laundry we sorted out who's you know different piles and different stuff and we opened up everything from uh Witch of Blackbird Pond and Wolves of Willoughby Chase and uh Banner in the Sky to um walking through um gosh what's it called the uh uh the Ingram family oh uh little house on the Little House on the Prairie you know Plum Creek all the you know all all these different stories we were constantly reading and going through David Copperfield. Yeah I think we actually did yeah I think we did and I I think um there's something in there even early on that I didn't understand because you don't like a book when you first start reading it. No. Because it's always like work you're not engaged halfway through you're like all right this is kind of fire. You know what I mean and you start to like get engaged and understand and I think even from a young age we were learning these stories and I had to go back and apologize to my mom because in high school I had to read through Moby Dick and I hated the story and I was like this sucks. I don't know. And then I got saved and I read through it again and I was like this is glory like this story right here it's Ahab and Ishmael and like you see the typology you see the story he's writing behind the story. You can hear the music and you you want to be able to get to a place in your life where you can hear the music that that is being played behind you know the scenes and behind what's going on. And it takes a mind that loves the word of God and loves Jesus and sees the grand narrative that he's writing to then be able to see all the offshoots and why people are writing the way that they are why they do the things that they do and what rebellion actually looks like in the arts and how you win those things back with the glorious things that we're able to put together like Bach did and write at the end to the glory of God. I think it was um was it Galileo when he did the statue of David he's like I didn't make this I I you know I just it was already there I just pulled the stone away from it you know it was something that was already there I Galileo was looking at the stars who who am I thinking of that did the statue of David Michelangelo thank you thank god Fred is here thank goodness Fred you came through that was clutch yeah that was clutch when I needed Casey to tell me who Jean Valjean was he couldn't do it. I just that's fine by the way one of the best stories in Le Mes if you get a chance to read it I don't even care if you don't make it through all of Victor Hugo's book but like the first quarter that talks about the priest is probably one of the best pictures of Christ I think I've ever read in my entire life. Read it. It's amazing it's fabulous.
SPEAKER_01All right well on that note are there any other stories that we haven't talked about that you would recommend because you kind of mentioned you'd give a list like just top five like if you're going to read anything fiction here is what you should read.
Training Kids To Smell The Story
SPEAKER_00Holy cow oh man okay so Moby Dick. Okay. You should definitely read. It's amazing. Uh, The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit is fantastic. The Silmarillion is even good. So anything by Tolkien. Yeah, I'm like, all of that is fantastic. I'm like, there's a whole world out here, man. Uh, Dawn of Wonder. I absolutely love it. You gave me that for my birthday one year. Did I really? So good. Yeah, great book. So good. There's I'm trying to like, I'm on the I'm on the spot. I can put a list together. Okay. I'm looking over the books in my mind in the library and I'm just trying to think what all is there. There's a ton of good stuff. There's so much. I can put a bunch together to you. But if you're looking for something to like just start reading, uh, like like with your kids or with your family, 100% recommend Little House on the Prairie. Start there. There you go. Um, also anything Lewis wrote. Oh, yeah, 100%. So good. I think every Christian should have to read through that hideous strength at least once a year. You know? Amen. Live your dream. All right. Well, thank you so much, Justin. This has been awesome. Great conversation, man. Thanks so much. Uh, let me let me pray for our guests and we'll call today. Yeah. God, thank you for your mercy and your grace. I pray not only that we would enjoy and um read the story that you've written out in front of us, but we would also live out the story that you've called us to. May we have a deep desire and an obedience to be the heroes that we're called to be, to be the mentors that we're called to be, and to uh walk in unity with you and uh walk out the music that you've written for us, Lord, so that at the final note we would be proud and see the story that we're a part of in Jesus' name. Amen.
SPEAKER_01Amen.
