Loading summary
Transcript36 lines
- [00:00]
A
Find people that you want to be like, don't find successful people. Find people that you want to be like that person. The scarcity thing is like, find a successful person. And it's like the best marriage counselor I ever met was the janitor in a church building on Tuesday nights, mopping the floor. I would go and talk to him about marriage when I was newly married, because that guy understood marriage, but he was a janitor. That's not his identity. That's his vocation.
- [00:30]
B
Jamie, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining me today.
- [00:34]
A
Thanks. Thanks for having me. I'm super happy to be here.
- [00:38]
B
I thought a good place to start would just be a little bit about your interesting background and kind of what brought you to today.
- [00:46]
A
Yeah, well, so I'm born and raised in Washington, D.C. and raised in my mom, pretty strict independent Baptist she still is to this day. And my dad, a wayward Catholic from Boston. And, yeah, so grew up in a. In a pretty strict household. No movies, no rock music, that kind of thing. And so I snuck into a movie theater when I was in eighth grade just to see why that was forbidden. And the movie that was showing, I had no idea what the movie was. I didn't care. I just wanted to see what would happen. And the movie was the movie Serpico with Al Pacino. The Life of Frank Police Officer Frank Serpico, New York City PD and so 14 years old, very religious. And watching the movie, it just affected me so deeply. And I couldn't figure out really why, but I just started to cry. And I knew that it was something significant, something spiritual, but I didn't associate it with God or anything because I was in a place of sort of where God doesn't go. Anyway, so at the end of that movie, I. I actually walked forward in the movie theater and just made this proclamation, really, basically to the projector guy, who was the only one left in there, that I was going to be a police officer. Like, that's what I was going to do with my life. And so that was age 14. At age 23, got through high school and university and met my wife and went straight into the police academy, out of university, back up in the D.C. metro area, and became a police officer. And it's what I always had wanted to do. I loved it, loved every minute of it. And I was good at it. There are things about it, of course, when you get into it, like anybody starting anything, there's things you didn't know, you didn't realize. Some of your romantic notions get trampled some of the reality hits you. But I loved it, and I wanted to be really, really good at it. So my question was always like, who was the best? Who made detective in the shortest amount of time? And I would try and go find those guys and learn from them if they would talk to me. And so just try and be the best I could. And I tried to figure out what we could do different at crime scenes and domestic disputes that would really make it so we didn't have to keep coming back. So I started developing different styles of handling cases and talking to people. And as a result of that, it drew the attention of some guys in the State Department. And so they set up an interview at a bar one night in my fifth year on the department. And I went to meet, have this interesting discussion with this State Department official. And he. He basically interviewed me, him and another guy. And as a result of that interview, I left the police department, went into graduate school, and ended up going overseas, working overseas basically in the Islamic world for the next 22nd. Six years. So 26, 27 years overseas. Incredible, incredible time. And then back into the US and started this company that we call Identity Exchange. So that's my. There's my history. That's my.
- [04:15]
B
Okay. In a prior podcast or something, you did, you mentioned. You said, when I got to the interview at this bar, they asked you, like, how would you handle this situation? And you gave them an answer, and they hired you on the spot to the extent you could share what was the situation and how did you say you would handle it? Do you remember?
- [04:38]
A
Yes. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Never forget this. Yeah. So it was weird because I got called at home. They magistrate called me at home, who I knew, I worked cases with him, and he said, I want you to come to the. I want you to meet somebody that wants to talk to you. And we're at this bar and clean. And I said, yeah, really? It's like late at night. And he said, no. Yeah, you want to come to this? So I went. Had no idea what it was. It was odd for this guy to call me, but I, you know, I knew him and I respected him. So I went and so, yeah, go to this table in the back of this bar. And the way they were sitting, so one. One guy was directly in front of me, just staring at me. And the. The magistrate was over to my right so that I couldn't look at them both at the same time. And I'm like, oh, my gosh. This is like an interview process. Like, they're going to sit. So I have to keep turning my head back and forth. So the one guy's going to talk and the other guy's just going to observe. So I was like, wow, this is like serious. And the guy just identified himself as an operations guy from the State Department. And he had my folder of five years of casework in front of which I was really odd to me. And he was looking through the cases and he was saying, I want to know what your thinking process is in the way you work cases. Because I know you didn't learn this in a police academy. Whatever you're doing, nobody taught you in any training we know of. So can you articulate your thinking process from sort of A to Z, the beginning of this to the closing of a case or clearing of a case? And I, I actually said to him, I'm pretty sure you're not going to like my process. And he said, he said, I don't care, I don't care. I'm looking at the results of your process and I want to know how you do it. And so he, he picked a case and he just handed it to me, said this, what did you, how did you do this? And it was a case where, you know, it was a low income housing project. There was a drug issue going on in there. We were in there all the time. And I, I decided I'm going to, if we're going to end this thing, we need to get sort of the main person, but not just lock them up because they'll just fill in the position. So I, I found the sort of lead dealer and I invited him to spend the night at my house. That was my brother. And so then I, so then I, the guy agreed, the dealer agreed. He came and stayed at our house and I just talked to him about identity actually. And the guy, because of that interaction we had over those 24 hours or so, came back and disbanded the drug network. Because of what, how it affected him, the way that we interacted. And the guy said, what did you talk about? And I said, he said, where did you learn how to do that? And I said, I learned it from the Gospels. And he said, yeah, wow, I don't really like that process. But he said, but it worked. And then he asked me a couple more, he had a couple more cases, one in particular that he really emphasized. And he said, can you do this overseas? Can you do this in an Islamic situation or a foreign situation? And I said, well, if they're human beings, I can. So he gave me a scenario that they were currently working where they had lost an agent. The agent had vanished or something. They didn't know what had happened, but they couldn't stop. They didn't want to stop the project. So they were trying to find someone they could just drop. Drop in that would just create a new paradigm kind of on the fly. And so they were interviewing different people to see if you could do that. So he gave me the scenario and said, what would you do? And so then I just took, I don't know, 15 seconds and I prayed, or we would say. I knew I had to innovate on the spot. So no human can innovate without contemplation first. So it's not that you're an expert in innovation, it's that you're an expert in contemplation. So I. I did a quick contemplation exercise using the scenario he gave. And I just had an idea, an inspiration, a God thought, whatever you want to call it. And I said, I would do this. I would. I said, actually, I would change the whole paradigm that you're running because the paradigm is faulty. And I would, first of all do it apart from the State Department. I would be completely separate from State Department policy, and I would do it as an independent, and this is what I would do. And he just wrote on a napkin, he said, you're hired. You're hired right now. And he wrote a salary on the napkin. And he said, will this get you from the police department? And he said, don't worry, your kid's education will be taken care of. Just all in this, you know, couple hours we were together. So I said, heck, yeah, absolutely, I'll take this job. I mean, for me, it was just the natural progression of where my identity and my vocation would go if it was growing. So I said, yeah. And I went home and woke up my wife, who was enormously pregnant at the time. And I said, guess what? We're moving to the Middle East. My wife happens to to be Jewish, so it's like, not something she wanted to hear in the middle of the night. We're moving, you know, to work in the Islamic world. And she started crying. And I said, that's probably just the hormones, but tomorrow she'll realize the magnitude of this and be happy, which she wasn't the next day either. So that's how I move. I actually moved out of the police department, and it took almost three and a half years to build a new paradigm and then go into the situation in a new way.
- [10:19]
B
I want to talk about Your time over there and building that. But I think a good place to start would just be in quoting you. You said every conversation starting point starts with identity. What is identity? And then I want to kind of go into that as we think about what you did overseas.
- [10:39]
A
Yeah, it's interesting because so identity has really become, it's everything that we do. So the idea, all living systems, the only organizing principle of any living system is identity. Like there's no living system that organizes around anything other than identity. So identity is the most critical part of any living system because being informs doing right. So if the identity is correct or authentic or the original, then the living system from a cell to a civilization is an open system. It's reciprocal, it can shift paradigms. It's interconnected to everything around it in its true authentic identity. Like a cell, for example. But when the cell is corrupted and the identity is corrupted, the cell, cell becomes a closed system and it becomes parasitic, it starts to devour things around becomes cancer. And so it's still a cell, but it's a wrong identity of what the original blueprint is. So in a human being, it's like it's your original design. It's the truest thing about you. It's timeless and it's, and it's grounded and affirmed. And this is really important in love. It's grounded and affirmed in love. And it moves according to love in the, in its truest sense. And so when I'm talking to a person, what I want to talk to is the true them and not the full false or the invented, we can say corrupted version of them that they've developed through trauma. Really what we want to talk to the authentic human being that was there as a child, what was that identity? It's the truest thing about you. False identity or ego or shadow identity or imposter identity is the true identity that, that's been traumatized and coping mechanisms are developed to protect it, are not bad, but, but then they cover up, they disguise the true identity. And so that's, that's why it's important to, to when you're interacting or when you're thinking about something, that you're doing it from the truest part of who you are because that part of you is other focused and it's creative and it's prefrontal cortex. The false identity is self protective and self promotional and it's amygdala, it's fear based and it's, and, and it's because we've learned in life, man, you got to protect yourself, you got to take care of yourself because nobody else is going to do it. So you turn inward and you become a closed system. And you're, you don't know how to cooperate or reciprocate, especially if you perceive a threat. Threat. And that's why we never have peace. That's why we don't have peace internally and we never have peace externally. I mean, look at our world and culture. It's all fear based and it's all very much self focused and self promotional.
- [14:13]
B
Golly. All right, I'm going to ask just a dumb question. How do I know what my true identity is? How would I know if I've tapped into it?
- [14:22]
A
Yeah. Well, it's really interesting in the. So when we were sent into the conflict zones of the world, you know, for our overseas career, the challenge was this, to answer your question, because it, because this has been a process for me in my own life. And then can I train other people? Does it work cross culturally? Like, if it's human, it should work across culture. Culture all for all time. It shouldn't shift because one guy's a Muslim and one guy's Hamas and one guy's Israeli or Mossad or something like that. They're still human. And somehow we've lost track of that. And we call it, they're dehumanized now. They're just the guy of that group. And so when we were sent into conflict zones, the very first situation that we're going into is Islamic and it's between countries. And so our question was for our little team was, what's the source of conflict in the world? Because if it's different in every conflict that we're in, if we're in Kosovo and do we have to know the history of the Balkan conflicts and if we're working with the Uyghur Muslims up in China, do we have to understand Mao and the revolution, the cultural revolution? Because if that's what we have to understand to resolve a conflict, we're never going to. We might resolve one in our lifetime or they're all the same thing. It's one of those two. So we went on the premise we're all human. It's probably going to be the same cause no matter where we are, if we can reduce it down to that. And so we developed what we call a conflict map. And it's just basically this. What's the cause of all external conflict in the world throughout history? Very simply, internal conflict. So the reason I'm in an external conflict is Because I'm in an internal conflict already. So an internal conflict can't produce peace. It's incapable of producing peace. All you have to do is watch a peace process between any two countries. Everybody comes in there in internal conflict, and as soon as it starts like this is going to go nowhere. And peace processes never go anywhere. We've never had one. The closest we've ever seen of an actual peace process is in Rwanda between the Tutsi and the Hutu, who just decided we're going to forgive everyone, clear the slate and never talk about what happened again. That's the only one we've ever really seen work. The rest is detente. It's like we're too exhausted to fight anymore. We're broke. Or the one team just creamed another. But it didn't. Nothing got solved, nothing got resolved. And it's just a matter of time before we're back into the conflict. So we knew it was internal conflict. External conflict comes from internal conflict. Where's the internal conflict coming from in the human? It's coming from fear. They're afraid. We're afraid. I was just teaching a course right before I came over here and I was just asking in the room, how many of you deal with fear, fear on a pretty regular basis? Everyone raises their hand, everybody. We're all stressed out. We're worried about our jobs, we're worried about the future, worried about the economy, worried about China, all of this stuff. And we're just here it all day long, you know, it's just pounded on top of us. And so external conflict comes from internal conflict, comes from fear. What's generating the fear? Well, fear in humans is very valuable because it, fear protects us from things that hurt us. Right? It's a warning system. Like if you keep driving this fast towards that embankment, you're going to die. And the fear comes up as soon as you correct, the fear goes away. You don't have to cope with fear. You have to respond to what it's pointing to and it goes away. And so when a so fear. Humans are only born with two innate fears. The fear of falling and the fear of loud noises. Every infant has those built in fear, fears of falling and loud noises. Every other fear you have beyond that, you are taught to be afraid of things. You were taught to be afraid of losing a job. You were taught to be afraid of being bankrupt. Those aren't things kids come up with. They learn it. And so the fear, the fear produce it. The fear is pointing to a wrong view of yourself. That's what it's the fear is saying, man, you don't even know who you are. Like you're doing this because you don't know who you are. You think you're not good enough. You think you're too stupid to be in this room with these people. And the fear is saying none of that's true. But we don't know how to address it because all we know is what we learn. You're not good enough. I've been measured my whole life. In every situation I've ever been in, I've been told I'm a failure. I've been told, you know, whatever it is. And so that negative thing is who's coming in to resolve a world problem and is never going to happen. So what we have to do is not resolve the problem, it's shift into the truth of who you are and who's in this room with who really is here. And they don't know. So we have to have a process to help them discover. Okay, before we talk about, you know, the Middle east situation, let's talk about who you are. Like let's talk about who that person across the table is. Because who you think they are is false. Who you perceive them to be is false. So once we make the shift into the authentic you, it takes away the fear in the room. Once the fear's out of the room, the creative process can start. Otherwise, in fear, you're not going to come up with anything new. You're just going to try and protect yourself and that's what happens. And so that was our thing is like, we have to know who we really are. And I'll just say this and I'll stop. We tell our people all the time, when you go into a situation, if you get your identity from the outcome of that situation, you're of no value in that situation. When you go into a situation, you bring the true, your true self, your true identity into the situation. And, and when you leave, you take it with you, out of it. If you try and get it there or you can lose it there, you're going to self protect and self promote when you get in there, which loses the creativity. So that's how we think about it.
- [20:54]
B
Okay, and just, just a follow up. So what is my true identity if, if my false is all the fears that I'm telling myself, what am I left with if I'm able to get rid of all those fears?
- [21:06]
A
Yeah, so the, the guy that trained me in this, I was overseas and he was watching me in A conflict situation that we were working. And he pulled me out and he said, you don't know your identity, do you? I mean, I was like. So by the time that he said that to me, I'd been through the police department, you know, interviewed by the State Department, graduate school back, and then came up with this paradigm back into work at five years working it. Now I'm in a new situation. The first five years really rough because I didn't actually have a good sense of who I was. He looks at me and he says, you don't know who you are, do you? And I said, yes, I do. I mean, I've been doing this for years now. He said, no, you don't. You're not even telling the truth when I say that to you. And I said, how do you know I don't know who I am? He said, because you're imitating other people. He said, we don't need you to imitate other people. We need you to be who you are so we know what to do with you. And we can't tell you who you are. You have to tell us who you are, otherwise we don't know. And so he sent me to this other guy that was sort of the expert in identity. And that guy just got me to walk through a simple process which we've way more developed, but this was like a battlefield course. And he said, tell me the things you believe about yourself that hurt you. Say them out loud. And I'm like, what? He said, what are things you believe? Try and tell the truth. What are things you believe about yourself that hurt you. And I said, well, I don't feel like I'm as good as the guy trained in me. He goes, yeah, okay, where did you learn that? Who taught you that? Who told you that? Well, where did you learn that you're not as good as other people? Who told you that? And then I. And the more I said it, and I don't think I'm as smart as them. Who told you you weren't as smart as other people? Where did you learn that? You weren't born thinking that. Who taught you that? And I just started. Well, that teacher in second grade. And my mom and my mom used to say, you're a disappointment to God and to me. Like that that's an identity statement. And I start to say it, I am a disappointment. So I finally get to that pretty quick. And I'm like, man, I guess I just feel like I'm a disappointment sort of for a long. And I just started to cry because it was so deep in me. And I never said it. I didn't even know how to think about it, because I know how to cope with it, right? And so I said, I think I'm in disappointment. He goes, okay, it's not true. He said, you have to be able to give that away, get rid of that identity. And I said, who do I give it to? And he said, do you believe in God? And I said, yes. And he said, give it to God. Give it to. He said, God is love. Let's out loud, give it to God. Use your imagination. Picture God or love or Jesus or whatever you do. Picture them. So he. He's moving me from my amygdala into the prefrontal cortex where all dreaming and creativity occurs. And I'm trapped. And I got to impress this guy, and he's got to like me, and I can't create. And so I imagine that I'm walking with Jesus somewhere. And he said, okay, all right, think. What does I am a disappointment look like? And I said, it feels like a backpack of rocks that I'm carrying now that you talk about. And it slows me down and everything. Give the backpack away. So in my mind, I just visualize, like Einstein visualizing riding on a lightning bolt or Kepler and visualizing planetary motion by watching a chandelier. The only way humans know how to think is through metaphor and pictures and images to see the unseen. True. And so it was like a backpack of rocks. And I just handed it to Jesus, and he just threw it off of a cliff. And he. And he looks at me and he goes, you are my militant peacemaker, peacekeeper. I want you to run with me, but you can't run dragging that backpack around. Don't pick it up again. Just like that in my mind. Bam. Just that image in my mind, I just wept. I felt lighter, physically lighter. And then they put me back in, and I go back to the guy that trained me, McCollum. And I said, I'm a militant peacemaker. And he's like, okay, we know what to do with that. This is where we're going to put you. Because now we know that what you're going to do in life is that you're going to seek out conflict because you hate it, but you're going to seek it out to solve it. And then I started thinking about my whole life. And that's what I've done to since I was a little kid. And my whole life just kind of lined up. And so then I knew why did the movie about Serpicoso move me? Because it was calling out my true identity. Even in eighth grade, even younger, when we do this with kids, they have a sense of it. And so then once you understand your identity, then certain vocations are just the greatest thing you could ever do because your identity can run free there, and other vocations will destroy you because it's counter to the truth of who you are.
- [26:08]
B
All right, we're going to get to the Middle east in one second. But I want to clarify one more thing that I think is really important in what you teach. Two worldviews, separation and connection. What are they and why are they so important to how humans see the world?
- [26:26]
A
Yeah, once we started working on identity with people that are identified as terrorists, they take on that identity. They're called it from junk. And they start like, you know, I'm a Blood and I'm a Crip. They use those identities. They're not real identities, but they start to live them out. And so we started working on identity. It's super fascinating watching these especially young fighters realize. Somebody called me this when I was young and kept telling me, this is who I am. And I said, okay. And now I'm living this way, and I don't even really like it. In fact, I hate it. And I'm so filled with rage and all this stuff. So we started working in the identity. We watched the identity exchange, we call it happen. So beautiful to watch, because we're not doing. We can't manufacture it. And so when they make the shift, they will change their environment. They'll change everything once they realize, oh, my gosh, this is who I really am. And so then they make the shift. But then we noticed that it was hard for them to continue on, though. So, like, they get it, they understand it, but something was like squashing it in them. So we kept going back and thinking, what is. We're missing a piece. We're missing a piece. And then we started to think it's something about the world. World that they're in, the world view that they have, that they're in. And the worldview is the lens through which we see the world. It's not what we see. It's the lens through which we look. That's why most of us have no idea what. What our worldview is. So we'll say, I have a biblical worldview or a Quranic worldview or a conservative. Those. Those are what you're coming up with because of your worldview. They're not your worldview the worldview is how you see the world itself, the lens. And so we started just researching it and reading. Actually I was reading economic theory because economics is a thing that runs a lot of things. And in economic theory there's a theory called the theory of scarcity or wounded separation, the wound of separation, this one economist called it. It's not a new idea, it's an ancient idea. And I was like, man, that's what it is. It's like an identity. Like you've got the right identity of the fish you raised over here in the fish tank in a perfect environment and then you drop them in a toxic pond and even their identity can't protect them because of what's going through their gills. 247 is poisoning and they don't know what water is. Right. So you're breathing this air of culture. And then the more we researched it, we could only find two worldviews. In religion, in economics, in anthropology, we kept there's not 50, there's two. We make everything way too complicated. And the two worldviews is. There's a separation worldview and you can watch it and then there's an interconnected or connection worldview. The separation worldview believes in scarcity. Separation worldview sees the world as. There's not enough of anything. That's the lens not. So whatever situation I look at, I realize, well, there's limited here, it's limited. So that means I better be certain about every move I make in here because there's not enough money, there's not enough time, there's not enough love, there's not enough of my people, there's not enough of anything. So I've got to be certain that I don't make a mistake. So I got to be perfect. And it makes forces me to be self focused. Like I can't root for the other guy. There's not enough for both of us. So I've got to compete with the other guy in the most unhealthy way. And so I can't really trust them. And you learn it so young that, wow, man, you're in a measurement race of limited resource and limited opportunity. And you're not a great reader, so you're already in this and you start to separate and it fragments people into teams and groups that are at war with each other for a limited resource. That's a separation worldview. It's the worldview of every empire that's ever been on the earth. And that's why every empire on the earth has failed. Every single One of them, the alternative is the connection worldview, which strangely is the only one that coincides with the reality of nature. Nothing in nature believes in separation at all, ever, Never. And nature doesn't believe in scarcity. Nature believes that it's all interconnected and the death of one is the value of the other, which in humanity you only see in maybe someone like Jesus who's saying other focused, self emptying, unconditional love for your enemy is what one works like. We don't believe any of that. It's like self protection, self promotion. We're the strongest, we're the biggest. We eat and devour everything around us to build a monopoly. That's the best. It creates nothing but war. The connection worldview is if I go up and you go up, why would we ever fight? Because there's enough. So instead of scarcity, you have enough. Instead of certainty, you live in mystery, which is the only. There's nothing certain in this life. Nothing. We don't know. We don't have certainty about any science or anything. We know things, but it leads to more mystery, which we love, which humans love. We love mystery. We hate formula, uncertainty. It bores us. So it's not certainty, it's mystery. It's not perfectionism, it's fallibility. Failure is learning. Failure is learning. Failure is learning. There's no other way to learn except through failure to demonize. Failure, we make an identity. I am a failure. No, you're not a failure, you failed. It's not an identity. It's what happens when you try something to see whether it works or not. And so in the connection worldview, the bottom line is other, focused. If he succeeds, I succeed. If he lives, I live. The separation worldview is everyone's got to die. So I can live. Basically, yeah. So this separation system produces because it can't produce anything else. It produces human trafficking, it produces racism, it produces dehumanization because there's not enough for all of us. And I'm just going to take what I can get and we're going to honor and reward the ones that have taken the most. What kind of system is that? That over here on this system, which is everything from quantum physics all the way up to anything looking out in my backyard, it's all working together. And no Daisy wants to be a rose and no blue jay wants to be a cardinal because cardinals are prettier. They all understand their identity as part of a living system that is centered on love for white another. So which one works? The more we separate ourselves from creation, from nature. It's hurting our planet, it's killing our planet. And so like the economist and ecologists say, if we just stopped international fishing for one year, just take a one year break, the Amazon would restore itself. But we can't take a break because there's nothing, not enough. And because if we take a break, what if they don't take a break? Then we lose. So nobody can take a break. And that's the world that we find ourselves in, which we could change tomorrow if we wanted to.
- [34:07]
B
And we're going to now. We're going to go down that thread. A lot of what you just described, bigger, better, we need more. If it's not us, then we need to take them out. And I love America as much as anything, but a lot of what you are describing is a lot of the way America takes stance in the world. And so now I want to bring it back to you. Going to the Middle east, they had told you you had something different. They wanted you to work outside the State Department and do it on your own. And so I thought maybe you could share a story or two about getting over there and the things that you were doing. Because for listeners that have not read your book or do not know you, you were able to bring break up tons of terrorist groups, convert terrorists to Christians. Your work is, I mean, it truly is God's work. And so I thought maybe you could take it from there. As I'm in the Middle east now, now what starts to take place?
- [35:06]
A
Yeah, well, yeah, so it's really interesting. And I just want to honor those guys, men and women that taught me. So everything that I know, I learned like everybody else. Right? So it's not like I came up with all this stuff. I was. And this, I just recommend this to all your listeners. Someone said it to me a long time ago. Find people that you want to be like, don't find successful people. Find people that you want to be like that person. The scarcity thing is like, find a successful person. And it's like the best marriage counselor I ever met was the janitor in a church building on Tuesday nights, mopping the floor. I would go and talk to him about marriage when I was newly married, because that guy understood marriage. But he was a janitor. That's not his identity, that's his vocation. Right? We give people identity from vocation. It's a huge, huge mistake. Anyway, so I've learned everything. And then once you learn it, you learn. You take information or ideas and you mix them with your True identity, which is what makes them unique. Otherwise you're just a cover band the rest of your life. You're just imitating some other famous whatever and nobody really likes a cover band. You want your own voice, and that's why you need to know your own identity. And then you learn from everybody that you respect. And so I've learned a lot. And so when, when we got into the, really the first scenario that we were working, it was a pretty significant thing because it was one country, Muslim country, trying to destabilize another one by sending agents into the. Into the other country. They sent 300 agents into this one region to destabilize it. So it's Muslim on Muslim. It's to be a non Muslim and clearly not. Not Arab and come in with my team that were very, you know, white and foreign. The idea is like, that'll. You'll never have an impact in there. You have to go in and either kill everybody or buy everybody. That's how the separation worldview empire works. It either threatens everybody or it pays everybody. That's the only way it can work because it's a scarcity mentality. But in the, in the connected worldview, it doesn't matter. What matters is I'm a human being and they are. And so if you go in with like, okay, these are not animals, even though we call them that all the time and they know it and they act like it or whatever. The thing is, how do I connect with them? How do I, like, make the connection? Because what's motivating them? Fear. Fear. They don't love Islam. They don't. It's all. That is such nonsense. They're afraid. Afraid that they are going to lose. That's what they're afraid of. They're going to lose everything. They're going to lose jobs and freedom. Just like I would be afraid. So when I go in there, what I want to do is make a connection where they realize, wow, this person is here to take away my fear. Like, how is he going to do that with money? Money doesn't take anybody. Fear by arming ourselves. That heightens the fear level on one side or the other. What takes away fear? Love. It's so funny. Back in the early days when we were presenting this to hardcore people, special ops type people, we're going to go in and love them. They're like, oh, my gosh. Our question was back to those folks was, do you think you're winning? Do you think we're winning with notches on our belt and all that stuff. Do you think we're winning? Look, look. Look at the world. Our guys are going into scenarios. We're not only not winning, we're shooting ourselves in the basement in Texas when we get back home. That is not anything to brag about. That is not badass. That's. We're the evil. We couldn't kill it, and now it lives inside of me. And the way we're killing it is by shooting ourselves. Do you want to brag about that? That's my. Always my response to them. Or do you want to win this thing? It's not about beating people. It's about winning people. That's the shit. It's not about law enforcement. It's about serve and protect. That's what's on our car. Serve and protect. We're not doing that. We're just enforcing law, which creates conflict. So when we went in there, in the first incident we worked, we had, there was. There was three of us and 300 of them. They were highly financed. We came in the part of the paradigm we invented. We came in hired by the bad guys. That was one of our smart moves. Like, let's don't come as the foreign guys coming in with us. Foreign policy. You've already got. You got a war already. Let's get hired by the bad guys and have them put us in there. Which took a while to work out, but once we did, that really threw off the opposition. They didn't know what to do. They're like, wow, who brought you guys in here? You guys brought us in here. Muslims brought us in here. That really affected them because then they couldn't just separate from us. Then they're like, oh, so then we start working in there. So we knew we had removed one threat to our being there was by who put us there. So when they kept investigating who was our. Who are we answering to? They would keep coming back to Muslims, and it messed them up. I love that whole strategy of how that worked out. But down in the. In the thing, there was one guy that was their lead dude in the country, and we knew he was the one that we had to connect with. And so I was. I taught in a university that was 98% Islamic. So I had to get really smart in the Quran and all that stuff so I could speak the language, how they saw the world, right? Because their worldview, it's not Quranic, it's separation worldview. So I'm using the Quran to teach connection worldview to the grad students. And he's One of the students, this guy, and he's running the militant group that's being recruited inside the university. And so one day in the class. So the only way I'm going to get this guy to switch is if I can get him in a position. This sounds really funny to you, but when I talk about this, but I needed to have it. I needed to be in a position where I needed to forgive him. Because the person who's in the position to forgive is the one who will win. You think if you come in in the power position, you're going to win. You're not going to win. You're just going to run into the other side's power. But. But if you come in in a position where you end up with the power to forgive because they've done something to you, you now own the room. This is true in negotiating too. The best negotiating couple out there. There, it's a husband and wife. And they do the negotiations called here. Honor, empathize, autonomy and reflection. And she, the wife, they're British. She talks about when they go T Rex, you go, mouse. That's exactly right. If they go T Rex and you go T Rex, you've lost, you're going to lose. Every time they go T Rex, you go, mouse, you have the advantage. That's what you want, right? So I knew that kind of back in those days. So this kid, this student's in my class, he stands and he would interrupt me when I was talking all this stuff that he would never do to a Muslim ever. But he figured since I was not a Muslim, he could just do whatever he wanted. And it was his country, you know, and these are his, his boys. And I'm the foreigner. So he would do that and I would just keep on teaching. One day he stands up in the class and he goes, he goes, do you believe in Jesus? To me? And I said, I do. And he said, do you believe that Jesus was sent by God? I do. Yes, I do. We never hide what we believe. We're not undercover like that. That's a waste of time. And he said, do you. Why do you think God sent Jesus? And I said, why do you think he sent Jesus? Because the Quran says Jesus was sent by God. Why do you think he said? Well, he said. Well, he said, I think you want me to say, because he loves us and we're sinful and he loves us. And Jesus is the demonstration of God's love to us. Isn't that right? Isn't that the right thing? And I start thinking oh, my gosh. He's gonna, like, preach it for me. Like, he's gonna do it, which would be great. And so he gets pretty into, like, pretty accurately talking about, you know, atonement theology. And I said, yeah, that's, in fact, true. And he said, so God. You think God, you. God loves me? Is that what you're saying? I said, yes, he does. And he goes, here's what I think of God's love. And he spits in my face in front of the whole class. When he did that, two of the students jumped up to kill him, because that's because they were going to defend my honor as a professor. And then I pushed him. I pushed him away. The two. I mean, I'm like, I can do that. I can do that by myself. I can kill this guy by myself. I don't need your help. But I knew now I have the advantage. That was all I need there. It was right there. And so I said. I told him, go sit down. And the students were horrified because I had been publicly shamed. They were horrified, and they were like, you better do something right now, or we cannot bear your shame with you. And I. I just walked out of the room. And it was really, really hard for me. It was so hard for me to do it because I knew what those students thought. I knew what I was capable of doing to the guy, and I wanted to. And no one would have questioned me. I mean, that would have been the thing to do. And some of the students later said to me, we can no longer talk to you because you have been dishonored and you have not restored your honor, and we can't. So it was tough. It was hard. And so I was like, stay connected. Stay connected to this guy. Don't separate from him. He's forcing the separation. Don't do it. And so, I mean, it took everything I had thinking about Jesus and the greater mission. This isn't about my reputation. That's scarcity. This is about the whole thing. We all need to win on this one. One of our guys had already. They'd already broken into his house and stabbed him multiple times in front of his little kid, who didn't speak again until he was nine years old. He was already gone. That was one of my teammates. The other one's wife had a nervous breakdown. We were the only ones left. And so I was just. I would go in and try and teach, and no one would listen to me. It was like, gosh, this is awful. And then one night, I'm at my House. And there's knock at the door, open door, and it's him. It's the guy that spit in my face. And I'm like, what do you want? And then, you know, immediately I'm like, gosh, he's alone, and it's nighttime. I could just kill him right now. And he said, can I come in and talk to you? And I'm like. So people would say he's not worthy of your trust. Like, you shouldn't trust him. I'm like, that's right. He's not. Because he's afraid. He's wounded. He lives in a separation worldview. He's doing exactly what he knows how to do to cope with the world that he's in. I'm a threat to him. Us is a threat to him, all of that. He's doing what he was taught to do. And so it's not, do I trust him? It's do I trust God? That's the question. Do I trust God? And how do I know to trust God? Not because I have great trust, but because I've seen God do things like this when I was a cop. On a smaller scale, this is just a lot bigger stakes. But I've watched him do it in the small. Here we are in a bigger state. So I let the guy in. He tells me, hey, I just got nominated for a scholarship in Singapore because he's a really good student. He was. And I said, congratulations. And he said, but I can't afford to get to Singapore to take it. And I said, what are you asking me? And he said, I can't afford. I said. I said, then you ask me a question. Ask me. And he wouldn't. And I said, what about your Muslim Brotherhood? Where. What are. Where are those guys? Why aren't they forking up the money? Do you know why they wouldn't give him money? Separation worldview. Because he's a competitor to him. So it fractured his own group, which it fractures every group. And so I said, ask me. And he said, would you pay my way? He said, singapore. And I said, I wouldn't. I would not. But the Jesus that you spit on, when you spit on me, he would. And because that's who I answer to and not you, I cancel the debt that you owe me for doing that. That's called forgiveness. I cancel the debt. Well, when you say that to a Muslim, that's the most remarkable thing they've ever heard. Like, you're canceling the debt. How are you restoring your honor by canceling your debt? And I went and I gave him the money and I said, I will never take this money back from you. This is a gift. Not from me, from the one you spit on. Gave it to him. He immediately disbanded the group the next day. Immediately. And he said to the group that he was fomenting, he said, if we're ever going to win and be free, we have to do it through forgiveness. And I've never known what forgiveness is until last night. And he told him what he did, which restored my honor a thousand times in the university, more than if I would have killed him. Right. And so from that I learned when you're in the position to forgive, you own the room. You own the room. Forgiveness is not a weak position. It is the power position, the mistake, the scarcity. World separation, worldview makes is when someone offends you, you go, just blow the hell out of them. That's the mistake. Then you lose. You lost. We had a chance. We blew it. So that was early on in my career. And so then as we went into situations, we could work those situations much faster.
- [49:18]
B
How did you get hired by them? You said, you need to have the enemy hire you.
- [49:22]
A
I learned that, yeah. I learned that from the Old Testament. I learned that from watching Moses. Moses got Egypt to finance first. They trained him to be a world class soldier and statesman, and then he got him to finance the exodus. And I'm like, why aren't we doing this? And so I went to the government of the country that we were trying to work in, and I knew what they were looking for or in credentials for professors. And I went and trained under this one linguist that I knew if I got her to train me, I could go anywhere in the world on her reputation. So I had to go interview with her. It was another person that just absolutely changed my life with her understanding of linguistics. And so I trained with her for two years. And she would say to me, she's Irish, thinks she's passed away now. She. I would come in with stuff I'd written and she would read it and she'd go, we already know this. We already know this. Write something that I don't know. Stop bringing me stuff I already know that was hard. She was saying, you be creative. And so she knew where I was going in the world to work. And she was saying, use your faith and your understanding of linguistics and phonetics and all that. Use it for the kingdom. But you're just imitating people when you write. You're imitating Krashen, you're imitating Chomsky. Same lesson, right? And so then when I went to the government of whatever country, I've done it a bunch of times, I'm like, here's my credentials. I would love to go teach and do field research in this location and do language research in this location. And while I'm there, I'm happy to offer my professional skill in whatever way you want. And they, they would always say, yes.
- [51:15]
B
Maybe the, the common citizen like me, when I think of terrorist, I, I, I think of maybe the propaganda I watch on tv, somebody with a gun kind of going through the streets. But what you kind of have laid out is that you were kind of teaching terrorists in university like they were everyday citizens and they weren't necessarily walking around with bombs strapped to them and, and guns. What is the mentality of terrorism over there? Like, what is driving it? Is it the identity that this is my Bloods, this is my Crips, this is. Or is there something else fundamentally driving this that simply forgiving someone for spitting on you could make it go away like that?
- [51:54]
A
Yeah, it's very. See, we dehumanize everything. We dehumanize it, and when we dehumanize it, we complicate it. So complexity models are beautiful. Complexity models are gorgeous. You just have to know which part of the complexity model you're working in. Things that are complicated are complexity models that we're afraid of. And we make them complicated because we don't want to solve them. So it's complicated, it's complex. The complexity of leaf is complex. But we love a leaf. Complexity is nothing to be afraid of, but you just have to know what part you're working on. And so every human being wants to belong. The infant, the first thing the infant does is wants to make eye contact with the one who is happy to see them. When they don't have that, they will look for the connection somewhere. Every human is trying to understand identity. If the identity is not understood and discovered in a healthy environment, they'll go find identity and belonging somewhere because they, whether they like it or not, they're in a connection worldview, and humans need connection. And so if they can't find it in a healthy way, they'll find it in a negative way. And they look for it as early as they can. And so you start seeing young people trying to find places of connection, right Immediately. And so they join gangs. The gang can be the chess club. The gang can be the Christian club. The gang can be fellowship of Christian athletes. The gang can be the Bloods, the gang can be the gay community. They're looking for belonging and validation and love. That's what they're looking for. And so they join gangs. And so all our life, we just keep joining different gangs. All of us are doing it. You know, I go to the Baptist gang on Wednesday nights. Right. Or I'm in the atheist gang. It's just gang names. They're. They're not human. They're not human names. And so they stop being identified. Like, what's your identity? I'm an evangelical Christian. What does that mean? That doesn't mean nothing. It's like the name that. Who came up with that name? God? No. Right. We did. And what's the name for? To separate me from everybody else. It's a name that separates me from everyone else and connects me with a few. And it is a disaster to have those names. Right. And so when you get to an ISIS fighter or a Hamas or whatever, it's the Bloods and the Crips. It's no different than what we dealt with in Washington, D.C.
- [54:43]
B
Washington, D.C. is a mess right now.
- [54:46]
A
Well, because that's what our culture is going to keep producing because it's our whole worldview.
- [54:52]
B
And is your answer, the simple answer, that to maybe solve the deep separation in America is around the word forgiveness?
- [55:01]
A
Oh, 100%, yeah. And identity. Right. Because the false identity can't forgive. It won't.
- [55:10]
B
Why?
- [55:11]
A
Because our pride and ego, it has to have separation. It has to keep validating itself as right, as correct.
- [55:18]
B
And if you had a separation worldview that had plagued you your whole life, fear overcame you in almost every situation. And I know you do a lot of this teaching, what would be the antidote? How does somebody that's lived their whole life that way, that can't shake it, how can they just change it? I know that's a big question.
- [55:38]
A
No, it's not. It's actually quite simple. But it's training. It's a process that you have to engage in, like, everything in our reality. To change something, you have to start, and you have to start small. And you work every day in the process. And what happens is. It's funny, like when you. When you hear Christians quote a verse like, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. What the gates of hell can't prevail against is truth. Right? So if I'm struggling with my weight, if I go to a gym every day with a trainer and just do what they say every day, the gates of hell cannot stop me getting healthy. That's what that verse means. If I'm going to live in forgiveness, the gates of hell are not going to stop me from developing wholeness and resiliency in my life. It won't. Because humans this. Because I'm actually operating in the blueprint of a real human. So the group I was just with, here's the exercise. Here it is. All negative emotion is an invitation to transformation. All negative emotion is an invitation to transformation. It's a process that parents should be teaching to kids, but they won't. They teach them self protection and self promotion. So negative emotion. So I was doing it with this group today. I don't even. I don't know them. They came from all over the place here, the whole room. I asked them. Okay, I want you to say out loud what you're most afraid of in your life right now. What's producing anxiety in your life right now? Every human being in this room. I don't care what your background is, what you believe about God, any of that. Tell me what's producing fear in your life right now? One by one around the room, boom, boom, boom. If there's a person in there that's not experiencing any fear. Beautiful. You're healthy or a liar, you're one of the two. But you're not going to receive whatever. But everyone in the room, yeah, I'm afraid that I'm a bad parent. Or I'm afraid. I'm afraid for my kid. They'll say something like that. Or I'm afraid for my job. Okay. How does it make you feel when you think about your kid? How does it make you feel when you think about your future in the job? They have to practice telling the truth. They don't know how to do it. They only know how to cope and deny and not tell the truth. What are you really afraid of? I'm afraid that I was a bad parent. Okay. What does that make an identity statement about that? That I'm a failure? Boom. Stop. That's what's killing you right there. Okay? Now, when's the first time in your life you realize you are a failure? Didn't start with your kid. It was way before that. When's the first time in your life you realized or were told that you're a failure? And that brain, that human brain, knows exactly what that was. Okay? Because the subconscious is not past, present or future. It's right now. So really? So I'm in second grade. I was giving them an example from my life. I was in second grade. This happened. My mom said she was disappointed, that hurt me. And then she told me that God was disappointed in me. That really hurt me. And when I was in second grade, and so I now have an identity. I am a disappointment. Okay? Now every time something negative happens, there it is, verified and validated. And my mom says I was a disappointment because I didn't like going to the little children's Bible study. So now every time I'm in a Bible study the rest of my life, when I feel negative, it's because something's wrong with me. Because you should like this. Should I? Who said I should like this? We did. And you don't. So something's wrong with you. Right. So guilt is I did something wrong. Shame is there's something wrong with me. And shame is very hard to get rid of. Right. So you're just diving down in that from a negative motion in the current situation. Guy cut you off in traffic. Who cares? How does that make you feel? Really angry. Anger is a secondary emotion. What are you angry about? I wasn't angry. What are you. You're afraid. What are you afraid of? He disrespected me. Oh. How does that make you feel? Like I'm invisible. Oh. When did you learn that in your life? Who told you you were invisible? When did you start to realize you're invisible? You're not seen. You got to make yourself seen. That's what ruined you in that moment when you learned that lie. Let's figure out what the truth was on that day. That was the lie. You're unseen. That's not true. You're unworthy. You're disappointed. That is not true. But when I was in second grade, I didn't know how to know different. Now I can know different. So on that day. So if you're from a Christian tradition like myself, it doesn't matter. But for me, it's like God was with you on that day when you were in second grade and your mom said you were a disappointment. Ask God what he said on that day because you didn't know how to ask God what he said on that day. You were told what he said. Let's ask him what he said right now. So I'm doing this with people in their 60s like I am, and, man, you should see the emotion because the emotion's never gone away. It's never been dealt with. It's just you drink over top of it, or you, you know, you become super religious or you give up on religion, whatever you do to cope, and then the emotion starts to come. What does love say about you? What did love say on that day? Did love say you were a disappointment? No. What did love say? Let's listen. What did love say? Get up here. What did love say? Love was proud of me on that day. Why? Why was love proud of you on that day? What does love call you? You should see middle school kids do this in a public school. You should see them. We do them. Whole classes of middle schoolers in this process with the guidance counselor and the principal in the room. So to make sure that it's safe. The things that when you ask them what are names you believe about yourself, that hurt you, man. They can name them so fast. That's how well they already know all the false. What are they going to do with it? So we do this exercise. Let's give it away to love. And they give. They tear it up. They throw in the trash. What does love call you? Let's go. Listen. What does love call you? Or God or Jesus? And they write down things like poet. I mean, they write down the most incredible things from deep down in here. And when we did it with Terrorist dude, one of my favorite. He's a guy I work with now. He's been. He's been in prison in Israel and all that stuff he wrote. We were out in the desert. He did this process and he wrote down healer of the city. That's right. Okay, so now as healer of the city, what do you got to do to be. What vocation is healer of the city? It's got to work in real life, what is it? He said, I've always been interested in public health. He's never gone to school. Now he has a reason to go to school. Why? To make. To get an identity. To put his identity in that field and study. We went to his graduation. So beautiful in this. He graduated in the US Got accepted to Stanford. This is a terrorist fighter. Gets accepted to Stanford. He now works in Jerusalem with Israelis. His enemy in public health. That's how you stop war. That's how you stop terrorism. That way, like that.
- [62:57]
B
For the business community and myself, I would be vulnerable and say one of my biggest fears has been to not be successful. And it's driven a ton of my life. It's driven me to do good things, and it's driven me to do unintended bad things, meaning neglect. And is that from an early childhood that being told, if you don't succeed, you're not good enough? And that just is on replay over.
- [63:26]
A
And over and over? Yeah, it's interesting in the separation Worldview, scarcity, worldview. The marketplace determines human value, which is so deadly. So your value is only what you can produce in a marketplace where the marketplace decides what you produce. It's not you produce anything, it's you have to produce what the marketplace says is valuable. What is the marketplace? Is that God? That's idolatry, right? That's idolatry in the worst sense of that word. And so, kids, the reason empires fail is because in every empire from the 9th century to modern US the education system shifts from the study of knowing things, beautiful epistemology, to how do we get high paying jobs. When education shifts away from knowing to just high affluent jobs, the empire starts to fall apart because then all the service professions start to become unimportant and all that matters. And it's really wild. You can read the 9th century Assyrians, right before they collapsed, they worshiped celebrities and athletes. That's what they worship.
- [64:49]
B
Here we are.
- [64:50]
A
Yeah, Rome did it, Greece did it. They all end up worshipping celebrities and athletes and people of service stature. Unimportant teachers, unimportant police, unimportant. Those are low paying jobs for people that aren't successful.
- [65:08]
B
All right, I want to bring it home on a story of yours that's maybe one of my favorites. You've been super generous, but I can't let you go without you telling the story. You hosted a men's retreat in Houston and you brought, so you can imagine, a bunch of Texans and you said, I'm going to spice it up a little bit. I'm going to bring some terrorists or perceived terrorists from the Middle east and we're going to put them all together for a weekend. Can you describe that story?
- [65:41]
A
Well? Yeah, yeah. So I was, we were working in Israel at the time and, and commuting back and forth between Israel and Houston working on some stuff. And so they, the, the church I was going to is a great church. They said, we're going to do a men's retreat and asked me if I would speak. And I said, I'll speak, I'm happy to speak. Can I bring some Palestinian bad guys with me? Now when I say bad, like one of the guys I wanted to bring with me had been in Israeli prisons 13 times. His brother had already been executed by Israel and the other one was in prison for life. These were mean, bitter people. Committed his life to fighting Israel. He was one of them that I wanted to bring him and four others. And so I said, can I bring these guys to the retreat? And they said, no. No, because in a separation worldview. No. And I said, why not? Isn't this a. Isn't this a men's retreat? Or is it just a Christian men's retreat? That's different. And, you know, they were like, okay. You know, that was challenging to them. And so they prayed about it, and they said, okay, we'll. We'll allow it if, you know, you take all the responsibility for them. Yeah, of course. Then I went to the big mosque in Houston, and I went to the imam and I said, hey, we're doing a men's retreat up at this church. We'd love for you to come. Like, we've never been invited to a men's. Christian men's retreat before. This is not a Christian men's retreat. It's a men's retreat. It's what we're doing. We're getting together. It's a bunch of men, happens to be hosted by this church. We'd love for you to come. And they're like, well. And I said, I'm bringing five Hamas dudes Pakistan. He goes, we wouldn't even invite them to our retreat. And I said, yeah, I know, I know. That's the problem. He said, are they coming? I said, if I can work it out with the government. He said, if they come, we'll come. So go back. And it took all kinds of. You know, it's a long story. And I just. Because we. We weren't going to break any laws. The question. My question to God was, these men are not allowed to travel. They're not allowed to travel. They're not allowed to go anywhere. How do I get them out of Israel to the U.S. counselor? Into the U.S. like, show me a way to do it, because we don't know a way, right? So in the scarcity model, there's only one way to do everything, and you're just trying to find the one way. In the. In the connection model, there's a million ways to do everything. That's the beauty. We just need to know the new way. And so I just kept asking, what's the strategy like up in my. Up in your intuitive mind. And then you bring it down into the rational and work it out, right? So the intuitive is the dream. Einstein said, the intuitive is the master and the rational is the servant. But we have made the servant the master. So the intuitive mind is like, let's dream about how to get these guys out of here, over to there, but then it's got to work on Monday. That's the rational. They're not against each other. One dreams and the other works it out, Right? Brain left it. Anyway, so with each guy, it just worked out. And the American counselor guy said. He said, I asked him, if I can get these five dudes into your office, will you give them visas to the US and he said, I will if you make sure they're back here in seven days. And if you lose one, you're going to jail. And I said, okay, I'll take that. And I said. He said, but I can't help you get him through Israel to here, but if you could, I'll give them the visa. So then I was like, okay, how do we get him from the west bank to the councilor through Israel? And we just prayed and prayed. And I met this Israeli colonel soldier, and we were talking, and, you know, they're just human beings. We're all just human beings. And when you start talking about. And I was telling him, like, man, I would love to get these guys to a Christian retreat. And he thought that was the funniest thing he'd ever heard in his life. The Israeli. He thought it was hilarious. He had all these stereotypes about Texans. And then. And I said, yeah, but if I could get him to the Israeli consulate, I could get him, you know, legally to the US and he said, I can. I can bring anyone for 24 hours into Israel that I want. And I said, would you bring these five? And he said, I'll give you. So I'll. I'll take charge of them for 24 hours. And he made it so. So that was like. It was all of us that are enemies working together. Like, that's the connected worldview. Because that soldier wanted to see what would happen, because he's sick of fighting Palestinians. He wants to see, is there a solution. Take them to the. We take them to the retreat. It was hilarious. The Muslims from the mosque came. They sat right in the front row. Five or six hundred men show up because they want to see what these guys look like. And so we brought them into the retreat. They interviewed in the council. It was hilarious. Bring them to the retreat. And I wouldn't let them be together. So we put one guy in this dorm. We spread them all out into the dorms and didn't tell the Texas guys who was coming at what dorm. We're just like, send. And we just said, God, take care of. Don't let. Don't let anyone get in a fight. Just, we're going to trust you. And so. But it was. The fear was really intense. It was so interesting how fearful everybody was. And fear shuts down. You can't love what you fear. You cannot love what you fear. And so we did all the intro and stuff and everything. And so they owned all the. All the guys knew that these guys were there, the Palestinians were there. And so the first night is packed in this, like, tent thing they had up because so many people came. And so I was. I started talking, and the Muslim guys were late as usual. And so I'm talking, and then they. They had police officers there. Police officers get kind of tense, and then the guys come walking in. When they came walking in, I stopped for him to get in, and they just stood in the back. And they were very hesitant to come in when they saw the number of people. And one guy stands up and starts clapping. One Texas guy stands up, starts clapping like this. And then boom, boom, they start popping up and clapping. And that one guy was what did it. He broke. It's like he broke the spirit of fear in the room, whoever the guy was that stood up. And then they all stand up, reluctantly or not, and clap. And then the Muslim guys come in, and they all kind of sit together, and we start doing the thing. Do the first session that night. So we do a session that was like, Friday night, Saturday morning, we come in. They all come in on time this time. And when I'm talking, the dude that's been in prison 13 times, Hasm's his name, he in a mosque. If you're talking in a mosque and they disagree with you, they'll just yell out. They just yell at you. They'll jump up and scream at you. And so he stands up while I'm talking, and, you know, he's in mosque protocol in his head. And I stop and I say, yeah, what would you. Hassan, what would you like to say? Hasan? He said. He goes, last night, Jesus came into my room, into the. Into the bunk house. And he said, I want to say what happened? And I'm like, okay. Oh, my gosh, we should have seen the Christian guys. They were like, what? And he said. He came into. He came into the bunk house and he told me. And he. And so over the course of the time, several of them did this, would say these things. They had the dream or Jesus met him or something like that. What was surprising to the Muslims was that Jesus was in the bunkhouse with Christians. Like, that surprised them because they thought. Each thought the other one doesn't know God. And so the fact that they were all together and Jesus showed up with them all in the same place was astounding to everybody. But the Christians were like, why is Jesus showing up to the Muslim guy? Why didn't Jesus show up to any of the Christian guy? That was, like, kind of funny. And so Hasan, eventually, he says. He says, Jesus, he was the second one to do it. Jesus has told me that he's giving me a burden to carry back with me. What's the burden? The burden is that he wants me to stop fighting. He wants me to stop fighting, that this. We got to stop fighting. And Jesus is asking me to be the one that goes back and disbands his group of fighters in his community that he lived in. One of the other guys stood up who ran the school, an Islamic school. And he said, jesus came to me and told me that this is the kingdom of God. Being in the room with you Christians is actually melakud Allah, the kingdom of God. He goes, I would have never thought that. But it is true. I feel the kingdom when I'm with you. You're not my enemy. You're my brothers. People start clapping. So one of them stands up. He was the one. He was. He was younger. He's quite famous. He is on the Palestinian Olympic team. His dad's a famous. Palestinians have an Olympic team, and he was one of their stars. He wanted to get baptized in front of everyone on YouTube. God asked, and we told him no, but he insisted. So we did it. Man, that caused a huge uproar in Palestine when he did that. So when we went back to Palestine, Hasan asked me if I would go with him to make the announcement to his group that they're disbanding. And I said, I don't want to go with you. Are you crazy? But he insisted. So we go to this location, which was an ancient mosque that was like a secret place they met. And we go in there, and he stands up in front of his lieutenants and says, you know, I've been in the U.S. i've discovered that the Christians are not our enemies. They're our friends. At least some of them are very close friends. And we're not going to fight anymore. We're done fighting. Jesus has asked us to stop fighting, and we're not fighting anymore. Well, his guys started screaming at him, saying that I bewitched him and all this stuff. But then the other guys stood up and, like, nope, we were there. This is what's coming. And so they disbanded the group, and he became. They elected him the mayor of the city. So not. He didn't become less powerful. He became more powerful. And then the head of the school said he changed the name of the school to the Kingdom of God school. And in the Islamic prayers in the morning that the students have to do, he came out and he said, we're going to pray a different way from now. I'm going to give all the students every day a question to ask God. You're going to ask God and you're going to learn to hear his voice. And I want you to come during the day to my office and tell me what God is saying to you. And so he completely changed the focus of prayer, but not the form of it. It's brilliant. And that school went from being the lowest performing school in the west bank to the. We went to the awards ceremony where they were honored as being the highest performer school. And then the EU started putting a bunch of money into that school because of the level of the students, because the teacher started to discover their identity. Not from me, from the Muslim leadership that came to Christ to reach. So all we were saying is like, there is a way to beat terrorism, but terrorism is sourced in fear. Take away the fear, there's no need for terror. Terror is just fear.
- [76:50]
B
So, Jamie, thank you very much for today. This has been incredible.