Transcription
I was raised in a very non-religious house. I would call it an anti-religious house. My mother was a Mexican Catholic who hated the Catholic church in the way that so many Mexicans get angry at the Catholic Church, but still exercised Catholic practices, right? She still had Catholic guilt and she still made sure we went to church on Easter and Christmas, that kind of stuff. So, but she was like really opposed to organized religion.
My dad, Viet, my stepdad was a Vietnam vet who also came back and basically was like, "God doesn't exist. He's not real. After what I saw in Vietnam, none of that shit's real." So, I was raised in a household that that taught myself and my sisters, if you believe in God, you're weak. If you believe in religion, you're weak, right? You're stupid. It's the opium for the masses. You know, you're going to be ignorant your whole life if you actually believe in some kind of religion. So, at 8 years old, that was the message. That was the lesson. So, I'm not I'm not going to be stupid. I'm not going to be weak. So, religion must be wrong. So, I was just paring that [ __ ] all through my like young adult life.
I joined the Air Force at the Air Force Academy at 18. Mhm. Um, my first year at the Air Force Academy, there's a guy that lived next to me, his name is Meredith Jessup, and uh and Jessup was I think he was from Alabama, African-American guy, big on big Jesus-loving American, right? And I treated I treated Jessup like [ __ ] all the time. It's like, "Don't you know you're stupid? Don't you know you're ignorant? Don't you know it's just it's it's, you know, the opium of the masses?" Just paring all this [ __ ] to him. And for a whole year, this poor son of a [ __ ] lived next to me. And for a whole year, this guy never like in my in front of me at least, he never cracked. He never fought back. He never argued with me. He never did anything except just show patience and forgiveness and love and his own opinion.
By the end of probably six months, I was like, "There's something to this Jessup guy." Like, we didn't call each other by our first name. Like, there's something to this guy. Like, how how is he so kind? How is he so friendly? How can life happen to him all the time, right? He's also trying to figure out dating. He's also trying to figure out life at the academy. He's also passing and failing tests just like I am. But he doesn't seem to be like nearly as volatile or dynamic in his day-to-day as I am. What's this guy doing different? I was like, could it be his faith? That seed, that seed stuck with me the entire time I was at the academy. And I just I started observing people who were Christian, people who were Mormon, people who were Catholic, people who were like devout in their faith versus people who were, you know, culturally part of their faith, cultural Catholics, cultural Jews, that kind of thing. And I kept seeing this trend where I was like, these [ __ ] people of faith are like stable and the rest of us are less stable.
Fast forward to I graduate. I graduate and one of my closest friends, a guy named Ian Slasnik, um gets married right out of the right out of the Air Force Academy, which is to me absolutely insane. You go four years without women and then three months, idiot. Good. More for you and me. Three months after you graduate, you lock yourself down to one of them. I was like, that's insane. Oh, statistically, it'll be a few years. But uh but I wanted to do something really special for Ian's wedding present. And Ian was one of those men of faith, those stable, like God-fearing men that I that I had been with for four years, a close one of my best friends at the Air Force Academy. So I was like, you know what? I'm going to I'm going to read the Bible. I'm going to journal my way through the entire Bible and I'm going to give that to him for a wedding gift. Right? So I was like, I have 14 months to do this. Let's make it happen.
So, I actually, this is, as stupid as this sounds, cuz I was I'm still artistic in my soul, I learned calligraphy so that I could write him a journal in calligraphy, journaling my journey through the Bible. And that's what I did. I built it for him and I wrote it for him and I gave it to him on his wedding day 14 months later. And it was in the middle of Psalms that I that I took Jesus into my own heart that I was like, "Holy shit." Like, I I am convinced now. I see what this is. I see God as the perfect or Jesus as the perfect propitiation for our sin. I see why I believe what I believe and how I believe it wrong and and I believe in Jesus Christ. So, I was saved. It just happened like that. It I mean to you it sounds like it just happened to me. It built up. It was a journey through the Bible, right? Hearing God's voice and taking it to prayer and and experiencing it myself. Um, and I gave that journal to Ian on his wedding day and like he flipped through three or four pages, heard the story, like started crying on his wedding day and gave it right back to me and said, "You can't you can't give this to me. Like, this has to be for you." And to this day, I still have it. My wife is actually, when I met my wife, who's Buddhist, my wife saw it, she read it, she was like, "We can never lose this." So, she's created digital copies, she's scanned copies, she's got the thing protected like, and she's still Buddhist. And she's she is still Buddhist. But this is another reason why I'm I'm so firm in my faith because I watch my wife ask questions and engage in more Christian thinking every day. Christian thinking. Yeah. Rather than Buddhist thinking.
Right. What's Can you explain the the cross pattern? The cross path there. So I'm less familiar with Buddhism. So Christians Christians believe that there was a man named uh named Jesus Christ who came to earth who died on the cross without committing a sin as the perfect propitiation for the rest of us. Meaning his sin replaced all of our sin so we can go to heaven if we believe that he was sinless on the cross. Right? He died for us so that we can be eligible for heaven. Otherwise, we live in a fallen world. We belong to the devil. God wants us to come to him. Jesus is the way that we come to him. I mean, I'm sure that there are theologians out there that can say it better. Say it in the comments. I'm the one on the podcast. That's that's my understanding.
Buddhists Buddhists believe every decision you individually make creates karma. Yes. Karma that helps or karma that hurts you. And that you will be responsible for whatever the karmic repercussions are of your decisions. Right? There's no person who came that that makes your sins clean. That's what we believe in Buddhism. You have to make your own karma clean. So if you're a [ __ ] [ __ ] right now and you die, then you're reborn again and you have to pay the penalty of being a [ __ ] [ __ ] in previous life that you don't remember, right? So all the karma that you built up, all the debt that you built up, you have to pay back in some future life. And then you're reborn, right? You don't remember your rebirth. You don't remember why you're suffering, but you are suffering. So then that gives them comfort. Oh, I'm suffering now because I'm paying back karma from a previous life. And hurrah, I'm going to have a better life the next time I come back. Not that I'll remember my new life. So it's this constant like uh balance book, this checkbook that goes back and forth. And then there's this idea of Buddhahood and enlightenment where you can become enlightened. And during that enlightenment, you understand how the universe works. And you can go on to Nirvana and you can be, you know, a bodhisattva and be uh and be clear and be outside of the cycle of karma and etc, etc. Again, um some Buddhist theologian can correct me in the comments because I'm the one talking. That's that is my understanding of both.
What I have found is that my kids, myself, my family asks less questions about Buddhism and more questions about Christianity. I see. Right. And as we go through our life, there are areas where we see the idea of forgiveness and the idea of of, you know, intelligent design and uh and a a god creator. We see these things um represented in daily life more than we see the pillars of Buddhism. And as a result of that, my wife is still Buddhist. I'm not going to call her a Christian by any means, but she certainly shows more and more interest and curiosity in the Christian faith every day. Like it it's for anybody who's ever seen it play out, it's one of the things where you don't want to get involved because you want everybody to be on their own journey. I want my son to have his own journey, my daughter to have her own journey, my wife to have her own journey. I had my own journey, right? And that's part of the relationship they get to build with God. That's what I believe.
You said this moment where you kind of flipped over was when you were it was before CIA, right? Correct. Because it's right when you're leaving the academy. Yeah. I think about that line a lot that you you had in episode 107 with me. I mention it all the time where you're just like, you know, we were going back and forth on whether things are all good or all bad and talked about this for like 10 15 minutes and I was trying to paint some examples. Obviously someone who's not been out in the field like you and you're like, "You have lived that, you have not lived that." And like I could almost see you like hallucinating above your body because then like you went into this zone. I don't think the camera does it justice but like you had this look in your eye where you were reseeing all these things talking about the worst examples of the worst things that human beings do to other human beings and it really affected me because it's like it does put things in perspective. That's one of the nice things about the show, you know, I sit in a podcast studio but I have people from around the world come in here and sometimes tell me some things that, you know, are harsh realities if you will. But what I'm curious about is if at any point throughout your CIA career when you were seeing some of said things if you wavered in your faith or thought that, you know, maybe this is all [ __ ] because why the [ __ ] would I live in a world where X happens?
So no, it's actually the other way around. My time at CIA made me that much more confident in my faith because I saw the principles of the Bible lived all over the world. I saw Can you explain that? So, one of the things uh one of the things that you learn in the Bible is that, you know, we live in a fallen world. We live in a world that's controlled by Satan. We live in a world that where the enemy is the most powerful being on the planet, right? God is waiting for us somewhere else. The Holy Spirit is here with us to help like guide us and lead us. But God doesn't claim to control the earth. He he has sent his son so that our that his son can have cleaned our our sin forever. God is not really interested in the earth. God is interested in the universe and the individual souls that choose to join him. Right? There's uh it may have been Ian. Ian or Ian or somebody else that helped me on my faithful journey and there were three or five of them that were really important in my faithful journey at the uh at the academy once explained to me this idea of, you know, the earth is a ball and Satan is a Rottweiler and Satan controls that ball. We are his plaything, right, the enemy if you will, but the Rottweiler is on a leash and the leash is held by God. So, he gets to play with the earth as much as God lets him play with the earth. But otherwise, we're just stuck on this thing, right? God lets him do it cuz God is the holding us in ultimate control.
And what do you think of that? For me, it's very liberating because for me, it shows me how small I am. It shows me how big the enemy is, which is what I need to know because guess what? 95% of my day is filled with temptation to do the wrong thing. And everybody listening is in the same [ __ ] boat. Yeah. That's what fills our day. Yes. Temptation to do the wrong thing, not motivation to do the right thing. Right? So, it makes sense. I I like that visual understanding of, oh, big scary dog. I'm on a [ __ ] ball. I can't beat that dog. Dog's going to do whatever the hell it wants to with me. But, life doesn't end here. There's something bigger than the dog, right? So, when I get chewed, swallowed, and shat out the back end of that Rottweiler, like that's that's the end. That's when I have the chance to actually join the father. For me, it's a very comforting idea.
Traveling, operating, meeting people around the world, you learn very [ __ ] fast the world is a fallen place. You learn very fast Satan is in control. You learn very fast people accept, adhere, follow, obsess with Satan's in control with their with their temptations, right? You find that everywhere. You see it. It's crystal clear. You can't fight it. You you have to accept it. And then you you learn a lot about yourself by seeing all the villain of the world. The world is an evil villainous place, right? It's full of people who do things that hurt other people. That's what it is.
You've said this before. You're like, human beings are not good. No. But like I and my come back to that is yes, there are evil people in the world and there are more than we would like to think. There's no doubt about that. Whatever got them there, it's a separate story, but like that's a real thing. But then there are also good people, too. And you seem to think that you seem to operate from the assumption and correct me if I'm wrong here that like no that's not really the case. Most of them are just bad and they're going to be more likely to do bad things. It's just a matter of what inputs will push them to a bad place. That's all it is, right? What inputs would get you to a place where you'd kill another person? What inputs would get you to a place where you'd steal from somebody else? What inputs would get you to a place where you would lie?
All right, let's let's run that example real fast. Our mutual friend Matt Cox talks about this. Threshold of committing crime. And he learned because he never committed a crime till he was 30 years old. He learned that he has a low threshold. Correct. Right. But he's like, "Everyone has a threshold." And what I mean by that is if you're the mother of an infant and the infant's starving, you'll steal some [ __ ] bread. But that to me, is that good? Is it good to steal? No. Is it is it technically like if you're looking at it purely objectively like ver good versus evil the evil option to do? Sure. But like if you're a mother trying to trying to you know give sustenance to your starving child and you're taking one loaf of bread. I you understand what I mean? Like that's not an evil thing to me. It's not ideal but like [ __ ] happens.
The fact that you said it's not evil to me subjective. Yeah. Shows that it's subjective. You know who it is evil to? The [ __ ] court system. And the court system will say it's black and white, right? And the court system is built by men who built policy, right? People, humans, men and females, whatever, right? But it was built by human beings who built a policy to create and enforce a law. All the all the evil objectively. Yeah. Well, because they needed something objective because otherwise it would all fall to some magistrate who decides, right? So the the point I'm trying to make is we we live in a fallen world. It is an evil world. If you're going to use the terms good and evil, right, there are pockets, moments of good as people aspire to benefit and help other human beings, moments. But we are predominantly fallen. We are predominantly evil, predominantly selfish, predominantly self-interested, predominantly abusive, predominantly manipulative. That is what we do. We manipulate our kids to get them to brush their teeth and turn off the TV. We say that we're doing it for a good reason. And we forget the fact that one day those kids that are manipulated into watching TV today grow up into adults who are manipulated into whatever the [ __ ] else, right? And they end up on trial like Diddy. We have [Laughter] could not see that coming.
The the world can't be the world can't be broken into this definition of good and evil because it is in a predominantly evil world. If you're going to use those terms as a man of faith, you say that though. As a man of faith, I say that too. I also say that as an experienced objective CIA officer, right? That is what the world is. So you have to look at it through a term through consequences, inputs and consequences, inputs and outputs, right? You have to look at it through that lens because whether somebody has good intentions or evil intentions, you know, positive or destructive intentions, whatever the [ __ ] you want to call it, you can always create predictable outcomes based off of predictable inputs. That's the world we have to live in.
All right, let's let's go back to what you just said, though. You said objectively as a CIA officer, something like that, right? I would actually argue that that's subjective. And here's why I say that your job is to go to the not always dangerous places. Sometimes you go to a friendly country with a job, right? But it's not to go meet, you know, the friendly [ __ ] village baker when you're there, unless you're trying to get information from them and they don't do anything good or evil. They just, you know, say, "Oh, yeah. It's [ __ ] 55 degrees today." And you're like, "Oh, thank you." Middle class. Sure. God damn you. God damn you. But I I see why you get the comments you get. Anyway, but if you are going into these places, you are trying to find the people that can be manipulated and can be pulled to the other side or you're trying to observe the people who are doing bad [ __ ] or are involved with the people doing bad [ __ ] So subjectively you are looking at you are always looking at a sample size of like hey what maybe not evil but like not good whatever's going on here versus like you know the [ __ ] lady teaching elementary school for 30 years and helping the kids. She means nothing to you. You're not doing jobs with her. You see what I'm saying?
I do. And and you're not 100% wrong. Right. There's there's a flaw in your in your logic. Right. Okay. You are correct. The majority of our effort goes into a small subset of villainous people, right? You have to be a terrorist. You have to be a an army general. You have to be a, you know, nuclear lab technician. You have to be somebody that we call a person of access. That person of access who has access to state secrets, that is where we predominantly put our time. But that doesn't mean that we only manipulate the people of access because to get to that person of access, everything from the flights to the taxi cabs, the hotels, you know, where you stay, when you live undercover, you are living undercover. 100%. Yeah. That means everybody around you who is not a person of access still gets shaped, manipulated, puppeteered. But you're doing that, correct? Right. So the flight attendant who you know gives you something she shouldn't give you because you're being nice to her. That's not bad. No, but that shows that inputs and outputs can be controlled. Okay. Which is the original point that we were making. Why we're recording at 11:30 today instead of 12:30 cuz you switched it last minute. Inputs and outputs like you do every time. Inputs and outputs. But I also asked you first what you needed to make sure that you got what you needed. Yeah. I I told you afterwards. You didn't ask me. Inputs and outputs drive everything. It's not about good or evil. The flight attendant has predominantly evil thoughts. She has predominantly self-interested, self-motivated, manipulative thoughts, right? She doesn't like having to work shift that she doesn't want. She wants to get paid more for the job that she does half-assed. Like, that's that's that's all of us. That's human beings, right? That doesn't necessarily mean that she's worth a CIA officer's time to further manipulate like a person of access. Freedom. So fresh.