0:00

Here we are sitting at your desk where we got

0:02

together and recorded a bunch of episodes last year. I'm

0:05

seeing these little sheets of paper. Remember

0:07

when I gave you these sheets of paper? Yeah, little

0:09

brown Swiss house or whatever? Chalet.

0:12

Chalet, my bad. Yeah. You

0:14

haven't cleaned here for a while. Shut up. No,

0:16

it's like artifacts. The historian in me loves that you

0:18

just left it untouched. Oh, yeah, okay.

0:21

We'll go with that.

0:29

It's like your archaeology. The further

0:31

you go down in the layers on the desk,

0:33

the more further back in time you go. Right?

0:36

That's right, yeah. There's history in here. There is. Nice

0:38

place you got. Okay, well, let's have another

0:41

conversation. You heard about this Sentinel

0:43

Island thing? Sentinel sounds

0:45

like a robot that you use

0:46

to guard a place. But

0:50

I have heard of Sentinel Island. It's somewhere

0:53

in the...

0:54

where is that? Is that in Asia? Yeah, Bay

0:57

of Bengal. Okay, that's near

0:59

India? Yes. Okay. And

1:02

Sentinel Island, North Sentinel Island

1:04

specifically is the one that's in question for this

1:07

conversation, is a part

1:09

of an island chain that looks like to me,

1:12

the naked eye, is a part of another island chain that

1:14

runs north to south, closer to

1:16

Laos and Thailand and Myanmar. It

1:19

wouldn't look where it's sitting. It doesn't look like it would be

1:21

a part of India. But

1:22

a good chunk of it apparently is controlled by

1:24

India, including this one little

1:27

circle-shaped jungle-looking island

1:30

called North Sentinel

1:32

Island. And this is where you probably have heard

1:34

of it before our conversation today. There

1:37

is a people group there who are

1:39

overwhelmingly untouched by modernity.

1:42

They're

1:42

not connected to civilization in

1:44

any way. Okay. Where

1:46

does that take your brain? Well,

1:49

they've seen airplanes. They had to have

1:51

seen airplanes. Yeah,

1:54

about that though. What? In 1953

1:56

or 56, India... passed

2:00

an act entirely

2:02

dedicated to the preservation of

2:05

non-contact with these people. I

2:07

think that included air traffic. You

2:10

can't go close. It's five nautical miles

2:12

for any kind of boat. The whole

2:14

idea was to create this non-contact

2:17

bubble where they would not see or

2:19

be exposed

2:21

to the outside world. Are they technically

2:23

citizens of India? Well, that's interesting.

2:26

I dug into that a little bit. Well, first of all,

2:28

does this island, is it owned by India? It's

2:30

owned kind of by India

2:33

as much as it's ever agreed

2:35

to be owned by India. Okay. I mean,

2:37

really, doesn't somebody there have to sign

2:40

off on it at some point for them to be

2:42

Indians? And I don't think anybody

2:44

ever has. So it's

2:46

an island with a people group ranging

2:48

somewhere between 40 and 400 and

2:51

so many inhabitants there are, but how would you know it's thick

2:53

jungle? You can't go on there.

2:55

A few people tried way back in

2:57

earlier times. Somebody violated

3:00

the rules a while back with a helicopter and

3:02

they fired arrows and threw spears at

3:04

it. And so we have images of

3:06

some Sentinelese tribesmen, but

3:09

the people on the island threw spears

3:11

at helicopters at

3:12

a helicopter, a helicopter. Okay.

3:15

Like they got close enough to try to land and they thought they

3:17

would hit the helicopter or they were just like, Hey, you're

3:20

a thousand feet in the air and I'm gonna throw the spear at

3:22

you. The image I saw, it looked like it was a closer

3:24

swing than that. You have your computer there? I do. Just

3:27

pull that up. Go Sentinel Island helicopter

3:30

or something like that. I think you'll be able to see the images. Okay.

3:32

They're, I mean,

3:34

they pop up around the internet once

3:36

every year or two when people are talking

3:39

about interesting things and mysteries of

3:41

the world. This Sentinel

3:43

Island comes up. Did you get it? Oh, so

3:45

you got some, some guys here on the beach.

3:49

These are the warriors. Okay. Got big

3:51

spears, got long bows. They have

3:53

long bows. Okay.

3:56

Is that an at-lattle the one guy

3:58

has there? I can't tell. It's

4:00

kind of grainy. And so yeah, so this is

4:03

a low elevation shot. So somebody

4:05

got pretty close and this is, this

4:08

is the head on look of somebody aiming

4:10

a bow at you, a long bow. And not only like

4:13

aiming it at you, but this is somebody that knows how to use it. It's

4:15

like the long bows at an angle. You can, I don't

4:18

know, you can just kind of tell that this person knows what

4:20

they're doing with the bow. And if you

4:23

saw Avatar 2 recently,

4:25

you know that long bows are the ideal

4:27

weapon for taking down helicopters.

4:30

Yeah. I learned that recently. I haven't

4:32

watched that. I can't miss. Every single time. I

4:34

haven't watched that. Why even have a helicopter? I'm

4:36

also seeing a picture of a boat here and it looks like

4:38

a pretty modern boat, or at least the construction

4:41

is made out of wood. Yeah.

4:43

So I'm gonna throw

4:45

a flag on the fact that they're never, they're

4:48

never contacted. Cause I'm looking at the construction

4:50

methods of this boat. Now I just recently

4:53

went to Peru and

4:54

I saw a boat, like

4:56

a dugout canoe right there on the side of the

4:58

Amazon river. Yeah. And

5:01

it looked less modern than

5:03

this boat that I'm seeing that apparently was taken from

5:05

a

5:06

photo from the air. I wonder if this boat like drifted

5:08

up on the island or something. Here's what happened.

5:10

I know what picture you're looking at. A few years back,

5:13

some fishermen got whipped into

5:15

a storm and ended up beached on

5:18

Sentinel Island. They were immediately killed and

5:20

efforts were made to recover the bodies. Now

5:22

my theory is, and I don't know this off the top

5:24

of my head, I'm sure you can Google it and figure it out right there. Those

5:27

helicopter shots of people on the island, I

5:30

bet that was authorities trying to verify

5:33

that those fishermen were indeed deceased.

5:37

So that boat might've been some sort of rescue

5:39

craft or life boat kind

5:42

of thing that ended up landing them on Sentinel

5:44

Island. I know of two visitors or

5:46

two groups of visitors, if you will, who have

5:48

set foot on Sentinel Island in recent

5:51

memory. And that is one of the incidents

5:53

with the fishermen. So I bet that's the boat you're looking at.

5:55

Really?

5:57

Okay. Very interesting. So

6:00

what are we talking about today? Well,

6:03

I want to go back to the very general question

6:05

I asked you a minute ago. Where

6:08

does that take you? Emotionally, like what questions

6:10

does that prompt for you? It's a really weird proposition,

6:13

isn't it? Well, prior

6:16

to 1999 or whenever The Matrix

6:18

was, the film came out,

6:20

I would say, you know, it would be

6:22

great to contact them, right? And,

6:24

you know, we probably have things that they, you

6:27

know, we've just discussed this in the past and

6:29

you said something like, hey, medicine or something.

6:31

What was your position?

6:33

We could take the medicine?

6:34

Yeah, I mean, we've talked before about the

6:37

ethics of reaching out to

6:39

a people group, a civilization

6:42

with reduced technology.

6:44

The basic question is, well, do you go

6:46

in there? Like surely they have cancer, everybody

6:49

has cancer. Well, we have some treatments

6:51

for cancer. How can we monsters

6:54

withhold treatments for cancer

6:56

and other diseases? We solved

6:58

all of that and they're dying from it. We could help

7:01

them.

7:02

Or is the ethical thing to say,

7:04

they wanna be left alone. They

7:06

are making their own way. They're solving their

7:08

own thing. To show up to quote unquote

7:11

help is to effectively end

7:14

their civilization experiment, because

7:16

it's over.

7:17

The second the Stone Age meets the

7:19

postmodern age and the advanced digital

7:21

age, that's not a fair fight. It's not

7:23

balanced. The one is just gonna devour the

7:25

other. So what do you do ethically? I think that's

7:27

a conversation we were having a while back. Yeah,

7:30

I'm reminded of several things. I'm

7:33

just gonna tell you the thing. You know how everybody

7:35

has their own life experience and

7:38

different things come to mind. I'm

7:40

just gonna tell you a few things that come to mind.

7:43

One of which is, there's

7:45

an old movie about the

7:47

Zulu, I think,

7:49

Shaka Zulu. And so,

7:51

he's this warrior in Africa

7:53

and the British

7:54

colonists come over the empire comes

7:57

over and there's this battle between these villages.

8:00

and these British that have machine

8:02

guns. And, you know, Chaka Zula is really good

8:05

with a short spear and he bangs a short spear on a

8:07

shield and, you know, just this

8:09

dichotomy between super

8:12

sophisticated modern technology. They could

8:14

smelt iron and they can make steel

8:16

and they can make guns and all that. And

8:18

you have this other side that has spears and stuff. That's

8:20

interesting.

8:21

Yeah, the Boer Wars, like the Dutch

8:23

as well in that part of the world. So

8:26

the part of Africa. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

8:28

sure. Yeah. And interesting clash.

8:30

Yeah, that's interesting. The other thing

8:32

it makes me think about is, I don't know where I saw

8:35

this, but there was a documentary about this one tribe.

8:38

I think they were in the Amazon

8:40

and part of their tradition, the

8:42

men

8:43

would wear these things. Here's a

8:45

content warning for parents

8:47

that may be in the third chair. Like if you have kids around,

8:50

I'm gonna give it about five seconds here. I don't know what

8:52

you're gonna talk about. Let's give them seven seconds. Seven seconds.

8:54

It's a doozy. Seven seconds. It's an image

8:56

that's not gonna go away. Okay. I mean, I

8:58

know what you're talking about. Is that enough time?

9:01

Is the second word in what you're about to describe

9:03

sheath? No. Oh, okay.

9:05

Well, it's the penis gourd. What?

9:09

How's that difference from a penis sheath? Well,

9:11

there's this, I don't, it was just called

9:13

a penis gourd. I don't know if it was National Geographic

9:15

or if

9:16

it was whatever it was, but I

9:18

remember watching a documentary. I've never

9:20

had a microphone conversation about penis attire

9:23

in my entire life

9:24

until right now. And I wanna thank you for

9:26

that. Well,

9:30

there's this tribe and

9:31

there's different things

9:34

that people wear and

9:36

some tribes, the

9:38

females will wear skirts, grass skirts

9:41

or whatever,

9:42

but this particular tribe, there's this thing

9:44

called a penis gourd.

9:45

And the men of the

9:47

village will take a, there's a long gourd

9:50

that grows near where they are.

9:52

They hollow it out and they take

9:54

a string and tie the string around their neck and

9:57

they hold the string out. And

10:00

and they put the gourd over their

10:02

penis and they tie

10:04

the string to the end of the gourd. And so it just holds

10:06

it there like that. Have you ever seen this? So

10:09

again, we cannot content-warn

10:12

hard enough for talking with the kids, but

10:14

I genuinely want to understand. So I'm gonna

10:16

ask question five, four, three, two,

10:18

one.

10:19

Is the idea that this function is almost like

10:22

foot binding or other long-term alterations

10:24

to physiology where they're trying to change the

10:26

penis? No, no, not at all. It's just

10:29

a way to conceal from honesty is my understanding.

10:31

And so- But then how does the

10:33

string factor in instead of like a belt? I

10:36

don't know. I just feel like you're judging mighty hard right now.

10:38

This is a cultural thing. And

10:40

if you don't understand this, that's on you. You're right. But

10:45

one thing that's interesting is the place

10:47

it took my mind is there was a moment when

10:49

a group

10:51

of researchers, or I don't know if they were linguists,

10:53

what they are, they went into this village

10:56

and

10:57

they had a, do you remember back in the

10:59

80s, there were these old

11:01

plastic flashlights and you would open the

11:03

top of the flashlight, had an old lamp, like a filament

11:06

lamp. Yes. And you put two

11:08

C size or D size batteries

11:11

in there. Like the cheapest generic

11:13

red flashlight. Yes. Yeah,

11:16

with a white switch, with little lines

11:18

across it to grip on the- And a little plastic lens-like

11:21

thing over the lamp. Absolutely, yes, we were talking about

11:23

the same thing. Yeah, and I'm not so sure that modern

11:26

children will know the flashlight we're talking

11:28

about, but you know what I'm talking about. And so- Or

11:31

torches. Yeah. For listeners

11:33

in the UK and UK influenced world. Yeah, and so the

11:36

people that were there from the, I'll say the modern

11:38

world,

11:39

which, you know, who's to judge,

11:41

but you know, the people that had access to plastic

11:44

injection molding technology, we'll say that. Okay.

11:47

They had a flashlight. And one of the villagers

11:50

took the flashlight, took the batteries out, flipped

11:52

it over, and used it as a penis

11:54

gourd.

11:55

And it was his attire.

11:57

And it was socially acceptable. in

12:00

his tribe that this is

12:02

how I conceal myself. And what's

12:04

interesting is there didn't seem to be any, golly,

12:08

I wish I,

12:09

I don't remember where I saw this, but I remember thinking,

12:11

oh, that's weird, because you

12:14

would think that there would be all kinds

12:16

of social awkwardness things going

12:18

around with like what type of gore do you use

12:20

and how big is it and all these kinds of things. And

12:22

it just wasn't a thing to these people. The

12:25

issue was I

12:26

need to conceal myself and this gets it done.

12:29

And I remember thinking that was fascinating.

12:31

And so it was this strange blend of modern

12:33

technology

12:35

being plastic injection molding and

12:37

the social norms of this

12:39

particular village.

12:41

I just remember thinking, there's a lot about this I don't

12:43

understand.

12:44

And the little boy in me wants to laugh

12:47

and go, ha ha ha, look how funny this is. I

12:49

mean, there's obvious jokes there. Come

12:52

on, that's reasonable. I mean,

12:54

anything that's farts or parts of the body you cover

12:57

with clothes will always, there's gonna be some

12:59

impulse that people have to chuckle about that a little

13:01

bit. But also, the fact that people

13:03

cover those things with clothes means that that's

13:06

a cultural text. It means that there's a cultural

13:08

shared agreed upon decision that's happening there,

13:10

meaning that it's full of meaning.

13:12

But what was interesting is that

13:14

the fact that they were covering that part

13:16

of the body.

13:17

And nothing else. Yeah, and nothing else.

13:20

It was almost like, I don't

13:22

know, it was very clear to me that there's something

13:24

about that I didn't understand that was accepted

13:26

within that specific

13:28

localized society.

13:30

And I thought that was fascinating. I thought that was wickedly

13:33

fascinating.

13:34

So anyway, that's the second thing I thought of. And the third thing I

13:36

thought of, which is not what I thought

13:39

I'd be talking about immediately after talking about the last

13:41

subject. Fair enough. Was the book

13:43

Through Gates of Splendor.

13:45

It's by Elizabeth Elliott. It was actually

13:48

a formative book in my life. A famous missionary's

13:50

wife. Yes, yes, Jim Elliott

13:53

was killed in Ecuador along with four other

13:55

people. There were missionaries. Let

13:57

me just look up their name here because I don't want to get this

13:59

wrong.

13:59

Nate Saint. Yeah, Nate Saint's

14:02

the, he's

14:03

the one that comes to mind. He was the pilot. So Jim

14:05

Elliot,

14:06

Pete Fleming,

14:07

Ed McCulley,

14:09

Nate Saint and Roger Udarian.

14:11

And so these five guys and their families,

14:13

they went down to Ecuador and they said, hey, we're going

14:16

to

14:16

reach this unreached people group

14:18

with the gospel of Jesus, right?

14:21

We're going to tell them, we're

14:22

going to give them the good news, which also means telling

14:24

them the bad news first. Yeah. So for the outsider,

14:26

and

14:27

I understand it's easy for people

14:29

like you and me to just take it for granted that that's some

14:31

people just heard and know about. We're talking

14:34

about the message of the kingdom, the idea

14:36

that there were all sinners, the long promised

14:39

Messiah, who is the one who solves

14:41

the human problem of sin and death

14:43

and suffering and ick and all of that stuff. And

14:45

that somehow what he does by

14:48

dying on the cross and being resurrected

14:50

deals with the brokenness of humanity.

14:53

Yeah. Yeah. You accept the grace that's

14:57

given freely through Jesus. And so the

14:59

three things that are easy to say, God, great grace,

15:03

buddy of mine, Steve says it that way.

15:05

So this is what makes Jesus different. Jesus

15:07

is God.

15:08

He actually died, rose from the grave

15:11

and that his grace is freely

15:13

given. There's nothing you can do to work for

15:15

it. Sure. Yeah. And so, okay. We're

15:17

on the same page. We're on the same page. Cool. And so

15:19

they,

15:21

being Christians were like, I'm going to go down here

15:23

to this unreached people group. And

15:25

I'm not okay with the little,

15:28

you know, as soon as you're in Sunday school and you're like, but

15:30

what are the people that don't hear about Jesus?

15:32

You know? Yeah. Yeah. They're like, well, I'm

15:34

going to go let them know. Right.

15:36

And so, because there's a, there's a conflict

15:38

that happens in your mind when you're like,

15:40

but you know, they don't know about the good

15:43

news. I need to tell them the good news. And so these

15:45

five missionaries

15:47

went down

15:48

and it did not end well.

15:50

They had a very specific plan. They were working on the language.

15:53

There was a, it's an interesting book. Well, Donnie, is

15:55

that the tribe? Well, Donnie, yeah. The known

15:57

locally is the Alka A U C A.

15:59

And so I read this book just

16:03

before I left college and I

16:05

went to Ecuador shortly after that. It

16:08

was huge for me and because I don't

16:11

know the one thing that Jim Elliott said that

16:13

I thought was fascinating and

16:15

it resonated with me is he

16:17

is no fool who gives up what he

16:19

cannot keep to gain what he cannot

16:21

lose.

16:23

That's something I think about all the time even now.

16:25

So another thing I loved about the book, in

16:28

the book Nate Saint who is the pilot,

16:31

he developed this really cool way.

16:33

He had this really cool yellow airplane.

16:36

He developed a really cool way using drag

16:38

and I think I've told you about this before.

16:41

You fly the airplane and you have a bucket

16:43

on the end of a string and

16:45

if you slowly let the bucket

16:47

out, if you can imagine an airplane flying straight

16:50

and you imagine a string rolling out of a

16:52

bucket,

16:53

it will drag, will affect

16:56

that bucket differently at different altitudes

16:58

along the string, right? Well,

17:01

the bucket obviously has a lot of drag. The string

17:03

has less drag

17:04

and you have tension up there at the

17:07

airplane. You have tension on the bucket all the way down. So

17:10

Nate Saint developed this really cool thing

17:12

he could do. He could bank the airplane,

17:14

have the string coming out of the airplane

17:16

and he could slowly ply out

17:19

that or roll out the string

17:21

until the bucket reached the ground. If he's

17:23

at a certain bank angle, he could

17:26

fly in a circle

17:28

in that bucket. He could drop things on

17:30

the ground. When I say drop, imagine a bucket. You look

17:32

up and you see a bucket

17:34

and you see a long string

17:36

and an airplane going in a circle around

17:38

it but the bucket's not moving. It's stationary

17:41

and it comes all the way down to the ground. Because

17:44

he manages the drag and the drift

17:47

and all these things, the airplane

17:49

velocity, because he's a good pilot and he's got a feedback

17:51

loop, which is him looking at it as he's flying,

17:54

he could communicate, so to speak,

17:56

with the ground. He could even put a telephone on the ground

17:59

with a... with a wire

18:01

all the way down. Talked to people and they're

18:03

like, he could put it, one of the things they did is they put a chicken in

18:05

the bucket. You put a chicken in the

18:07

bucket and you drop it down.

18:09

This is how they initially made contact

18:11

with the tribe. Dropped a chicken in the bucket

18:14

and then they even put some stuff in and they brought it back and they

18:16

got really excited.

18:17

Then they went in to visit these people.

18:20

They

18:20

developed a way to land the aircraft

18:22

on a small little

18:25

beach along a river, along

18:27

an oxbow in the river.

18:29

They were ultimately killed.

18:31

It's fascinating. They were killed

18:34

with spears. There's a description

18:36

even of how the interaction went south.

18:39

There was some initial promise of

18:42

positive contact,

18:43

even some maybe exchanging of gifts

18:45

or something

18:47

that looked like it was going well and

18:49

then things just flipped. Somebody went

18:51

and procured one of the

18:54

spears that was used. Those are still

18:56

made.

18:57

You can have it right here. You

18:59

do. That's the same one I have.

19:00

I think somebody must have sent us both of these at once

19:03

and I'm embarrassed that I no longer remember

19:05

who, but for years now, I've had this in my office.

19:07

Exactly that spear.

19:09

Yeah, I remember the letter because in the letter

19:12

they said to maintain the balance

19:14

of power between Alabama and Wyoming, I'm

19:16

gonna give him a spear as well. Well, it was

19:18

even before and it's even after. Yeah,

19:20

I'm embarrassed that I don't remember who sent this as well,

19:22

but it's really cool because there's a string on the end because

19:25

you throw the spear and then you can unwind the string

19:27

and then you pull it back.

19:28

It's really interesting. They found

19:32

some of the spears that were in

19:34

the men. They found

19:37

some of the pages of the Bible that the

19:39

men had

19:40

left in that area.

19:41

And so it looks like the tribesmen had put

19:45

things on the spear that they intended

19:47

to use to kill the specific individuals,

19:49

which is wild.

19:50

It's really, I'm confident

19:53

we've talked about this before. I feel like we have. Yeah,

19:55

yeah, we have. But I love it. So here

19:57

I am again. Yes, and

19:59

the long-

19:59

story short is eventually

20:02

there was forgiveness between the people who

20:04

killed those men and their families and

20:06

ultimately that message of the kingdom

20:09

of God and all of that ended up really taking

20:11

root in that particular community. Now,

20:14

if we are to be honest about the history

20:17

of missionary movements and all of that,

20:19

you have to also acknowledge the things that didn't work

20:22

because

20:23

there's some awesome, amazing stories

20:25

where things went great and there's

20:27

just tremendous benefit for everyone. There

20:30

were also incidents of exploitation,

20:33

imbalance, weirdness on the

20:35

whole. I think right now it's very popular to

20:37

treat any kind of look back

20:39

on the missionary movement. It's just this total

20:43

racist colonial debacle.

20:45

That's just not fair or true at all.

20:48

At the same time, then of course, folks who really cherish

20:50

those memories are

20:52

going to want to counter with what? No, the whole

20:54

thing was beautiful and perfect. And

20:56

the truth is, I think the missionary

20:58

movement is something that went right alongside

21:00

the rather exploitative colonial

21:03

economic movement. And it was the missionary

21:05

movement, not governments. It was the

21:07

church that went and really held

21:09

back the full exploitative impulse

21:12

of the resource grab that went along with 19th

21:15

century colonialism. A great

21:17

example of that is in Jamaica, the

21:19

story of William Nibb. Did

21:21

I ever told you about William Nibb? No.

21:23

High schools are still named, the biggest high

21:25

school in Jamaica, I think is still named after William

21:27

Nibb. He's there, Abraham Lincoln, liberator

21:29

of the slaves. Really? Amazing

21:32

dude. Put everything on the line

21:34

to side with the people

21:36

of Jamaica, with the locals, with the natives

21:38

of Jamaica and business hated

21:41

him, government hated him. He was an English

21:43

guy. His church got

21:45

burned, his home got burned, there was a bounty

21:47

on his head. He's hiding in a ship

21:49

just offshore for more than one night

21:52

trying not to get killed. But ultimately

21:54

he's the one who was looking at it and was like,

21:56

we cannot own the people of Jamaica.

21:59

You can't own.

21:59

You can't buy, sell and trade

22:02

people.

22:03

Slavery is an abomination in the eyes of

22:05

God. Slavery is incompatible

22:07

with the Bible. This has to go. And NIB1,

22:10

but the forces of government

22:12

and business, they wanted to keep that relationship

22:15

as long as they could. So it's

22:17

stories like that where you gotta look back and

22:19

realize that this, it's not a very accurate

22:21

depiction of you're like, oh, well, these, you know, gold

22:24

grubbing business people, they partnered up with

22:26

Jesus people and went and enslaved people and all

22:28

of that business. I can point to some examples

22:31

where that happened, but for every one of those

22:33

that you can bring up, I think I can show you 10, 20, where

22:37

it was the missionaries who gave up everything, all

22:39

comfort, everything,

22:40

because they saw not just an opportunity to go

22:43

reach somebody with what they believed to be true

22:45

about God and Jesus and all of that, but

22:47

their sense of God inspired

22:50

justice was offended by what they knew

22:52

to be happening in these places of initial

22:54

contact that were occurring in the age of

22:56

colonial boom.

22:58

They ended up being the ones who went and looked out for the

23:00

people who were getting exploited by greed. I

23:03

just don't think they get enough credit. I think they get crapped on

23:05

a lot. And so that's me sticking up for them. I know

23:07

people like that today. How do you mean?

23:10

I actually know them, like

23:11

people that spend time in other

23:14

countries

23:15

that we can't talk about. Yes, yeah,

23:17

yeah, yes.

23:19

Yeah, you can't talk about them because if people,

23:21

they're in a different country and they're doing something and

23:24

they might be working a job locally,

23:27

but they're actually missionaries. And

23:29

one of the things they're trying to do is they're

23:31

trying to make sure that people in the local area

23:33

are treated well. And

23:37

that's enough to say about that. Yeah, because

23:39

there's literally nothing we can say because you and I

23:41

are both connected to the same kind of stuff. Because

23:43

they could die. And we absolutely can't even

23:45

give hints or wink, wink, nod, nods about it.

23:48

Yeah, you and I both know what's going on.

23:50

Yeah, exactly. And I think that's cool. I think

23:52

so too.

24:10

And I think that

24:13

brings us back to the Sentinel Island deal.

24:16

You have to imagine that that's going to capture

24:18

the attention of somebody, that somebody

24:20

who pictures the adventure missionary

24:22

travels of Dr. Livingston, I presume,

24:24

in the 19th century, and

24:26

Zimbabwe, and Victoria

24:28

Falls, and just all of that legendary

24:31

stuff. People who were raised reading

24:34

through Gates of Splendor and know the

24:36

story about what happened in Ecuador. It

24:38

could be really easy to look at that and fixate

24:40

on the adventure, high risk, high

24:43

adrenaline aspect of that. You

24:45

could also

24:46

say that that specific

24:48

method

24:49

is not particularly effective. I say

24:52

that with weight because we know

24:54

some of the ancestors of some of these people,

24:57

like grandchildren, and we know

24:59

them. And we say that from the comfort

25:01

of these microphones.

25:03

Absolutely. We're not even doing this live. That's

25:05

how low the risk is. Like anything we think is stupid,

25:07

we can just make go away. Right, but

25:09

I think there's an argument to be made on

25:12

what is the most effective way

25:14

to reach people and what is the purpose of

25:16

reaching people.

25:17

Yeah.

25:18

Jesus anticipated that question.

25:20

I just got done doing that whole book of Matthew

25:22

thing on my podcast. The whole book of Matthew

25:25

thing. I don't know what you want to call it. It

25:27

took

25:27

a long time. It was a lot of work. But

25:30

even there, Jesus'

25:32

commissioning of the people he sends out with this

25:34

message about,

25:35

really overwhelmingly, it's a message of justice.

25:39

He sends them out and he's like, hey,

25:40

you got to be true to serpents and innocent as doves

25:43

here. Because

25:45

things are stacked against you and the people

25:47

who are doing evil, exploiting other people,

25:50

abusing their power and position.

25:53

They are very entrenched and they're very good

25:55

at what they do.

25:56

And you guys who I'm sending out, he's just

25:58

got like a bunch of fishermen and small business owners

26:00

and stuff, like total

26:02

motley crew ragtag crowd that Jesus

26:05

had gathered and that he sends out in the

26:07

about the one third mark of the story

26:09

of the book of Matthew, he sends them out

26:11

and he's he isn't just like go be good.

26:14

And by just your supreme decency

26:16

and not swears, everyone will know

26:19

that I'm the Lord. It's not like

26:21

that at all.

26:22

He tells that uses the word shrewd.

26:24

You got to read the room, you got to look at the

26:27

situation and think about what you're doing. Well,

26:30

those guys bumble through the rest of the book, but

26:32

we know that after Matthew, history

26:35

and tradition and other parts of the Bible tell us

26:37

they looked a lot more shrewd.

26:39

And they're what they did when they went

26:42

out after the Bible holds out as the

26:44

death and resurrection of Jesus

26:46

did not look the same depending on where they went.

26:48

Now, all but one ended up

26:50

meeting the same fate as Nate Saint

26:52

and Jim Elliott. I mean, eventually

26:55

you're saying a message that is a complete paradigm

26:57

change when you go out with that particular message.

26:59

And Jesus said that wouldn't always be greeted well.

27:01

Isn't that interesting that that Christianity,

27:04

I

27:05

mean, as soon as I say that people will be

27:07

like, but the Crusades, but like Christian, Christian,

27:10

yeah, it's an excellent counter example. But

27:12

for the most part, Christianity has spread by

27:16

people being killed as

27:18

opposed to conquering. Yeah.

27:21

I mean, that's why it caught on. There's this,

27:24

I don't know where he's at now, Washington state, Baylor,

27:26

he's been a few different places. Rodney Stark is

27:29

a sociologist. I've read all its stuff. Absolutely.

27:31

I don't know who that is. It's okay. He's

27:34

a guy who focuses on why things

27:36

stick historically. I

27:38

mean,

27:38

there were 50 messianic claimants

27:41

we know about in the timeframe of Jesus.

27:44

Tons Josephus, the Jewish historian,

27:46

who was a contemporary of Jesus.

27:48

He gives us probably 20 stories

27:51

of different people. I'm the Messiah.

27:53

I'm raising an army. We're going to start from

27:55

here and we're going to kill Rome. We're going to kill these

27:57

guys. I mean, it's crazy.

27:59

I've done videos on all these different claimants

28:02

holding themselves out as Messiah, but only one

28:04

stuck

28:05

ever

28:06

for all the people who've claimed that.

28:09

Well, Rodney Sark's question as a sociologist

28:12

is, how the heck did that happen? Why

28:14

that one? Why that guy? I

28:16

really like his look at it because it's not like

28:19

a evangelical apologetic

28:21

make you feel good about your beliefs kind of

28:23

book. It's just sociology. And he's got a series

28:25

of arguments for why he thinks it caught on.

28:28

One of the big reasons is

28:30

they didn't have the sword. They did not

28:32

have the opportunity really for 400 years

28:35

before you really start to see things

28:37

begin to flip toward Christians having any

28:40

kind of authority. And they didn't become a meaningfully

28:43

persecuting group ever until

28:45

about 700 years in pockets when

28:48

they started to meld with government.

28:51

And so to start, it's very compelling. He's like, they

28:53

didn't catch on by killing all of their

28:55

rivals. They caught on by outliving

28:58

their rivals by when plague hit compelled

29:00

by their understanding of how God is and what he

29:02

would want. We just can't leave everybody to die. So

29:04

we're gonna stay here and anybody who's here, we're gonna nurse and nurture

29:07

back to help. And so then Sark goes

29:09

through and he has chapters where he analyzes what

29:12

percentage of increased survival that

29:14

kind of nursing or attention would give given what

29:16

we know about what diseases were each of these,

29:19

and made up each of these different plagues. And

29:22

it's fascinating to just see somebody put math

29:24

to it and be like, all right, the plague hit this percentage

29:27

of the empire. That's this many people who would have been affected.

29:30

The death rate in general without care

29:32

seems to have been about this. With

29:34

care, it seems to have been this. And we've

29:36

got all of these primary sources saying that Christians

29:38

hung in.

29:39

That means

29:41

when those cataclysmic events occurred,

29:43

either Christians caring for Christians,

29:46

which promotes the growth of Christianity, or

29:49

Christians caring for non-Christians, which

29:51

would be compelling for the non-Christian, like

29:54

you stayed in risk of death to look out for me,

29:56

that would result in the proliferation of Christianity.

29:59

Stark views all of this. a lot of those moments as being kind of quantum

30:02

leap jumps in Christianity

30:04

gaining a foothold by living out

30:06

its stated values.

30:08

I like it.

30:09

Yeah, I really like that. As you were sitting

30:11

there talking, I was

30:12

sitting there thinking about the Shema.

30:15

I think it's interesting in Deuteronomy, it's all

30:17

your heart, all your soul, and all your strength.

30:20

But in Matthew, when it's re-quoted, it's

30:23

all your heart with all your soul and all your mind.

30:25

So that laying down of

30:27

your strength, I'm kind of reading things

30:30

in between the lines that aren't there. Sure.

30:32

Yeah, I am. Let's be honest. But I think

30:34

it's interesting that the mind component, the mental component

30:37

is brought in and I

30:39

don't know, people are one with logic and

30:41

the logic goes something like this. Oh,

30:44

you're not asking for anything. You're actually

30:46

just helping me?

30:48

Why?

30:49

That doesn't make sense. And so it's

30:51

the counter logic that ends up

30:53

making it work. Yes. It's

30:56

upside down. Right. And

30:58

that brings us back to your question about the shrewdness,

31:00

Jesus' word there, not mine,

31:02

or efficacy

31:04

of the strategy we're talking about that the Sentinel

31:06

Island thing got us into.

31:08

Does it really feel to the recipient

31:11

like you're just doing something for them in that kind

31:13

of circumstance?

31:15

Or would the people of, let's say, Sentinel Island,

31:17

let's go away from the Ecuador example, let's

31:20

say you and I went around

31:22

some churches and raised some money. We printed up

31:24

bright yellow t-shirts that say Matt

31:26

and Destin mission trip to Sentinel Island 2025

31:29

and we wore hats

31:32

and we did a mime show like

31:34

all the things that they used to do in the 90s. Let's

31:37

make it puppets. Let's go with puppets. A

31:39

very dramatic puppet show. Oh,

31:42

it hurts. It hurts. But let's say

31:44

we

31:45

did that. It's not going to work. No, wait. No,

31:48

let's let's think about it a different way. Okay. You

31:50

and I are on the island. Okay. We're

31:52

on the island. Okay. So we're in violation

31:54

of international law and Indian law. We

31:57

are from Sentinel Island. Oh, okay.

32:00

Okay, and we're there

32:02

and we're sitting by the fire. Yeah,

32:04

and we're like hey, man,

32:06

I think tomorrow I want to go hunt some pigs

32:09

Yeah, I do look at my new arrow. Look

32:11

at this. Do you see this? Yeah, dude.

32:13

I've sharpened this for so long Look how

32:15

sharp this thing is touch it. Yeah.

32:18

Oh, it's very pointy pointy

32:22

I Would say

32:24

pointy no my daughters They mingled

32:27

two words when they were kids and so

32:29

they couldn't say pointy and so it ended up being

32:31

pointy And anything that

32:33

sharp we still call it pointy. No, we're on

32:35

the island right now. Yeah, they don't exist

32:37

in this reality Yeah, I hate this reality now,

32:39

but all right. It's pointy pointy.

32:42

Yeah, okay, so great arrow, dude I'm

32:44

thinking about tomorrow

32:46

going out and shooting a pig with

32:49

my arrow. Are you in? Yeah We should jam some

32:51

fruit in its mouth after that and put it on a spit

32:53

and rotate it. I'm game dude Yeah,

32:55

that's what I want for tomorrow. It's way better

32:58

than all this fish. We absolutely want to go. Let's

33:00

get okay Okay, we sleep, you

33:02

know lots of jungle sound. We

33:04

pray to tribal God before we go to bed. No,

33:06

we're not even we had nothing We got no we don't even know concept

33:09

of that. We don't know. Okay, cool. Okay, so

33:12

we get up. Yep We're going hunting. Hey, dude,

33:14

wake up. Wake up.

33:15

Oh, is it pig day? It's pig day. Let's go.

33:17

All right Don't forget the new arrow. Oh,

33:20

yeah, the pointy pointy one. Yeah.

33:22

Yeah, I got the pointy one. Okay, so we go out Yes,

33:25

and we start on our pig hunt wonderful. Are

33:27

there pigs on this island? Let's say there are

33:30

I really want to know now Like this needs to

33:32

be rooted in facts because of how factual

33:34

this example is. They gotta have fat.

33:36

They gotta have protein So

33:39

you can get fat from fish

33:41

head Can you

33:43

get fat from fish head? Yeah.

33:45

Yeah, like a fish head stew will produce fat

33:48

But coming up with fat is one of the tricky things on

33:50

islands But that's why you get like Hawaiian

33:52

barbecue because lots of different pig species

33:54

can do well Cuz I can root around for anything

33:57

in that kind of environment why you don't get

33:59

larger games than pigs. Okay

34:01

so we're we're kind of out

34:04

towards the edge of the perimeter of the island.

34:06

Okay. We're still in the ender canopy. Okay.

34:09

And then we walk out and then we see on the

34:11

horizon a boat. Okay.

34:13

It's a big boat. It's like a container ship.

34:17

Wow. What do you think about this

34:19

big thing that you and I just saw on the horizon?

34:21

What do you think about that?

34:22

Now like in this reality,

34:25

I don't know. Our parents have talked

34:27

about boats and flying things.

34:30

You know, so was a story handed down

34:32

from grandparents about

34:35

flying objects that used to go right

34:37

over the island all the time. I think they're like

34:39

they've got to be smart. They know. But

34:41

we've only seen that once in our lifetimes.

34:44

Only one time has

34:46

one of these flying objects appeared.

34:49

But we saw it plain as day. I'm telling you,

34:51

island destined. I was there that day

34:54

and I saw that flying thing before

34:57

it left. That was real. Just like our

34:59

grandparents told us. And it was loud and

35:01

terrible. Yes. And we hate it. Yes.

35:04

Do we hate it?

35:05

There's a couple of the kids

35:08

from the younger generation

35:09

who are uncomfortably obsessed with

35:12

it. That's going to be the downfall

35:14

of society. So we're going to preach

35:16

hard against that. Yeah, we hate

35:18

it. That's

35:21

how all the things work. It doesn't

35:23

matter that we're on this island or if we're like

35:25

here. You know, it's true, man.

35:27

Interesting. We just rally around

35:29

the thing that we hate together. Interesting.

35:32

Okay. I don't know where I'm going with this example. It's just kind

35:34

of interesting to put the shipping container shows up. Oh,

35:36

yeah. Yeah. How do you feel about

35:38

that island destined? I

35:41

don't know. I mean, that's big. It

35:43

looks like

35:45

that looks like a craft of war. It's bigger

35:47

than ours.

35:49

We have this little bitty thing that we

35:51

sometimes go out fishing in. That thing's big. I

35:54

feel uncomfortable around that thing.

35:56

And I don't like it. I just don't

35:59

like it. Yeah. Yeah, it's powerful,

36:01

it's using technology, I have

36:03

no chance of understanding. I don't see any rowing

36:06

or sails. Yeah, how do they do that?

36:08

Yeah. I mean, it looks like magic.

36:10

Again, do not mistake

36:13

my little role-playing here

36:15

as being that I think these are unsophisticated

36:18

midwits.

36:19

We would go onto that island and immediately

36:21

die given the tools they have.

36:24

We have no cultural memory of how to survive

36:26

like that, even with our fancy educations.

36:29

We're not gonna live out a robust, happy life

36:31

like they're going to be able to pull off on that

36:33

same chunk of ground. It would be torture

36:35

for us. We would not know what to do. We would not

36:37

succeed the way they've figured out to succeed. They've

36:39

got a billion shortcuts. I don't think

36:41

these are idiots. I think these are competent

36:44

people with solid core

36:46

aptitude and ability at the level

36:48

of the brain.

36:49

But come on, look at how big

36:52

that ship is. If

36:54

I can't touch it and poke at it and take

36:56

it apart, if I don't have time with it, I

36:59

can't just figure that out from a distance.

37:01

It's just intimidating. Interesting.

37:04

And I think that communication

37:06

barrier or that experiential barrier

37:08

that's there,

37:10

as long as we just don't let that

37:13

thing penetrate that barrier, we're

37:15

good. We have an enemy and we understand it to

37:17

be an enemy and we don't have to worry about

37:19

getting close to it and all that kind of stuff. So

37:21

I think if I was a

37:22

person in power,

37:24

I think it would be really important to tell

37:27

people, hey,

37:28

you have to keep the barrier up. Like,

37:31

keep the barrier up. The last thing we

37:33

wanna do is communicate

37:34

with those people. That's the last thing

37:37

we wanna do. So interesting thing happened.

37:39

I was reading something a while back

37:42

about

37:43

a guy from Sentinel Island. Something

37:46

happened and he ended up on a mainland hospital.

37:48

He learned Hindi on the hospital. I think

37:50

this was generations ago.

37:52

We were talking decades and decades ago.

37:55

And then returned

37:57

to Sentinel Island, maybe.

37:59

I'm not sure if he went back

38:02

or if he went somewhere else, but I think he went

38:04

back. And

38:05

there was a lot of interest apparently in going

38:08

to interview this man, because

38:11

I'm not aware of anybody understanding at all the

38:13

language of the Sentinelese. I

38:16

don't think there's any possibility of verbal

38:18

linguistic communication at this point. But

38:21

there was a guy some time ago

38:23

who could have served as the, what

38:27

was the dude's name? When the settlers came

38:29

to New England

38:30

and they met a guy

38:32

and spoke English. Wasn't Squanto.

38:35

Oh, wow, dude, what was his name? Was

38:37

it Squanto? Yes, thank you, thank you, thank

38:39

you for knowing my discipline better than I know

38:41

it. Yes, that's the guy.

38:43

So

38:44

you could have a situation like that, where just inexplicably

38:47

you've got this liaison between cultures,

38:49

between languages, it could fast forward everything.

38:52

And I don't think any of that interview

38:54

ever occurred, but

38:57

I could certainly see how somebody in the anthropology

39:00

world would be like, this is the greatest

39:03

prize.

39:03

It'd be like interviewing someone from the distant

39:06

past. We have to get this interview,

39:08

we have to do it. And ultimately I think the strength

39:10

of the law and the enforcement behind that

39:13

Indian Protection Act from the 1950s or whenever,

39:17

probably prevented such an interview from

39:19

occurring.

39:21

You understand the appeal, right? Like what we

39:23

could even learn about humanity, if you could

39:25

get that conversation untainted,

39:28

untouched before all of the robots

39:30

and all of the technology and all of that contact

39:33

happens.

39:34

If you could get a meaningful, mostly

39:37

pre-contact interview

39:39

with someone from there, what could you learn

39:41

about our distant past? Have

39:43

you ever read the book Brave New World?

39:46

Yes, I have. Okay, there's a

39:49

thing that happens in this book where you have

39:51

this person

39:52

in the modern world.

39:54

And I would say it's a dystopia. Oh yes.

39:57

Yeah, so it's a world where

39:59

they're-

39:59

Huxley, right? Yes. Okay.

40:02

It's a world that's so civilized

40:04

that they plan out every

40:07

person that is to exist and

40:09

you are rated according to your

40:12

capabilities and so it's it's

40:14

kind of like

40:15

if we were to maximize is

40:17

that even a word? It worked for me. You know what

40:19

I'm trying to say. Everything about

40:21

society and we're like hey you're a beta

40:24

or you're a you're an epsilon like we're gonna

40:26

score you based on your capabilities and we're

40:28

gonna plug you into certain jobs. You know

40:31

that's how we're gonna do things.

40:32

There was this individual that

40:35

went to America and he went to I

40:38

think it was New Mexico. He went to a reservation

40:41

and he was allowed to

40:44

observe this tribesman

40:46

and this guy was doing all these really

40:49

strange things and he was trying to he's like

40:51

what on earth is happening and

40:53

it was weird because this guy was more in tune

40:55

with his humanity that the

40:58

tribesman was more in tune with his humanity

41:00

than this modern person was and

41:03

it was interesting. It was just like I

41:05

didn't really understand it. I remember getting

41:07

to the end of the book and thinking what was that? I

41:10

thought it was rather interesting. The

41:12

other day on the way home

41:14

I've been

41:16

inside a lot. I've been looking

41:18

at screens. It's the winter so

41:20

I've been doing all kinds of work. I've been working

41:23

with CNC machines. I've

41:25

been using my brain a lot but I was driving home

41:27

the other day and I had somewhere to be at a certain time

41:30

and I looked at the river and the sunset was

41:32

beautiful

41:33

and it was beautiful an hour earlier

41:36

but because it's the winter the sunsets take a long time

41:38

and I was like you know when's the last time I got out

41:40

at the river and just walked down to the river.

41:42

So

41:43

I got out I just

41:45

blinker on

41:46

pulled over got out of

41:48

my truck

41:49

and then I started running back towards

41:52

the bridge

41:53

and I couldn't get a good view of the bridge or

41:55

the sunset from bridge number one.

41:58

I had to go to bridge number two and to get to bridge number two

41:59

I had to run across

42:02

bridge number one and there was no shoulder.

42:05

So I had to run basically in traffic on

42:07

a really skinny bridge. I

42:10

was like, I'm going. And so I went to

42:12

bridge number two. On

42:14

my way to bridge number two, I crossed a dead

42:16

deer

42:16

that was on the side of the road. Two sofas

42:19

that had apparently flew out of somebody's vehicle.

42:22

It was awful, like litter and stuff.

42:24

And then I finally got down into the mud on the riverbank

42:27

and I could hear the birds.

42:29

You noticed, you know, when we've been driving together,

42:32

I've been looking. You're smart. You've seen me look

42:34

at the birds every time we're driving. Yeah, of course. Me

42:36

too. Yep.

42:37

So I finally got down there and

42:39

I

42:40

looked at the sunset and I looked at the birds. I took some

42:42

pictures and I thought to myself,

42:45

why the heck have

42:47

I not done this more? I live here, but

42:50

I've been inside all this time.

42:52

Do I really have it better? You know, and so that's

42:55

another thing. This makes me think of you got these guys

42:57

on the beach.

42:58

With their bows and arrows and their spears. I

43:02

think it's pretty cool. You

43:04

know, because there's something about stepping

43:07

on the riverbank

43:09

next to a muscle shell.

43:12

That's been opened by a bird and

43:14

the muscle has been eaten out and just watching that. There

43:17

was something cool about that. And I feel

43:19

like I've gone too far.

43:21

I feel like I have.

43:23

What's the word? I

43:26

feel like I'm

43:27

very self centered and I

43:29

think that my world is extremely important

43:32

sometimes and it's really not.

43:35

Am I making any sense at all?

43:37

Massive amounts of sense. Okay. I

43:40

live somewhere beautiful too. I picked it. It

43:42

was on purpose. The last two places

43:44

I've lived are the two most magical places that

43:46

I could ever imagine from when I was a kid.

43:49

Yellowstone National Park

43:51

and the Black Hills of South Dakota.

43:53

Those are the places that inspired all my curiosity and

43:55

interest. This is what my child

43:57

like image of draw a mountain.

43:59

would look like, draw nature. I

44:02

would just draw a kid version

44:04

of those two places. I love them.

44:06

And the stretch that I've been in, and

44:09

you know, I've been going pretty hard working

44:11

on some stuff for various projects and

44:14

really pushing things, YouTube

44:16

and podcasting, lots of work. And

44:18

I'm down there in my basement and got

44:20

my headphones on. So I can't hear

44:23

things that other people are doing. So I don't get interrupted.

44:25

I stare at that glowing rectangle and

44:28

I stare and I stare. And then I read some books

44:30

and then I talk into a mic and then I stare at the rectangle.

44:33

And then I read some books. Then I talk into a mic.

44:36

Days will go by.

44:37

I'm like, wait, what are you doing, dude?

44:39

You moved here

44:41

because of the beauty that's right outside your

44:43

window and you keep that window closed. So the glare

44:45

doesn't cause problems on your precious

44:47

glowing rectangle. And then I

44:50

will just blow things off on zero notice.

44:52

I'll even tap out of an appointment if I have to.

44:55

And I will get in my vehicle and I will go be with the fish

44:57

in the mountains.

44:59

It's this abrupt kind of, no,

45:01

I have to address this now.

45:02

It can't be, I need to reconnect with this

45:05

someday and make a new habit.

45:07

I have to go now

45:08

when that impulse hits me. Am

45:10

I understanding you?

45:12

I think so. I think so. Which is

45:14

why I think that it's important to get more in touch

45:16

with that side, which is why what I'm

45:18

gonna do now is I'm gonna take this water bottle. Oh,

45:21

dude. I

45:24

hated that. And I'm gonna cut the end of it off

45:26

here. And I made

45:28

you a penis cord. Thanks

45:34

for picking a two liter. I'm sorry,

45:36

I thought that would be funny. That was pretty funny.

45:40

It's C3, that wouldn't work. Here's

45:42

mine. That's

45:45

a joke. I

45:49

think

45:49

we as people

45:52

in the West and I've

45:54

got a laptop, I've got so many modern

45:56

things within arms range. I also have this spear

45:58

that someone sent us. All this stuff is within

46:00

arm's reach. And I

46:03

think a certain amount of comfort's great, but at some

46:05

point, I think it's good to think

46:08

more like the people from North Sentinel

46:10

Island.

46:12

This episode of No Dome Questions is brought to you by stamps.com,

46:16

and they wrote the tidiest,

46:18

niftiest little thing here at the beginning that I think

46:20

really explains it well. I'm gonna just read this. When every

46:23

person, moment, and penny counts

46:25

in your business, you can't afford

46:27

to take any of them for granted. stamps.com

46:30

gets it because for the last 25 years, they've

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46:35

time and money, so you can focus on

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your business knowing stamps.com has

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all your postage needs covered with premium

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discounts and great rates.

46:44

So I would like to

46:46

create a mental image here. I

46:48

think it'll be a useful way to frame

46:51

your thinking. A

46:53

long time ago, I made a website,

46:55

and it was one of the first websites I ever made on the

46:58

internet. It was called Godzilla for Hire.

47:01

I was hoping that would be the name. It

47:04

was called GodzillaForHire.com. I don't

47:06

own that anymore, but what we did is

47:08

we were poor college kids, and we didn't have a lot

47:10

of money

47:11

at all, and we decided

47:13

what we would do is we did have a Godzilla

47:16

doll,

47:16

and I had a Sony Mavica

47:19

camera that went to a floppy disk,

47:22

and I was like, you know the

47:24

camera? I was like, I'm gonna take pictures of

47:26

this Godzilla doll doing stupid

47:28

stuff,

47:29

and then I'm gonna offer to

47:31

hire this out to people,

47:33

and it was actually the first internet award

47:36

I ever received. Somebody emailed

47:38

me, and they're like, hey, your website's so good, we would

47:40

like to give you an internet award. Was

47:44

it just the internet award? Was that what it

47:46

was called? No, it was like, I forget what it was, it was

47:48

like a comedy award or something. They gave me an image

47:51

that I could post on my website with

47:53

HTML. That gives you an idea where we were at

47:55

on the internet.

47:57

The way we did this is we

47:59

would put like... a picture of a little chef's hat that

48:01

we had folded out of a napkin on top of his head and

48:03

we had like a spatula and we're like, hey, chef

48:05

Godzilla for all your chef needs.

48:08

And then we had all these little

48:10

things that we put glasses on him and gave

48:12

him a calculator and we're like, hey, Godzilla is

48:14

an accountant. He

48:15

can do your taxes. And

48:18

we did all of these things. What was the part where you

48:20

made the money?

48:21

Let's not make it weird, Matt. Just let me

48:24

go with my story.

48:26

And so- Yeah, no, please, do. No,

48:28

this is a good idea.

48:29

We went through all these different things. It was really

48:31

quite funny.

48:32

And then the last thing we did

48:35

is we popped off one of the Godzilla

48:37

arms and we put a hot dog

48:39

in there.

48:40

And we said, hot dog for an arm

48:43

Godzilla

48:44

for all your hot dog for an arm needs.

48:50

That's right there in the name, Doug. It's

48:52

genuinely funny. And

48:54

we're like, we don't know what your hot dog for an arm needs

48:57

are, but if you do need that, Godzilla,

49:01

the hot dog for an arm Godzilla's got you covered.

49:03

So- We'll meet, may exceed

49:06

your needs. Now you're probably wondering

49:08

why I'm bringing this up while we talk about stamps.com.

49:11

Weirdest thing, yes. Yeah, yeah,

49:13

but oddly it actually works because

49:16

what I want you to do is when

49:18

you think about postage that

49:20

you have to put on something,

49:22

I want you to think of stamps.com

49:25

because it's got you covered for all your postage

49:28

needs. See what I'm doing there? So-

49:31

Barely. This

49:34

is an ad. People

49:40

hopefully want to get back to the part where it's a

49:42

show. Whole

49:45

run up. That's literally the worst payoff

49:48

in the history of the program.

49:51

It's like a Norma McDonald joke.

49:54

So good. No, no, no, it's not

49:56

that good. It's not that good,

49:58

the moth joke. Oh, I thought it was-

49:59

That's good. Okay, anyway, so... That's

50:02

the one. Yeah, but when you think about postage,

50:05

you need to think about stamps.com because

50:07

that's what they do. Let's say you got to ship

50:09

a thousand of something, okay? Okay.

50:13

Like, if you go buy a stamp for each one,

50:15

that's a lot of money, a whole lot of

50:17

money.

50:17

Yes. But stamps.com, they've

50:20

worked it out where you can actually get

50:22

lower fees on postage, and

50:24

that's a big deal. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about.

50:27

Well, I do. You're making it sound like it's this

50:29

great big hypothetical. What if you need to send out

50:31

a thousand things? It's not hypothetical because

50:34

we have used this

50:36

to send stuff out to patrons on 10

50:38

Minute Bible Hour on my YouTube channel,

50:40

stuff like that. And so I remember

50:43

when Camilla got all set up, she just got the little scale

50:45

and made this little corner shipping area

50:48

in our little goofy in-home office. And

50:50

I thought it was going to be this massive weeks-long

50:53

project, and she and the kids just

50:55

sat down one afternoon, and they got

50:57

a little assembly line going, and the postage thing

50:59

was cake. And it was

51:02

so much cheaper than the bids

51:04

we got to go and take it somewhere or ship

51:07

it in the traditional way. It was just, it was

51:09

awesome. It was an incredibly simple solution

51:11

for a thing we needed to achieve. Yeah,

51:14

it's that simple. If you've got a business and

51:16

you need to ship stuff, you need to be thinking about

51:19

stamps.com for all of your postage

51:21

needs, and I know the mental image that just

51:23

came through your head, there it was. It

51:25

worked as a Godzilla doll with a hot dog coming out of its

51:27

arm. It makes me think of stamps. So

51:30

here's the offer.

51:32

So set your business

51:34

up for success when you get started with stamps.com

51:37

today. Sign up with the promo code NDQ

51:40

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51:42

plus free postage, and a free

51:44

digital scale.

51:45

No long-term commitments or contracts, just go

51:47

to stamps.com, click on the microphone

51:50

at the top of the page, and enter the code NDQ.

51:54

Look, I know that automatically there's

51:56

a bunch of people who are listening who have their own

51:58

businesses. as pretty obvious

52:01

proposition for that member of the third chair

52:03

because you're sitting there right now and you're

52:05

running your shipping costs through your head and you're

52:07

like, well, would I save money on this? And they're saying

52:10

here that it's up to 84% off of USPS and UPS

52:14

rates. So yes, probably you would

52:16

save a lot of money with this. But Destin,

52:18

before we get back to talking about the thing, what

52:21

about the people who don't own businesses? How

52:23

is something like this going to be useful for them?

52:26

Somebody that needs to ship out a lot of stuff,

52:29

just go for it. Stamps.com used the promo

52:31

code NDQ and

52:33

it's like having a little post office in your office.

52:36

All you got to do is have a printer, a laptop,

52:38

set everything up, you can ship stuff out, save

52:40

money. It's

52:41

the way to go. Yep. So again, to set

52:43

your business up for success or you

52:46

for success if you just want to ship a bunch of stuff,

52:48

you can get started with stamps.com today

52:50

and sign up with the promo code NDQ

52:52

for a special offer that includes a four week trial

52:55

plus free postage and a free digital

52:57

scale. No long-term commitments or contracts.

52:59

Just go to stamps.com, click

53:02

the microphone at the top of the page and enter the code NDQ.

53:05

Matt, I think I need the last word here because

53:08

I know what people are going to think when I

53:10

say it. Oh, okay.

53:12

Go to stamps.com

53:14

for all your postage needs.

53:21

I think that the people at stamps.com

53:24

are about to see a nearly inexplicable

53:26

spike in business.

53:30

I mean, there's a decent chance you're just going to get a call and get offered

53:32

a job just as a heads up because that

53:34

connection is so strong. It's undeniable.

53:37

It is. Great job, man. No, great job. No, you're

53:40

welcome. You're welcome.

53:43

Okay. Gord joke just now aside. It's pretty

53:45

good. It was a pretty good joke. The

53:48

reason it's funny is because it's transparent and it doesn't

53:50

work. No, it doesn't work at all. Yeah, that didn't come

53:52

through on the microphone, but it's really ineffective.

53:55

It's just kind of distorting and weird. It's

53:57

just going to be weird for everybody. I'm probably

53:59

not.

53:59

I'm not gonna wear it, just as a heads up. That was funny.

54:02

Yeah, go ahead. Okay, good. We talk about the Sentinel

54:04

Island thing. It's an interesting thought

54:07

exercise. That's how the conversation goes, where I'd expect

54:09

it to. If you imagine, what would it be like to

54:11

be there? What would it be like to be a fisherman

54:14

who gets washed up on shore there? What would it be like

54:16

to be an Indian legislator

54:19

in the 1950s, coming

54:21

off of everything with the Indian

54:24

independence movement and the values of Mahatma

54:26

Gandhi that is shaping culture

54:28

and society? How do you apply all of these

54:30

values and all of these things that you want for yourselves

54:33

to these folks who live on this island? Oh, interesting.

54:36

Oh, so you're saying,

54:38

I don't understand the politics of this. You're

54:40

saying that India was gaining its

54:42

independence at that point in time from the UK.

54:46

And so whoever came up with this,

54:48

did they have the impression like, hey, we're

54:50

doing the same thing to this group? Is that when this happened?

54:53

Well, surely it had to. When formed

54:55

it, right? When was the law passed or whatever?

54:58

1956, 1953. Was it

55:00

really? Yeah.

55:01

Okay, that's amazing. So, I mean, you've got a generation

55:03

there who's been thinking about this stuff an awful lot.

55:07

And here you've got this tiny little,

55:09

I mean, numerically of no consequence

55:12

people group. They're no threat, they're

55:14

no real benefit. I mean, it's just,

55:16

I

55:16

mean, it's just like a little town way out in the sticks, except

55:19

it's on an island and they've never really met

55:21

anybody from the mainland.

55:22

So what do you do? Well, I think the ethically

55:25

consistent thing in their mind is probably

55:27

what they did.

55:29

So cool, I dig it. And I like working

55:31

through the thought exercise, you and I,

55:34

well, okay, what if you see it from this angle,

55:36

this angle, this angle, what would you do? Going back to

55:38

what I was saying earlier, I was gonna make

55:40

a joke about the matrix in 1999. Oh,

55:42

wow, yeah, remember that? Had it been in 1999, I would say, oh,

55:46

well, let's take them technology so they can do

55:48

things better. Now, I

55:50

don't wanna infect them with social

55:52

media. Ah, yeah. So.

55:55

Can you imagine if we just led with like

55:57

TikTok? Here you

55:59

go. give you a pretty good idea of what's going on outside

56:02

the island. Just use this device and just kind of

56:04

swipe here. You've been in a place where

56:07

Americans are in a village

56:09

in Africa or South America.

56:12

And you've been in a place where

56:15

the American is uncomfortable interacting

56:19

with a villager.

56:21

So they lean on the technology crutch.

56:23

They pull out the phone or they pull out the camera and they take

56:25

a picture and they say, Hey, look at this picture. I just took

56:27

of us. And then

56:29

the children will start looking at the, Oh, take

56:31

a picture of me. I've seen it play out

56:34

many, many times. And unfortunately

56:36

I've

56:37

participated in that because I was like,

56:39

well, you know, if I can,

56:40

you know, I've been, yeah, but unfortunately,

56:43

I mean, come on pictures, that's human.

56:45

It's, it's totally understandable why

56:47

you would do that. It's a point of non-spoken

56:49

human communication to look

56:51

at an image, celebrate it together, point

56:54

at things.

56:55

You got to cut for myself some slack.

56:57

That's you trying to connect with another person and you

56:59

don't have a lot of tools to do it. It's interesting

57:01

though, isn't it? In your pocket. The

57:04

medium is the message.

57:05

The medium is the message.

57:07

And if you pulled out a sheet of paper and drawn

57:09

a picture of the two of you together, that means

57:12

something very different. Then

57:14

check this out. Click. Look what I just did.

57:17

Snap in a picture with your phone in your

57:19

pocket. It's a different thing.

57:21

So we gave it out from a whole bunch of different angles,

57:23

but let me bring it back to this.

57:25

Should we go status quo here? Or should

57:28

somebody go and talk to these folks? The

57:30

world is what the world is. Maybe it's time.

57:32

Maybe there's so many benefits they could receive

57:35

that are being withheld

57:36

that it's incumbent on the rest of the world to

57:39

go and help these people.

57:41

I don't know. What I think is interesting

57:43

is, um, there's a telescope they're going to

57:45

put up on a mountain in Hawaii. And

57:48

I remember thinking, Oh, it's a great place to put a telescope.

57:51

But there was an argument made by

57:54

a local person that says, here's the deal. We've

57:56

got one mountain top.

57:59

We have one mountain. mountain top here. It's

58:02

Mauna Kea. Is that how you say it? Oh, okay.

58:04

So yeah. There's telescopes up in this area,

58:07

but we have one pinnacle of this mountain.

58:10

Once you build something there, it's

58:12

done. Look, we've done

58:15

it.

58:15

We've taken that away.

58:18

And so that's the problem here. Once you

58:20

do this, it's done.

58:22

Yep. And you can't undo that.

58:24

Yep. And that's the problem. Yep.

58:27

So much

58:28

of what I would say has been

58:30

ugly, thoughtless, and unfortunate about

58:33

the age of expansion that just

58:35

burst out. Technology hit a certain point and

58:39

the dam just broke. Like

58:40

this whole second

58:43

half of the earth untouched.

58:45

What is the start? What if we found a third half

58:47

of earth right now, dude? Would you not go?

58:50

You'd go. Yeah. Yeah. I have to know

58:52

they have different animals there.

58:54

They got like kinds of ducks that nobody

58:56

knows about yet. They have potatoes. You

58:58

have to see the new kind of ducks. Well,

59:00

let me ask you this in Star Trek. There's

59:03

a,

59:03

I'm not a Trekkie, but it's called the prime directive.

59:06

Right. What is the prime directive? I

59:08

think is

59:10

that the instruction that is

59:13

Starfleet goes out. You're

59:15

not to engage with any pre

59:17

warp drive technology

59:20

civilization.

59:21

We need Bob back. Yeah. Of course we

59:23

do. Yeah. If you've got a pre

59:25

warp civilization, that is the arbitrary

59:27

line in the sand that somebody drew and

59:29

they're like, all right, if they're not there yet, we just have to

59:32

let them play it out. We observe

59:34

from a distance, but we don't

59:36

reveal our presence and we

59:38

don't mingle. Is that the prime directive? That's

59:40

my understanding. Um,

59:42

it protects unprepared civilizations

59:44

from the danger of Starship crews

59:47

introducing advanced technology,

59:50

knowledge, and values before they are

59:52

ready.

59:53

That's interesting. Clearly

59:54

that's Gene Roddenberry offering

59:56

comment on the in

1:00:00

the crazed, expansive

1:00:02

rush

1:00:03

that pretty much wrapped up about the time that

1:00:05

he was a young boy.

1:00:07

Oh, talking about colonialism? I'm talking about, yeah, I'm talking

1:00:09

about when Roddenberry was a kid,

1:00:11

the frontier was pretty much wrapping up. That

1:00:13

was it. Golly, man. But

1:00:16

I go back to the mountain thing that you're talking about. Right,

1:00:19

you throw that telescope up there. Well, it's advanced

1:00:21

humanity. We're gonna see what's in the stars.

1:00:24

Awesome, I'm really for that.

1:00:26

I like the idea of launching one into space better,

1:00:28

doing it from up there. But

1:00:30

that is the one mountain top you got. And once that's what it's

1:00:32

designated for, that isn't going away unless

1:00:35

it's by some sort of act of violence, which is a pity.

1:00:38

Same thing when I look around the Black

1:00:40

Hills, the West,

1:00:42

I see malls, particularly

1:00:45

of the strip variety, everywhere.

1:00:50

Yeah. I go to Branson, Missouri.

1:00:52

I like to fish there in the winter. I drove through

1:00:54

there for a day.

1:00:56

I'm looking all around this lake, and it's a pretty lake.

1:00:58

A man-made lake, but also every

1:01:01

hillside.

1:01:02

I remember a beautiful hillside from a couple years

1:01:05

ago when I'm there. That was the one place that

1:01:07

still felt like, nah, housing development.

1:01:09

It's never going away. I went to the

1:01:12

place Tara and I lived when

1:01:14

we first got married, and I went there

1:01:16

recently. It was the first house we rented. And

1:01:19

she's like, oh my goodness, send me a picture. So

1:01:22

I went and took a picture of the barn. I remember

1:01:24

a little cat we had named Brimley would sit

1:01:26

on this post. The guy who recommends

1:01:29

oats? Yeah, Brimley. Exactly.

1:01:32

I think you've told me that before.

1:01:34

I'm tracking, yeah. It was great. We went

1:01:36

to the place where I remember this

1:01:38

young girl would come ride a horse behind

1:01:41

the house, and we didn't really know anything about horses. It

1:01:44

was just really interesting to see the

1:01:46

place, but right

1:01:49

at the end of the driveway, I remembered it to be

1:01:51

trees, and I remember all this stuff. There were

1:01:53

several, what I call McMansions. They

1:01:56

were like little suburb developments.

1:01:59

They're just thrown up. And

1:02:01

it was clear that the runoff wasn't planned very well.

1:02:03

And so there was like a little,

1:02:05

they could have made it look pretty pond,

1:02:07

but it was kind of grown up and it was just like, this

1:02:09

is where the low point is. And we got to, and

1:02:12

I remember thinking, man, this was beautiful.

1:02:15

And once you got to the place, it was still

1:02:17

beautiful. But I remember thinking, this

1:02:19

isn't great.

1:02:21

And so I also remember

1:02:23

someone talking to me recently, they said, hey, we went

1:02:25

to a vacation. We went to an island

1:02:28

and this was a whole family. They took their whole family

1:02:30

to an island, which I thought was amazing. Wow.

1:02:33

And they said, hey, it was like a

1:02:36

big deal. This was like,

1:02:38

our kids are about to go to high school and we're

1:02:41

gonna have one last hurrah while we're all still in the house.

1:02:44

And the dad, or I forget

1:02:46

who it was telling me, they said, yeah,

1:02:48

most people when they go to this place, they go to this island,

1:02:50

but now everybody goes there. So we go to this other

1:02:53

place and it's just quiet.

1:02:55

For now. Until

1:02:58

everybody hears that. Because when

1:03:00

I heard him say that, what did I think?

1:03:02

If I went to that place, I'd wanna

1:03:04

go to that island. I'm not going to that dumb crowded

1:03:06

one, like all the dumb idiots. Exactly,

1:03:09

right? Going to the other one.

1:03:10

We watched most of

1:03:12

a River Runs Through It the other day. Never seen it

1:03:15

before. It's a fly fishing movie. I've never seen it before.

1:03:17

It's rough. It's a boring show. I didn't finish

1:03:19

it. Some things happened and I was like, I'll come back to it. And then

1:03:22

I never did. So that tells you what I thought of

1:03:24

it. Maybe that made sense 30 years ago.

1:03:27

Didn't move the needle for me. But

1:03:29

at the beginning it did a little bit because it's in

1:03:31

Missoula, Montana. I lived in

1:03:33

Missoula, Montana. I feel great affection

1:03:35

for Missoula, Montana. They're talking about locations.

1:03:37

I know the Blackfoot River. Last day

1:03:39

I ever spent with my brother, it was on the Blackfoot River.

1:03:42

Me and Adam Doty and my

1:03:44

whole family and my kid brother.

1:03:46

And it's a trout river and we all

1:03:49

put on snorkels

1:03:50

and we snorkeled it. I didn't know how to fly fish back then,

1:03:53

but I thought trout were beautiful and neat. I

1:03:55

probably saw a bigger trout that day than I've ever seen

1:03:57

in my whole life.

1:03:59

Snorkeling. a mountain

1:04:01

river with my brother and my

1:04:03

childhood best friend, we lost a snorkel

1:04:06

in there. So we're trying to battle back upstream

1:04:08

and get the snorkel. And anytime I go back

1:04:10

by Missoula, just real sad about the

1:04:12

Blackfoot River. I'm like getting out of that water. That's the

1:04:14

last time I saw, last time I saw my brother,

1:04:17

last time we were all together. Wow. Right there trying

1:04:19

to battle upstream and dive down and get the snorkel

1:04:21

from all the trout.

1:04:22

Wow. That we're guarding the snorkel. Wonder

1:04:24

if it's still there. Guarding the snorkel. Yeah.

1:04:26

So, I mean, it's the Blackfoot. It's

1:04:29

the first place I lived out of college. It's the first

1:04:31

place, like me identity place. The we

1:04:33

picked when we got married. This

1:04:35

was neat to hear all of those points of commonality, but

1:04:37

there's one line. There's

1:04:39

no drone shots back then in these movies. I had clumsy

1:04:42

helicopter shot of some kids running through a

1:04:44

field. And the narrator says something

1:04:46

like, and when I grew up in Montana,

1:04:49

this is pre-World War I.

1:04:51

It was a place of primal

1:04:54

innocence.

1:04:56

There was still do on it. And

1:04:58

I felt something. There was still do

1:05:01

on it. I felt something. Yeah.

1:05:03

Just it was so big.

1:05:05

It was so untouched. And the little dent they

1:05:07

were making on it probably seemed like it was of no

1:05:10

consequence.

1:05:12

Missoula is different now. It's filled

1:05:14

right up. But

1:05:16

that's half of where my heart goes when I think about

1:05:18

the Sentinel Island thing.

1:05:19

Is where your heart's going with the DMS

1:05:22

with it? Or do you not?

1:05:24

Is anything really unspoiled? Is

1:05:26

it nice to just imagine that there's something?

1:05:28

I mean, one little, however many acres,

1:05:31

island there is somewhere that's just unspoiled?

1:05:36

That feels pretty good. But now let me add

1:05:38

this to the mix before we wrap up. We

1:05:40

were traveling through the South the other

1:05:42

day, right? And Camilla had

1:05:44

an interaction with a lady

1:05:46

who believed she has a gift of healing. She was miraculously

1:05:48

healed people. What? Yep. She was an unusual

1:05:51

woman. It was an unusual interaction.

1:05:54

I'm not persuaded that she actually

1:05:56

has that ability. I'm not necessarily sure. I don't

1:05:58

think she's even- She specialized in like-

1:05:59

lower back pain kind of stuff. Leg

1:06:02

lengthening and yeah. Leg

1:06:04

lengthening? That's the kind of miracles that that

1:06:06

crowd does. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm

1:06:08

enormously skeptical of

1:06:10

such claims.

1:06:12

I don't practice that

1:06:14

religion, whatever. We don't need to get into it. So

1:06:17

we're always polite when we run into

1:06:19

somebody of this stripe,

1:06:22

but

1:06:23

she's went right up to Camilla and she's like,

1:06:25

well, I'm a healer.

1:06:26

So what

1:06:28

do you need? What kind of healing do you need?

1:06:30

Camilla was very polite. My daughter was very

1:06:32

polite. Why would you be mean to this lady? I'm

1:06:35

not looking for a fight

1:06:36

at the dressing rooms at Target.

1:06:38

Like this is what I want from life. So no,

1:06:41

we're good. Thank you so much. And we just kind

1:06:43

of moved on. And then we were

1:06:45

talking with some other friends and family and kind

1:06:47

of having a little bit of a giggle about it. And I got to thinking about

1:06:49

it. I was like, you know what though?

1:06:51

How big of a jerk would you have to be if

1:06:54

you genuinely believed that you could

1:06:56

lay your

1:06:57

palm on somebody and

1:07:00

pray something or something

1:07:02

and they would be healed of their affliction?

1:07:05

How big of a jerk would you be to keep that to yourself

1:07:07

and not at least offer and

1:07:09

try to give that away

1:07:11

if you genuinely believed it?

1:07:14

And so I came to kind of respect

1:07:16

the lady in our disagreement that

1:07:18

this was kind of how she had found peace with

1:07:21

that tension. It was like,

1:07:22

hey, she believes I got this gift. I have

1:07:25

to run it by people. I have to give them the

1:07:27

option. Now I know there

1:07:29

are people in the third chair who are listening to us talk about this

1:07:31

anytime we get into Jesus gospel,

1:07:33

Bible faith stuff. And that's how they view

1:07:35

what we believe here. I get it. I'm

1:07:37

in peace with that. But the

1:07:40

same way though it was challenging,

1:07:42

I got to a point of being able to muster empathy for

1:07:44

someone who believes something I don't believe, that being this

1:07:46

healing lady and her impulse to say,

1:07:49

I have to give this away.

1:07:51

Surely someone who does not agree

1:07:53

with you and I and our understanding of the world and God

1:07:56

could look at us and be like, well,

1:07:58

I totally understand why at some point.

1:07:59

you might want to tell somebody like if you really believe

1:08:02

this is truthful and life-giving and good,

1:08:05

you could probably want to mention it.

1:08:06

So what do you do with that

1:08:09

impulse that somebody might feel to

1:08:12

give away something they believe is good and right and

1:08:14

true to people who've never heard it while

1:08:16

balancing that with the fact that there's

1:08:18

some degree of unspoiled and untouched happening

1:08:21

there?

1:08:22

In my life, in my relationships,

1:08:25

I usually build the bridge

1:08:28

and then wait for the person to walk across it.

1:08:31

So you're proposing

1:08:33

a 450 mile land bridge a causeway

1:08:36

to uh sentin or sentinel island? No,

1:08:38

I'm still talking figuratively. Oh okay good, that

1:08:40

makes more sense. No, like relationally,

1:08:42

I

1:08:43

don't hit people in the head

1:08:45

with what I believe. I

1:08:48

just let it be known in like the least

1:08:51

intrusive way possible like hey

1:08:53

I kind of over here this is kind of where

1:08:55

I'm at

1:08:56

and then if people ask questions

1:08:59

that's cool and

1:09:01

then I'll have the discussion but for me

1:09:03

to say like hey I believe this and I think you

1:09:05

need to think this

1:09:06

like that's a different that doesn't work

1:09:08

for me when people do that to me it's off-putting and

1:09:11

weird and I don't like it. Yeah, I don't like it at

1:09:13

all. I have a friend who thought off-putting was spelled

1:09:15

o-f-f-d-u-d-d-i-n-g

1:09:18

like oh gross. It's gross.

1:09:21

It's gross. It's off-putting. That's

1:09:25

really good. No, I think

1:09:27

uh

1:09:28

just the way I do it in relationships is I just

1:09:30

say I'm here, you're there, cool,

1:09:33

I still love you and like you. Right. And let's hang

1:09:35

out. Yeah, I like that vibe. And then it's

1:09:38

just a little more difficult to talk about when there's

1:09:40

a literal island there. Right.

1:09:43

I

1:09:43

think an important thing to note

1:09:46

is there there are

1:09:47

different Christian understandings of what that

1:09:49

scenario actually means.

1:09:52

There are some who would say God

1:09:55

by his providence like he ordains

1:09:57

he knows he just knows and he sorts all that out.

1:10:01

somehow whoever is going to respond

1:10:03

to God will respond to God. Okay.

1:10:06

There are others who would say like, no, it's

1:10:08

a very volitional thing for somebody to respond

1:10:10

to God.

1:10:11

And you kind of, you kind of got to help get them to

1:10:13

that point through like, I'm

1:10:16

just, I'm laughing at you just sitting

1:10:18

here trying to like

1:10:19

casually explain Calvinism

1:10:22

and Armenianism and all the stuff.

1:10:24

You're just like, yeah, I mean, like if you could

1:10:27

just paraphrase it like this, it

1:10:29

was like, wow, this is, this is complicated

1:10:31

stuff. That's right. When we talk about things, we'll

1:10:33

be due.

1:10:34

But then, one thing I would say is

1:10:37

I

1:10:38

don't think it's okay to check your mind at the door.

1:10:41

You have to ask these hard questions and

1:10:43

you have to know where you stand on them. It troubles

1:10:46

me that as we talk, you are stroking the blade

1:10:48

of that lethal tribal Ecuadorian

1:10:50

spear. Like it just, it's very

1:10:52

foreboding as though I've said the wrong thing.

1:10:55

Okay. I'll put it up. Cause you've got that spear. I'm

1:10:57

sorry. Okay. No, it's all right. That is strange. I'll put that

1:10:59

up.

1:11:00

Still others would look at that and say,

1:11:02

and there's stuff in the Bible about the physical

1:11:05

created world being evident enough

1:11:08

to tell the story.

1:11:09

The rocks will cry out. Uh, yeah.

1:11:11

Or Romans one that, you know, in tones

1:11:14

of like people can do the math. You can see

1:11:16

it. You can reason backwards from existence

1:11:19

to get to a point of being like, Oh, like I think maybe somebody

1:11:21

made this and I think maybe they might be like this.

1:11:24

Are you familiar with the concept of the spear man? As

1:11:27

I sit here with a spear.

1:11:28

Yeah. That it's a way

1:11:31

to illustrate the infinite nature

1:11:33

of existence. And if you go to the very last

1:11:35

thing that is known and explored on the edge

1:11:38

of existence of the universe and you extend

1:11:40

a spear into it, that

1:11:43

I

1:11:43

don't know, what does that mean? What are the consequences of that? I guess

1:11:45

then that's the new end of things. Yeah.

1:11:47

And then you could

1:11:49

do that over and over.

1:11:51

And eventually you, you can rationalize

1:11:54

yourself to infinity, like infinity

1:11:56

in space, infinity in time.

1:11:58

You know, it's a big. concept

1:12:01

and

1:12:03

it's interesting because that has

1:12:05

a lot to do with how I rationally arrived

1:12:07

at oh there must be a prime mover. I don't

1:12:10

know I

1:12:11

think that's a very interesting

1:12:13

concept and it is a way

1:12:15

that a person

1:12:17

could get to some very very big questions

1:12:19

and I think people should think about that. Yes

1:12:23

and

1:12:24

man that could be episodes upon episodes

1:12:26

right there.

1:12:27

I want to chase that

1:12:29

but instead no pun intended I'm going to move

1:12:31

toward the plane landing here. All

1:12:34

these different scenarios that we've hypothesized about

1:12:37

regarding the Sentinel Island thing and

1:12:40

a humanitarian impulse, a

1:12:42

religious impulse, a specifically Christian

1:12:44

impulse, a curiosity impulse,

1:12:47

an anthropological impulse to want to go meet

1:12:49

these people and engage.

1:12:52

Somebody ran this experiment.

1:12:54

There was a guy a few years back

1:12:57

who was of a particular

1:12:59

stripe of Christianity where there's a big emphasis

1:13:02

on hey they can't know unless you go tell

1:13:04

them

1:13:05

who decided that he was going to take the

1:13:07

risk and go to this island

1:13:09

and try to make contact with the

1:13:11

people of Sentinel Island in the style

1:13:14

as he imagines it of

1:13:17

the great missionaries of yore that he

1:13:19

read about.

1:13:20

So he goes to India.

1:13:21

He documents a whole bunch of it. He communicates

1:13:24

with friends and family and

1:13:26

he pays a couple of

1:13:29

local fishermen to break the rules

1:13:31

and take him to the island. He

1:13:34

goes to the island and he

1:13:36

is keeping a journal and

1:13:40

he makes contact and he doesn't get killed.

1:13:42

It looks like there's even a light exchange of

1:13:45

gifts. Really?

1:13:47

Local fishermen are still there. As soon as

1:13:49

it feels like that was enough he gets back on the boat.

1:13:52

He apparently goes away. He

1:13:54

comes back again. I'm not

1:13:56

crystal clear on whether he came back

1:13:59

a second time.

1:15:59

were defending themselves.

1:16:01

Yeah. Maybe they were defending themselves

1:16:04

in a really big way.

1:16:05

And if somebody had done this to the Spanish when

1:16:07

they landed the way back in the day,

1:16:10

it would have worked out differently in the new world.

1:16:12

Right? So, yeah, obviously

1:16:14

those

1:16:15

are very different scenarios because one

1:16:17

came with power and one came with nothing. I mean, there's

1:16:19

one kid showing up versus men

1:16:21

in armor with guns and economic

1:16:23

motivation. I mean, it's very, very different in terms

1:16:25

of

1:16:26

military threat, but in terms of cultural

1:16:28

threat, when you're talking about

1:16:30

a people group that small, that one guy,

1:16:33

that's a pretty big deal.

1:16:34

So this is interesting because I've followed

1:16:36

this story as it's unfolded. It's intrigued me for a long

1:16:38

time. And I've seen very

1:16:41

secular minded people

1:16:43

who theoretically would not be sympathetic to

1:16:45

the

1:16:45

missionary movement, almost come

1:16:47

to the kid's defense a little bit.

1:16:49

I've read Christian types who've

1:16:51

been very, very critical of this

1:16:53

young man and a lot of stuff in between

1:16:56

because I think it's a- It's murky. It's ethically-

1:16:59

It's gray, the gray area there. Clumsy. And

1:17:01

so, huh, yeah. So if you don't know what to do, leave

1:17:04

it alone. I guess,

1:17:06

go with that as default.

1:17:08

I don't know, but I'm getting uncomfortable.

1:17:11

Can I take this off now? This

1:17:13

is, this is, this is a joke. Yeah,

1:17:18

thanks for clarifying that. To be clear, I'm holding a bottle

1:17:20

up to the microphone. This is just,

1:17:22

this is just. I don't know, man.

1:17:25

It's,

1:17:27

I don't have answers. Maybe it's in the

1:17:29

immaturity of my thought at the moment,

1:17:31

but I'm gonna have to wrestle with this for a

1:17:33

while

1:17:34

and go read about it for sure.

1:17:37

Yeah, that's where I'm at. This one

1:17:39

to me- You better believe I'm going to look up satellite

1:17:41

data. Oh yeah. I'm

1:17:43

going to look up some satellite imagery to see what's

1:17:45

going on. There's, oh, you know what? It's

1:17:48

obscured. There's a NASA satellite, GOES,

1:17:50

right? You can see where fires

1:17:52

are all over the world.

1:17:55

And that's, you know, you can see where

1:17:57

humans are cutting down forest and

1:17:59

burning things.

1:19:58

I

1:20:00

would beat it into a spear immediately or a

1:20:02

spear tip. I don't know, the

1:20:05

line, where would I draw the line? Written language?

1:20:08

Man, that's fun, right? I think it's

1:20:11

a fun exercise.

1:20:13

And if we can't immediately jump

1:20:15

to the obvious moral conclusion sitting

1:20:17

right here, if it's not just immediately

1:20:20

morally apparent to us,

1:20:22

I think that does mean that it's a, I mean,

1:20:24

it's at least a somewhat complex question.

1:20:27

And it means that the what do you do with

1:20:29

Sentinel Island

1:20:30

extend lives by giving them technology

1:20:33

that extends lives and improves nutrition

1:20:35

and all of that, or do you leave it alone?

1:20:37

I think if we can't come up with that prime

1:20:39

directive technological line

1:20:42

quickly off the top of our heads and it's not immediately

1:20:44

apparent and evident, then what

1:20:46

you have here is a bona fide conundrum that

1:20:49

is just worth wrestling with. What's

1:20:51

interesting is

1:20:52

let's assume that the people of this particular

1:20:55

island are great to each other. They

1:20:57

treat each other well,

1:20:59

they have something akin to rights that

1:21:02

they honor amongst themselves.

1:21:05

Then there's this other island

1:21:07

and you know that

1:21:10

on that island, people are taken advantage of, women

1:21:12

are taken advantage of,

1:21:14

children are killed or whatever.

1:21:16

You know that there's,

1:21:18

well, you and I would call evil is taking place

1:21:20

on that island.

1:21:22

Is it weird that I almost am more compelled

1:21:24

to go jump in? So

1:21:28

is that weird?

1:21:29

I mean, maybe they're working it out. Right,

1:21:31

because- Maybe they almost got it whipped because I

1:21:34

mean, some post-warp civilization

1:21:36

might look at us in 1859 and be like, they

1:21:40

buy, sell, trade and breed people.

1:21:43

We just got to liquidate this. No, come

1:21:45

back in like six years. We're gonna have a big fight.

1:21:48

We're gonna start improving on this and then you won't

1:21:50

believe how much better it is in a hundred years. Like

1:21:52

we're really getting somewhere here. I've got a ways

1:21:54

to go,

1:21:55

but we're getting somewhere. You got to at least

1:21:57

have some kind of awareness of how systemic.

1:23:59

It's just super super super

1:24:02

interesting.

1:24:30

you