On this episode of the Dudes and Dads podcast we talk to our friend Jake from Into the Light.
You're listening to the Dudes and Dads podcast, a show dedicated to helping men be better
dudes and dads by building community through meaningful conversation and storytelling.
And now, here are your hosts, Joel DeMott and Andy Lehman.
Andrew.
Joel, do you know what today is?
Andy, I think I do, but I want you to tell me so I can just, I can breathe it in.
I can experience it.
Season seven.
Season number seven.
Episode one.
Of the Dudes and Dads podcast.
Andy, this is a significant milestone.
It's interesting though.
People assume that we've been going for seven years and it's actually been six.
Right, because when you start season seven, that means you've been at it for six years
because season one is year zero.
Year one.
Year zero.
True.
That's how a timeline works.
That's how math on a scale.
I've never been good with math.
It's okay.
Andy.
Yes, we are.
Here we are.
Everybody, season seven of the Dudes and Dads podcast.
Glad to have each and every one of you along for this ride, these conversations that we
have.
This year, Andy, maybe we always look forward to welcoming new people on board into the
community and this will be another year of we just say, "Come on in.
The water's fine."
I'm excited.
Yeah.
I'm excited.
We haven't officially fleshed out the whole season yet.
We don't normally do the whole season.
In typical Andy and Joel fashion, given the fact that we're raising 100 children, managing
numerous both job and volunteer responsibilities, the Dudes and Dads podcast, it's a labor of
love, but it is a labor of finding the time to do things.
So planning some stuff, we'll get there.
It'll happen.
But you know what I'm sure of, Joel?
This season is going to bring back other guests too, like tonight's guest, actually.
Tonight's guest is a repeat guest.
You know, listen, we've talked about this.
There is a special hall of fame for the repeat guests.
I'm going to just bring them on right now.
This is Jake.
Welcome to the show.
Hi, Jake.
Oh my goodness.
Andy, that segue was clean.
Yeah, that's so great.
That was wonderful.
But no, I mean, we have talked about it.
My wife has been on three, four times now and last time she was on, she said, "You know,
NAF Downs has this like trophy that you get to have your neck plaque on when you've been
on so many times."
And so we need to do that for real, Joel.
We will refer to them as repeat offenders.
That's that'll be...
And so far, this is Jake's second side.
This is not three.
This is...
I can't...
We talked about the numbers.
Yeah.
Our friend Jake from Into the Light back.
We were just talking in Andy Diller research because sometimes we forget how long it's
been.
But Jake, your episode, you were on with us last March 21st of 2023, which in the show
notes, we'll link that first episode.
So if people are interested in going back.
But man, we feel like these days so much happens in two years.
So we think it necessary, number one, Jake, for you to do a quick recap on what in the
world was going on.
You were on the precipice of things two years ago with Into the Light.
I think number one, refresh us.
What's Into the Light all about?
What were you working on then?
And then we'll dive into where you guys are now 'cause we've got some new and exciting
things that are about to drop that we wanna share.
That's all the teaser I'm going to do because we're here to interview you and hear from
you.
So tell us, tell us, give us the background and then we'll get to today and all the good
stuff happening now.
Totally, totally.
Okay.
So when we chatted last time, our ministry had just released our documentary and basically
our ministry was just the documentary.
So and you know how kind of like, you know how like when an album or when a band makes
an album, they call the album the same thing as the band's name.
There might be a technical term for that, but like we did the same thing.
And sometimes now we regret it because we have like Into the Light ministries and like
it's a ministry we work with different authors and speakers to create video resources on
biblical sexuality.
So it's pretty broad.
There's a lot of stuff in there.
And then we have Into the Light, the documentary.
And that documentary is a teaching resource that helps people think about the issue of
pornography and walk through that from bondage and sexual sin to freedom in Christ.
So it's a resource that kind of straddles the line between a film and a counseling teaching
resource and hopefully is watchable and entertaining and convicting.
A lot of gospel.
And so we had just released that when we had talked with you last.
Basically kind of the whole of that last podcast, which I have to say, I had a lot of fun doing
it was basically, I was just talking about the process of making that film and a little
bit of some of the, some of just even in that first little bit the reactions we had gotten
to making it.
And, and yeah, that was, that was really, really fun.
So that's, that's what I was doing then.
Since then our focus has really shifted as a ministry, kind of our next, the next phase
has been for parents because we made this resource.
We basically made this resource and parents would come to us and be like, this is really
helpful for someone who's caught in pornography and needs the hope of the gospel.
How do I talk to my eight year olds or do I talk to my eight year old?
And how do I have the talk?
And what does like, how do I talk about pornography and all of these things?
And so we felt like the dealing with the issue of pornography with the interlight documentary
was really straightforward.
They are burning house fire.
You guys know this podcast for men.
It's like, this is an issue.
The next biggest issue is like, and I'm curious if you guys are willing.
I want to hear a little bit of your stories with this, most people, even my age are like,
yeah, my parents didn't talk to me about the, it's like my parents specifically did, but
most of my peers, their parents didn't talk to them about, about the issues really at
all.
And they kind of navigated this world of learning about sexuality, just through whatever they
found and often whatever they found was pornography.
And so now kind of that generation starting to have kids for the first time, really being
aware of like, I need to talk to my children about this.
And so that's, that's where we are right now.
We are, as of recording this, I think we might release it later.
Well, I'll say January 18th, whether this is before or after two major resources that
we're building will be released.
The first one is parenting and pornography roadmaps to raising children of integrity.
It's a nine part masterclass series with some incredible people like Dr. Moeller from Southern
seminary, Abby Halberstadt, Jonathan Holmes, Justin Wimble, early, all talking about this
topic.
How do you talk to your children about God's good design?
How do you warn them about the dangers of pornography?
How do you think about technology in the home?
How do you think about your own fear and terror when it comes to talking about this topic
or your current struggle with pornography?
So that's, that's a resource that we're building and like, I'm so incredibly stoked about it.
We filmed it with a live audience and did, did all of all that stuff is really cool.
And other series that we're releasing, cause we realized we're like, okay, you can, you
can go through the good biblical foundations in the theory, but then every single parent
is like, okay, I've got this in my home.
I have these phones, these laptops, these tablets, these gaming consoles, these smart
TVs.
Now do I think about the devices in my home and make them safe?
And so we built a tutorial set walking through all those devices, a video for each one, walking
through them, theologically knowing that technology is a good gift from God, but just radically
being like, and we're going to lock these things down.
So that explicit material cannot be accessed.
And so we really spent a lot of time researching and building that series to help parents really
within a few hours, be able to kind of take a handle on their home and make it safe either
the eight year old who doesn't know what they could find or the 13, 14 year old, who knows
what they're looking for to, to stop them.
That's a pretty big task to take on.
I mean, there's so many different devices and so, so how are some, how, how did you
research that to figure out, okay, what devices should we start with?
What devices, you know, cause again, each device is going to be a little bit different
on, on how you set that up.
Totally.
Okay.
It depends how nerdy you want to get as far as that's a production question.
You go as nerdy as you want to go.
Okay.
So basically here's your, here's your your scale.
On one end, you have abstractions so broad as make sure you cannot access explicit material
on a device to which we all say, amen.
And that doesn't help me at all.
I just know that that's true.
And then on the other end, you have click this app, scroll to this menu, tap that menu.
And that's really helpful.
That's really cool.
The problem with that is that's so expensive to make for your M song, your Samsung plus
your Huawei, you are like, it just, it gets, we're talking thousands of videos at that
and there'll be obsolete within about a month because as soon as Android or, or Apple iOS
or any of these platforms update there, you know, all we, all it has to do is have one,
like you, one setting move to another place, your videos invalid.
So what we basically did was we spent, I don't know how many miles we walked, like maybe
200 miles worth of pacing the neighborhood, trying to figure out at what resolution to
get these videos.
We basically tried to bring them as practical as we could, but yet still making them something
that will live over for for several years.
And then we did the research to figure out whether that was true.
And we, we, I think we got them at about where they need to be.
So we'll, we talk about one of the videos is just for phones.
And then we walk through those principles.
I'll be like, what, okay, what do you need for a phone?
Okay.
Well, you need a dedicated accountability software on the phone.
We partnered with Covered and I's on this project.
So we rep rep them tremendously because I think they're awesome.
Another one is accountable to you.
They're great.
And so we say, okay, the details of installing Covered and I specifically, we give more resources.
So in, in sort of our version of show notes, we point people to specific web pages for
that, but at least we walked them through.
Okay.
But more than that, what makes a good accountability system?
So you should be able to monitor, filter and block and do that at an app level with an
accountability software or a router level router level.
What's that question.
We built a video on that.
Okay.
Router level security.
So we walk through all of that looks like I, and there's at some point where I start
to glaze over with this, like, yeah, because in a podcast, this gets really tedious.
But we made these videos really funny, actually, at least I hope so.
There's aspects of them that are quite silly and hopefully entertaining.
Cause if we can you and tell you about your wifi router at the same time, then we win.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
So I think there is the, I know this is, you know, this is a fresh conversation in our
household.
We've, we've really struggled, I think with the technology on the side of when, when installing
things or doing things, it like just massively messing up our technology use in general,
like things, things don't work the way that they used to.
And you know, it's like this otherwise harmless app or thing that we were, we were doing no
longer works the way it, the way it did.
And a lot of it has to do with, yeah, getting kind of digging down the minutia of, you know,
I was like, gosh, I didn't think I was going to be, have to be like a tech security person.
And I think that's the, you know, talking with other parents, that's the biggest, that's
one of the biggest things, like the whole managing of all of this feels like another
full-time job, you know, and, and you're trying to be responsible with it.
And yet, you know, it's like, if I, if I have to like personally punch in a security code
to one of my kids, you know, to one of my kids' devices every single time that they
want to watch, you know, whatever, what, you know, something, something reasonable and,
you know, and all of that, that feels difficult.
But on the other, on the other side to say, you know, to say, well, we're just going to
take a hands-off approach or whatever is really, you know, it's like giving them a loaded gun.
Right.
So I think that's the, there's, there's a level of, there's a level of, of frustration.
There's probably been a fair amount of, of yelling in our home of, I'm so tired, I'm
so tired of this, not work, this not working the way I want it to, or, or, you know, and
things like that.
So I think that's the other thing of, you know, I would, I would just cheer on anybody
who's trying to give us access to, cause this topic comes up on the show frequently and,
and in, in Andy's world being, you know, professionally in technology all the time, I know to your
point, it's like, it's an ever changing landscape.
And I'm, I, it, it feels like the forces that be out there are, are evolving and changing
quicker than what we're keeping up with most, most of the time.
I'm wondering if you, and doing all this and kind of being in this space, like, and I don't
know the full details on it, but like, like policy, like adult content policies, like
state by state, like there's been like, like legislative things that have come out.
Well, and not to mention the, I mean, you right now are physically in Canada, so that's
even different from the United States.
Yeah.
So, so I wonder, like, if you have a general sense right now of where the battle, where
the battle lines are being drawn in terms of, of just safety, like policy or, you know,
around, cause I'm sure you guys have run into that or the differences in different places.
What, what is the push right now?
What is the hope policy wise, like to, to try to make these things, these things safer?
Cause I want to give people again, an accurate depiction of what's actually going on.
Cause I'm also, I'm also like, cause I think it can be like, wow, Oh, we've, you know,
it's now in the state of Indiana, there's this policy that's, you know, keeping, you
know, to keep children safe.
And I just have a, if you'll forgive me, a slight suspicion that it doesn't roll, it
doesn't roll out exactly like that is cause it's like the moment of policies that put
in place.
It's like, well, my, my kids are smart enough to get around that, you know, whatever.
So I just, if there's, if you would just have any kind of input on what those policy conversations
have been like, what, what state, state, federal government agencies are attempting to do or
not attempting to do.
And then like how that might actually affect, you know, what we're doing, what we're doing
right now is as parents, people, people on the ground trying to help her help our kids.
Totally, totally.
I can give a shot at some thoughts though.
Mostly not my wheelhouse.
Yeah.
Sure.
Mostly because I'll kind of explain why.
So my, the first thing would be, we're at a think a point now that gives me a lot of
sympathy for the parents, maybe a half generation ago, even like 10 years ago or so.
Cause I think about 10 years ago, you kind of had this idea like, Oh, you're not giving
your 16 year old a phone.
How dare you?
And now you can be like, yeah, I guess I got a phone till 16 and even the most granola,
like the most liberal parents kind of go, I mean, yeah, fair enough.
Right?
Like maybe not the path we take, but I get it.
It's the internet.
We know.
And so there's, there's kind of a generation that, that we, we felt the burn of just like,
you know, mind slush and, and, and Tik TOK and then, you know, all the things not throw
Tik TOK onto the bus anymore or less than anyone else.
But I think now the parents have an easier time, I think navigating this, the idea that
you would want to protect your kids from stuff online, even if that's just framed as like
predators online, it's just more palatable.
You see that reflected in the legislation, like the fact that it's only recently that
multiple States have, have really been pushing in the war they fight, which is a great tactic
is for like ID, right?
So Pornhub is allowed everywhere, but in certain States, you'll need to have more and more
sophisticated ID measures.
And then, so then Pornhub in particular being the biggest one, basically just says, you
know, with all love, screw you, we're not going to have access to in your state, which
to which I think most porn users go, okay, we'll use something else.
And that kind of exists at a resolution where like, as a Christian, I kind of say who cares?
Because for me, there's plenty of legal, explicit material that is easily used in a sinful way.
That is going to stay forever, right?
Like if you go on Instagram and, and well, don't scroll too far, you'll find people trying
to suck you onto their page posting as much as they can possibly get away with.
It's very easy to, to lust it in a Matthew five way after this content, even if it's
not technically pornographic.
And so it becomes just as much of a problem that has to be worked through with children,
both in a discipling way and then in a content way as well.
That gets into like, Christians just held to a higher standard, frankly.
And then you got to think about like, okay, what risks does my, my eight year old have
on Instagram?
What does that mean?
How can I view what's on Instagram?
Well, there's, there's ways you can do that with, you know, certain monitoring systems.
I don't know if that kind of answered your question, but sort of,
Well, I think that gets at it where, you know, I, I guess I just personally have not paid
very, very close attention to the policy conversations, mostly because to your, to that point, right,
that I don't, I kind of don't care.
Like there's, there's a, you know, I care in as much as let me back up.
I care in as much as it's going to help the general population in some places, some, some
ways.
But when we're talking specifically within faith community, it's kind of like, well,
the standards are even, you know, the standards go beyond even those explicit sites, right?
They go, it goes beyond, it goes beyond that to your exact point of, of things that are,
there's things that are healthy and good for the mind and the heart and the soul.
And there are things that are not.
And so, and the things that are not, there's plenty of things on that list that will remain,
will remain accessible apart from any governmental legislation or any sort of other, other policies
that are, that are put into place.
So yeah, I think that's a, that's a helpful, that's a helpful word.
Yeah.
We were talking to a, to a Christian or to who he was a Christian.
I think he was the principal of a public high school and they had gone kamikaze.
They had locked down their school really well.
They had done a great job because the school is a different environment.
You can go, you can be there.
But the situation you ran into really sadly was that there were students making their
own pornography.
And at that point you go, okay, as Christians, we can diagnose this.
That's a simple art.
And to some degree shocking, but also in line with our theology, like the, you know, the
heart hearts and they will find a way.
Yeah, exactly.
And so that becomes disciples that changes from tech questions.
It's still tech questions, but it becomes so much more a discipleship question, which
that's, that's not any easier of a question for sure.
Yeah.
With, I mean, you guys have obviously, I mean, over these last two years with developing
all the things that you have developed, I mean, that's coming from, that's coming, obviously
that's coming from a place of you're being asked, you're, you're being asked about these
things, that these, these have become kind of pertinent top line questions and a desire
for resources.
What's your general sense of, of parents out there today, how they're feeling.
Do they feel like they're gaining ground?
Do they feel, do they feel like they, or do they feel like they are at the tail end of
things?
So sort of being reactionary and then hoping for the, hoping for the best and kind of what
it feels like otherwise, just this tsunami of whatever in front of them.
Totally.
That's such a good question.
It really it's really, it's interesting because it all depends on the age of the parent.
So my, my I'm 27, my age group has a couple of, if they were married early, they got a
couple of five-year-olds kicking around.
And so, but yet me, like I, I was, I was right.
I just scraped into Gen Z.
So like I had, I think the best of both worlds, I'm a digital native, but I also like actually
touched grass when I was a child.
I just, just remember dial up internet.
So like, hallelujah.
And so a lot of them are not overwhelmed by technology personally.
They're like, no, I'm pretty comfortable with this, but only just a couple of generations
up.
And it's like, well, fair enough.
You, they only started encountering some of these things later in life, just because that's
just part of it.
And so I think with a lot of parents that I, that we've talked to, first of all, they're
all, I expected, you know, when we started getting into this, they were like, Hey, you're
going to enter the parenting space.
The amount of judgment and criticism you're going to get is incredible.
We have encountered zero.
Every single person has just been like, great.
I'll take any help I can get, even if I hate most of it.
And so, and it was just been really nice.
Actually.
Most people are super excited about it.
And I think people just don't know the landscape, like where to start.
I've even said routers a few times and I bet there are probably a lot of parents fair enough
to go router.
Was that the thing?
That was the thing I bought that one time when we got the wifi.
Right.
Yes.
That is the thing you got that one time when you got the wifi, do you probably also have
a router modem pack?
You don't probably don't know you have a router modem because they used to be two devices.
Now they're together.
Uh, Andy, you're laughing.
Cause you know this.
Yup.
Right.
And so, and so do I need to explain to you that a router and modem are two different
things, but they're technically probably it gets insufferable.
But what we want to tell parents is we've got you covered on that.
We have like, we have a video that's like 15 minutes long that we, our biggest thing
has been to be like, make this thing watchable and accessible.
We can, I can baseball pitch you all the information and that's so unhelpful because that's never
been the problem.
The information is always out there.
It's just trying to coalesce that enough or bring that together in a framework that makes
sense.
That's actually like paying, like you can actually pay attention to it.
Yeah.
Um, that's the big thing.
I guess maybe, I don't know if I'm answering your question, except that most parents are
just like, they're not aware there's a problem.
But most of the time when you don't, when you know there's a problem, but it's just,
you can't figure out what to do about it.
It just goes deal with it later.
Yeah.
Well, I think two part of the reason you've had zero like pushback on that is because
of the fact you said, Hey, pornography is an issue and you've exposed that you've, you've
showed that in the documentary.
And now you're saying, yes, I may not be a parent myself or whatever, or to have lots
of experience here, but I know what's going on.
Like I am in, I am in this age where I've seen this, I've grown up with most of this
stuff, but, and I know, I know what to do.
So I think that's, that's probably part of the reason that you've had some success, you
know, success in that where you're headed or not.
I don't want to say success.
We've had zero pushback on that.
Amen.
And like most things, if you just are somewhat humble going into it, like I love listening
to parents, give me their thoughts on this thing.
Most people are just, it's more, and I actually got a kind of a free pass because I don't
have kids.
My, my, the other half of the ministry, John Michael bout, he's got a whole bunch of kids.
So, but I get, I get like carte blanche and it was going to criticize me for how I could
be like, I don't know, but like, do you want help?
And then they're like, yep, great.
And I'm like, cool.
Yeah.
Jake, talk to me about this a lot of conversation here in this last gosh, in this last year,
last couple of years around, around purity, kind of purity culture, stuff.
And I'll show you how I tie this in because I, I think it touches on our, some, some unhealthy
attitudes that Christians, especially us in the kind of evangelical more, more conservative
space maybe have, have encountered, which it just feels like the backlash.
And me, I was in youth ministry for a long, long time and I, I feel like, I feel like
I probably ended my youth men right around the COVID times just in time to not feel the
full wave of, cause his kids were going into lockdowns and things like that.
And more and more on, I'm like more and more on devices.
I, I, my suspicion is that this has got worse, but the idea of, just really asking the question,
what, what is it?
Cause, cause you guys have such a theological foundation around this, which I think is just
so immensely helpful.
What is it about our understandings of sexuality in terms of what we're communicating to our
kids that has harmed us so much?
Cause, cause we have, we have the theological framework, I think the biblical framework
to address this very, very well.
And yet you've seen the outcomes.
You are well, well aware of it.
You're well aware of the struggles.
We know the, we know the percentages and all of that.
How have we wrongly communicated this?
How have we wrongly lived this out?
Because I think the proof is in the pudding that something has gone haywire here within
our, within our communities, despite the fact of the sort of the foundational theological
resources that we have.
I'm curious on your insight, what you've experienced in the conversations that you, that you have
had, because clearly, and this is my own, I'm doing my rant before my rant in a form
of a question, clearly, clearly for all our talk about, about purity, we aren't and are
not getting more so.
So what, what the crap is going on, man?
What is, what is the deal?
Yeah.
Well, well, okay.
I'm gonna do my best to kind of navigate that, but you've like kind of cracked open a few
firecrackers and.
Yes I do.
You're welcome.
I'm going to, there's going to be a soundbite or two that I might look back and go, eh,
that could have been probably articulated better.
It's really interesting.
Cause you said the purity culture movement.
I'm, this is slight tangent.
We'll go back.
I'm about to start my doctoral work in the area of modesty.
So yes, cause that's not controversial in the slightest.
No, I really hope the listeners pick up on this.
Like there's a tone of sarcasm there.
Anyway.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, please.
No, I'm very excited about this is this will come back.
I'm really interested in some of the ideas of, of beauty and beauty and shame and embodiment
and clothing.
Dirty, all these conversations in how we conduct ourselves publicly with the clothing that
we wear.
It's a really nerdy way of saying how the heck do you talk about modesty in any sense?
So that's going to be the next four years of my life.
One of the big pieces of that is the interesting phenomena of the late nineties, early two
thousands, that was the heyday of purity culture.
And that's the, I kiss dating goodbye.
And then sort of now we bounce a cup about a decade or so that can have two decades and
we have sort of the deconstruction side of things that's wrapped up in sort of the church
hurt pushback of all of that.
And so immediately if you got your head screwed on, you kind of go, there's, there's something
there.
There's something valid there.
Right?
Like I, yeah, the purity culture movement made some promises and again, the purity culture.
The many, many yeah, cause we're talking about it as kind of this monolith, which obviously
it was not at all in all various and all we kind of have is I think Andy and I think of,
you know, cause we're old there, there were just some distillations of that.
They kind of seeped through.
But me for, so I, we use that term, but for me to point directly at say like, Oh, it was
this organization or this church, whatever that doesn't exist.
That doesn't exist.
So just to be fair and clear, I guess, and it's hard to, because like, you know, let's
say, should we create the purity culture as a monolith?
The one, what you might be able to say is they promised basically just euphoria sex
in marriage for till kingdom come, as long as you just kept it in your pants and kind
of put your hands behind your back.
It was very simplistic.
Just obey these set of rules and be a Virgin, like Virgin, like Virgin, like that's the
thing that I heard again and again is virginity was the goal.
Virginity, virginity, virginity.
You see these chants in youth groups, like virginity is cool.
Virginia, you know, and it seemed like that was the, that was the goal.
Do you feel like I'm getting that reasonably accurate?
Okay.
100%.
And what's interesting is I've talked to certain people who were, who made a lot of mistakes
during that era and the things that they would get up to that.
That technically check the box.
And then it was very, but I've had some really interesting conversations.
I've read, I read the most interesting book called a return to modesty by Wendy Schelt.
I think it was.
Now she's a kind of a Jewish atheist.
So it kind of comes with that interesting perspective of like a lot of sort of religious
carry over respects.
So not, not atheist and like the snarky sense.
You wrote it in 97, which was the year that I came out and what she would talk about the
cultural pressure she faced.
Was something was unlike we face now.
So what she would have would, it would be genuine pressure.
So the tabloids would say such horrible things as how, like how to tempt out, like the tab,
the type of the cultural milieu was conversations about how do you tamp down emotional attachment
after a flank?
Like how do you get that pesky, emotional attachment?
Well, and it was, and it was rungy.
It was you sleeping around because you should be.
And if you aren't something wrong with you now, so that that's not a part of my experience.
I'm way too young for that when, but that's what the period of culture is reacting to.
Like even some of the sitcoms that were, that were at their heyday there was like the hahaha,
we all sleep together.
And this is very funny laugh.
My generation, when I go to the high school, I went to, I went to, I went to a few different
schools.
I remember I went to my, well, the first one I went to was I went to school for advertising.
So it was just crazy, coked out, tattooed up, mushroom taking creatives about as liberal
as you could ever hope for.
And they found out that me and a close friend of mine were Christians and that we didn't
sleep around.
Almost on the whole, they would just go, huh, you know what?
Fair enough.
Good for you guys.
Just and then when we talked to them, they'd be like, yeah, you know what?
We're tired.
We know this casual sex is vapid.
And they'd throw their hands up.
We, there was an, honestly, I remember very quickly, even if I wanted to sleep around,
I couldn't because most of the people I genuinely had a level of respect for the path that we
took.
They thought it was pretty cool.
They didn't want to mess around with that.
And that held true for my whole time in secular undergrad.
Very no, again, people will have different experiences for sure.
But my take is culturally people are like, and this is actually more, more the secular,
they're kind of just exhausted with the effects of the sexual revolution.
There's been a few books against the sexual revolution by Perry, I forget what, Louise
Perry.
She wrote a whole book, like there's a whole feminist movement who are basically looking
at a revolution being like, hey, this didn't do much for us.
proper kind of 60s, 70s.
And then Christians, we have our own subspace.
This is so much more than you asked for.
Christians have their own subspace of like the church hurt, church to deconstruction,
anti-purity culture thing.
My intuition is there's more bad actors in there kind of filling that fire of encouraging
people.
And I want to be sensitive to like genuinely sensitive to the people who felt the worst
of the period of culture movement and who have felt church.
I mean, there's no lack of that out there.
Genuine people have gone through so much.
But to kind of glamorize the deconstruction world and to make it kind of sexy to talk
about purity and to like dis-purity, dis-modesty, you're not building up a really robust biblical
ethic ground up.
And so maybe to try and land the plane, when I feel like we get to come at a really interesting
place right now, where most people are kind of like a little like storm tossed by this
whole thing where they're going like, I don't know if like that one Instagram reel that
like talked about how evil the purity culture was.
I don't know if that quite landed.
I'm really sure my parents who didn't talk to me any about this at all, God bless them,
but they weren't equipped to do this.
I don't think they did it right.
So the middle ground somewhere.
And can I can I can I pitch you my middle ground?
I want to I want to test this out.
And I feel really fortunate to have you because you're, you're in so many more broad conversations
because as someone who is developing resources, you're I'm sure it feels like you're in a
lot of broad conversations, right?
You're like, hopefully you have a sense that I think you do have like, kind of sample,
you're sampling a lot of different places at all given times.
And it's like, okay, what's the common themes?
What are the themes that are emerging, which I think is a really strong, that gives you
some confidence, like when you start hearing kind of these overlapping things, it's like,
okay, we're on the right track.
We're like, we kind of are gauging, right?
Here.
Here's what I'm curious about.
I'm curious about if the conversation is not about purity, virginity, all of that.
And this ties in, by the way, with our with sexual content consumption and all of that.
What about this word of chastity, like this of chasteness?
I am intrigued by this because it is a first of all, it is a more ancient term to use,
I think more biblical in a lot of in a lot of ways.
Like tying into this idea of, you know, and I'm recovering Wesleyan.
So the holiness thing is like, you know, important, important to me.
I'm team holiness too.
Yeah.
Okay.
We'll edit that out.
But a greater sense of a, to your point, like, and I think it touches on ideas of modesty
of like, okay, I have been given this gift of a, of a body.
The whole, the whole thing is, is a gift and it is to be stewarded and shepherded properly.
The whole, the whole thing.
And it's not, it's not just, it's not okay just to have a conversation about what do
what mechanically, what do I do or not do with my parts, the parts of my body.
Right.
And then, and then also, but then mindsets, mindsets attached to that.
So I just looked up the definition of chastity.
I'm always curious about like what the words actually mean.
I know it, but I want to read it from the, from the dictionary.
So it says the state of practice of refraining from experimental or especially from all sexual
intercourse vows of, you know, vows of chastity.
So I like the whole like experimental cause it's not just how far can I go before I cross
that line?
It's just the whole thing.
Cause cause Jake, the, the converse, the questions that we, that I have fielded as a youth worker
for years, that how far is too far, I think comes from that.
It's a troubling mindset.
I think comes from not a mindset of chastity, but a mindset of, of of elevated like where
virginity is the goal.
Like just don't do the thing, whatever, whatever else is, is, is second, third of tertiary concern.
Just don't have sex before you're married.
And as long, as long as you do that, that you're going to be okay.
But by the way, by the way, if, if you do fail in that area, God help you like then,
then what?
Right.
Cause that, and that's where I get, that's where my heart breaks so much for our young
people who are surrounded with this hyper sexualized stuff, all the, all the time, they're
going to, let's just be clear.
They are going to make mistakes.
What is the road back for them?
What is the path back?
And I just wonder if this chastity thing is like, if that's something chaste-ness and
I know this sounds like old, old timey language, but this chaste-ness is, is a route, is a
route back for them is a, is a way, is because it's a, it's a heart, it's a holistic heart,
mind, body, soul way of thinking of like I, I have a, I have a life to steward here in
how I'm presenting, what I am revealing to the world, what I'm putting out there to the
world and not just in terms of like my, my persona, but in terms of how I can honor God
and honor his people with this life that I, this life that I have been given.
And yes, to be, to be in the best place relationally that I can be with, with God, to be in the
best place relationally in a very related way with my future spouse, with my future,
you know, my future mate.
Like because I think for, again, for Andy and I who are just a smidge, a smidge older
than yourself, Jake, I, I know that going into marriage, going into marriage, I mean,
I've been married, let's see, 19 years this summer.
Andy, a few more years.
20, 21 this summer.
Yes.
So, and I know that when I'm guessing, I know it was, I won't speak for Andy, but I'm guessing
going in and back in those days, coming out of conservative Christian communities, going
into marriage, it was like, it's like, I don't really actually know properly how to think
about sex now that I, that I'm allowed to do it.
Going back to your point, you know, you're talking about how, like, what, what the crap
that we do if we make that mistake, because they're especially, and they get, and this
is going off on a whole nother tangent from what we originally brought, brought you on
for, but I think, I would say a tangent, but, but it's related to how people are now, right.
What they're pursuing and what they're looking for on the port on the pornography side.
I think this is what it's, I guess I'm just trying to connect the dots on that.
Like yeah, so I think the word chastity where you're saying, you're not saying just don't
have sex, right?
You're saying like, be like pure with your life, like who you are.
Like that also allows for more grace and forgiveness.
Correct.
Just like any other sin does, but because you're not saying, Oh, you know, I did the
ultimate, the ultimate sin, ultimate sin.
Whereas you're just saying like, here, you're saying, there is a path for you to take.
There's a path for you to take that is, that is God's best for you.
You may deviate from that path, but that path will always exist for you for forever.
And by his, by his grace, by his mercy, by the, by the things that are, that are offered
to us, we can, we can find ourselves there again.
Jake, I'm going to guess that in your work with Into the Light, I'm going to guess that
there, you have just seen the hunger for that.
Like for a, like, how do we come back from this thing?
I got in, I got in deep, I got in way over my head.
I found myself overwhelmed and, and probably in the darkest, you know, and by the way,
men and women alike, clearly the, the, the numbers are, are going up into the right for,
for both groups.
What hope have people found?
Cause I think it's just such a hopeless, it can feel so hopeless in light of what we're
talking about here.
Like if, if it's, oh, I've done the unpardonable sin, I've, you know, I'm an out or, and whether
it's in my, cause I think previous sexual behavior indicates further sexual behavior,
including, and that's the connecting the dots, including porn addictions and, and seeking
these things out online.
What, what do you have a sense that people like, what do they really long for?
Like what are they really longing for?
Where are they find, where are they finding hope?
What what can be done?
Like what really, really, really can be done.
Cause I think it, it just like, geez, you know, and I, I would say, you know, it's like,
do I just need one more video to like, there's a good, and I'm not saying that you're advocating
for that, but there it's, there's, we have, there's something that has to, that can be
done and you obviously, I mean, you're dedicated the past two years to this.
And more.
And so what, like, what's, what's possible for people?
What, where can we, where can they go from here?
Totally.
The biggest, the biggest it's kind of like, I'm going to give the most obvious answer
ever.
It's like, and this is just, I don't mean this glibly.
It just sounds so glib the gospel and it becomes, because when you're kind of touching on, it's
like this question of the unpardonable sin and lines you cross and how you react to that.
And then you have this product of pornography, which is just a Meyer that just sucks you
in and makes you live a life that feels like every, like your existence is unpardonable.
Then you have confusion.
And then the relational tension that things like pornography brings or in families, the
things that, um, you know, crossing a line would lead once that gets found out, you're
going to have all these pockets of issues.
At the end of the day, it's like the clarity that the gospel brings about your identity
as a human saying like, okay, all of this, are you a redeemed child of God?
Let's figure that out because like unrepentant sin might mean you're not, but if you're,
if you feel of the Holy Spirit working conviction in you and a desire for the fruits of the
spirit, then that's a sign that you're a Christian.
What does it mean to be a Christian?
I mean, you, you are positionally loved by God and that's like a secure reality.
And so, and then the gospel like, well, the gospel gives us an anthropology to expect
a degree of failing, especially from people who aren't Christians, but, but if anyone
says he has no sin, he deceives himself.
Right.
So that's like really like, and that, where do you get that?
I mean, that comes from good Christian community and good preaching.
So that becomes like starts to this becomes questions where I like on the biggest scale
possible.
I just say, get yourself plugged into a local church that preaches.
And that will, that will start to just a really, really good, a really good gospel, just start
bleeding into all these areas of life.
That becomes a slight, that's a true that's truth that I will proclaim today.
God takes me home when it comes to specifically these issues of pornography and, and yeah,
I don't, I think I've spent less time.
It's interesting.
So the next resource that we're probably going to build is a podcast series on dating and
pornography.
But I think right now I've got thoughts, obviously I'm a bit rusty on exactly how I would
muse through that incredibly complex process of two young, immature, adventurous individuals
coming together in this thing we call dating and making it to marriage with the existence
of pornography and all the temptations that come with two people that really like each
other spending time together.
Navigate that you guys were, I don't know how, I don't know Andy as much, but like you
guys were youth pastors, you know what kind of a dumpster fire and just life that has
to,
Well, I'll just say this boys, boys, boys are not doing well.
Boys aren't doing well.
They, they're not, and they're not dating.
And in the new digital culture it, they, they are getting shut down.
Like on the online culture, the online dating culture too, they're getting shut down.
You know, here's the, I'll, I'll, you kind of mentioned this, I think you touched on
this when you were turning, when you were right now, the content that I listened to
on, on sort of youth culture and what's going on, especially with young adults and young
people.
I'm listening to a lot of like classical liberal philosophers about this stuff because they
sound, they, I don't know how to say this.
They don't fit in with the rest of their crew anymore because they're, they're still pursuing
after truth and they're seeing these trends happen.
They're like, we've got to account for this somehow.
Right.
Turns out this sexual revolution thing it has not landed well and there's dead bodies
everywhere.
Right.
You know, our young men are not doing well.
Our young men are not dating.
They are, and, and a lot of that is connected to their increased use of pornography.
They're, they're getting sexual release through that and they're, it's kind of just making
them just not get out there into the world.
And then and Christian or not, like by the way, like I just, I think that's kind of in
general, there's not a healthy, that's just my perspective.
I really, really think that we don't have a good, again, this probably goes back to
this purity, chastity, whatever.
Like what does a holy relationship look like a godly relationship look like between a man,
a young man and a young woman who are trying to discern if they want to spend the rest
of their lives together.
Trying to decide if they want to fan, you know, all the family stuff.
Cause, cause the thing, the unspoken thing that we all know is like when you are entering
into those in the initial steps, the very initial steps of that relationship, you know,
when the dating thing or whatever, there isn't the back of your mind, it's like, well, we're
discussing whether or not what we're trying to do is navigate whether or not we're going
to have sex eventually.
Like like that's right.
Like that that's kind of out there.
And and yet, we like what happens in the meantime?
What happens before all of that?
What how, how is the relationship invested in, in the meantime, knowing that more than
likely both of them are engaging with, with pornographic material in the interim and,
and wow, to sort of like help them get along, you know, while they're developing this relationship,
which just is crazy.
That's so, it's so, so hard.
Yeah.
My sense of it too, is like, you know, you have you have something like maybe the transgender
movement, which most reasonably solid Christians can look at that hopefully with a good sense
of if sadness and compassion, but just go, no, like, right, right.
Pretty straightforward, God created men, God created women.
But what we don't realize is how much of the philosophical presuppositions that led to
that bleed into just the day to day life.
Right.
To have these things of like, these transhumanist layers of like the online me is just as valid
me as the embodied me.
And so that's, that's the, that's a snarky way of, or that's a fancy pants way of just
saying, y'all spend too much time online.
That's glib.
But like what that, what that communicates about what it means to be an embodied human
being, it starts to devalue that as just to create it.
Good.
And then you have like the only way I can make sense of these categories.
And the only clarity that I've been able to bring to all of them is to really shift into
like kind of Catholic, natural law language, just, or just creation norms of like, look,
you were made a male or a female for like in the image of God as equals for a purpose.
Why are you different?
Why are men and women, men and women, there's only one tell jubile reason.
And that is to form a family unit for the purpose of creating children.
And like, that sounds callous.
There's a lot more beautiful ways of saying that, but that adds an intelligibility to
this project.
And it's like, and then you start, start spinning that off and to be like, okay, what's the
purpose of sexuality.
It's like, it has its only, and like, again, this is getting so abstract and so much of
our mission is to take abstract.
Dude, I've read so many Catholics last few years, but is to take these conceptual categories
of what the very purposes of sexuality are finding their clarity and tell us in marriage
for the purposes of unity, covenantal frameworks, procreation, and then make that simple and
sing.
I think that's something that just goes, oh, that's really beautiful.
I'm not just trying to scrape the best parts before marriage, but if you can, and this
is, it's hard, but if you can get, and you can, so there's two ditches here.
One is to simplistically go, tell the youth the right things.
And the other thing is to throw your hands up and say, no one gets it.
And that's not true.
There are 16 year olds who can look you in the eye and go, you know what?
I really want to be married.
And if I can't be married, dating's foolish.
I want to do this properly.
And they, they square their shoulders and give it their best shot.
Like God bless the parents who, who worked hard to get them.
But it becomes to, it comes, I guess maybe my answer would be, it comes from my job and
the jobs of the pastors and leaders is to really understand, read some good books to
understand the, the, the current center shaping the culture.
I mean, have you guys read, or you've heard of rise and triumph for the modern self by
Carl Truman?
Yeah.
Yep.
Love that book.
Yeah.
I think it's, it's really interesting to read these books that help us understand some of
these ideas of like, like, why aren't people dating right now?
And so, well, there's 101 really, really scary reasons.
And then presenting a compelling reason that a 16 year old can go, I can sign up for that
life.
Yep.
That starts to give them the reasons why you would ever like, because if it's just pleasure,
if it's just like, look, sex is to feel it, then yeah, you try and chase as much of that
as you can before marriage and get the rest of the goods afterwards.
It's not complicated.
Just let me know what I can get away with before God.
And I'll get as much as I can.
If that's your framework.
And so the framework to go like, like I get all the straightforward stuff of saying, yeah,
man, God made a beautiful thing.
That's really painful when it's not in marriage and getting someone to sign up for that.
And then saying, all right, also, let's have a good, a good theology of sin.
We mess up and let's bring this into this.
That was a bit of a word salad, but yeah, it was great.
There's books on this and this is a podcast, you know what I mean?
Yeah.
Well, with, with this into the light work that you guys are doing, it's just so important.
What, what are you like when we talk a year from now, what, what do you hope that you're
telling us a year from now about outcomes, achievements, impact?
What what's like, man, what's your, what's your dream and all of that?
Well, our, you know, we're a ministry.
We have a vision.
Our vision is to see a generation of Christians who love God's design for sexuality and are
equipped to face every form of sexual brokenness.
And so in a year from now, I hope to tell you about maybe some other, some resources
we got on the pipeline, but with regard to these parenting resources, I just hope to
give some fun stats that just say a lot of parents have been able to watch these really
amazing teachers that we've brought together to teach on this.
And I hope to get people just be like, Hey, I made my home safer.
And I actually think like, I'm very sure my seven year old hasn't discovered pornography.
And I hope he can actually make it maybe to 13, 14, 15 before he ever has encounters it.
And we've been talking to him.
He knows what it's going to be when he encounters it.
When he sees it, he'll go, that was the thing mom and dad were talking about.
And I know what I do.
I shut it down and I know I can come to mom and dad and I can tell them I saw something
and I know they're not going to yell at me.
And like they have a script that gives to them.
These things are things that take time.
They're messy.
They're hard.
But if I can have some of those stories, I will be praising God because like, Oh man,
just a vision of a generation of kids who can start, who can get into the dating process
and say, you know what?
I actually haven't seen any porn.
And I don't know if we talked about this.
That's my story.
So my mom, I don't remember a time where covenant eyes wasn't on my phone back in the day, about
15 years ago, it was a glitchy piece of software.
And I loathed it.
Listen, gentlemen, I had hermit crabs and I wanted to research those hermit crabs.
And I was researching away.
And then the word sex was on those websites and covered has blocked it.
And I took my laptop to mom and I said, mom, they blocked my hermit crab website.
And my patient typed it in.
I'm sitting there.
It's 12 year old me.
It's huffing and puffing.
I needed this stupid.
I hated coming to so much.
Now we're partners with them by the grace of God started realizing 12 year old me, 11
year old me was annoyed.
14, 15 year old me got it.
I started going, okay, I'm older now.
I'm old past puberty.
I understand why.
Cause I didn't, I remember talking to my mom going, why do people look at naked bodies?
It makes no sense.
We started going in.
I started going, all right.
Yeah, I get it.
Mom's been pretty clear about what this stuff is.
I know I can talk to her about it.
I'm going to avoid this stuff by the grace of God.
You never got hooked on pornography.
And I know from, from working with guys who've struggled with pornography, like we're, I
mean, accountability groups, discipleship stuff.
It's just, it, their lives are hard.
It's harder to just do.
They get intrusive thoughts, everything that comes along with it.
It's a, it's a more difficult road.
And my life is significantly easier because I don't have quite the same set of things.
I'm sinner saved by grace like everyone else, but I really hope more people get to have
a story similar to mine.
And I, and I hope parents can go to sleep a little easier, not knowing that they're
perfect, not knowing that they've done everything that can be done, but going to sleep going,
I actually locked down my house properly.
I've done, I, before God, I've done the best I can.
And I've actually done a lot and sorry, I'm, I'm ranting guys.
You got it.
That's good.
The best part, the best part about this tech series that for me, which we didn't know going
into it, you can do it.
Like you can, you can lock your house down to a degree of radical safety.
It's actually possible.
It'll cost a little bit of money with some, some routers and some accountability software.
It takes some time.
It might involve chucking a device or two, although we try to avoid that.
But the end of the day, you can go to sleep at night knowing if sexually explicit material
comes into this house, I'll know about it.
And I can have gospel centered conversations as a result of it.
That's one pillar.
The other pillar is, is talking about your children from a young age, about, about embodiment
and God made our bodies good.
And that men and women are good and all these things.
I'm excited that this stuff is possible.
And I'm, I'm really, I'm hyped about this.
Awesome.
Yeah.
I, I really appreciate your, your passion and what you guys are doing with, with the
project overall, not just the documentary, but you know, the documentary.
The documentary was amazing.
I watched it when we had you on the first time.
But not just that, but the stuff that you're doing now to take that further, you know,
cause like you said, it's great to bring awareness to the, the epidemic, the pandemic, whatever
it is, the, the pornography that's out there.
But now you're also able to say, this is what we're doing to help parents and families have
this conversation and what do we do about it?
So yeah, I really appreciate the work that you guys are doing in this ministry.
Yeah.
It's a, it is the Lord's work.
It is important.
And you know, I don't, I don't know.
I just think you, more and more people I think are being, and I'm glad to hear kind of as
you've outlined, I think more and more people are open to this conversation.
Some of our more conservative communities, you know, boy, oh boy, it, it feels, it feels
a little, I know some people cringe about it, but I will say, I think those days are
behind us more and more.
So like we're, it's just so blatant in our face.
Eventually we all have to throw our hands up in the air and look up to God and say,
okay, help.
Like we all need help with us.
We really, really do.
We can't just, you know, say, well, never, never, never mind children.
It's like, well, the stats don't agree with you.
It's, it's, it's all of our kids and we need to keep them, we need to keep them safe and
prepare them for things as best as possible.
So I'm grateful for you guys and you're doing that.
That's good work, Jake.
I'm grateful.
I'm very grateful.
I'm grateful that like, you know, I mean, there's a lot, there's a lot of things to
be grateful for the people, the people, the men and women who speak in this series are
incredible.
I mean like Abby Halberstadt.
I mean, there's probably, I doubt many of your listeners because this is for dudes and
dads.
Abby Halberstadt has written a couple of books for moms.
Dude, Emma's for Mama slaps.
It is such a good book.
Like I was so, like we filmed with her, right?
For this series.
I read that book and I was so encouraged by it and I'm not the target audience, even a
little bit.
But we just got hurt just walking parents through this issue.
I'm just, I'm really excited about that.
And like, every chance I get, I shout out like our donors, we've got a team.
I mean, these things cost, I mean, literally hundreds of thousands of dollars to make and
people just believe that this stuff's important.
And we've got a whole team of monthly donors and some one-time supporters who like just
want to see this stuff happen.
So something I didn't say is January 18th, these all come out and they're all free.
So you can go into the light ministries.ca and you can just immediately start watching
all of this.
Just yeah.
And we hope everybody listening to this will just absolutely help support this stupid business
model that you have set up that just makes no sense this side of heaven, Jake, what in
the world?
But clearly you're out here to help people and we're grateful for that.
Well, I'm enough of a capitalist.
To help me that sometimes the nonprofit route was the right choice or not.
But I mean, we're in this now and the reality is I'm so grateful because sometimes we'll
get messages from young kids, like from young kids who just go like, "Hey, I never told
anybody, but I found the doctor."
So one of the cool things, we've got a really great online team.
All of our social media was viewed just under half a million times last year.
And that's kids do scrolling TikTok who see David Platt and go, "Hey, I know that guy."
They go, "Oh, he's talking about pornography?"
Into the light.
And then they go watch it and they don't have to tell anyone and they should, but you're
15.
You can talk so much, but they start getting some of those gospel steps.
This is for more for the old documentary.
I'm very thankful.
I'm so thankful we were able to make that resource free for everybody.
That's so awesome.
Yeah.
So you mentioned January 18th, this podcast will come out two days or on Tuesday just
after that.
So it'll be, yeah.
It'll be awesome.
Fresh.
Fresh off the presses.
Well, hey Jake, obviously we can't let anyone leave our show before this final segment.
Now it's time for dudes and dads pop quiz.
Oh yeah.
All right.
All right, Joel, you can go first.
We're going to go first.
So Jake, these are questions that you can't prepare for.
They're random.
They're, they're just, they're all over the place.
And we'll, we'll, we'll see what, we'll see what happens.
So my first question to you, Jake, for those of us living down here outside of Canada,
what do you feel like Canada's finest culinary contribution is that we, that we don't know
enough about down here?
Oh my goodness.
Not even close.
Poutine.
That's the most Canadian thing you could have said.
But here today, you Americans would think, God bless you.
You would think that you had the market cornered on the most calorie laden, it's not even close
as Canadian crush poutine that like all those fries and the cheese curds, it is beautiful.
It will put you into cardiac arrest.
It is one of the handful of things that will make it into the new kingdom.
I'm so grateful.
You heard it here first.
Okay.
Love it.
All right.
I'm going to hunch down when we get to heaven and see if we can have something together.
Yeah.
Which talent would you like to most have that you don't currently have?
Ooh, that's really, really interesting.
I'd like to paint.
Is that a talent?
Oh yeah.
I don't have that talent.
Yeah.
But I want to grow.
I want to top you guys in 20 years when I get a spare minute.
I want to learn how to paint, but right now I would be a disaster.
That was fun.
You know, good cup of coffee, just painting.
That's good.
My next question for you is Jake, what book should I be reading right now?
Anything that any of the Jeeves and Wooster series by PG Woodhouse.
Do you want me to tell you why?
Would I do?
Please.
I'm going to pitch you guys on this.
I could have given you so many more holy answers, but we're going with this one.
So PG Woodhouse was a humorist in the early 20th century.
He was a contemporary of like Chesterton, kind of a lot of the guys.
And so he wrote these series of very stupid novels.
The Jeeves and Wooster is just the collection.
It's a category and they have all these different things.
Joy in the morning is the best one.
It's the funniest.
The plots are irrelevant.
It doesn't matter.
It's the writing.
He is his command of the English language is so funny that, and the best way to do this,
if you guys are audio bookers, if you're not become it.
Stephen Fry, you can buy on audible.
Stephen Fry has the entire Jeeves and Wooster collection on audible.
And Jeeves and Wooster, so Bernie Wooster is sort of this late Victorian, not even really
existing, but this guy, late Victorian noble guy who has way too much money.
He just has all infinite money.
It doesn't matter.
And so he lives his life and kind of like doing the most ridiculous things ever.
And he's like a really well-bred guy.
He went to Cambridge, but he's kind of an idiot at the same time.
And Jeeves is his butler, who's a genius and is like renowned the country over as just
like this brilliant guy.
And they're these silly and all the plots are like, literally he accidentally gets engaged
and has to figure his way out of it.
Or like he can't, like, he just like, doesn't want to pay it.
So he has this whole caper.
They're silly.
They're light.
They're so stinking funny.
And I haven't, there's nothing that can pull me out of a funk faster than just nonstop
giggling at Jeeves and Wooster by PG Woodhouse read by Stephen Fry, get it on audible.
I should get a referral link for that.
I recommend it.
I'm going to say right now that we've I've asked this question frequently.
Yes, you have.
This is, this is the best answer to this question I've ever gotten.
The best answer.
Go read it and then get back to me.
Yeah.
Cause I say best answer because it's also the most, it was the deepest dive and the
most unexpected.
So I'm now like, I have to go look into this cause I'm, I'm captivated Jake.
Okay.
Andy, next question.
I could have been dumb and just told you to read like Thomas Aquinas or something.
I would have rejected that answer wholeheartedly.
So, all right.
So we know that you have had a great job right now.
Your job is doing this ministry and producing this, this stuff for, for lots of people.
And we appreciate that, but what is the worst job that you've ever had?
The worst job I ever had.
And this could have been a temporary job.
This could have been a one time job.
Anything that you're getting paid for.
Yeah.
That you received.
Well, maybe not.
Maybe, maybe we're, maybe we're, there's a volunteer job that, that went wrong.
That could also be the case.
Here's the answer I'll give.
I I'm a nerd.
I'm an artist.
I hand wavy stuff work, but I grew up on a farm.
So like I can, I can do some serious farm work.
That doesn't mean I like serious farm work.
So there was a season when we had a calf on the farm.
There the mother, I forget what exactly the situation was, but some yucky, lucky young
lad was volun told to bottle feed this calf every, every morning.
And Oh, doesn't your heart flutter at the adorableness of it?
No, I little old me had to haul this massive bottle at the, at this like 220 pound calf
is trying to run me into oblivion as I'm trying to like bottle feed the thing.
As is yes.
Andy has raised a lot of calves actually.
And I feel like he's really connecting with you.
I am.
Well, it is the very cutest thing.
You know, the baby it's the bottle.
I absolutely hate it too.
Since then we've got, we've got bottle broken calves because we don't, we just, I hate it.
He's like no more.
No, not only that, but it's expensive.
Milk replacer is like $80 a bag.
Holy smokes.
It's ridiculous.
Okay.
No more milk.
Honestly, if it was one calf on the off time, I would probably love that now probably will
be had better things to do, like play Minecraft or something.
And at 10 o'clock in the morning, that was not my, no, no.
Yeah.
Jake, my final question to you again, for those of us that are we, we Americans down
here in the U S Southern Canada, the South of the Canada.
Where in Canada, where in Canada do I need to take my family sometime on a, on a family
vacay?
Where, where, where should I be going?
You're going to go up through Detroit.
I like the start of this already.
Great.
Yeah.
And then up to Detroit and you're gonna keep going through, through Sarnia up to Hamilton.
You're going to go past Hamilton into the Niagara and visit me for a little bit.
Love it.
Thank you.
You're going to, you're going to back to, we're going to get coffee.
It'll be great.
You're going to go back track back through Hamilton and you're going to head up to another
four, another three hours up to Toba Moray, Toba Moray, Canada.
All your list.
How do you spell this?
T O B E R M O R Y.
It's pretty strict.
It's not Toba Moray, Canada.
The hiking up there.
It is the most, I beg your listeners, Google it.
Gorgeous, glass clear lake, massive rocketing of cliffs, just the coolest.
Like and then the actual town of Toba Moray is this adorable little folksy town with all
these boats and stuff like that.
I can't have more than a thousand people.
And then right in the big harbor, if you're lucky enough, you can do out there, you can
take tours.
There's a massive shipwreck.
That's so huge shipwreck that sunk in like 10 feet below the surface.
So if you're, if you can maneuver your way over there, you can dive it and just like
go down and swim.
It is, is super, super pretty.
Toba Moray, Canada, 10 10 recommend.
All right.
The only complaint that I have with that is I don't just want to get coffee with you.
I want to get some poutine also.
So we'll make it work.
I got to deal with it.
All right.
My last question, I'm going to stick with the Canada theme.
All right.
Okay.
I wasn't going to sing, but our home man, that's all I know.
I get home and native land and then I black out the rest.
But anyway, okay.
All right.
So every land has every land, every place that I've ever been, you know, in the United
States has that one, like really, really odd thing that everyone is like, you either need
like need to see it or not.
Like the biggest ball of yarn, right?
Or the biggest boot or the biggest chair.
What is the weirdest, strangest, like sightseeing thing in Canada or just in general, like something
weird and strange.
Cause we, we down here, we believe that there's a lot of weirdness up in Canada.
So we, I just, we feel like there's something up there that we don't know.
So here's the problem.
Here's the problem.
That's a very American question.
I'll tell you why.
America goes, Oh, us weird like this.
I mean like we have Portland, we have Detroit, we have New York, we have Dallas.
We're America, the rest of the world things, country, country, country, country.
So I'm being, I'm being a little bit, sorry.
Canada is as diverse city to city, place to place as every part of Canada is.
And so it's like, it's funny because like, and this is not good, but like there are places
in the deeper part of Southern Ontario that will run Confederate flags behind their diesel
trucks.
Wow.
You're not prepared for that level of subculture.
Wow.
Alternately the, like the Jamaican population of Toronto is crazy.
There's a huge, massive subculture of like Jamaican hybrid, Jamaican infused.
It's really, really interesting.
Then the, where I'm from is the Niagara, upper Niagara area is, is Dutch Mecca.
So after world war II, so many Dutch immigrants came over here, but it was really influential
and liberating the Netherlands.
And so you come over here and you have all these Calvinistic Dutch performed churches
with like six foot nine white people on every corner and like, like me, less, less than
ballpark, but like blonde blue out over here.
And so all these little oddities are just, yeah, Canada's Canada's a great place.
So that's a cool thing.
Awesome.
Well, I, I I've been, I've been there once.
I went to the Niagara falls actually went up through.
Yeah.
Probably drove right through those towns you're talking about, but yes.
Yeah, that my first trip into Canada was illegally on a canoe.
That's all I'm going to say.
So yeah.
Well, well Jake, we, you've successfully passed the dudes and dads pop quiz.
Well done Jake.
And we, we thank you so much for being on the show today with us.
Yeah.
We're going to make obviously all of the current past into light content easily accessible
on our show notes over at dudesanddads.com.
Hey everybody.
If you've got ideas for shows or you've got questions or harsh criticisms, we'll take
them all.
Yep.
Dudes and dads podcast@gmail.com is a great way to shoot us an email if you'd like, or
head over to dudesanddads.com to see future episodes, past episodes, present episodes.
We have a time machine over there.
It's amazing.
And if you like to support things, you can support our show by going to the dudesanddads.com/support,
where you can become a Patreon or PayPal or all of that other jazz.
Send us your money.
Hey everybody.
We're so glad to be starting off on season seven.
We look forward to the coming year.
Until we see you next time, we wish you grace and peace.
Peace.
(whip cracking)