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I Tried To Argue Against God And Ended Up Changing Everything

• Greg Pingel and Jonathan Roberts • Episode 13

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Tampa wasn’t just a trip, it was a mirror. We went in expecting another solid event and came out talking about the one thing that actually changes people at the root: spiritual surrender. What surprised us most is how fast life starts to look different when belief stops being a vague “yeah, I think so” and becomes a hard yes or no. That shift shows up everywhere, from how we lead and coach to how we show up at home. 

We walk through a real faith journey from agnostic curiosity to conviction, starting with the question of evil and ending at the central claim of Christianity: the resurrection of Jesus. We break down why we look at the Gospels the way you’d evaluate testimony in court, why small differences in accounts can be a sign of authenticity, and why details like women being the first witnesses matter historically. We also dig into the uncomfortable question skeptics always ask: if Rome and religious leaders wanted to crush the movement, why wasn’t producing a body the easiest way to do it? 

Then we get practical. We talk about the “gifted not given” mindset, why gratitude can restore joy you thought you lost, and how faith changes anxiety, relationships, fitness, and discipline. We also hit Christian masculinity and leadership, the difference between passive niceness and real conviction, plus a detour into Big Bang theory and evolution debates through the lens of evidence, fine-tuning, and what “science” can and can’t prove. 

If any of this pushes a button, good. Listen, share it with a friend who loves to debate big questions, and leave a review with the one point you agree with and the one point you don’t.

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Cold Open And Unplanned Start

SPEAKER_00

It's kind of relaxing. It works out. We're about to have an interruption, but that's cool. Okay, so we're filming a podcast. Happy, what is today? Wednesday? Wednesday. Happy Wednesday. Happy Wednesday. Just got back from Tampa two, two, three days ago, two days ago. It's a good little trip. I do want to say, I predicted it. Go back on the podcast two months ago, month and a half ago. Predicted the movement of the Elliott group. That's true, he did.

SPEAKER_01

He's like Motor Thomas of the Elliott group.

SPEAKER_00

Yep. And I told Greg exactly what he needed to do. So he's on board. We're going. So this is another one of those podcasts where we prepared nothing for it. It's actually about our 20th episode. However, we had to delete about eight of them. Why? Because I said mean things. Oh, that's true. That was old Jonathan. That was old mean. That was old Jonathan. I remember that. I went off on a couple things, came from the wrong area. But yeah, I've made some changes. Did a three-hour Zoom call today. That was pretty sweet. That was crazy. Yeah. And that's with the little coaching master tonight. We do a couple calls for the city. Usually an hour long. I kept it for three. Kept nine people on all the way to the room.

SPEAKER_01

Dude, that's crazy. I was I was leaving to go to get lunch, and this call starts at nine o'clock, and Jonathan is still on the same call. I'm like, dude, that is the longest. That is probably the longest ECM call anyone's ever done. Yeah. Hands down. And just holding nine people on. I was like, dang. For three hours. Did you pitch at the end?

SPEAKER_00

No. Dang. Yeah. That was good for them. I mean, solid, solid questions. And, you know, people are going to continue

Tampa Trip Sets The Theme

SPEAKER_00

to grow. And okay, so let's talk about Tampa because I think that's going to be the most relevant thing that we could talk about. It was a different event that we've never done before, or that we've never been that impactful. And well, it was the best event ever. Yeah. By a mile. It's not even close. Yeah, no, 100%. But it was it was because it focused on the spiritual change of people and bringing people closer to God. Now, for you, you've believed in God for a while, right? Yeah. Okay. I have not. This is new to me. This is all new to Jonathan. Well, it's not so much I didn't believe, it was more I was I was agnostic, meaning I just believe there was something. Yeah. Which I think is the silliest thing that you could possibly believe because that's just basically a fancy word for being atheist and not saying that you want to lock into something and basically saying, I don't know. Dude, it's been like six months.

SPEAKER_01

So Jonathan, six months ago, said I'm going to disprove God. No, I didn't say I'm going to disprove God. You said you had to go find you had to go figure it out now. Figure it out. Yeah. And what's the one study you always bring up about the attorney who never lost a case and said he was going to do this?

SPEAKER_00

Oh, I forget his dang name. There's Lee Strobel, who was the actual one who went to disprove God, which if you actually read his book, it was a mix of he wanted to disprove it, but also he wanted to understand like why his wife had this new level of happiness, joy, and all of that. And he was an award or very a very well-recognized Chicago Tribune journalist in the 70s and 80s. And he's like, dude, this will be easy. It's two weeks, two days, or he said, two days, I'll have the resurrection disproved. And once I disprove the resurrection, everything else in Christianity falls apart. Was it two years? Spent just under two years trying to disprove the resurrection and ended up converting. And then there's that other attorney, and I forget his name, but he's written some books and stuff too. And he's now, I think he's a preacher, or he's, you know, evangelical from somehow. But he he 200 and I think it was 258 cases. He holds the Guinness Book of World Records as a defense attorney for most consecutive cases one. So 258, I believe the number is. You're talking murder, rape, all sorts of horrible stuff. Yeah. He's obviously really good at his job, really good at finding facts, really good at, you know, uh portraying the truth in a way that makes sense to a jury to, you know, say his horrible clients are innocent. Because I guarantee you, out of those 258, I would say a majority probably weren't innocent, but the way our legal system works, he had the same thing. Someone challenged him one day, hey, what do you think of God? And he's like phony, baloney, doesn't exist. And then the guy goes, Well, why do you think that? And he didn't really have an answer. So he's like, Well, you're the best attorney in the world. Why don't you just prove that he doesn't exist? Yeah. So he goes on a journey to prove, because he was challenged that it doesn't exist using his awesome attorney skills and litigation skills. And he converts. So I found them midway through my journey, or maybe the first month

Hunting For Evil Leads To Jesus

SPEAKER_00

into it.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Because I just went in to say, Well, I went in to try to figure out evil and what evil was. And like, how in the world can we have people like the Epstein files? And if you were lucky enough to see our, you know, deleted, deleted inst or our deleted podcast.

SPEAKER_01

The hidden, the hidden podcast files. Yeah, you would end them all.

SPEAKER_00

You would understand where my mind was with like the Epstein files and all the other crap going on. So that was the intention of like, okay, I need to understand evil. Yeah. And then all of that kept leading back to Jesus Christ. Judaism, Islam, Christianity. So at that point in time, I'm like, well, whether you have secular belief or you are religious, like the fact is that Jesus Christ walked the earth. Like if you disagree with that, you're a moron because there's more documentation through the Christian faith, Jewish faith, through, I mean, it's in the Buddhist faith, the Hebrew faith, like everything. There's Romans that have reported it. Like everyone that would want him not to be here, it's reported. And it's more well documented than anybody else from the time period. 2,000 years ago. So based on that, I was like, okay, so the guy walked the earth. Now I have to describe what he is. So there's multiple beliefs and thoughts on that. If you go more Buddhist Hindu, you're more, you know, saying that, hey, he was a great teacher, which is crazy because they admit that he was there. If you're Jewish, you're going with the theory of he was a piece of crap, a fraud, a blah, blah, blah. Yeah. Then if you go with the Christian, he was killed, you know, suffered in a Pontius Pilate, died on the cross, was resurrected three days later. Like, I'm kind of giving you the creed right there. But you go with that knowledge, and then you can go with the Islamic knowledge or the Islamic belief that would be he was a prophet similar to Muhammad. He is a Messiah, however, he was not born from the Virgin Mary and he did not die on the cross. So I'm like, okay, well, now I've got five or six different perspectives. Now I've got to even go deeper to figure out like if he died on the cross. I'm glad that you have like some autism in you. Yeah, no, autism's a great freaking superpower. Yeah. He's been in this rabbit hole for six months now. So then you look at the information and start studying Jesus' life. And really all you have is about three years of Jesus' life. Yeah. Like that's it. From the age of 30 to 33, the rest of it, there's very, very little information. But those three years where he was preaching and is doing his thing, very well documented. So I I want to go away from sources of Christianity. You know, I grew up Christian, grew up Catholic Lutheran. So like I knew the stories, I knew the stuff. So I'm like, I need to learn the other stuff. Like, has anyone written about Christ that wasn't Christian? And I'm like, okay, the Jew, the Jews have. There's a lot of information. Yeah, totally. So the Jews have written a lot about like the miracles he performed. You know, the healing the sick, giving the blind sight, fixing the dude that you know couldn't walk, and you know, all of that. So they wrote about that. And they wrote that it was, you know, black magic and all that crap. But the thing is, they never deny it happening. It's true. They write that it exists. So I'm like, holy crap, there's something here. So then you continue to go, go, go, and you're like, okay, this all is dictated around the resurrection, and if the resurrection is real. So I start diving down that path. Can someone be resurrected? Well, here's the facts. One, you've got the four gospels, the four main gospels: Luke, John, Matthew, and Peter? I could be jacking that up. Not a freaking expert, just have a lot of random knowledge flying around. So you have the four gospels, and there's a few things that you have to be able to prove the authentic authentic authenticity of the gospels. One, let's just go with the people, let's just go with the arguments that people bring up. Arguments. They contradict each other in slight variances. Yeah. Okay, that is completely true. There are some slight, you know, things said a little bit differently, you know, things in slightly different places. Well, if you look at any sort of testimony, let's say we were, you know, going before the court and we had to prove someone guilty beyond reasonable doubt. That's kind of the standard of, you know, in most Western civilizations, how we decide whether something happened or not. Totally. Because the reality of it is, like everyone on the jury, they didn't see what actually happened in the crime. It's eyewitness accounts, secondary witness accounts, investigation accounts, forensic evidence, all sorts of stuff. The exact so let's let's use that same level of investigation to investigate

Testing The Resurrection Like A Court Case

SPEAKER_00

the resurrection. So we look at the gospels, a written account that was written, you know, 20, 30, 40 years or so, depending on you know what you go with after his death. Yeah. Which we'll we'll cover why it took so long in a second. But the first part is there's slight contradictions in the gospels, and a lot of people will argue, well, that means it's not true. Well, here's a couple things. One, those four gospels were not written, they weren't in the same room, like, hey, Billy, freaking write this. This is what we're gonna put in the story. They were written at different times from different areas of the world from four different people. Yep. Which is amazing because if you look at any crime or anything big that happened in your life, 9-11, for example, you could probably tell me exactly where you were, what you were doing, what was it so can I, but I can also sit next to the guy that was sitting right next to me, and he'd have a slight different variance. It's like the telephone game. No, not at all. That proves, hang on, we'll get there in a second. How do we go with that one? It's the complete opposite. So, so we'll have slight, we'll have slight variances in our stories. Okay. You know, if you and I were buddies, we might have both been walking to the bus stop together. So this is a little bit of my story, but you right might remember going into the living room of my buddy Eric's house, and I might remember that we sat in the family room and watched this. However, both of us are probably gonna remember that are probably gonna remember what it looked like when we saw the second plane get hit by the tower, and we're gonna be like, that's gonna be in the story, and that's gonna be pretty much dialed in. Any murder investigation, things like that happen too. Eyewitnesses have slightly different accounts. So going down that path, I'm like, okay, that actually adds a lot here. And then that's brought up a lot. The telephone game is like, you know, you've played the telephone game, you tell me one word, 30 people later, you can't repeat it, you gotta whisper it, blah, blah, blah. It gets put into a complete different sentence. Well, that is completely true. That is something that could have happened. However, these gospels, or yeah, the gospels weren't written the day after, they were written 30, 40, 50, 60 years after. Yeah. And they were, you know, there were there were times where eyewitnesses were interviewed, all sorts of stuff to get there. They are too dang similar and have too many similarities to be the telephone game. And they also weren't passed on from this guy to this guy to this guy. You know, you had one of the disciples, he was over in Eastern Asia, and the other one's over in this direction. So, like, they started to spread the word and the stories because the stories were carried verbally at first, yeah, but they stayed the exact same or very, very similar. The other big part of it is you have, okay, why did it take 30, 40 years to write the first one? Why, why did someone not record it day one? Well, great argument here. Did you write down what happened on 9-11? No. Did I? No. But we were both there, right? Yep. Why didn't we? I I don't know. There's only about 500 books out there on 9-11 for people who actually wrote it out of the 300 million Americans that witnessed it happened and saw it happen. The other thing is, back in ancient times, most people couldn't read or write. So it even lowers the chance that it would actually happen. So the fact that they even exist is is is freaking cool. So you're going down this journey, you're trying to figure out did the resurrection actually happen. So you've got everything that I just said. Here's the other thing: you have people who you know saw Jesus after he was resurrected. Um, you have some of the, I mean, he ate with multiple of the disciples. Many of them touched him, he touched them. One of the disciples was like, dude, for me to believe, or it was Apostle Paul, I believe, said, for, and I believe that's the right name. That's the guy that was the Christian killer, right? I'm still getting the names mixed up. I'm trying to keep it together. But he said, the only way I'm gonna believe if I'm able to touch and actually see the wound of the Roman soldier that you know stabbed him. So Jesus allowed him to touch, see all of that. So I'm like, okay, crap's adding, crap's adding up, what's going on? The math's mathing. So then I'm like, how could the Jewish or the Romans disprove all this? Because wouldn't that be the easiest way? Like, obviously, the Jewish doesn't want the Christian reality or Christian religion to go in because they want their religion and their messiah and all that, and then the Romans didn't want any of this to freaking happen or get out there or the people of Rome. So, how could they prove that Jesus was killed, crucified on the cross, they stabbed him, all the gut, you know, crap came out, water and blood, and then three days later he was resurrected. So there's a few things here. One, no writer in history in that time frame, 2000 years ago, would have written that a woman found Jesus Christ in the tomb. A woman's testimony from Jewish and Roman law couldn't even hold up in court nowadays or back then. They wouldn't even take it. So you wouldn't write that. The other thing you wouldn't write is like the Roman guards would have not just let someone simply enter the tomb and leave because they would have been put to death. Yeah. But then you have you have the fact that it would be this easy for the Romans or the Jews to disprove all that stuff was happening. Grab the body, walk it around everywhere, and show the people that you have the dead body. But that was never done. Nope. Nor was the body ever found, nor has the body been dug up in any archaeolog or in any archaeological digs. Yet there's been a few emperors or you know, Egyptian pharaohs and stuff like that that have been found, that have been identified. Yet this one big one that everybody would have wanted to say, like, hey, look, it's not real, doesn't exist. Never. So if you read the gospels, obviously he, you know, uh rose in heaven after it, so it doesn't, you know, exist. So you have a really good account of that.

The Evidence That Made Faith Click

SPEAKER_00

And then I just started going through the evidence, and I'm like, trying to, because I truly believe anytime you have a belief, you should try to argue yourself out of your belief and see if you still believe what you originally believed, because that's the only way to have a real belief. That's where this rabbit hole came from. Yeah, other than that, you're on CNN, Fox News, and you're just going with what whatever someone else says. And I personally don't have it in me. It's something I struggle with. I don't have enough just to hear what someone says and be like, yeah, I believe in that. I also believe that what I just said there is what is making a lot of men, a lot of Christian men really freaking weak. Is they just simply say they believe. And they don't really believe. Because you're either 100% in or 0% in. There's no like, oh, I'm 90% of there, or I'm pretty sure it happened, or yeah. No, dude, you fully have to believe, and and we'll we'll get to the surrender part later, but you fully have to believe because there's no 90%. Did the guy come from back from the dead? Was he resurrected? Did Jesus was Jesus resurrected? It's yes or no. It's not like I think he was 50-50. Because yeah, then you're just uh all over the place. So I couldn't really find any good evidence that said it didn't happen. Yeah. I found a lot of evidence that they didn't like him, that he was a fraud, that he was, you know, persecuted, that like Romans and Jews alike did not like what he was doing. He was pissing a lot of people off, but none of them ever said he was a bad person. Even the Romans and Jews report that he was an honest and very good moral teacher. They report the Jewish a lot reports his miracles. The Romans report the miracles he performed. They don't call them miracles, they call them all sorts of other words. Yeah. But they they all admit that it freaking happened. So once all of that knowledge was contained, once I was like, let's look at the resurrection, and I had that knowledge, I went, oh crap, it's real. And then the cool thing is, it happens this damn fast. Your faith clicks in like that. Because all it takes is for you to believe in the miracle of the resurrection.

SPEAKER_01

And then once that happens, everything How long from where okay, how long from where you started this journey to you have that click? I'd say four months. Yeah. Maybe three.

SPEAKER_00

It's crazy how much you've changed in the last two months with it. Yeah, and that's why we've been talking about this a lot. This is why my three-hour Zoom call hit this morning is because that exact same thing I said to you is you came and asked me last week before we went to Tampa, like a serious question. You're like, How did you change so much so fast in every freaking area? And I thought for like a second half, it didn't even take me that long. And I go, Do you believe in God? And you said yes, and then I go, then start believing in God. Yeah. Because that's all it freaking is. And I believe my stubbornness is actually a good thing because the mix of my stubbornness and autism, that once I lock onto something, I have to know everything I possibly can about it. So my journey has just begun. But I I I could tell you this in the last 60 days, I have probably read more literature on this than 99% of Christians have. Yeah. I think every week you're giving me a new book to read. Yeah. Dude, I'm reading a new, I'm reading a full book every two or three days. Yeah. Dude, I'm freaking addicted to it because I'm like, oh my gosh, I missed 25 years of my life. I've been blind to this. I've been an idiot. Now I've got to play a lot of ketchup. And it's also legitimately changed my life in freaking every freaking area, my relationship, fitness, business, the way I treat people, the just how I feel on a day-to-day basis. Your calls are way better. Yeah, my calls are way better. I'm speaking better. I'm not a miserable bitch. I'm not self-centered. Like it's really cool. He's happy. I'm happy.

SPEAKER_01

It's weird having a happy Jonathan around the office. It's strange.

SPEAKER_00

It's different.

SPEAKER_01

And he actually will hug people now too.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Where he wouldn't do that before. But uh it seriously all comes from just having faith, but the faith is the belief. Because for me, it's not, I can't, I can't just say, oh, yeah. And I don't think anyone can. And I think that's where a lot of people struggle, and that's where a lot of people don't actually quote unquote surrender. Because once you believe it's real, once you go down that path, it's like, oh crap, like that's a lot of weight on my shoulder, shoulders, but I can also give the weight to Jesus because that's why he died for our sins and our salvation and our anxieties and everything else that we carry that's you know sinful. So I'm like, you could give that away, but that also means that everything written new and old testament is now true and no longer theory. So then you have to go to the covenant of the New Testament, understand the covenant of the Old Testament, but understand that it doesn't apply because of Jesus. A lot of it doesn't apply, some of it still does. But then you have to go to the New Testament covenant and be like, oh, this is a guide on how to live my life, a guide on how to be a good person. And then you read it, and I'll tell you this there's not been not one thing in my life that has gotten worse. Not a thing. And everyone's like, oh, but restrictions and rules and this and that. And I'm like, restrictions and rules on what? To be a good person?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

To love your neighbor like you love yourself, to love your enemy like you love your neighbor, to freaking cherish your wife, to love your wife as Christ loved the church, to be able to be willing to die for her if need be, to be willing to put in the extra work, to be willing to, you know, bring other people to the the kill like what there's no negativity in it. Yeah. Well, I can't do this. Yeah, you can't be you can't sin, you can't lust, you can't be a complete jackass, you can't be you you you can't do all that. Boo-hoo. Not a big freaking deal, dude. Not rough, yeah. And then you also have the realization that everything that you're doing, everyone that you're around, like everyone is now a gift to your life. And people aren't just in your life at complete random. There's a purpose, there's a reason, not only for your purpose and your reason, but everyone around you isn't just a random, a random occurrence, and that there's you know, some sort of purpose. I'm sitting here with you today. There's a purpose like why we're on this podcast. Like, I don't know, maybe 20 people listen to it, maybe a hundred people listen to it, maybe it finally maybe no one listens to it. But I know this, I know six months ago, that three hour Zoom call that I had today, six months ago, I wouldn't have had that Zoom call. No, not one bit. And I even told him that. I'm like, Dude, even two months ago. Yeah, two months ago, I don't think I would have because I I didn't understand what I understand now, and I didn't, I didn't I I had the belief two months ago I was sold, but I I I I still had a lot of information I needed to fill. But like, I even told him today, dude. I'm like, and I always open up my Zoom calls to questions, and I would have been like, dude, if we hit the hour and 45 mark and we were still going, I would have figured out a way to get off this Zoom call. I would have made up something. But I'm like, I don't even care. The longest you've been on a Zoom call since I've been here. Three hours. And people stayed the whole dang time, which was freaking cool. And it made me realize like there's a lot of people trying to figure this out, trying to figure out their purpose. Yeah. And I still believe in self-development. It's actually given me more of a belief in self-development because I've seen it from a different perspective and I've seen like faith. Like, if you have faith in in something bigger than yourself, then all that stuff that we say, you know, cut your limiting beliefs, cut all leashes, like all of a sudden it makes sense. It's like it's not even about me. It's not it, if you're self centered, you only believe to the certain extent of what you have seen in life and what you have seen is possibly capable for yourself. But when you believe There's a bigger picture, there's a bigger purpose. It's like there's an infinite amount of belief. There's an infinite amount of wealth. There's an infinite amount of love. There's an infinite amount of goodness. There's an infinite, an infinite amount of joy that you can actually take in. But if you're self-centered, kind of like I was, like, I didn't see happiness, dude. I could have seen someone win the freaking lottery and seen someone shot in the freaking face, and it was the exact same emotion for me.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_00

Like I didn't care. Like, and it wasn't that I didn't care. It wasn't that I didn't know how to express it because I didn't, I didn't know how to get out of my own head from PTSD and whatever other crazy experiences I had. Then I just realized that, like, okay, well, now I could view the world as a gift. It was like I was I was so I bought the house, right? If you've watched the podcast for a while or some of the clips, you've seen like my view at the back. It's super, super cool. Yeah in the evening, it's got a kick-ass sunset, mountains, all that. Like it's it's a really nice view. We bought the house about, I don't know, coming up on a year ago or something like that. And that view was really cool until I don't know, day 14, kind of like when you buy a new car, it's a fun car. You know, you buy M car BMW, two weeks, it's fun, it goes fast, it accelerates, it's cool. And then you realize after about two weeks, it's just a freaking view. You're gonna see it again tomorrow, tomorrow, the next day. You're gonna drive the car, it's gonna be just as fast, got four wheels, four doors. And I'd kind of lost the joy in that view. And that's kind of what my entire life has been the last 15 years is just chasing quick dopamine hits with how do I make more money to buy this? How do I make more money to buy that? How do I make more money to buy that to get the dopamine hit? I've actually started to enjoy that view again, sit there and watch it because I'm seeing the view as a gift. Yeah. Because why? One, I'm grateful for where I live and you know the life I've been able to obtain to be able to get that, because it's not standard, but that mountain isn't there at random. Those trees, the colors of Scottsdale, Arizona, they're not there randomly. The sun doesn't just randomly set, it's all built on a purpose. And when you view that view as a gift, it's not given, it's gifted. So when you view everything as gifted rather than given, you cherish it more. Totally. Like they talk about a lot, like you know, people who win the lottery, right? They lose all their money. They lose all their money because it's given and they haven't been they they they don't know how to handle it, they give it all back, they're you know, they were broke when they bought a lottery ticket, they're gonna go back to broke. Well, what if that person changed their mind as this was a gift from you know my inheritance? A lot of people that inherit money don't blow it like at the same rate. Some people do, but they don't blow it at the same rate as a lottery winner does it because it was a gift to them rather than a given to them. So viewing life and people and everything around you as a gift can easily change your perspective. And then when your perspectives change, like try to like you know that, and I never believed this until I understood it. You know how they say, like, if you're mad at someone, right? Try to smile. Yeah. And try to continue to be mad at something or try to continue to be upset. Dude, I do that, I do that with my kids. Yeah, it's it's actually really freaking hard to do. Yeah, it's really hard to Yeah, dude.

SPEAKER_01

Riley gets upset, and I'll be like, smile, look at me, look at dad, smile, and she starts smiling, and then all of a sudden, like, she's good. So dude, correct.

SPEAKER_00

So for the people listening, and I'm kind of if you listen to my Zoom call, you're gonna get a lot of information, but it's good for me. Three-hour Zoom call. But this is the same thing we're talking about right now. Yeah. So this was really

Family And Fitness After The Shift

SPEAKER_00

cool. Last night, I screwed up. I didn't really want to do any, I didn't want to work out last night. I ended up working out, but let me tell you how it happened. So we just finished dinner, Holland's at the Elliott's house doing some stuff with him. So it's just Orion and Britney and I. And I look at Orion and I mess with her all the time. I'm like, Orion, you want to go work out? Because we got the garage in our gym, and she's always no, no, no. She never, never wants to. Yeah. And if she does, like on the rare occasion, I kind of make her to or lead her to, she'll do her own thing and not work out with me. So last night I'm like, Orion, you want to work out? Just thinking she'll give me a know when I can be kind of a jackass. And she goes, Yeah. And I go, Oh crap, I didn't want to actually work out. So she goes and changes, and I look at Brittany, I put my excuse me, my shoes on, and I was like, I don't really want to do this, but like I'm grateful that she does. So now that she said yes, you have to. So we went out and she actually worked out with me, followed the same work. She's like, Dad, I want to do shoulders, back, and I think she said biceps. I'm like, cool, we'll do two extra.

SPEAKER_01

Did you go to the gym yesterday morning? Huh?

SPEAKER_00

Didn't you go yesterday morning? Yeah. I went twice. It's good for me. And then at the end of the workout, she's like, Dad, you want to go for a run? And I'm like, God. No. But I had to. I couldn't say how far is the run? Uh we just did like six hill sprints from like my house to the top where it flattens off. It wasn't just under a mile. Yeah. It was like after six of them, it was like 0.92 miles, but get the heart rate to 160, 170, let it drop back down some people. Yours was definitely higher than 160, 170. No, I could prove it. I got to a max of 166. Really? Dude, I'm a beast. Dude, even with your resting heart rate at 100? Uh it's only it was 85 this morning. It's getting better.

SPEAKER_01

We're blowing it up. But resting heart rate's 85, but yet working out heart rate's 160.

SPEAKER_00

But here's the thing, she would have never done that six months ago. Totally won enough. So it's like you start bringing everybody closer into your life. You start, you know, yeah. I mean, even Brittany said, she's like, I never thought you would be this way in a positive way. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And I never thought I would be. I never thought you would be. I never thought I could be happy. Dude, I never thought you'd be happy. I thought you'd always gonna be miserable. I never thought you'd go to church. Maybe. Yeah. From like six months ago, or because I've been here almost two years. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and I never really wanted to impact whatever people are going to, and they always tell me I need to. So yeah, it's pretty cool.

Why Tampa Hit Hard For Everyone

SPEAKER_01

Anywho, back to Tampa, because we were originally like talking about Tampa. And we went down this rabbit hole.

SPEAKER_00

But that's what Tampa was.

SPEAKER_01

Fell into this rabbit hole over here. That is exactly what Tampa was.

SPEAKER_00

Because I called this two months ago, and now I see it. Now I see it crystal clear. Because Andy's always, you know, our number one core value on all of our posters. Yeah. Yeah, this. This is like the fifth version of it. And everything on here has kind of changed, except for that one. Yeah. And this is a touchboard, so I'm trying not to screw it up. But I've never actually understood it. Because everything else sounds kind of good. Never quit. Discipline is freedom. Integrity. Honestly, none of those even matter. There's only one that matters. Because if that is there, like we should change this again. Yeah. And just have trust in God down the middle because everything else falls under that. Even being jacked, even mental toughness, even relentless growth. It all falls under that. Because all those are limited to by what you believe and what your faith is. If you don't have faith, you're just gonna be, you know, you're only gonna think you can be so jacked. You're only gonna think you can have so much mental toughness. You can only push yourself so dang far. But yeah, it gives you just a complete different perspective on everything. And that's what came out on Tampa. And everybody, and I saw a couple people walk out, so I don't know if any of them were my clients. Yeah. But everybody, I'm about three quarters through my list. I had more clients, you and I actually tied for more clients than anybody else, than anybody booked in our company. I have called every single one, and not a single person has been disappointed. Yeah. And every person has said, dude, to be real with you, I expected a lot and I got way more than I expected, but I didn't expect what I like what happened. That's what that was anybody.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, they expected it to have a perspective shift, but not that.

SPEAKER_00

Yes.

SPEAKER_01

Like, not that. They knew they were gonna get their life change, but they didn't know it was gonna be that. And that was crazy. I don't think, dude, I don't think I did. You expect that?

SPEAKER_00

No. I did it. We weren't. That wasn't even the plan for what happened at the end. No, the no the end. I had one guy, he's like, I just you know, he's like, Andy had a good amount of stage time, but I just I wanted a little bit more. I go, honestly, dude, uh, he had about 45 minutes more at the end, and the GT went a little bit long, and we just said, I don't know what the heck's happening, just keep letting it freaking go. Yeah. No, I didn't, I didn't, I dude. PT brought it home. Well, and that was the smoothest event we've ever done. And there's more people than we have here. Yeah, everything went super smooth. The timeline actually for once worked out. It usually never works out.

SPEAKER_01

No, we're using it. And moving all those speakers was interesting.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, we're yeah, usually adjusting stuff left and right, but like everything happened like just on time, like it was supposed to happen. And yeah, I've never I've I've never done my quote unquote follow-up call.

SPEAKER_01

I feel sorry for anyone who missed that.

SPEAKER_00

I mean, I feel that was intense. It was, you know what it was? It was Andy going from 90% going with God's mission to saying, screw it, it's 100%. Yeah. And then I mean, we had the follow-up meeting yesterday about exactly what the mission and future is gonna look like, and it was exactly that. It was like, there's no more 90. There, what did he say? He said, Oh, oh yeah, it was we all now have one coach and it's the best coach in the world, and you know, we've been looking other places, blah, blah, blah. Not to say that we're not gonna coach and learn from other people, but he goes, it's the Holy Spirit is gonna be the only coach that he has to guide him through it. I'm like, that makes sense. Yeah, I get it now. Six months ago, I wouldn't have got it. So it it just it all leads to everything. And here's the other cool thing.

Christian Men Need Fire Not Passivity

SPEAKER_00

Once you have convinced yourself that it's all true, you can no longer be a passive jackass. Because back to weak men, weak Christian men that aren't leading our freaking community anymore. So I'm calling some people out. Everyone thinks Christianity, and this is a fear that I had with Christianity, everything everyone thinks Christianity is passive, right? Yeah, love thy neighbor like I love thyself, blah blah blah. You gotta be nice to everybody, gotta love everybody. And that's all completely true. But here's the thing the perfect Christian man is supposed to live like Jesus, right? Yep. So I always go back to this because there has to be an intensity and a fire in your heart to accomplish big things. There's, and I don't remember exactly who wrote it. I need to start now, I need to start being able to plug stuff in and memorize and you know, get a little bit stronger. But there's the story where Jesus goes to the temple and just destroys everything. You know, he's wanting to take out the you know, they're doing a bunch of money crap in there, loaning money, laundering, I don't know, laundering, there's a prostitution. Like the Jewish temple is just a freaking cesspool of shit. So Jesus is like, I have got to destroy that. That's not what God wanted. So a lot of people relate to that. It was like, okay, he could go in, flip some tables, whip some shit up, and break some stuff. But a lot of people don't actually think about this. That was not a Jesus saw it and was like, oh, that's bad. Let me go break this real quick. That was a premeditated act. Because he made the whip. Because he, yes, he manufactured his whip prior to specifically for that. Yep. So he saw what was going on, he premeditated it, knew exactly what he was gonna do. And now that is like my mission and purpose, not to go in and destroy the Jewish temple. I guess it doesn't exist anymore, but if they build a third temple, we're gonna go there a different time. But, anyways, back on track. It's it's it's someone asked me this today, Dustin did. So if he's listening to this, appreciate your questions. What's my new purpose? Same purpose it is, just with a hell of a lot more intensity. Yeah. And a different, a different way. Because I've been four and a half years, five years now, and really before that, because even as like a GM and a sales manager, I was doing the same thing, coaching people. But like for really the last four and a half years, that's been like my dedicated life is helping people. I've helped people sober up, fix their marriages, save their marriages, make more money, this and that. And remember, Andy says this a lot. He goes, he realized in the car business that he taught a lot of people to make a lot of money, but not change their lives. I did the same thing. I've probably taught, I mean, just in the car business alone, before I got coaching with this company, I've probably taught 50 to 100 people how to make six figures. Yeah. Guys that are dumb and showed up and able to. Guys making 152. Here's the thing. When I was in the car business, all of them, the only thing I taught them was to make more money, drink fancier tequila, have a nicer house, and have a fancier car. Yeah. And still be broke at the end of every month. So I had to have a little bit of perspective with you know, clients with the Elliott group of changing that, which was like, okay, let's make money and let's, you know, have an awesome family, this and that, because I also realized like I chased money for a while and tightened up the relationship,

Sales Coaching As Problem Solving

SPEAKER_00

this and that.

SPEAKER_01

We had that conversation on the call today where you talked about you hate calling it objection handling.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, yeah, I did say that. I completely forgot about what my call was actually about.

SPEAKER_01

He actually is like, he says, I I hate objection handling. I know I always used to talk about objection handling, but it's not about ha handling objections. It's just friction. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

If if you're if you're objection handling, it's like you're trying to go to war with the customer. Jonathan stole that from me. Uh no, I stole that from I stole that from my own head, because that's put into manus and turned into something else. Yeah. So I can actually speak. But I mean that's that's really what it is, is like you're not handling objections, you're just solving frickin' problems for people. And here's the thing: most people, salespeople, not even salespeople, just people in general, are lost in their own ways because they dislike themselves, they dislike something about their family, their wife isn't as intimate as they want them to be, they're fighting at home, they're not connected with their kids, and and they blame everything else, everything in the world on why that's happening when really all you have to do is read, believe, believe in Jesus Christ as your savior, let all that crap go and realize that everything's a gift. And if it it's it's stupid to say this. I've spent 15 years in the self-development world, whether it's personal or I've worked in it, and I've tried to figure out that last little piece of like joy and happiness for so freaking long. I've read every Tony Robbins, I've read every little thing, I've made the money, I have the house, I have the cars, I have the freaking greatest family in the world. And there was just that little piece missing. Yeah. And I truly feel like I found it. And by putting that last piece of the puzzle in place, it like strengthened the puzzle in every different freaking area. Or like unlock something inside your brain. Yeah, maybe. I'm honestly trying to figure out what it is. Because I don't even feel like me half the time.

SPEAKER_01

That's why I said it unlock this part of your brain you never have, because you're a completely different person now. Instead of using like 5% of your brain, you're using like 100% of it now. I shared this at so I hate networking.

SPEAKER_00

Not hate, but it's like that's my biggest fear.

SPEAKER_01

You suck at it, that's why.

SPEAKER_00

I don't even suck at it. Once I get rolling, I'm actually okay with it. I'm just very nervous he's bad. He's bad. I was with him at NADA. Bad. Okay. For those of you that I've met networking, and we had a good experience, like once I drop a one in the comments. Drop a seven in the comments. Here's the hardest part of networking to me, saying hi. Yeah, dude, I didn't give a I I didn't even have a fear in Tampa. Yeah, I didn't care. Brittany even mentioned this. She's like, this was the best trip we've ever been on because I I'm a highly anxious person, or was yeah. She's like, you didn't have any like usually what happens is night one traveling, like it's just so much stress, anxious, airport, all that. Like night one, I'm usually a prick. She's like, you were fine the whole time. You were actually nice the whole time.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

That was a shocker.

SPEAKER_00

I think for the most part.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. I didn't get any rude comments.

SPEAKER_00

But what's weird is I'm not even freaking trying.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, dude. Like I'm trying to deliver a new leaf. I'm not actively like trying to focus on it per se. I mean, I guess I'm actively focusing on it, but I'm active, I'm just living it's almost like you're living out of your old body. Like killing off your old self. But there's you you you can't just do it secularly. You can't just do it like I mean, I guess you could. You could shoot yourself in the brain. But that's the only way to do it with a secular notion, without a faith there. Because without faith, you you hang on to that baggage. There's nowhere for it to go. It stays with you. So that's it.

Big Bang Doubts And Evolution Pushback

SPEAKER_00

Now let's talk about the Big Bang Theory. And he'll read another six months of books. Oh no, I've already done it. Already down that rabbit hole. No, I'm telling you, dude, it's like you you go down this. So I don't know, this will just be interesting stuff. People might want to hear it. It was like, how do you have so much faith? So this is trying to study like all the stuff I don't believe and how to, you know, why it doesn't make sense. So big bang, science, you know, all that nerdy stuff. We'll talk big bang and evolution. So it was actually cool because during my journey, I saw a little real snippet of Joe Rogan talking to I can't remember who. I think it might have actually been, I don't remember who it was, but Joe Rogan's podcast, he was talking, and he says, here's the thing, because Joe Rogan has also, you know, started to go to church, started to try to figure out his journey. I mean, dude, there's a ton of people right now. There's a lot. Theo Vaughn. Yeah. Uh Mark Wahlberg is Catholic. He does a lot with the Hollow app. Like, I mean, there's there's a lot of people that I never even realized. The one guy wrote a really good book that I read recently. He's he was a Hollywood guy. I don't know. Gosh, his story. I mean, he was doing some stuff. But he found, I can't remember his name, I should drop it later. But where was the one with this? Oh, yeah, Big Bang. So Joe Rogan says this says Christianity, if you're on the verge of Christianity and science energy, or whatever the heck it's called, science, there's there's one of two miracles you have to believe in. One is Jesus Christ died, resurrected, blah, blah, blah. That story. The other miracle is from something in the universe smaller than the tip of a pin exploded and put everything in the perfect place to make our humanity. And Joe Rogan goes, Yeah, I'm taking Jesus. Yeah. And I started thinking about that and I started digging deeper into it. And I started researching like how much proof and evidence do we have of the Big Bang Theory? Very little at all. I don't think there is really any. The biggest proof we have is Albert Einstein. Yeah. And the theory of relativity, which is still up until this date, not really disputed too much. So the theory of relativity shows that everything is relative in the universe and everything is growing and expanding at a you know high rate of speed. And then you go study the Old Testament, you're like, okay, I see how I could kind of put that in there, but I don't want to just kind of put it in there. I want to be, I want to be real with it. So Albert Einstein, when he was writing his theory of relativity, I want to say eight 1916, he published it, and for two years it stood. And people were like, amazing, this is cool. But he had a caveat in there that basically disproved Christianity, and he said he put it in there because he couldn't explain it and didn't want it to. So two years later, there was a Russian physicist or whatever study of science they're involved in. Not is it physics? Yeah, it would be physics, who actually found an error in the theory of relativity because Einstein had met had multiplied something by zero, and that's just at the time he basically came out and said, Yeah, because I couldn't explain it. I couldn't get that last little piece of the puzzle. He goes, Well, nothing can be multiplied by nothing, so that doesn't make sense. So they removed it, and that's when Einstein finally admitted and said, the only explanation to this is there's got to be some sort of creator. And then Einstein's, you know, trip to Christianity. In 2004, I believe it was, NASA did a sent out one of their probes or whatever, deep deep into the universe, and there's these heat waves that are going out that are pushing out through space, and it's how they prove that you know space is possibly expanding. Yeah. So NASA studies these and they start seeing that these waves are so pr precise. I'm talking like if they were one thousandth of a millimeter off, one thousandth of a millimeter cooler, one thousandth of a millimeter, I guess millimeter is not a temperature gauge, but like if anything of them was slightly different, the universe would implode on itself. The universe would implode if it was growing faster, if it was growing slower. The universe would implode if the stars and the and the planets weren't perfectly in line and in perfect orbit.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So even NASA, the lead astronomer for that, comes out and said, Well, for the God people, you've got better evidence. And I'm like, okay, so these guys that are highly educated with science are all kind of starting to point that direction. And if you actually look at a lot of scientists, did you know science, the term science? One means like anything that is studied in science is unprovable. Yeah. Because once it's provable and they're like, yep, 100% certain, it's no longer a science, it's fact. So science itself is all a belief. And it honestly takes more faith to believe in a lot of the science stuff. The Darw Darwin Darwinism, which is completely, I mean, that's been proven pretty much false nowadays by any sort of education, unless you're just believing on it to believe on it. Like, it takes more faith to believe in that because there's so much, there's so much mystery to it. Like, how does the world let's just say the Big Bang is true? And it may be, it may be a godly, that's how the Big Bang and God's expanding the universe. The millions and billions of stars and planets and everything, everything's in orbit, everything's perfect. And we've got this one little rock that's perfectly distanced from the sun, that has the moon perfectly distanced from it, that keeps everything in orbit and keeps everything natural, and we've got our atmosphere, and we've got all this that creates life. And we've tried finding life on other planets, and we may or may not doesn't exist. Okay, so that's unique as hell. But then how do we as humans, how are we so different from everything else that was created? Because if you go with Dar Darwinism, everything started from a single cell organism. Yeah. Okay, so a single cell organism created a double cell organism and so on and so forth, which led to eventually humans and dogs and cats and horses and flowers and trees and all that crap. Why are we so much different? And wouldn't that also say if evolution to that extent was real? And I think people and and creatures do evolve a small amount for their environment, but not these huge, like we did not come from ape monkeys. Yeah. We didn't come from tadpoles, like that doesn't make sense to me. But like, why are humans so dang similar? Like the only thing difference between us is the color of our skin. Like I know in high school we used to have the joke black people had the extra little leg muscle and that's how they jump and run. That's actually not true. Dang it. But the only thing really different between us is really the color of our skin. Yeah. But evolution would say the Eskimos, for example, living up in Alaska, shouldn't they be the most hairiest api ape-looking sons of bitches ever? Shouldn't the, you know, people that the the communities that have lived in Sierra Africa their entire freaking life, like, shouldn't they be very well adapted to deal with the heat? Yeah. Yeah, they should be. But humans actually suck. We are the lead, everyone, oh, we're the top of the food chain. Yeah, we are, only because one thing, because God gave us dominion over the animals and the plants to use for whatever we need. But other than that, humans don't deal with the cold well. We don't deal with the extreme heat well, we're not that freaking strong. We've got no survival skills in the water. F frickin' frogs can kill us. Like everything around us could if it was just if we didn't have the ability to think, solve problems, create weapons, create tools, humans would have been wiped off the earth a long time ago because we have no evolutionary advantage. Not one bit. So that just disproves evolution right there. Is one, why are we the only ones that have the ability to create, that have the ability, like why are our brains so much more developed than everything else? Wouldn't evolution say that we all kind of get to the same point? Disadvantage? Yeah. And we would just all be, I don't know, eating plants or cannibalism or some weird crap like that. Why are there so many different animals? Why are there like evolution would not go that route? It would go, okay, here's you know the human track, they're doing pretty well. Oh crap, bears are better, so let's start evolving everything into bears or into flowers or into trees, and we'd all be a bunch of trees with mouths that can talk. Like that's where evolution would bring us. But it didn't. There's such differences. Like, are you aware that you're different than a freaking tadpole? Okay. So evolution makes no damn sense. So then what is it? Well, a creator makes a little bit of sense. And what's crazy? It should go back to like our first couple episodes of our podcast. They're deleted. Not the first. The first like nine were good, and then like 10 through I think 17 or 15.

SPEAKER_01

You can see this whole well, you could have seen the whole journey, but you could you could still see the whole journey.

SPEAKER_00

You just you you get a lot of my you you don't get a lot of my anger there for a while. Which I still have pretty stern beliefs, but I believe it in a different way. So where was I going with this? Bro, oh yeah, I've always believed in creation, right? Yeah. Because what did I say early on? I was like, you know what we're doing? We're living in a freaking simulation where there's just someone playing some stupid game with us, and it's to make AI and blah blah blah, right? Like I've always believed something is controlling all this because there's too much randomness in the world for it not to be, and none of it makes any damn sense. And you're just you just I was blind. I was like, whatever, I believe something is like, why didn't I ever investigate that? Maybe I could have been happy 10 years ago.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, dude. Could have been happy 15 years ago. Like, geez, I'm an idiot. You've been putting you putting Britney to their and back the last 20 years.

SPEAKER_00

She had to go through suffering.

SPEAKER_01

The suffering of drawing. The suffering.

SPEAKER_00

That's great. I would have given up. I would have quit. You're an asshole. That's why I'm not gay. I couldn't have put up with me. What'd that shirt say you got? Oh, something the devil, but I whispered that's gay. What it what what is that? I don't know.

SPEAKER_01

I can't remember, dude. Something about the devil is trying to attack you. I can't I don't know.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, the devil's coming after you, and I it it's it's a saying that everyone has it just kind of turns it at the end instead of being a it's the same little the bracelet thing Andy used to give, the copper one. Yeah. I have one in my safe. Yeah, I don't have one. Because you weren't here soon enough. Yep. But yeah, it's the same thing, it's just funny. I thought it was funny. I wasn't gonna get it, and then I'm like, you know what? Screw it, this is funny, I'm gonna get it. Six months ago, I wouldn't have got it, even though I thought it was funny six months ago.

SPEAKER_01

He had this internal struggle in his head because he said he's gonna get it, and then he's or he's not gonna get it, then I'm like, dude.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I ordered it like five minutes later. I was like, screw it. But that's that's this thing is like where I was like, I don't care. Yeah, screw it, just do it. Dang. Want it. It's kind of funny, has a good message. Screw it, screw what people think, don't care what you think. Well, and that's another thing, is dude. You're not swearing as much either. Yeah, I've pretty much eliminated it. I've cussed a couple times on this when I've started to ramble, but yeah, I've almost got it taken out. I've just got to pay attention a little bit more. I'm pretty close. Yeah. It's just when you get when you start rambling, it's that's when it's when you're just going off the tip of the tongue.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

But trying to wing it, because we didn't plan for this at all. Nope. There's wingers. No, I kind of knew what it I wanted to talk about and where it was gonna

Staying Sane And Closing Thoughts

SPEAKER_00

go. Because honestly, I couldn't tell you a thing that's going on in the world. I have no idea. I think Trump might have nuked Iran. Who knows? Yeah, dude, I have no idea. Could have happened. Gas prices still high. Gas prices were better in Florida, that was kind of cool. Uh than Arizona, because we get our oil from the California pipeline. Thank you, California. You could just like earthquake and go away. So, yeah, gas prices were better in Florida than they were in Arizona. That's confirmed. It was humid.

SPEAKER_01

That was really humid. It was really humid. I had to get sticky at the gym in the morning.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah, sticky, and then just all day you're sticky. It's annoying. I don't know how you do it. So that confirms Arizona's the best state in the union. Unless you're a roofer or you work on the roads, like don't move here. That'd be bad. But if you got AC, you're good. Family's good, kids are good. Yeah, I don't know. I think the world's a pretty dang good place. Right now it is. And then you get on Twitter and realize that the whole world's burning. So stay off Twitter. Stay off Twitter and and TikTok. Elon, for a million dollars a month for the rest of my life, I will never tell people to get on Twitter again. Now I'm gonna blow up big, so you should probably take this while I'm cheap. I will support Twitter for a million a month. Yeah. I can be bought out. What do you oh shoot? What do you know? I just don't want to.

SPEAKER_01

And he's spilling water all over himself.

SPEAKER_00

Sorry if I broke your microphone.

SPEAKER_01

Nope, still good. Still good. It's okay. Okay. So step three. What was step one and two? I don't know. And now we're on step three. I feel like we need to talk about something else on this podcast. Dude, I didn't plan to talk about anything else on this podcast.

SPEAKER_00

I know. But I feel like there's something that I'm looking to say, something big, something inspiring, something that will change everybody's life. And I don't know what it is. Well then that's why we gotta shoot another episode. I disapproved the Big Bang, disproved evolution, proved the resurrection. Proved he has a soul. Proved that you can change. Yep. I don't know. I feel like I'm missing something. You need to talk. Dude, I don't got anything to talk after that.

SPEAKER_01

Alright, I'm done. We're done. Dude, donezo. Alright. Later, homies. E-O-N-E done. Peace. Done.

SPEAKER_00

Later. Goodbye.