← Old School with Shilo Brooks
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- [00:02]
Shiloh Brooks
The world moves fast, your workday even faster. Pitching products, drafting reports, analyzing data. Microsoft 365 Copilot is your AI assistant for work built into Word, Excel, PowerPoint and other Microsoft 365 apps you use, helping you quickly write, analyze, create and summarize so you can cut through clutter and clear a path to your best work. Learn more@Microsoft.com M365 copilot I'm Shiloh Brooks. I'm a professor and CEO, and I believe reading good books makes us better men. Today I'm talking to Alex Jones. Alex is the founder and CEO of Hallow. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky, published in 1879, changed Alex's life. Today I'm asking him why. This is old school. Alex Jones, welcome to old school.
- [01:05]
Alex Jones
Oh, thanks so much for having me, brother. It's an honor.
- [01:07]
Shiloh Brooks
So I want our listeners to get to know a little bit about you and who you are before we discuss the book choice. Because the book choice is the Brothers Karamazov, which not every human being would choose. I'm telling you're a special guy. That's an 800 page Russian novel that weighs 50 pounds. So tell us a little bit about you, about Hallow. What is it? Why did you found it?
- [01:27]
Alex Jones
Ah, that's a great question. I love Pope Francis's answer to who are you? I'm a sinner is the shortest answer. But yeah, the Hallow story and my story are really pretty similar. I was raised religious. I was raised Catholic, but fell away from my faith in high school and college. Would have considered myself atheist or agnostic for most of that time. And when I graduated, I got really into meditation. My mind first went to secular meditation. So I started doing kind of this secular meditation every day. And there were a couple apps that had launched Headspace Calm that I was using and I loved. They were great tools. But every time I would meditate, my mind would feel this weird pull towards something spiritual like an image of the cross or the name Jesus, which I thought was very strange. And so I started reaching out to pastors friends asking like, hey, I thought I had this really interesting question. I was like, hey, is there any way there's some sort of intersection here between this meditation thing and this Jesus thing? And they all laughed at me and said, yeah, we've been doing it for 2,000 years. You probably should have heard about it. It's called prayer. And I was like, no, I know prayer prayers. They're like, hey, thanks for Stuff. Sorry for stuff. Help me with stuff. And I had this one pastor say, yeah, that's a great way to pray, but have you ever tried to. It's a great way to talk to God, but have you ever really tried to listen for Him? And I had no idea what that meant. And I started discovering this whole world of contemplative and meditative prayer. One of them, there's a bunch of different techniques, but one of them is called lectio divina, which is a way of meditating on scripture. And I randomly opened up the Bible. You're supposed to pick a word that sticks out to you. I opened up to Luke 11 through the word that stuck out to me was from where the disciples asked Jesus to teach him how to pray. And he gives them the Our Father. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. And hallowed was the word that stuck out to me. And it was just 10 minutes, just in the comfort of my own home. But it was just this. It just changed my life. It was this incredible combination of this deep sense of peace with this depth of meaning and purpose. So Hallow means to make holy. Was God trying to make me holy? Was I letting him make me holy? Was I supposed to help other people grow in holiness? And the answer was no. I was just following the ways of the world, trying to get. Get ahead. And so I ended up quitting my job and doing this crazy thing. The idea is so obvious at that point. It's. I had been using these apps. I wanted a different app. I discovered this thing. I wanted an app that helped me to do that, even if it was just for myself, which is certainly the 99% likely outcome, was it would just help me to grow a little bit deeper in prayer. But God has done just absolutely incredible things with it. So he's brought me back to the faith through that, through the beauty of prayer and a real relationship with the Lord.
- [03:54]
Shiloh Brooks
So I want to talk more about Hallow and your story, but somewhere in the span of what you just told us, from you looking for something like what you created, but you couldn't find it, so you had to make it yourself. Somewhere in that span, you read the Brothers Karamazov. And so what I'd like to do is get you to say, you know, when was this? Where was this in that whole journey? And how did that book transform you and contribute to this, to this kind of awakening that you had?
- [04:21]
Alex Jones
The Brothers Karamazov is such an incredible book. There's a handful of books that have Completely and totally changed my life. And reading is such a. I'm so grateful that you guys are doing this show. Reading is such a great blessing. Has been so life changing for me, especially as I've come back to my faith. Both scripture, but also, you know, spiritual books. But so, okay. I first came back to my faith and in this kind of craziness of coming back to my faith, a bunch of people recommended a bunch of books, a bunch of great books. There's mere Christianity, there's St. Teresa of Avila. She has a series of books that were really phenomenal. He Leadeth Me. There's a handful of really phenomenal books the Way. But one of them that was recommended by pretty much everybody I spoke to as one of the great spiritual books is the Brothers Karamazov. I think it's the greatest novel ever written. Dr. Peter Kreeft, who's, I think, the greatest living theologian of, at least in the Christian world, says it's tied for the greatest novel ever written alongside the Lord of the Rings. But the. It's an incredible story. It's got a love triangle. It's got two love triangles. And at the core is this conflict between a father, an earthly father, really pretty terribly awful father, and his three sons, and primarily one son. And there's a dramatic murder and there's a trial, and it's got you on the edge of your seat. You gotta give it like 100 pages to get into it, like any great book. But once you're into it, it's an incredibly engaging story. But then at the core of it and at the center of it is this really, really beautifully profound spiritual message. And it's this thing called Sober Notes, which I'm sure we'll get into. But it's this idea of humility, of transformation, of conversion, of guilt, of sin, of the weight of sin, but also of the power and the ripple effect of love, the power of love to transform the world. Real, active love. And so anyway, I read that book the first time when I was first coming back to my faith. And once you get into it, it's hard to put down. So I got through it once. I got into it pretty quickly, but then it was about, oh, I don't know, six years, I guess, and we were thinking about. So with Hallow, we journey through these books for our seasonal challenges. And the biggest one we do every year is called Lent. And it's the best challenge we do. We put a ton of effort into trying to make it the best thing we can. And so the Brothers Karamazov came up and it's a perfect book for our Lenten journey, which is it's got this incredibly engaging story that keeps you hooked, which helps you to build a habit of prayer. You want to figure out what happened and to whom. But then it's also got this really deep and really profound spiritual message which actually really mirrors the journey that we're all called as Christians to go through during this season of Lent. And I reread the book and I don't know what it was about the second time going through it, but it just like the message that Dostoevsky was trying to deliver, it just hit me in a way that just completely changed everything. It changed the way that I interact with people. It changed the way that I see myself. It changed the way that I see my sin. It changed the way that I see the power of love. It changed the way that I see the world. It changed the way that I see the Lord. It changed everything for me. Me.
- [07:21]
Shiloh Brooks
I think you're right to say that this is a complex book, that it's a book to be taken seriously. It's a Russian novel. There's some beautiful translations out there. It has a lot of characters. Oftentimes it can be helpful for first time readers to keep a notebook by your side and when you see a new character name, write it down, say who it is, because they're going to come back and all the names, since they're Russian, might look similar to you. So there are strategies for getting through this book, but I want to focus on what you call the core, the spiritual message of the book. But I think before we do that, we should just kind of give people, I mean, you mentioned in your overview, this is a murder mystery, this is a spiritual book. This is a book of war, this is a book of family. It's got all these interwoven concepts, but I think the title is probably what's most important for people to understand. It's called the Brothers Karamazov. Now what does that mean? Well, very simply, the book has three brothers who are its main protagonists. Although there's a kind of illegitimate fourth brother who we could talk about these three brothers. We should just be very brief about this and I invite your reflection on them. Ivan Karamazov, Dimitri Karamazov and Alyosha Karamazov. They're all very different. And the book is largely the interweaving of their various passions, their perspectives on the world and how they encounter it and how they disagree about it and all These sorts of things. But I wonder if you might want to say something just about who each of those brothers is that would provide a kind of summary introduction to the Brothers Karamazov.
- [09:00]
Alex Jones
Yeah, I thought you did a great job framing. The other hint that I would give is he uses nicknames in Russian, nicknames for the different characters. And so keeping a notebook by your side. Sometimes the books have. Like when he says Mitya, he is also. He's also referring to Dmitri, and he has long versions of the name. It's Ilyusha is one of the names. Or Ilyushenko is referring to the same person. So anyway, there's. There's a handful of tricks for getting through the book. One of the writers on our team, her name's Ashley, she's incredible. She had this beautiful insight, which is. And I do think Dostoevsky really very purposefully did this, which it mirrors actually quite beautifully, the parable of the Prodigal Son in Scripture. And so the parable of the Prodigal Son, for folks who don't know, is this very famous parable where Jesus is describing what it's like when people return to God the Father, and he tells the story of, okay, there's a father and his two sons. The younger son asks for his inheritance, leaves the father's house, squanders all his property with gambling and prostitutes, realizes his need, his desperation. He's hungry, and he says, okay, I'm going to return to my father's house. Even his servants are treated better than I am. And so I'm going to return to him and say, father, I've sinned against heaven and before you. I no longer deserve to be called your son. Treat me as you would one of your hired hands. And so he comes back home, and while he is still a long way off, the father runs out to him, is filled with compassion. Not judgment, not criticism, just compassion. Lifts him up, hugs him, kisses him and says, let us celebrate, Let us eat, let us rejoice. Because the son of mine who was dead is alive again. And the elder son, who's at home this whole time, builds up this wall of pride within his heart and gets angry that his father has been so generous to the younger son. And says the father again comes out to greet him while they're celebrating, because the older son refuses to go in. He says, why are you refusing to go? And the older son says, well, I've been working all these years, and you never gave me anything. And you give the fatted calf for this son who went and Wasted everything for you. And the father says, oh, my son, all that I have is yours. This has all been yours this whole time. But we must eat, we must celebrate, because this son of mine, this brother of years, was dead and is alive again. Anyway, that's the parable, the really beautiful parallel to the Brothers Karamazov. So most people have heard that parallel. Most Christians certainly have heard that parable. But Mitya is the younger son in that parable. Mitya is this reckless, passionate, driven by his own whims, Driven by his own. Yes, the word that Dostoevsky uses is sensuality, his own sensual desires, the desires of the flesh. He's in love with. He's engaged to a woman named Katerina, but he's in love with this woman named Grushenka. He's following kind of the ways of the world. He's this younger son who's let off and squanders all his property, mirrors the younger son in many ways. And then Ivan mirrors the older son, the son who allows pride and his intellect to build up within his heart. And Ivan is kind of this, I don't believe in God. And beautiful passages about the suffering of children, the problem of evil, but all these arguments for why Ivan doesn't believe in God, and they're mostly intellectual. So Ivan is this man of great pride. And then Alyosha is really the father figure in that story. Although he's the youngest son in the Brothers Karamazov, Alyosha is this. He's training to be a monk. And so he's this man of deep peace, this young man, he's the youngest of the sons, but this man of deep peace and love. And what Dostoevsky does in this book is he shows the power of love. And it's not like, radical. It's not. Alyosha doesn't die on a cross. He doesn't sacrifice himself for everybody. But what he does is he shows up in little ways for both of his brothers, both Mitya and Ivan, just listening to them, just being there with him, and through his love, you see him radically transform all of their lives. And their father, Feodor, is terrible, awful again, very much like Mitya squanders all his property, is kind of a fool, the town drunk and fool, and also is in love with Grushenka, who is. Who is the person that Mitya is in love with. And so there's the love triangle between a son and his own father, which is heartbreaking. Fedor, like, totally abandons the sons. Growing up is a terrible Awful father. And it's really this journey of, okay, yes, they have this sin, this brokenness from their earthly father who is killed. That's the murder mystery is Fyodor is killed. It's the first sentence of the book is that he's murdered, and there's the trial for who is guilty for the murder and trying to figure out who killed him. And. But the core of the journey is really Mitya, Ivan and Alyosha, all journeying to their true father in heaven, all journeying back to God and to Christ and to letting him into their hearts and letting him transform their hearts in a radical and beautiful conversion.
- [13:42]
Shiloh Brooks
So this is not an unbumpy road. I think you're right to say that this is a journey back to, in a certain sense, the father. And the father is killed, and there's these beautiful double meanings in their father, namely their mortal father, but also their father in heaven. I want to talk to you about. You know this about a certain part of the book that's arguably the most famous part. The Brothers Karamazov is a beautiful novel. It's a novel that is often celebrated as the best novel ever written. The form of novels like nobody even needs to write another novel because Dostoevsky just drops the mic like he did it. It's the best there's ever been. But there's a part of the novel that when people think back on the Brothers Karamazov, when it's talked about in literary circles and philosophic circles, comes up again and again. And this part of the novel, it's really two chapters, one called Rebellion and one called the Grand Inquisitor. And you mentioned a moment ago that there's this brother, Ivan Karamazov, who, you know, he's got a dark soul. And there's no part of the book that challenges faith and the goodness of faith in the goodness of the Christian God more than this chapter called Rebellion. And let me just set this up because I want to ask you about it. One of the brothers von Karamazov goes to his more. Much more pious brother Alyosha and says, look, and I'm going to vulgarize this, but I want to get your reaction to it. This is a world full of. Of suffering. And it's not just people who are fallen who are suffering. I have collected, Yvonne says, newspaper clippings of the senseless murder of innocent children, that young girls being tortured and forced to eat their own feces, little boys being sent out to dogs who rip them limb from limb. You can't tell me, Alyosha, you pious man, that your God redeems this. This happened to those people. They suffered. Those children were innocent. They did nothing to anyone. And yet they died. And not only did they die, you can't go back. It happened. So you can talk about grace, you can talk about redemption, but the fact of the matter is those children suffered innocently. And so I say to you, pious Alyosha, how can a God who is good permit this to happen in this world? But that's the challenge that's posed to the reader and Alyosha, by Ivan Karamazov. And Dostoevsky himself worried very much about this because he thought in his own heart that this was the best argument for atheism that's probably ever been written. And he felt. I'm given to understand that he may have overdone it. In other words, that the passages that I've described may convince a believing person to be an atheist, or at least a person who's searching to be an atheist, rather than the opposite. And so I want to ask you, as a person of faith, you've mentioned that you are asking the users of your app to read this book. How do you understand that scene? And how are we to overcome that very deep challenge that Ivan Karamazov poses?
- [17:03]
Alex Jones
Man, what a beautiful summary of. Yeah, it's a really difficult chapter. And all of the stories Dostoevsky took for that chapter are real. He took them from real newspaper headlines in Russia, and there's stories of infants being tossed onto the spears of opposing armies just for entertainment. The story you told of the young child being chased down and torn apart by dogs. His mother is forced to watch. These are all real stories, real crimes that happened in Russia that Dostoevsky is sharing through this book. And you're right, it's also the most famous part of the book, this and the Grand Inquisitor. And there's a part of that that's a bit heartbreaking, honestly, because we studied this book mostly in English classes or in literature classes and outside of the context of faith. And you forget when you read these passages, because if you just read these passages isolated outside of the book, and even if you read the book, you forget that Dostoevsky is a believer like Dostoevsky. Christ. Dostoevsky is a deeply Christian man. But what Dostoevsky is doing there is he is presenting beautifully the most articulate case which we as Christians shouldn't shy away from. The doubts and the arguments and the things that go against God, the things that people will use to attack God. We should dive into them full steam. But what we forget so often, especially when we read this outside of the context, is that Dostoevsky answers this question. He answers it in the novel and scripture. This is not a new question for scripture. Scripture is the Bible is about answering this question. So much of the Old Testament, so much of wisdom literature, and so much of the New Testament. The New Testament, the core of the New Testament is that. And we forget what Alyosha's answer is.
- [18:49]
Shiloh Brooks
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- [19:55]
Alex Jones
But Alyosha's answer at the end of this whole passage is to his brother. You asked just now if there is in the whole world a being who could and would have the right to forgive. But there is such a being, and he can forgive everything, forgive all and for all, because he himself gave his innocent blood for all and for everything. You've forgotten about him. But it is on him that the whole structure is being built. And that's how Alyosha responds to this problem of evil, which is the only real response, which is the answer. Christ on the cross crucified, suffering innocently for the sake of our sins, for the sake of the sins of the world, especially those against innocent people, especially those against innocent children. It is. It'd be better for a millstone to be hung around your neck and you thrown into the sea than for you to lead one of these little ones of mine to sin. The grand Inquisitor then goes on, we'll talk about that, I'm sure, Which is, Ivan responds to that invocation of Christ and says, okay, fine, let me now put Christ on trial. You've brought up Christ. Let me put him on trial. And he puts him on trial in this beautiful story about the Grand Inquisitor, which we'll talk about. But then the answer to that again and again. We study that Grand Inquisitor in literature classes or whatever it is in high school and college. But then we ignore the answer, which there is an answer. And the answer is not all that satisfying intellectually. And I think that's kind of the point, which is, you have this whole trial why Christ gave humanity freedom, why he shouldn't have given humanity freedom, why he made a mistake in giving humanity freedom, and he should have just subjected us and limited our freedom. And then Christ doesn't respond with any words to this Grand Inquisitor, who's the. The evil figure in this. In this story, in the next chapter, Christ just sits there meekly and kindly. And at the end, he gets up and the guy says, are you going to ever respond? Are you going to have any answer to this? And Christ just gets up and he walks over to him and he gives him a kiss. And then at the end of the story, Alyosha, Ivan says, okay, Alyosha, you've heard that I defend. You've heard that I deny your God. And Alyosha is a monk. He loves the Lord with, like, his whole heart and his whole soul. And he says, okay, Alyosha, you've heard that I deny your Lord. You've heard all of my attacks against your God. What is your answer? And Alyosha stands up and walks over to his brother, and he kisses him. And Ivan says, that's plagiarism. It's this beautiful passage about, okay, fine. It's not all that compelling intellectually, like, as a philosopher, which I am not. But I'm sure if you're a philosopher or you're some intellectual guy trying to figure out, okay, what's the answer to the problem of evil? What you're wanting is, okay, I want this, like, really strong argument that's going to convince me. And what he gives you is love. He gives you love, and that's it. And where does Scripture answer the problem of evil? In a bunch of different ways. The first and probably most beautiful in my opinion is Job, which is this book of Job where this man is in the Old Testament. This man is completely innocent, completely righteous. He has children Land, all of this. The devil comes to God and says, yeah, well, he's just. He just loves you, Lord, because. Because you've given him all these things. Let me go destroy all his stuff. And God mysteriously lets that happen. And Satan goes to Job and the worst possible things, kills all of his children. Half of his property, half of his family is taken off by an army and murdered. Is his whole. Everything built burns down. He has, like, thousands of cattle that are all dead. And then he himself gets sick with sores and this illness where he's just sitting on the ashes of his property and his family just scratching himself with an old shred of pottery. And he yells out to God and he says, God, I have tried to stay true to you. I've tried to stay righteous. I've tried to stay faithful. Why did you let this happen to me? And God comes and shows up to him. And so this is. This is incredible. This is the problem. This is the whole. The worst thing you could imagine to the most innocent person. And God comes and answers his question, why did I allow this to happen? And you would expect, okay, God to say, well, I had to give humanity free will because that was the only way that they could love me. And then that introduces the risk of the problem of evil, and the whole world is broken. Or maybe he goes back to Adam and Eve and the first sin and how that brokenness transpires into the whole world. All these beautiful theological answers that, you know, the church has given or different Christians have given throughout time. But he doesn't. He doesn't say any of those things. He just shows up to Job and he says, I am the God who created the universe. I am the one who put the foundations in the earth. I am the one who tells the clouds when it's time to rain. I'm the one who causes hail storms to fall from the sky. I am the one who tells lions when it's time to eat. I'm the one who raises the sun and raises the moon. And he just goes on this beautiful poem about God's grandeur. And he says, can you understand this? You, this man, come to me and ask me why I do what I do, why this happens. Can you understand what I'm talking about? And Job says in this beautiful prayer of surrender, lord, I asked things too wonderful for me. You came down in your great mercy, and you answered me, I love you, Lord. And he just surrenders. And the answer there is, okay, well, what is the answer God gave him? And the answer that God gave him is some things you're not going to understand. The second piece of the answer to this, to this problem of evil, which there's actually this beautiful piece of theology to this, which is there's this theologian who writes this beautiful story about Dostoevsky, and he says, okay, so what is the answer to the girl? Let's just take the girl in the shed who has to eat her own feces because her parents are so awful that they lock her in the shed. What is the answer to her? When she gets to heaven, she dies in the. In the frozen Siberian wilderness. What is her answer? And he said, God doesn't bring her up to heaven and say, okay, here are all the ways. Here are all the reasons that it adds up. Here are all the reasons that your suffering was worth it or was redeemed or whatever it is. All he does is he takes this little girl that's crying and he wipes away her tears, and he says, cry no more, child. Cry no more. And he sits there with her in the shed and cries with her. And that's the second answer, which actually Dostoevsky puts first, which is the real full answer to the problem of suffering is only Christ on the cross.
- [26:19]
Shiloh Brooks
I appreciate what you've just said. I mean, it's a real profound statement of faith. I also appreciate the nuance with which you've articulated the role that reason, the limited role that reason can play in making sense of this problem. And I wonder if he wouldn't respond in two ways. One would be this, that God can sit with a girl in the shed. But what that doesn't erase, and it will never erase, is the happening of the torture that she felt that's there, and it happened, and she ate the feces. Or the boy felt what it was like to be ripped apart, and so God can sit with him afterward. But it's the happening to which I object. That a God would let it happen in the first place, that might be his first response. The second would be this, that you say. And I agree with you that in the Grand Inquisitor scene, when Jesus is criticized for giving men freedom, it appears as though Jesus, when he kisses the man, doubles down on the idea that men are free, and this is the best way to do it. But this seems to me to be in some tension with the notion that men are free after all, if they're free, in what way? Or what is the nature of the surrender? And when one thinks of surrender, one often thinks of enslavement, although that's not necessarily the case. That's how the Grand Inquisitor is thinking about it. But in what way are we free when we surrender? Because on, you know, on its face, it seems these two things are in tension with one another.
- [27:47]
Alex Jones
It's a beautiful question. And again, I don't. I don't think. I don't think intellectually anything that I would say would convince Ivan. I mean, certainly not me. Anything that I would say would convince Ivan in that chapter to change his mind. Now, you do see Ivan throughout the story, which is another part that we often miss. You do see him convert his heart. Now, it's the very beginning of his journey, but you do see at the end he has this experience, this very visceral experience with Satan at the end. And there's this story that is a parable that's told in the story that very much represents Ivan. And it is a man in eternity. And he's told, hey, you can sit down here and wait, or you can walk to heaven. You can walk to the glory of God, you can walk to God's joy. The only thing is, it's a quadrillion kilometers is the word he uses. It's a quadrillion kilometers to walk there. And the man says, okay, I'm not going to do it. That's. I'm not going to do it. I'm going to sit here. And he sits there for a quadrillion years, which is another silliness. And then he gets up and he walks and he walks, and by the time he gets there, he says, oh, I've only been here two seconds, but it was worth a quadrillion, quadrillion kilometers. It was worth everything to be here in this glory. But what you see is Ivan actually towards the end of the story, and this is a little bit debated because it's an interesting transformation that he has after this experience with Satan at the end. The Grand Inquisitor is very much at the beginning, very much Ivan kind of peak pride and peak intellect, explanation and reasoning and arguing against God. But towards the end, you see him convert his heart to realize his own, what Dostoevsky calls sober nose, to realize his own implication in the sins of the world. He is not isolated. All is not permitted, which is another one of his famous lines. And so Dostoevsky does answer this question, and he answers it with love. I wouldn't say the answer necessarily is surrender, which is certainly a part of the answer. But the answer that at least Dostoevsky gives is love. And so how do you see that throughout the story? You see that in Alyosha, and Alyosha is this image of God the Father, is this image of Christ in the story, which is, how do you see this man go to his brothers, go to Mitya and go to Ivan and love them? And it's not all that compelling of an answer. It's never going to be to anyone. Be like, oh, man, like, yeah, that answers the problem of suffering. That answers why this terrible, awful thing happened to these children. But that is what Dostoevsky brings to life. And I think if I were to try to summarize this point, which is this sober nose point, he has this beautiful quote and this beautiful passage that tries to explain it, which is the heart of it, the heart of his novel is this. The crown of the monk's insight, he calls it, and the crown of every man's path on earth, which is realizing that you are guilty on behalf of all and for all. And it is realizing that you have to. Let me. Let me pull this up if I can. There is only one salvation for you. Take yourself up and make yourself responsible for all the sins of men. For indeed it is so, my friend. And the moment you make yourself sincerely responsible for everything and everyone, you will see at once that it really is so, that it is you who are guilty on behalf of all and for all. And what you see is two things I think he brings really beautifully. One is the weight and the ripple effect of sin. So if you see the world as this lake, the ripple effect of sin, what one sin, what one mistake can have as an impact on somebody that you didn't even know, a child that you passed by in anger is another one of the examples. He weaves this beautiful thread throughout this novel of this young boy named Ilusha, which I think is the most beautiful summary of the point that he's trying to make. But then on the flip side, the ripple effect of love, and the ripple effect of love is greater than the ripple effect of sin. Where sin abounds, grace abounds. All the more, the ripple effect of love can cancel out sin. And the greatest ripple effect of love and grace is Christ on the cross. So, no, I don't think anything intellectually, and I think Dostoevsky does this purposefully. He is a Christian making a Christian argument in this book. He does this purposefully to say, look, if I really, honestly, intellectually, with my own reason, my own power. And again, the point going back to we are trying to judge what is good and bad by the. We are trying to judge the very definition of Good and bad itself. God is goodness. So we are saying, as little men, that God has created, what do I think is good and bad? The only reason I have goodness at all, the only reason I have any morality, is because it comes from the Lord. I am judging God. I am judging truth and goodness. If I were to define God as a Christian, it would be the source of truth, the source of goodness, the source of love. I'm trying to tell the source of goodness that it is wrong. But what he is doing is he's saying there's no intellectual strong answer to this. Christ doesn't give up. Christ doesn't stand up in the Grand Inquisitor and answer with some explanation. He doesn't answer with a long paragraph, which Dostoevsky could have done. He was the best writer, I think, in the world and a very strong believing Christian. He could have done that. But what he does is he stands up and he kisses him. Now, your question on surrender is actually a really, really beautiful one. And it is the heart of the Christian world, which is, okay, if I surrender, do I lose freedom? If I surrender to the Lord, to God, if I give God my life, do I now become less free? My answer to that in my own life, which there's a much more beautiful theological explanation, but is this whole concept of freedom that we have in our world is very, very distorted. And we've tricked ourselves into thinking that we're somehow free because we get to choose whatever we want. But as soon as you start to try to fight against your will, as soon as you try to fight against whatever you want, whatever your body wants, whatever you feel passionate about, whatever, you realize that you're enslaved to those things. You realize that I try to eat healthy for a week. I realize I'm enslaved to my habits. I wasn't eating whatever I wanted. I was a slave to this bad food. Whatever habit, whatever bad sin there is, I'm a. I'm a slave to it. I'm a slave to this world. My social media feed. I think it's freedom that I can open up my Twitter feed. No, they have me in an addiction that I am opening up my feed at points where I should be spending time with my kids. That's not freedom. That's not me having control of myself or my own freedom. The only true freedom in this world is to give your life to Christ. It's hard to use words to define it, but when you're in sin, you feel this heaviness, you feel this thing pulling you down. And when you're free from it. Anybody who's been in an addiction of any sort can feel this or can relate to this. When you're free from that addiction, there's this lightness, there's this freedom, there's this control, there's this joy that comes with that, that is true freedom. And that only comes by giving your life to the Lord, which I think is what Dostoevsky is trying to bring to life throughout this story.
- [34:22]
Shiloh Brooks
So I understand that you are Catholic and Dostoevsky was Eastern Orthodox. I'm curious if you think this book has something to offer people of all denominations or even more importantly and more interestingly, of all faiths. In other words, we've been speaking rightfully so in Christian terms. After all, the book is a very deeply Christian book. But I'm just curious if you think there's some universal lesson that this book offers human beings as such, and we might say other faiths, we might say other dominations of Christianity. We might also say there's a big group of people out there who mouth the platitude. I am spiritual but not religious. And so I think those three groups, you know, would be interesting to hear from you. What do you think this book can bring to such people?
- [35:08]
Alex Jones
Yeah, it's a great question. So he is Orthodox and he has. Well, I think Ivan actually specifically has some criticisms for Catholicism in the book, specifically Jesuits. But I mean for us, for Catholics, for hallowed. Our goal is to grow deeper in a relationship with the Lord. We do it all on the app in a way that's in line with church teaching. But there's so much beauty and so much wisdom in Christian tradition from all different sorts. So there's a bunch of beauty and a bunch of wisdom in all of Christianity that I think any Christian can find truth and goodness in. Now to your question of can anyone of any faith find wisdom in this book? Well, a. It's a great book. So it's a very engaging, very awesome, very beautiful, very wise, very profound book. So for anyone interested in literature, certainly, there's certainly something for anyone of any faith, he has this beautiful definition of this word, active love is what he uses, how it's translated, and he calls it very different from love in dreams. And I think it's a really beautiful lesson for anybody of any faith trying to grow and to become a better person. And he has this, again, Mithya, in his own conversion, coming back to the Lord, has this beautiful realization of we won at the end, where he has this vision of our responsibility to the poor, our responsibility to our brothers and sisters in need and how much we are called to love and to sacrifice our own lives for them. How we're called to grow in this act of love, this harsh and fearful thing, like hard work. Not just, oh, I feel like I love somebody, but no, I want to. Everybody wants to love somebody. Everybody wants to feel that, but nobody wants to do the dishes. As a quote from Mother Teresa, you have to do the things you don't like doing fast for people, pray for people, but do the things that you don't like doing for your brothers and sisters, your wife, your kids, whatever it is, to try to grow in this act of love. Which extends, I think, to anybody of any faith background. But at the core, no, I don't think Dostoevsky's book can be taken outside of the context of Jesus. Jesus is the center of the book. He is. And this is what Dostoevsky does so incredibly beautifully. He is the end of the book. He is the beginning of the book. He is the story throughout the book. Your relationship with him, Alyosha's relationship with him, and how he shares that with Mitya and Ivan. That is it. That's the whole book.
- [37:32]
Shiloh Brooks
The word of the day is patricide. This derives from the Latin pater, which means father, and kide, which means to strike. In the brothers Karamazov, there is the death of the father of these brothers and part of the novel is trying to figure out who done it. This is also, of course, famous in literature. Oedipus the great Greek Oedipus trilogy. Oedipus kills his father and sleeps with his mother. Patricide hey, it's Shiloh Brooks. If you want a news podcast that's informed, uncompromising, and outside of your echo chamber, check out the Gist with Mike Pesca. As the longest running daily news podcast, it's become a mainstay on Apple's top charts. In 30 minute episodes, the Gist tackles thought provoking questions that don't fit neatly into partisan lines. With the help of expert guests from the worlds of economics, entertainment, academia, and more, Mike criticizes the right and keeps the left honest. He isn't afraid to spotlight absurdities, debunk conspiracies, and explore tricky topics like the impact of sports betting, for example. As an award winning journalist with bylines in the Atlantic, the Free Press, the Washington Post, and more, Mike delivers sharp analysis with even sharper wit. Find the Gist Every Weekday wherever you get your podcasts, I want to ask you a little bit about Hallow because we've been talking a lot about the singularity of Christ. And I ask you this next question. I want you to know it doesn't come from a place of hostility or snark. I went on your YouTube page and I saw some of the extraordinary things, things that you all have done. I was delighted, to be honest with you, to see people like Mark Wahlberg and Chris Pratt reading prayer. And because Hollywood people, it's, it's, you know, they typically don't have the courage to come and acknowledge their faith. And I was just delighted, if you want to know the truth, to see that. I went on the App Store and saw that you have something like 330,000 five star ratings. This is, this app is changing people's lives, period. And I think we should acknowledge the power of it. And I was not familiar with it before meeting you, and I've been really impressed with what I've seen. At the same time, when I prepared for this, and you get this question a lot, and it won't be a surprise to you. When I was preparing for this, I saw you on a lot of podcasts that were business podcasts. You're a very successful man talking about the beginnings of Hallow, talking about the VC venture capital that you all raised and the revenue and the shares and the things like this. And I have to admit, it made me feel a little uncomfortable. After all, we've talked about the serious nature of faith. You guys are doing real good work. That I acknowledge. At the same time, to see that mixed with venture capital and talk about revenue in a kind of religious context made me feel a little uneasy, like we were bringing Jesus back into the marketplace. And so I wanted to ask you, given the fact that churches are nonprofit institutions, you know, many of them are very wealthy, but they're non profit, and that your enterprise is for profit, how do you and your team understand what you're doing, given that uncomfortable juxtaposition between the commodification of faith on the one hand and the real spiritual work that you're doing on the other?
- [40:45]
Alex Jones
Yeah, it's a really important question. And honestly, I mean, for us, it. It goes back to the very beginning of trying to figure out what we were building with Hallow and trying to figure out how we were building it in prayer. I guess the one thing that I would say, and this is not as a commentary to anybody who's starting a business and has not done this or anybody who's running a business, I think business can be, and the church is very clear on this, I think business can be a tremendous force for good. It can often be co opted into not good if you let it. If you're not trying to serve your brothers and sisters, if you're not trying to create products and services that do good in the world, if you're trying to, to, you know, build up your own pride or your own ego, it can certainly be evil. And most of the time it is. I mean, most of technology is evil, most of, or at least is distraction. And most of business is about pride and ego. I mean, a lot of the world, most of the world is fallen, but it can be a tremendous force for good. The Church is clear on that. Pope Francis was very clear on that. Every major Christian theologian. God can sanctify everything. God can sanctify capitalism. He can sanctify any business that is trying to do good. I have been tremendously blessed through this Hallow thing. Had you told me a thousand downloads, people would download this a thousand times, I would have told you you were crazy. A million downloads, 10 million downloads, 30 million downloads. It's all just God. It's all just God. We just break it and screw it up. The fact that I get to work on this thing full time and provide for a family is insane. I mean that's like a tremendous blessing. But. But what happens in startups is you accrue and Halo is controlled and governed and operated by the co founders. It is entirely. We're not like subject to some market thing. We've taken it very seriously that Halo is controlled and run by people. The people who started Halo, me and my two co founders. But what happens in startups is you end up owning a percentage. You own a percent of the company and that ends up up accruing some ridiculous sum of money, some great net worth or whatever it is. And that was never the goal with Hallow. So Hallow's all of my equity in Hallow, my individual equity, which is I'm the largest individual shareholder in Hallow. All of that is going to the church. All of the equity I currently have is going to the church, donated to the church or to her missions or to the poor. But why did we structure it as a startup? At the beginning, my default was, okay, I had fallen in love with the Lord through prayer. I wanted to build this app. People started using it and we saw lives really start to be changed pretty radically. Like there were parents who had lost children who were finding peace for the first time, who were able to get out of bed for the first time. There was Young people who were struggling with depression and anxiety who were able to find some sense of hope and meaning and purpose again. There were people who were struggling with really dark, really heavy addictions who were able to find some sense of sobriety again, like God was doing really beautiful things. And so my default was, okay, we'll structure this as a nonprofit. That's what I think religious things do. Honestly, what I wanted to do was structure it as a lifestyle business is what it's called, which is like a small business that then you can kind of go golf more and relax and let the kind of business run. And what I least wanted to do was a startup. And. But we had fallen in love with prayer. And prayer, you also, it's very effective. It helps you make decisions. God gives you answers in prayer. And. And so we prayed about it and we talked to a bunch of spiritual religious leaders. We had a bunch of bishops and priests and nonprofit leaders. We got a bunch of feedback from people which was totally unexpected from priests, religious leaders that was, please do not make this a nonprofit. And I was very surprised about that. But there was a bunch of reasons that they had, you know, executive directors of nonprofits have to spend a tremendous amount of their time fundraising, which makes a lot of sense because you can get tax free money and so you spend very little, you can spend much less time focused on the product and the content, what you're trying to build. It's really, really hard to build technology as a nonprofit because it's very hard to hire developers. And for us, we really wanted to build a great app. We wanted it to be world class. We wanted it to be so much of nonprofit, so much of religious technology and media. But religious technology especially is very sad. It's not worthy of what it, of what the church is, of what the beauty of the faith is. And so we really wanted to build great content and, and folks were sharing with us ahead of time that it's very hard to hire developers because you're competing with Facebook and these people paying half a million dollars. So the only way you can really do that is to offer some sort of equity in a startup or something or like be a retired thing and is a very different approach to trying to build technology. So that was another piece. And the other piece was as a startup, we go and we try to fundraise. I go and I try to pitch against Snapchat and the next TikTok and the next AI thing or whatever. And I try to say, hey, you should donate to, you should not donate, you should invest in Hallow to these investors. And that is what my pitch is. And a lot of them are people who have donated a lot to the church or are big angel investors in Catholic or religious organizations. And they say, hey, I would donate to this, but instead, I don't have to. I'm going to invest in it out of my, you know, whatever, high risk thing. And that's fun because instead of. For me, instead of competing against the church for the nonprofit philanthropic pool of capital, which sadly, in the world, I wish it was much larger, but sadly is a very, very, very small fraction of the investable pool of capital, I can compete over this much larger pool of investable capital, which is, you know, I'm not competing with the church and, and the homeless. And the. The donations that these folks are giving Hallow is actually not all that important. I use it every day, three times a day. If it's not around tomorrow, I'll be fine. I can still pray. I can still do all the things that I'm trying to do. It's beautiful. We have beautiful prayers on there. I'll be sad, but fine. It's. It won't be there. Whereas, like, if my church isn't there, even if they just change the mass times, I'm going to be upset. If my doctor screws something up, I'm going to be pretty upset. We're not doing anything all that critical. But what we do have an opportunity to do, which is the core of everything we're trying to do, whether it's a Mark Wahlberg partnership or Chris Pratt or whatever, the core of what we're trying to do is to reach out to folks who have most fallen away. And what that takes is big bets, big risks, many of which are most likely not going to work out. To try to reach out to folks who have not been to church in a long time, who have not taken their faith seriously in a long time, whether that's a Super bowl commercial or some Mark Wahlberg thing or whatever, that is what is at the heart of what we're trying to do. And so once we realized, okay, of these different models that we could structure Hallow, what we're trying to do is take big risk, big risks to try to reach out to folks who have really fallen away that aligned best with the startup model. Now we structured it in a way that's called a public benefit corporation, which allows us to. What nonprofits do is they write in a social mission to their charter. So their fiduciary responsibility, their legal responsibility is actually what their social mission is. So the public benefit corporation structure allows us, from a governance perspective and from a fiduciary responsibility perspective to write in that mission to our charter, which is what we have, which is to help try to help people grow closer to the Lord in addition to trying to create value for folks who have invested or folks who have been a part of the team.
- [47:46]
Shiloh Brooks
There has been, and I think with respect to your perspective, you know, from sitting at the top of Hallow, a revival of Catholicism in this country. In a way, maybe Christianity more generally, but Catholicism seems to be more in a state of revival from some of the articles I read than even the Protestant denominations. This is especially true on the political right, but not exclusively. I'm just curious to get your perspective as a person, many of whose users are Catholic and who's Catholic themselves. Why is this revival happening? What, you know, what is causing this and why? And is it just a politically right movement or, you know, what is this about?
- [48:27]
Alex Jones
No, I don't think so. I think, I mean we have a ton of folks on the app of all sorts of political perspectives and we're very international. So whatever the left and right doesn't even make sense in many of the places where we are. But the, I mean what we're seeing is crazy. I mean we're seeing we're bigger than we've ever been. Growing very quickly. And I just. Somebody sent this 18 to 34 year old men are growing at 1100% year over year at Halal, people praying and women are growing at like 900, 800% or something crazy of that same age range. And so there is something really beautiful happening, especially with young people. Christianity has gone through many cycles of up and down, many cycles of life and death. We don't have great data on it because obviously it's before anybody tracked any data. But you just think about life, you think about time, you think about the history of the church. First you have the death, you have the growth of the church while Jesus is on earth and then Jesus dies. Certainly seems like the religion is going to die. That happened most of the time before. But he comes back to life and so the faith resurges and the numbers of the faith, the numbers of followers, but then they kill all the apostles. Okay, that certainly seems like it would end the religion, but. And it goes through this like great, this great season of persecution in Rome and then it becomes the official religion of Rome, the greatest empire in the world. And then Rome falls. And usually when an empire falls, the whole Religion falls, so then Rome falls. Okay, that seems like it would die, but it doesn't. It resurges somehow. It grows from there. And then the rise of Islam, the Crusades, this rise of this giant religion that takes over. It seems like the world is going to take over Europe. But again, doesn't the new. The Enlightenment seems like, okay, Darwin, everything is going to destroy religion, but it doesn't. It resurges somehow. And so the faith actually goes through these births and resurrections, which is fitting because that's what. What Christ did rises from the dead. And I think that's what we're seeing now, which is you had this new age atheism, you know, 20 years ago with Harris and Dawkins and whoever, and you have this kind of very thin atheism that's like secondary sequel to the Marx atheism and popular appeal. A lot of people fall away from their faith. And I think what you're seeing now is this real hunger for, I would say peace, which is real peace. And what you had in Covid was kind of this. A little bit of an awakening to it. But I think what you're seeing now is just people are so tired. Whether it's social media or the news or whatever is going on in the world, it's just you're barraged by all this noise, all this busyness, all this stress, all this anxiety. And you try to search for this piece in a feed that entertains you, or in a Netflix show, or in alcohol or in drugs or whatever it is. But there's only one real, true peace that can satisfy what you're looking for. And people are finding it, and they're finding it in the person of Christ. They're finding it in prayer and taking 10, 20 minutes and just being silent and letting him share with you what he has for you. And what he has for you is his great love. And so that's what I think people are hungry for. They're hungry for true, lasting peace, true, lasting love. And I think that cuts across whatever everybody in the world tries to make, everything about politics. And that's what they tried to do during Jesus time, too. And that's not what Jesus is about. He always rises above it. He's focused on your heart, not on what's happening in Washington.
- [51:39]
Shiloh Brooks
Let's go to a lightning round, please. Who is your favorite pope?
- [51:42]
Alex Jones
Pope Leo. Well, that's a good question. Pope Leo. I love Pope Leo the 14th. I actually also love Pope Leo the Great, but probably, I mean, you can't beat Saint Peter. So we're gonna go with Saint Peter.
- [51:54]
Shiloh Brooks
What about Saint. Your favorite saint?
- [51:56]
Alex Jones
Saint Teresa of Avila is my favorite saint. Mother Mary is, you know, technically my favorite, because I have to say that because she's the greatest. But St. Teresa of Avila is the one that I feel closest to.
- [52:06]
Shiloh Brooks
What about your favorite passage of Scripture? What's the citation?
- [52:09]
Alex Jones
Oh, man, there's a bunch, I think. John 12. Amen. Amen. I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat, but if it dies, it bears much fruit.
- [52:19]
Shiloh Brooks
Is there another great novel that you think people of faith could benefit from reading?
- [52:24]
Alex Jones
Oh, yeah. I mean, I think He Leadeth Me is. I think He Leadeth Me in Brothers Karamazov are the two greatest spiritual books I've ever read.
- [52:34]
Shiloh Brooks
What's the greatest mistake you made at the beginning of Founding Hallow?
- [52:38]
Alex Jones
Oh, my goodness. That's gonna be hard to do in a lightning round. I have made a thousand mistakes. I make a thousand mistakes every day. It's the most humbling part of this thing. The hardest mistakes when building Hallow is people, people mistakes, things that I mess up when it's bringing someone on or figuring out how they're going to work on the team. And so any people mistakes are always hard because these people give their lives for the work that we're doing, and you want to do your best to take care of them.
- [53:06]
Shiloh Brooks
I'm going to give a shout out to Notre Dame because I know you went there and I love them, but they need to get in a football conference. But anyway, other than that, is there any way that. Is there something about attending Notre Dame? You know, looking back at that university, I'm a believer that higher education really shapes people. That prepared you to found this app?
- [53:24]
Alex Jones
Yeah, 100%. I owe Notre Dame more than I could put into words. I met my wife at Notre Dame. Many of the priests who I reached out to in that story at the beginning of Founding Hallow were Notre Dame priests who I had met there. So a lot of. I owe my faith, I owe my marriage, I owe my children, I owe my family to Notre Dame. There's so much of Notre Dame that I think is beautiful and still, you know, living a life of Christ for the world. And then intellectually, academically. Yeah, they make you go through these great theology courses, which formed me in a beautiful way. And technically, I was an engineering major at Notre Dame, so I learned a tremendous amount about, you know, technology and physics and first principles, problem solving.
- [54:03]
Shiloh Brooks
So I went to visit Notre Dame recently. I gave a talk there and they took me to see Touchdown Jesus. This is my last question for you. Is Touchdown Jesus blasphemous would be.
- [54:16]
Alex Jones
I think I'd be kicked out of Notre Dame alumni if I said that.
- [54:18]
Shiloh Brooks
Alex Jones, thank you so much for sharing the Brothers Karamazov with us. Not an easy task. I appreciate it.
- [54:25]
Alex Jones
I appreciate it. I did not do it justice, but if you read it, it will do it justice. So praise the Lord.