Shifting Culture
Shifting Culture
Ep. 291 John Kasich - How Faith Communities are Building Hope From the Bottom Up
Today, we're sitting down with John Kasich, former Governor of Ohio and a passionate advocate for community-driven change. In his new book 'Heaven Help Us', Kasich explores how faith institutions can be powerful catalysts for solving local problems. We'll dive into stories of everyday people who are making real differences in their communities, from fighting human trafficking to supporting refugees. This conversation is about hope, grassroots action, and how ordinary people can create extraordinary change when they work together. John shares personal stories and insights about bottom-up problem solving, the role of faith communities, and why believing in our collective potential matters more than ever. So join us as we join together with faith communities to make a real difference in our society.
John Kasich is a national leader who has spent a lifetime bringing people together to solve big problems and leave the world around them just a little bit better than they found it. Kasich served as the 69th governor of Ohio and ran for President during the 2016 GOP primary. His message focused on unifying Americans rather than dividing them, championing the great potential of our citizens to make positive impacts in their own communities, a strong national defense, and the importance of our international alliances. Today, he runs the Kasich Company and serves as a political analyst for NBC, CNBC, and MSNBC. He is the author of four New York Times bestsellers: Courage Is Contagious; Stand for Something; Every Other Monday; Two Paths, and It’s Up to Us. His most recent book, Heaven Help Us is available April 8. He is married to Karen Kasich and is the proud father of adult twin daughters.
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I gotta be honest with you today, there's not a lot of top down doings going on, okay, but I think if you bottom up stuff, you then can get to those people who are doing top down and show them about the intensity of how you feel, the support that you have, and give them a glimpse into what you're trying to fix.
Joshua Johnson:Hello and welcome to the shifting culture podcast in which we have conversations about the culture we create and the impact we can make. We long to see the body of Christ look like Jesus. I'm your host, Joshua Johnson, today we're sitting down with John Kasich, former governor of Ohio and a passionate advocate for community driven change. In his new book, heaven help us, Kasich explores how faith institutions can be powerful catalysts for solving local problems. We'll dive into stories of everyday people who are making real differences in their communities, from fighting human trafficking to supporting refugees. This conversation is about hope grassroots action and how ordinary people can create extraordinary change when they work together. John shares personal stories and insights about bottom up problem solving, the role of faith communities, and why believing in our collective potential matters more than ever. So join us as we join together with faith communities to make a real difference in our society. Here is my conversation with John Kasich. John Kasich, welcome to shifting culture. Thank you so much for joining me. Excited to
Unknown:have you on thanks, Joshua, thanks. And everything's up to date in Kansas City. They say everything
Joshua Johnson:is up to date in Kansas City, even our chiefs, even though we did lose the Super Bowl. But, you
Unknown:know, I had a very interesting experience in Kansas City in 1976 as a very young man, I went out there to try to help Ronald Reagan beat Gerald Ford in a primary out there. And it was really interesting. And I got to spend I ended up running five states for Ronald Reagan, and got to escort him, accompany him to talking to different delegations. What an experience. And at the end, when he lost, they had a gathering of his senior people in the Alameda hotel. I don't think that exists anymore. I don't think so. Yeah, what's there? It has a different name now, but boy, that was really something. Kansas City is a great town. It's a great
Joshua Johnson:is a great town. So it is a great town anyway. Well, you've been doing a lot of work in politics and government for a long time, and you've done an incredible job as a public servant, civil servant. Why did you say in this new book, heaven help us, let's focus on faith institutions and the good work that they're doing, right?
Unknown:Well, this is actually my second faith book. My first one was called every other Monday. And it was a story of a Bible study that I kind of got started with a buddy of mine in 1987 that still exists to this day. And we meet every other Monday. So that was my first foray into the into the faith world. The way this book came about was in during COVID, I'd had people tell me that there were a lot of preachers that were under pressure to start doing politics from the pulpit. I don't like that idea, so I gathered a bunch of top notch theologians to try to come up with a statement that they could hang their hats on when people started giving them a hard time, the gathering theologians and getting them to agree to much is harder than getting the Congress of the United States to pass a balanced budget. So a friend of mine who was engaged with me on this project said, why don't you just write your own book? So this is like, five years later, which is amazing to me. It took that long and I wanted the book to basically, you know, in politics, if you want to build a campaign, you need a clubhouse. If you want to have a big dream come true, you can try to do it on your own. Or else, you can use these institutions of faith, churches, synagogues, mosques, to try to get material support and psychological support and people support and to do great things. And I'm a believer that America's strongest from the bottom up. And if we can be together solving serious problems, we can, we can be a unifier and not a divider. And that's what I was interested in.
Joshua Johnson:Well, I would love to see us be unifiers and not dividers. We're living in a moment where it feels a lot of polarization division, especially when you're looking at national politics, right? But if you look at local communities, there's a lot of incredible things that are happening. You know, we've been traveling a lot, teaching around the country and everywhere we go. So there are people doing incredible work with their communities. They're helping refugees, they're helping homeless, foster kids, and it gives me hope that there is something different in this country, that we can come together around these community issues, and not just what's happening in national politics.
Unknown:And I agree with that Joshua, because, as I like to say, if the Secretary of State or your trash man went on vacation, who would you miss more? And the fact that matter is, if you know, we do have a lot of division, but if you're working on a project to deal with human trafficking, or, you know, really terrible poverty, homelessness, literacy, autism. When people work on a project together, the politics doesn't mean anything anymore. You're sort of together, then you can kind of even jab each other about politics and kind of laugh about it. And the other thing is, I also wanted people to know what goes on in these institutions when you drive by one, it's not just some empty building there that you know on Tuesday or Wednesday. There's all kinds of things that can happen. And it also, I want to give you one real story. So there's a woman I know, she has a son who's autistic. She's very worried about what's going to happen when he gets older. And I said, well, listen with your great concern, why don't you go to your church and talk to them and that maybe they can help you to create a facility where we can have adult autistic people be able to live, where you have a sense of peace. She had never thought about that before. So I'm hoping with the book, people are going to get ideas from it as to what they can do to advance some particular cause. Give me
Joshua Johnson:a story from the book that really impacted you, like this is something that you were really struck by. I know they're all incredible stories, and they're chock full of stories that are very inspirational and practical, that we can step in and do those things. But what really stood
Unknown:out. One of them, it's beyond most of us, is Hal Donaldson, who started off
Joshua Johnson:Mother Mary. We've had Hal on the podcast. He's well, I mean,
Unknown:a guy's feeding 571,000 kids every single day. I mean, it's kind of hard to believe. And Joshua, the problem with the Donaldson story is, I've had friends read the book, and they go, Well, I can't be him. He said, Well, you don't need to be him. But, you know, there's a story here. Here's a startling statistic. I can hardly believe it's true. But Tony Chris, who's involved in literacy, he says that 25% of people in this country reach adulthood and they can't read, which, of course, creates poverty. I mean, that's a stunning statistic, and now he's running a program across the country to get people to help kids to read. So, you know, it's hell Donaldson, but I'll tell you another one that's really is that whole shooting down in in Charleston, and how those people forgave the shooter. You remember that story when, yeah, and I've talked to the minister who's down there, Eric Manning, trying to help them, and they went to court and they forgave the shooter, and it's a long struggle. That story is well known, but I wanted it to be in this book, because, to me, forgiveness, I mean, that's just blows my mind what they did, yeah,
Joshua Johnson:and I think, well, it's really only the power of God that can enable you to forgive in a situation like that. Forgiveness does not come easy, but for me, it only comes through the power of God that I could forgive others horrific things like that. You
Unknown:know Joshua, so it's it what you're saying is so true. And you know, I had my own really difficult time when my parents were killed by a drunk driver and but it provided me with a window of opportunity to find out where I was on the faith journey, because I didn't have an answer for it, how I felt about eternity, that I think God existed at that point after that tragedy. But what it does is opens a window of opportunity. Once the morning and the devastation begins to clear, there's an opportunity for you to go through the window to recover your life and save your life, and that's what I want people to think about. You know, as they go through this and there is a recovery, but you're right, I look at my life where I have no scars from the most devastating thing for me at that time, and I'm okay, and now I can talk about it, right? But it's, it's, it's tough, and I don't look if people want to do it without God, that's great. I'm all for him, if I can help him somehow, great, but it's a lot easier if you can rely on the fact that there is a God who loves us and cares about us, and. Wants us to do well. And then that's the other mystery, like, Well, why do these bad things have to happen? And so that's a whole nother discussion. But in the meantime, in the beginning, I always tell people, if you don't believe in God or you don't know what to think, ask them. Ask them for help, and maybe he'll answer you, but you might not be able to ask just once. It's like when you asked your father, could you take the car out you sometimes you ask him, 345, times before he finally relented. Some of that is true with with the with the Lord
Joshua Johnson:is true. So in your first book, first faith book, every other Monday, how has that Bible study shaped you and your view of Community and Government and the role of government? Has that shaped you at all?
Unknown:We don't really think about talk about government. I mean, the Bible study is kind of a life lesson. In other words, you know, it's sort of like at a discussion with one of my pals the other day about the Tower of Babel. He says, What do you really believe there was a tower? I said, Well, you know, maybe, but maybe not. But the point of this, of it, was this, when people are so arrogant, they think they don't need God, okay, so that's kind of the way we talk about, you know, it's, it's about, it's about big ideas and notion, and why did Abraham do this, and why did Isaac do that? And then we get into the New Testament, and we, you know, we'll talk about, you know, Thomas the doubter, right? What does that mean for all of us? I mean, so those are the discussions. I'll tell you how, what happened Joshua, when, when I lost my parents, and I had grown up a Catholic, you know, I thought a pretty good believer, but went to college, drifted away. But when this terrible accident happened, I had a group that came that descended upon me. One of them had taught a Bible study on Capitol Hill when I was in Congress. Before the accident, they came to ask me to join. I said, You ought to be out of your mind. I don't have time, and I'm not interested. Another guy worked on Capitol Hill and showed up in my office every day to try to help me maneuver through this terrible period. And the preacher who my mother loved, who preached at the funeral, he became a really close friend of mine, and those people sort of just started to help me to just begin. It's a really, it's really a good question, because I just started diving in and reading stuff. You know, I would read books, I would read, I mean, to read a Bible, but the books, I think they might have had even more impact. And then I would have many discussions. Because, you know, I question everything, and so all that kind of and then the we so I started going to this Bible study, and then a friend of mine in Columbus said, why don't we start our own and we're the best of friends, and think about we've lost people, people have have died, who have been part of that study. And it's gone on for, like, I say, almost 40 years. And does it help us? There's no question that it does. We talk about the things that, and it's all men. We talk about the things that that men face throughout life, and and we use the scripture to kind of mean we finish Romans. We like to joke we've read it's taken us, like, 10 years to finish Romans three times, but now we're in Genesis, and we'll be back to the New Testament. And, but it's good, and it's an hour long, and we get a study sheet, and we're now on our second Minister, the first one we lost, and now we're on the second one. And but it's, it's really good. It's really good. Tell you another one. Other quick thing, you know, we, we've done this virtual now, so we have friends from around the country, like one who lives out in the state of Washington. He said, John, this has made all the difference for me, because I think it creates, it creates a community.
Joshua Johnson:Yeah, that's right, yes. Well, we need, we need communities to be able to do a lot of these things that people in your book are doing. We can't do it alone. We can do it by ourselves. We have to have communities. How did you see were there any common themes of people starting out of seeing, hey, there's a problem here. Let's tackle this together. Let's galvanize the faith community around us, and then let's, let's do this together. What were some of the themes, common themes that people had
Unknown:never give up. That's the biggest one. They had an idea. And this is what I always believe, if you have a great idea, Joshua, people will gravitate to it, but it is not easy to be a leader, because it's lonely. I always say leaders have to walk a lonely road. But what you find, you know, one of the great stories in this book is this guy who lives in Omaha, not far from you. He had. Dream, and people thought he was nuts. He was a respected citizen, a member of a synagogue. His dream, after he, you know, after he went through years, was to build a church, a synagogue and a mosque on the same property. And he got it done with the community center, where people could get together and talk about what's similar, or what their differences are, and kids play together, he just wouldn't give up on it. It's like almost everybody in here, they just never thought where it was going to go, but they sought the support of the institution to help, and that was one of the things that I had to work on early in the book, is I said, we just don't want stories. I wrote that in my first book, courage is contagious, where people could do remarkable things alone. But I felt that, no, I want to really, I really want to illustrate the power of these institutions to bring about the kind of change that we all seek in areas that are so very difficult. So you're
Joshua Johnson:looking at institutions that are creating some incredible change within communities. Yes, and so it's more of a bottom up type of change. Totally, totally. You've been working in a lot of top down type of places. How do they merge the bottom up and the top down? How does faith institutions and government and the rest of the community start to like work together to solve some of these problems and issues that we have. Well,
Unknown:first of all, I've always been a bottom up guy. Even when I was working from the top down, I was always a bottom up guy, and it's been my philosophy. I'm not sure people even understand stood it at the time, but they kind of get now what I'm saying, I gotta be honest with you today, there's not a lot of top down doings going on, okay, but I think if you bottom up stuff, you then can get to those people who are doing top down and show them about the intensity of how You feel, the support that you have, and give them a glimpse into what you're trying to fix. And I'm going to give you a perfect example, and that's the area of human trafficking. Most people didn't know what that was. And now we see the faith institutions, you know, we see the churches engaged in trying to do something about the area of human trafficking, and now all of a sudden, it's on the radar of people who are kind of the higher ups. So I think that the merge can, first of all, if you have great leaders at the top, they're going to be sensitive to what's happening on the bottom up. But if they're, they're a little bit absent today, then the bottom up, can they? Can they? Can they can draw attention. They can tell somebody farther up. Do you know what's going on? Do you understand what we're doing? Because the top down people, believe it or not, report to the people from the bottom up, but people don't know they're supposed to. Well, I think, listen, if there's one thing that politicians want. It's to be able to keep their jobs, and so if they're un not responsive to the to the concerns. But look, I'm more I'm more interested right now in lighting this fire in the bottom up and to get people to start solving problems where they live, which I think solves much bigger problems than we that we have in this country today.
Joshua Johnson:So a lot of things. So one of the things that we did, so my my wife and I have a heart for refugees, of people that have come from other countries. We live red beast for a long time working with refugees. And so, you know, we have sponsored some people through our church here in Kansas City, but the local resettlement agency has lost all of their funding from the government. They don't have anything left, and so our church said we're going to pay for it, you know, we're going to pay for these families. We're going to do it. That's really, God bless you, Joshua. It's just thank you. But it's just something that we do as as people of faith, right? We want to. We want to. I'm not
Unknown:sure people always know that. You know what I mean. Like if, if you talk to people about religion, there's a number of them that will just turn their nose up and say, all you're trying to do is judge me. And here you are taking people who are vulnerable, right, and giving them a life, yeah? How'd you get your church to do it? Were you? You and your wife talked to the church about this?
Joshua Johnson:Yes, we talked to the we talked to the church, and then we What did they say when you talk to them? They said, We need the help. Like we we have to do this. This is not to do Yeah. And it was not even a question. It was like, and so we yeah, we just spoke what we're doing. And so it was one Sunday, you know, my wife shared the need. We raised a bunch of money, and we formed a team of 12 to be able to come around this family all in one Sunday. And that same Sunday, we had the kids sell hot chocolate, and they they made. About $1,000 for these families, which was pretty incredible. Really fun see
Unknown:it. And it makes everybody work together. Everybody feels good. And then it's faith in action. You know, I'll give you there's a story. One of the other things that surprised me is you, Joshua, as I think through the book, is government shouldn't be hostile to religion. So, for example, this story I told you about literacy, that all started with a group of churches going to a public school and just cleaning the place up, shining it up. And they weren't up there to proselytize. But you know, to me, the best, the best way to to show your faith is not what you say, it's what you do, right? And so and there's another area where we've got the faith community involved in the portals of the schools to let parents know what might be available to them in times of need. We don't want to have government be hostile to what the faith community can do. And it's it's really important. So
Joshua Johnson:then, how do we let people know that faith community, churches, synagogues, mosques, it's not just about, you know, interior spiritual life, but it is for the common good of the people around us, you
Unknown:know, Joshua. I'd love to tell you that that I can, you know, get a baseball bat, get it to the plate and hit a grand slam home run, and fix it all. But I think it's, it's, it's like books like this, it's other things where people talk about, there are a number of authors that have written I I mean, I don't know that there's many that I've read that's specifically like this, but I'm looking for, I'm looking at Helmut stillicki, I mean, I'm reading, you know, and I'm reading that kind of stuff, but there are so many examples of where the faith community does this. They need to let people know about it, and it's not bragging, it's just informing about what we do, what we do in our church, what we do. You know, in a church I go to here, it's they go down to the faith mission, the church I go to in Naples, whenever I'm I'm down in Florida, think about this. They got wiped out by the hurricane down there, but yet, they raised$200,000 to help their their partners that in the community, in the in the middle of trying to report repair a church that basically had been destroyed. So I mean, it's just telling these stories, and you and I telling the stories, being likable, you know, not beating people up. And that's what I think it is. It's little by little. And as you know now, there are more and more young people who are kind of looking at faith now, re examining it. And so we need to encourage that. And there's no easy answer to these things,
Joshua Johnson:no. But we need to continue on. You know, the the church in Naples raising money for the community. I was just in Asheville at a gathering, oh, they said, as as Everything was destroyed, everybody came together to help one another, right? It was a beautiful sense. And then they're saying it was just a couple weeks ago, and they're saying, well, people really are like, going back into their silos when tragedy strikes. I think, hey, Americans are just incredible at coming together as a community to help one another, but after that tragedy lapses for a while, we like to go back into our silos. Is there a way to continue coming together, to continue to be unified, to not get back into the division Yeah, we so get caught up in Well,
Unknown:I would, I would guess that a lot of these efforts should be ongoing. It's like, if you take Asheville, think about the terrible of all the places, right? The home of Billy Graham. I would like to think that once you engage, maybe the good example is, is Tony out there, and I was talking about the literacy thing, and in the school, they were going, the community has stayed together, continuing to repair that school so they've stayed connected. I can tell you that the church in Naples, they're doing stuff all the time. I mean, it's not like they've they've just quit doing it. They're supporting these partners. And I was just down there not long ago and listened to them talk about, by helping their partners, how much money their partners have raised to take care of people. So I think you have to think about it as kind of an ongoing it's an ongoing mission in life, but going back into silos once you have been helping people and doing good work, I would hope that people would gain a better understanding of that we don't have the right to go back into a silo and be angry at somebody else. I don't know, and maybe that's part of the message of these these faith leaders. We do not have the right, you know, we need. To continue to think about what we can do to help others, because everyone's made in the image of God. Look, I Joshua. I'm not saying that I'm a great guy, but I've let this kind of this, and I'm a hypocrite because we, I mean, I'm, I'll be first class hypocrite, but I try to make these things known wherever, wherever I am, in a in a way that people can hear. So I'm not pointing a finger at them, but I don't hide my faith in why I think it's important. I was in Canada at the end of the year, and one of the ladies that was in charge of this program where I was speaking, she said, Well, you know, up here in Canada, we tend to be a little bit more secular. I said, I appreciate that. So I I heard her, I didn't stop me from saying what I wanted to say. I just wanted to be a little bit more delicate about it,
Joshua Johnson:you know, yep, exactly, exactly. You know, for me, if I look at my city, if I look at Kansas City, there's a lot of there are a lot of problems, yeah, you know, we have homelessness, we have we still have, have racism, really, a lot of shooting that is happening in, you know, in Kansas City, I could go on and on about problems. How do we figure out what our role is, if I'm connected to a faith community, if I say, hey, there's so many problems, what do we do. How do we engage? How do we start?
Unknown:But you think that a lot of the problems that we have can be traced to poverty, lack of education. Those two things I think, are really important to recognize. So what can we do to alleviate the poverty situation? Look, wait, look what you're doing with the refugees. You know. Think about how you're you're building families there. So I think, and when it comes to the education system, we don't have a very good one in this country. We're not giving kids what they need. So at some point, somebody that wants to take that on, school by school, community by community. We have a lady here in Columbus, who started a KIPP Academy Knowledge is power Academy. You wouldn't believe the results she's getting. So I think it's, I always like to think it's one building at a time. It's one person at a time. It's one problem at a time. You put all those together, what does the Scripture say about it's the little things that add up into the big change. So I would take the issues that you think are, let's go back and think about Martin Luther King and what he had to do. Look how, how long of a struggle it was. Now, did he get everything fixed? Of course not. But think about the changes he brought about. But it wasn't easy, and it was all the time, every day, every day, every day, tear gas, beatings, jailing, everything. But he bent history. And I still believe we can bend history, and I've been around long enough to believe in the bending of history, I do, but it takes all of us to kind of push to bend history.
Joshua Johnson:I think that when we're going and solving problems, we see symptoms of, you know, massive systemic issues. Yeah, and we try to solve the symptoms, but it doesn't really solve the big issues. Is there a way for either even small people and small faith communities to look upstream, to really see what is behind the symptoms and the problems that are happening in their community.
Unknown:I think, I think Joshua, when people get involved, they discover the problem. You know, for example, this lady who has been working with foster foster care program. When she got in the middle of it, she realized, Hey, I mean, these are dark places. There's no joy whatsoever. And she went about doing and she wasn't there just to solve this particular foster care problem. She was there because she was looking at the symptoms. She was not the symptoms. She was looking at the root of the problem. It was a lack of support for the workers in the government who needed support and encouragement. It was the fact that these places were not built to be places, and nobody took into account what, what, what it means for children to be placed, or the caregivers or the parents. So she went about. She got to the root of it. She got down. And it's it's catching on across the country. So I think we have to look, you know, with Hal Donaldson. I mean, I don't know what you say about him. I mean, he's just dealing. I mean, you know what he's doing? He's trying to feed people. He's not just passing out food. He's, I mean, that's incredible what he's doing, but he's doing much more than that, trying to get at the root cause. You know, one of the guys that endorsed my book, by the way, I fir, I got my hands on it for the first time today, right here, heaven help us. But, but you know, one of the guys that endorsed this book is Bono. And what about Bono? Well, because he used his star power to try to deal with with poverty and. AIDS in Africa. He got to the root of it, and he's, I mean, he saved million. And Bobby, his guy who he does this with, Bobby and Bono are inseparable. They've saved millions of lives now, and they focused us more on the problems in Africa. We don't seem to be paying much attention to them today. But I can tell you, Bono and Bobby are not going to fade away on that subject. And by the way, when you think about that, it was Bono and Bobby and I was there and helped them, to some degree, who took this issue to George Bush, who created PEPFAR that saved so many lives in Africa. There was an example of where the bottom up affected the top down. Yeah, I
Joshua Johnson:love this bottom up concept, because I do believe that this is the thing that could change the world for better. Is that when, when everyday people come together, see a problem, work together to solve that problem, I think the I think the world is going to be a much better place. Those are the places where it gives me hope. It gives me hope to be able to say, Hey, I am a part of a community that does something like that. As you look across our nation and see some of these communities, what are the things that are giving you hope in your day to day? Well,
Unknown:you know, it's like you say you as you traveled across the country, you saw so many good things happening. I mean, just what comes to mind immediately for me is how my wife, when she was first lady, got involved with the human trafficking issue and a judge who decided that it was important that those who had been trafficked were not the ones who were being punished, but that the people who had put them on the street were the ones who are going to be punished. When I hear about the number of young people at Ohio State University who are going to church up there and trying to do good, there's kids in the gym that I I'm with. Kid just asked me, I'll tell you a funny story. Kid walks up to me, says, I'm he's 16 years old. He says, I'm taking my driver's test. You're a smart guy. Do you have any tips for me? I said, Well, yeah. I said, Leave your phone. Don't take your phone in the car. Well, my parents want me to always have my phone. I said, Well, for this, they won't care. Show respect to the people that's looking at you. And he goes, Well, what else? I said, Well, why don't you ask Jesus to ride in the back seat? I take him all the time to places, you know. So guess what? I saw him yesterday, and he gives me the knuckles, and he said, I passed my driving test. I didn't ask him about Jesus, but he did pass. So I see things like that, kids, 16 years old. You know, it's a nice story. I'm actually hopeful about where we're going to go. And I know that the pendulum swings, and we go through this and that. And, you know, the pendulum swung one way politically, now it's probably going to swing too far the other way, it'll settle out. But I, I want people, you know, really, the purpose of this book is not to fix top down. It's to get people to think about what they can do, so we can do be better at bottom up. And you and I both know, no matter how much great we do, we live on Earth where the power of sin win all of us, I'll declare I'm one of the great sinners, where all of us make mistakes and bad things come from it, but we gotta, we gotta move on, because that's what we're expected to do, particularly with the gifts that we're given. That's another great thought, isn't it? What do we do with the gifts we have? We bury them in the ground. That doesn't work. We gotta use our gifts and have courage. Well,
Joshua Johnson:using our gifts and having courage are essential. But sometimes, when I think of the problem of sin is not going to be fixed until the consummation, until Jesus comes back, right? We're always so we're going to have problems. We're always going to have problems. And for me, sometimes I'm like, Okay, I could face that. But other times I'm like, This is too daunting. I don't know if I could engage anymore. It's we're not going to solve it until the end. We're going to do some good. How do we keep going? You don't know,
Unknown:you know you don't really believe that. Come on, you. You know that if we do things together, we'll make things better plain. We will make we know that, and we're not going to focus on the fact that there's, I mean, we know there's. Look at the progress we've made in in just in in medical care, you know, think about how long people can live now. Now the problem is, you know, we're living so much longer. We have problems that we didn't have 40 years ago. I mean, there's reasons to be optimistic, and I think the Lord has given us the tools that we need to right many of the wrongs and to help overcome problems. So people say, Well, why doesn't he just do it? Well, he doesn't do it because we're not down here as puppets. We're not we're. Not here to be, yes, men, we're here with free will. And I think what he's saying is use that free will to fight some of these things you see that are really difficult. There's
Joshua Johnson:a few things that you have said in our conversation that I think are are kind of key, talking about how Donaldson, basically, a lot of this happened because Mother Teresa challenged him. You know, what are you going to do? Or what are you doing about this stuff? You have people in your community that came around you and said, you know, they're they're talking to you. You then go out and do some things right house. Story are pretty similar with the
Unknown:it's interesting, Joshua, you're exactly right. They are similar, yeah. But he's, he's done, he's done a lot greater things than I have. But,
Joshua Johnson:well, I think, you know, the guy in in Omaha, he has a dream. Can't let go of a dream. It feels like there's a lot of encounters from community, from other people and encounters from God that help set the stage to the places we're going to engage and we're going to do, how do, how does the community help us, and how does communication with God help us move into a place of doing good for Our community? Well,
Unknown:I mean, you have to spend time. It's like a friend, right? You gotta, you gotta get on the same wavelength to hear if there's something coming through that gives you, that affects your conscience and the spirit moves you to do something. So I want to tell you an interesting story. I had a friend who was probably I met him when he was 76 or 77 he was very fit and always exercising. Delightful guy, great golfer, and we became friends. And I used to say to him, You're my hero, because of how good and how well he was doing as he got older, he called me about two or three years ago, and he said, John, I have cancer. So I called a friend of mine who could keep an eye on him as he was being treated at Ohio State and another facility. I don't know much about that, and once in a while, my wife and I would visit him if he was in a facility, and then he would go home, and I would call him, and we'd talk occasionally. And so one day I called him, this was probably about three months ago, and he says to me, I said, Hey, Woz, his name was Woz. Jim Wasilewski, we called him, Woz. I said, Woz, how you doing? He said, Johnny. He said, I'm at the end of the road. I'm now in hospice. There's nothing more they can do. And he said, and I got lots of people here, I have to go. And he hung up the phone. I didn't know where he lived. I didn't know his wife's name. I didn't have her phone number. All I had was a cell phone for him while he's in hospice. So I don't know what I'm going to do. So one day, I was talking to one of my guys that helps me, and I said, Can you make Jesus more of a personification for me. Can you make me, instead of thinking him as like God and all this, can you make him like more real? And he's telling me. He says, Well, you know, think about Jesus. He gave up all of his special powers, his divine authorities, divine powers, to come down here John and he was harassed, tortured, murdered, and he did all that for you. And I'm like, yeah, that's pretty interesting to think about that, because he could, you know, he didn't had all this power, but yet he gave it all up. So I am walking, it's a Saturday, and it is the weather is Kansas City, horrible, sleeting, hailing, raining, cold, windy, and this friend of mine, who's always had questions about Jesus, he and I go for a walk every Saturday, so we're walking on this path, and I'm telling him this story about what my friend told me earlier that day, and we get up to a crosswalk. Now this is, this is two months ago. We're in the crosswalk, and here comes this car flying at us in the middle of this crosswalk, and stops. And normally I would kind of wave, or I would do nothing. I would just walk on and I thought, you know, I need to say something to the driver and thank them for stopping. And I walk around the car, I get to the driver's side, and the window comes down. He says, Hi, John, do you recognize me? I said, I really don't. He said, Well, I'm woz's son. He pulls into the parking lot, he gives me his wife's name, he gives me the phone number, he gives me. Address. Now I know that I'm supposed to go as he was, right. I mean, what am I supposed to do? Forget about this. So the next day, I go over to his house, and I'm there, and his son shows up with his wife. She looks at me, she says, she says, John, we have never been on that road before. We have no idea why we were heading into that tiny, little town. And I she goes, isn't that a coincidence? I said, No, I don't really think it's a coincidence. And so I went to the gym, and I've told about 50 people that story, and I've told lots of people this as I've traveled around, and my wife said, John, the reason why this happened to you is because, God knows you have a big mouth. And so what does all that mean? It means, I think it means that people can go, wow. Or some people can say, that's just a coincidence. Or they can say, Boy, there's something to that. And what does that mean? What does, does that mean something for me? And that's all I'm trying to do. And then I write this book, you know? I mean, I don't have anything more to say about all this, other than you remember that old song they used to put it on Christmas. I was just, I'm a slob, just on a bus trying to my make my way home. You remember that song? I was a beautiful song, and that's the way I look at it. Be kind when you can. I'm not always kind. I can be a jerk, but do the best I can, to do what I can, if we all just do the best we can and find our better days. We're making this a better society, realizing that it's just never going to be perfect.
Joshua Johnson:Amen, we can make it better. And you know, in that story, and a lot of these stories, people are paying attention and being intentional to say, Hey, God may be moving here. I actually have to open my eyes. And so we're moving from a place of going through the motions in life, and just living a life into being open to what God is doing, being open to what is happening around us in our community, and when we open our eyes, we could see that there is going to be some good that could be done, and communities can come together. So open our eyes, pay attention. It's important.
Unknown:It's an amazing story, isn't it? It is old. Was, and the rest of the story was, when I was with him, I said, Woz, because he loved to play golf. He was actually club champion once. I said, Do you ever remember one shot that really was great? He said, Yeah. He said, I hit a four hour and 190 yards and made a hole in one. So guess what? About a week later, his son calls and says, We'd like to dedicate a tree at the golf course on the 11th hole where my father made his hole in one. I said, done. So my wife and I put some money in to make sure we could get this done, and you just want and somebody's going to see that plaque, and they're going to say, what is this about? And I will tell them about Woz, and I'll tell them about that story.
Joshua Johnson:It's great, beautiful. Sounds fun? It's great. Well, heaven help us. Is a fantastic book. I really highly recommend it to a lot of people. So I think that we could, we could use some of this to say we could do something very similar in our own communities, with our faith institutions. We could make a difference in our community. If you could talk to your readers or people who are listening to this conversation, what hope do you have for them in the Oh,
Unknown:find you'll find your purpose. To me, this book gives you a sense to think about what your purpose is. As one of my friends says, He said, I and he's one of my dearest friends, he said, I actually go back to the book and figure out what it is that I'm not doing that I ought to do, and gain inspiration from some of the stories here. So find your purpose. Build a stronger community, and things will work out. I have
Joshua Johnson:a couple really quick questions for you at the end. Yes. One I love to ask this for everybody is, if you go back to your 21 year old self, what advice would you give boy? Oh boy,
Unknown:well, I was elected to the legislature when I was 26 the youngest in Ohio had no relatives. Here, it was a tremendous upset, and I and I kind of laid low for about a week, and then I was in a meeting, and I started pontificating with these people who were much older than me. And when I got done pontificating, I sat about back feeling pretty, pretty good about myself, until this gentleman, colleague of mine said, can somebody put a little mustard on that hot dog? That kind of explains it? I think yes. Good. Anything
Joshua Johnson:you've been reading or watching lately, you could recommend for us I
Unknown:have not seen. In the Book of David yet, but I am going to watch that and and I read a lot of I don't know if you know who Helmut thielicke is. He is a, he is a German preacher who was preaching when bombs were falling. And his book, he has a book called our Heavenly Father, which I'm now reading for either the second or third time. It's fantastic. And I'm also reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Now let me, let me tell you about that book. Back in World War, two soldiers wanted something to read, but they couldn't put out a big book, because how would they carry it? So the book publishers printed books that were like sideways and the most requested and popular book among soldiers in World War Two is A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I'm reading it now my what's my wife's favorite book? And I'm thoroughly enjoying it. So
Joshua Johnson:great, incredible recommendations. Go out, get heaven help us. It's a fantastic book. John, thank you for this conversation. Let's
Unknown:stay in touch. Okay, stay in touch, and I would love to you all right, sir, thank you so much. Thank you. Bye. You
