From Hair Transplant To Holy Questions

A simple travel plan—celebrate the empty nest, get a long-awaited hair transplant, see a few sights—turned into a spiritual jolt I didn’t see coming. From the first call to prayer echoing across Istanbul, I felt a nudge to pay attention: to public faith, to daily rhythms that shape identity, and to a hospitality that flowed from shared standards. What started as a personal errand became a lesson in bold devotion and a mirror held up to my own Christian life.

We walk through the sounds and sights of the city—mosques open five times a day, garments that signal belonging, and loudspeakers that stitch worship into the fabric of ordinary time. I share what I learned touring a former church turned mosque, why Islamic spaces avoid images, and how that restraint resonates with biblical warnings against idols. Along the way, I read a few chapters of the Quran to better understand what I was witnessing, then hold that up against familiar scriptures from Exodus, Deuteronomy, Isaiah, and the New Testament to consider God’s transcendence and our human need for tangible anchors.

The conversation turns to why Islam’s clarity and consistency appeal to youth, especially young men hungry for identity and accountability. We talk about community signals, visible standards, and the way daily prayer can form character in public. That observation becomes a challenge aimed at my own tradition: have we learned to hide what we believe? I offer practical ways to make faith visible with grace—praying over meals, returning to weekly worship, opening the Bible where we live and work, and serving neighbors without apology—while avoiding culture-war posturing.

As we prepare to head to Ephesus, the story widens: Mary and John, endurance and witness, history and hope. The thread through it all is simple and hard—live what you believe, every day, with kindness and courage. If this journey sparks a question or stirs a habit you want to rebuild, I’d love to hear it. Subscribe for the next chapter from Ephesus, share this with a friend who needs a nudge, and leave a review to help others find the show.

This is the Buddy For Junior Show — where faith, truth, and courage come together. Join us as we explore life’s deeper purpose and carry the torch of conviction. The show begins now.

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Chapters

• 0:23 Airport Intro And Trip Setup
• 0:38 From Empty Nest To Hair Transplant
• 0:59 Unexpected Spiritual Wake-Up
• 1:39 Immersed In Istanbul’s Islamic Culture
• 2:54 Shared Values And First Impressions
• 3:57 Reading The Quran And Public Faith
• 4:56 History Of Mosques And Iconography
• 6:35 No Idols And Biblical Parallels
• 8:37 Why Islam’s Boldness Attracts Youth
• 11:06 A Challenge To Christian Boldness
• 12:18 Closing And Next Steps In Ephesus

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:12

Welcome. Welcome to the Buddy for Junior Show. I'm gonna give this a shot. I'm at an airport in Istanbul. We're flying to Ephesus. I just spent the last four days in Istanbul, and I gotta tell you, I'm completely blown out of the water. What started off as an empty nesters, empty nesters trip with my wife and I, that I wanted to uh have the tail end of it be in Turkey for my hair transplant that I've been planning for a couple years. And we did it. I followed through the hair transplant, I was a little nervous, it's done. And what started off, as I was saying, as an empty nester tour has turned into an incredibly spiritual journey that I had no idea I would partake in, in Jesus just showing up. And I'm not sure if it's because of the journey I'm on spiritually, why it happened, the timing where I am, the places we visit it, but I know it was the intent of a higher power of the Holy Spirit, and I'm very grateful. Let me share specifically what I'm talking about. Jesus showing up. I here I am in Turkey, Istanbul, in an Islam nation with Muslims visiting mosques, and an overwhelming amount of the culture of Islam, of that religion, is everywhere. You have the prayer chants over the loudspeakers that partake throughout the day. You have the mosques that pray five times a day. They're open for prayer five times a day. And as we're touring the mosques, we're witnessing this ritual. You have the um women wearing the coverings, some just the face, others the entire body, exposed to just the eyes, the hijab, the garment that covers them. You have the men in what appears to be very comfortable. And at one point I was jealous because it was so hot out for their comfortable um attire that they wear. And experiencing the Islam faith when they're interacting with you, when they're talking to you, when you're lost on a train and they're helping you, uh, that was something that was definitely inspirational. I'm talking about very graceful people who are completely open to the tourism that's happening in uh Istanbul. Very helpful, very graceful, very uh at peace, joyful people. And that was not what I was expecting because I really had no expectations other than the fact that I thought maybe it'd be a little standoffish, a little pushback because of the way we dress, because of uh our lack of sharing their value system. And this is where the rubber meets the road, the value system. So as I'm witnessing this these prayers five times a day in the garbs that they wear throughout Istanbul and the many mosques that are everywhere. Do we really have that much of a difference in value system? And I would offer that we don't have that much of a big difference. And I started reading the Quran, a couple chapters, to really understand what I was witnessing. And the Holy Spirit showed up to me in the mosque, and what he showed me was what it looks like to live in faith, what it looks like to live out your spiritual beliefs in public. And like it or not, that's exactly what the Muslims do, and that's what I witnessed this spiritual transparency, the unapologetic approach or the unapologetic worship through the loudspeakers throughout the entire city, through the uniform, for lack of a better word, for this podcast, through the five days showing up in the mosques, unapologetically, showing their honor to who they worship. And we did a tour, we did a tour of a couple museums, and one was the oldest mosque in the world. The Arab A-R-A-P mosque was actually originally a church that was built in night in 1325 that was later converted to a mosque when the Ottoman Empire conquered. What we learned was in a mosque, there is no pictures, there's nothing other than architectural design. And what they did was they took over these Christian churches and they plastered over all of the drawings of the apostles, all of the Virgin Mary mosaics. They basically plastered over them, which preserved them by default. And why they do that is because there's no picture of Allah, there's no picture of Muhammad in the mosques. There's no picture. There's just these to the left and to the right. There's the Arabic language that says who they are. But there's no, there's no um idol. There's no idol. One second. Okay, sorry, as I said, I'm in an airport trying to pull this off. I'm gonna get more detailed in next week's podcast, but I don't want to go without a week of me telling you where I am, what's going on. So back to the mosque. There's no there's no there's no idol worship in a mosque, as God had originally said in the Bible. Let's look at the biblical Christian or the Old Testament, Exodus 20, 4 to 5. You shall not make for yourself an idol in a form of anything in heaven above or on earth, beneath the waters or below. You should not bow down to them or worship them. For I the Lord am your God, and I am jealous. Deuteronomy. Therefore, watch yourself very carefully, since you saw no form on the day that the Lord spoke to you at the herb out in the midst of the fire, beware least you act corruptly of making carved image of yourself in any form or figure. Isaiah 44, 9 through 11. Those who make idols are foolish because their idols have no power to them to help them. All who worship idols will be disgraced along the craftsmen, mere humans who claim they can make God. And this goes on. John, little children, keep yourselves from idols. Corinthians, therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry. So the mosques follow that. The mosques have no idea what God looks like. We don't, because we can't explain him. He's inexplainable, he's indescribable. He's the creator of the universe, he's the alpha, he's the omega. There's no containing him, there's no putting him in a box, there's no description of him. It's all powerful. And you have to respect the fact that when you walk in a mosque, there's no idols, there's no prophets, there's no apostles anywhere in the building. It's architectural design, and they've taken over as they conquered Christian churches, transformed them to mosques by removing the cross on the top of the domes, and by covering the idol worship that you could claim or you could make a case for. Sorry about that. At the airport again. So listen, what I learned, and I want to just get to the point, and we'll pick this up next week, and we'll bring you into my uh Ephesus when we go to Ephesus, which is in the New Testament, Ephesians, where Mary and the Apostle John lived. Here's what I'm getting at. When we look at Islam, maybe we could learn something. Maybe this is the fascist growing religion on the planet for a reason. Maybe these young people are attracted to Islam, and I'm gonna go over the statistics. By the year 2050, I believe it is, or 2030, they're gonna be matched in worship totals of followers as Christianity. The growth is astronomically impressive. You have youth, young men that are attracted to this movement, that are attracted to the uniforms, that have an outward expression of who they are. Look at young kids joining gangs and the colors and the bloods and the crypts. You have that affiliation and brotherhood. You have a complete outward expression, and you have a community that you know when you're out, who's in your community and who shares the same belief system. You have consistent, constant prayer throughout the day, five times a day. You have loudspeakers throughout your community blasting a reminder of who you are. And when you're wearing and you're representing, it holds you to a higher standard, which I personally experienced and how I was treated with an extreme graceful welcome. Okay, again, that was a loudspeaker announcement. I'm trying to get this done with my surgery, my hair transplant two days ago. I've been out of it, and I'm excited. I want to share this enthusiasm and just give my listeners a different perspective that you don't see in the nose. Perhaps we can learn something from a faith that is growing astronomically. The unapologetic outward expression of their belief system is contagious, it's growing, it's infectious. And the reality is we as Christians have been putting ourselves in a box, and I've been saying it, we've been hiding who we are. We are a generation, if you're in your 40s and 50s, that we're told to be quiet about our faith. It's been pushed out of our high school system, our elementary system, it's been pushed out of our colleges, even the ones who have a cross on their logo. I know this because my daughters go to college. It has been pushed out of government. It's been pushed out of Hollywood. There has been a major, massive, demonic erasing of our Christian faith. And it's time that perhaps we can look at another religion that frightens us because we're unaware of it, but perhaps approach it from a loving perspective and an open-eyed perspective, and figure out wait a minute, why are they so comfortable in expressing who they are? Why are they so comfortable in dressing the way they dress? Why are they so comfortable fighting for local politicians? Sorry, that's a loud speaker again. I'm gonna end this. The bottom line is it's time for the Christian faith to stand up, be proud, get back to church, pick up the Bible, pray over your meals, pray in public. Get this train back on the tracks, each family at a time. You can do your part and your role. Whether you're a younger person listening to this, influence your parents. If you're a parent, influence your kids. If you're a parent, aunt, uncle, whatever it may be. We need to inspire our Christianity back to the fold, to mainstream, back in our educational systems, back in our public offices, back in our TV screens. But let's start with our houses. I'm gonna end this now. This was an unorthodox podcast at an airport, but I didn't want to go a week. I want to share with you what I learned and the impact of faith had on me that I had no idea it would have on me whatsoever.