The SEEK Podcast
Welcome to the SEEK Podcast – we're so glad you’re here. This podcast is a place of community, collaboration, and inspiration, created to invite and encourage you deeper into a relationship with Jesus. Join these podcasters and many others as we encounter Jesus at SEEK25, Jan 1st-5th. For more information and to register, visit seek.focus.org.
The SEEK Podcast
Balancing Family, Faith, and Life's Challenges: Bearded Blevins x SEEK
Join us in this compelling episode of the SEEK podcast, featuring Jonathan Blevins and Jason Evert, recorded live at SEEK in Salt Lake City. Dive into Jonathan’s transformative journey from a Catholic minister to a celebrated content creator, inspired by his brother Ninja. Witness how an unexpected encounter at a youth conference ignited a profound spiritual awakening that would steer his path forward.
From discussions on masculinity and spirituality to confronting the challenges of ministry under fire in Australia, this dialogue offers a heartfelt exploration of faith under pressure. Amid personal anecdotes and spiritual insights, discover how resilience, community, and a deep commitment to faith can guide us through life’s most challenging moments, encouraging listeners to live a life of courage, conviction, and compassion.
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Welcome to the Seek 25 podcast, featuring some of our favorite podcasters recorded live at the Max Studios podcast stage during Seek 25 in Salt Lake City.
Speaker 2:All right, check, check. Can you hear me? I can, let's go. Thanks for being here. Good to be on, I appreciate it.
Speaker 2:For those who don't know me, my name is Jonathan Beard of Blevins. I apologize for my voice. I've been like live streaming and doing podcast stuff since I got here and I heard the elevation might be a thing, so thank you for your patience.
Speaker 2:I was in ministry for 15 years in the Catholic Church as a youth minister and a director of evangelization. I have my bachelor's in theology and my master's in theology with an emphasis in youth and young adult ministry. And six years ago, my brother I don't usually bring this up, but a lot of you already know this Six years ago, my brother, who has blue hair and is ninja, blew up and became the biggest streamer in the world and he encouraged me to start live streaming on Twitch and so I started doing it part-time. It went really well. I started my own business out of it and now I do full-time content creation, talking about sports and all kinds of fun stuff like that. So thank you so much for being here. I'm so excited and, jason, it's great to have you my friend. If you don't mind, I know everybody already knows you, but if you don't mind introducing yourself just a little bit, that'd be great.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, jason Everett, father of eight beautiful little kids, back home in Arizona, and I run the Chastity Project Ministry. We run chastitycom, so I am blessed to travel around the world and speak about God's plan for human love and sexuality high school, college students and beyond.
Speaker 2:Let's go. I probably should have mentioned that I'm also married and have three kids, one on the way. That's exciting. Catholic conference, let's go. But I have to ask you this, jason. So this is a little weird, but it's okay. We do weird here. So is there a chance that in the year, like 2000 and 2001, that you would have been speaking at NCYC's? Yep, oh yeah, the National Catholic Youth Conference? Yep, we did many.
Speaker 2:I have to share a story. Please bear with me. Okay, so I'm in eighth grade. My mom signs me up for this Catholic conference. That's for high schoolers. I'm already the youngest in my eighth grade class, but she's like you're going. My mom's an amazing woman, she's the best mom ever. My dad's pretty great too. She left out of town that week and similar to right now.
Speaker 2:I got really sick and my dad did not do a ton of the laundry, so I'd already packed up everything for this trip. I'm trying to get out of it. Now I have an excuse to get out of it. I'm sick. So I tell my dad dad, I don't feel good, I feel really sick. And he's like oh, you're fine, you're just trying to get out of it.
Speaker 2:And I was like dad, I got to run to the bathroom. So I go inside, I run up the stairs and I didn't quite make it A nice. A nice it was it was not a fart, let's just say that and it was really embarrassing. Okay, and so what do I do? All I have to like tell my dad that I pooped my pants, or I just have to like figure something out. So I try to clean it up real quick. It wasn't a ton, it was just a little. I promise this goes somewhere. Awesome, I would hope so. And so I get in the car and I'm like all right, I'll get in the, I'll grab the bag from the, from, uh, my car, and just change in the church, and no one's going to know. And the bus drivers there, cause we're late, grabs my bag, throws it under the bus.
Speaker 1:So now I'm stuck and I have to sit on this bus to Indianapolis.
Speaker 2:In my own grossness and I'm like trying not to cry I sat by the bathroom so that I could blame it on other people and it was super embarrassing. We finally get to the conference and I should tell you, I grew up Catholic, went to mass every single week, but I never had a personal encounter with Christ. I didn't really love the church, I just didn't mind going to mass. I get into the room with four seniors, I hop in the shower to try to clean up and they turn the light off and start like punching me through like the shower curtain. They were not really trying to be that mean, they were just trying to be funny, but I was sick and it felt awful. So I go to my youth minister and I say, hey, like I'm having the worst time, I'm sick, I don't want to be here, can I go home? And she's like you know what, john, you can just go, do whatever you want. This entire conference. Go ahead, indianapolis, eighth grade, just go, and you don't have to check in, you don't have to be in any small groups, just like, let God do what he wants to do.
Speaker 2:So I took my hundred dollars that my dad gave me and I spent it at a steakhouse and then I ran out of money and so I was like, well, I might as well check out this conference. And I pull open the schedule and I see like and I don't remember exactly what it was, but in my mind it said the Catholic Church and sex. And maybe that wasn't the title, maybe you remember the title, but you were the speaker and I was like what does the Catholic church have to say about sex? I'm in eighth grade. I didn't even know what that was. I thought it was kissing naked, and so I didn't even know. But I was like this is, I want to know what this is. And so I walk into your talk and even then, dude, your whole place was packed, there was nowhere to sit, and so I sat behind the bleachers and I just like sat there alone and I listened to you talk.
Speaker 2:And that conference and your talk that you gave was the very first time that I encountered Christ. It was the first time I had heard someone who seemed normal talk about loving the church, loving Christ and talking about church teaching. That I didn't know existed. And so I just want to start by saying thank you so much for being a part of changing my life. Well, that's awesome. Praise God, I got a lot better after the poop in the pants story. Okay, that's a good story, right, guys? Come on now. Don't be ashamed. All right, I want to get into a bunch of stuff with you, but first, if you don't mind, just go a little deeper into what it is that you're doing. You're doing kind of three main things right now. As you're sharing talks all around the world, let's hear about it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, we've got Chastity Project and we try to spread the message of chastity through in-person speaking engagements, things like that. Secondly, we've got a couple dozen books that we've written on the subject and then a lot of online content. So Chastity Project tries to get John Paul II's vision of human love out through those. We also have another ministry called jp2trailscom where we do wilderness backpacking retreats for young adults, and so we did one in Poland and one of the trails John Paul II did and I taught love and responsibility up in the mountains to the young adults. And we're like, oh, this is awesome, we got to do this back home. So we got back home.
Speaker 3:A friend of mine was like, well, would you do one for our parish in Denver and we'll open it up nationwide. So we opened up registration, we got 250 applications in 48 hours and we're like I think we're onto something. And so we did that one and it's just kind of snowballed now where we just had ones in Montana, canada, arizona, colorado, and we've got 19 on the calendar now from here to Switzerland, to Italy, and it's just getting in the back country and then spending time with a couple dozen young adults, a couple of priests, and then you teach theology of the body, have adoration, and it's heaven and we're just kind of dreaming big. We're looking to do on a Kodiak Island with grizzly bears, a bear guide. We're looking at Norway, patagonia, even a missions trip to Ecuador where we're going to go fly into Quito and then take a six-hour drive to the rainforest and then we'll be backpacking medical supplies into the Amazon to remote villages. So it's just really kind of just dropped into our laps and just have exploded in the last six, eight months or so.
Speaker 2:That's incredible. How many of those trips are you personally going on?
Speaker 3:Well, I've just finished the seventh one that I've done and I'm just basically doing one per month on the way out. Okay, that's super cool.
Speaker 2:One of my favorite pictures that you've posted a couple of times over the years is when you got to meet St John Paul II. It's a beautiful picture. You make a joke sometimes about the security guards, why they look so crabby. That's super funny. But can you share a little bit about your love for JP too, and maybe like why you know?
Speaker 3:what he was doing in his ministry. As he was doing that, yeah Well, I mean, I I'm kind of spoiled. I got to see John Paul II in person 24 times in my life, uh, I got to uh, most of the time I was at a distance at a world youth day. On another occasion I got to hold his hand, uh. And then another occasion I got to speak with him, have mass with him, uh, talk to him, give him a hug and a kiss, and so I'm like a fifth-class relic more or less, seeing him that often.
Speaker 3:But you know, he's just my hero. He's a very interior man. I mean, if there's anything that struck me about him, it was that, as visible as he was and traveling the globe and all that, he was really a man of prayer and he suffered a lot. His father, when his mom died, he said. Of his dad he said the violence of the blows that had struck him opened up immense spiritual depths in him and his grief found its outlet in prayer. And I think the same is true of John Paul, who suffered a lot growing up, losing his loved ones, but he found his outlet in prayer and his understanding of human love and sexuality and love and responsibility. It's the most beautiful vision of human love, and to me it isn't just so much arguing about truth and what's good, but beauty is irrefutable. You can't argue with what's beautiful, and so his vision of human love to me is the core of our entire chastity ministry. So he's absolutely my hero. Patron saint, just love the guy.
Speaker 2:That's awesome when you go on these trips and you see the beauty of the world. How much of that is part of what he was into.
Speaker 3:Oh well, I mean when he was a young priest and then became Pope, he said I only have two responsibilities young people, kayaking and skiing. And so he would just take them out and catechize them in the mountaintops and then just walk with them and they'd have all these questions on relationships and human love. Of all the couples that went with him engaged couples, newlywed couples, grand total of 0% divorce rate of all of these couples and when you start reading what he was giving them in Love and Responsibility, it becomes obvious why they were having successful relationships. He was an extraordinary man.
Speaker 3:I had heard of one woman who lost her Catholic faith and her friend had an opportunity for her to meet with Pope John Paul II, but she's very bitter and cynical because of the sufferings that she had been through. And her friend said look, just meet with him, talk to him, see what happens. So they went behind closed doors. Has their meeting. Doors open up. The woman comes out just beaming with joy. Just Doors open up. The woman comes out just beaming with joy, just renewed in her faith.
Speaker 3:And her friend said oh, what did the Pope say to you? What did the Pope say? And she said he's the most amazing man that I've ever met in my life. And her friend said well, what did he say to you? She said he didn't say anything. He listened to me, and this is the wisdom of Solomon he knew when to speak, but he knew when people just needed to be heard. And so he had a tremendous heart, a tremendous gift of listening, and it's from the fruit of all that listening that we have these great books, because he knew the human heart.
Speaker 2:That's incredible, I should take notes. I've been married for 11 years and so many times now my wife will be sharing something with me and I'll just finally pause, and maybe this is the blessing of St John Paul II. I'll pause and I'll say is this something I'm supposed to respond to or to just listen to?
Speaker 3:Yes, very important question to ask at the outset. Yes, do you want advice or you just want me to hear? To listen Exactly, I know I can do either.
Speaker 2:And so you've got to be a little bit better at that than me, not really. No, okay, good, it's good to know that none of us are perfect. That sounds so incredible that you're doing with young people. As someone who used to be in ridiculously good shape, I know it's hard to tell here now, but, like used to be a good athlete, has not been lately. How in shape do I have to be to be going on one of these things, one of these hiking events? Oh, we have different tiers. So, like the basic tiers.
Speaker 3:You get to stay in a cabin, you got the amenities and you just go for a day would be. We've got a base camp but we're in tents and we take day hikes. Well, you come back to the base camp. The next tier would be backcountry, where it's 40-plus miles and you don't come back to the base camp until after four or five days of being in the backcountry. Then we're looking at one up in Alaska. That's going to be like a week long and you have to take a day-long class before they let you on the trail because of the fatality rates. But is the fatality rates? But they'll train you on how to survive and one day there's 6,000 feet of elevation gain in one of the days. So the idea is to give everybody what they can handle and pick the trail that's good for them. So I'm probably like a 4 or 5 level.
Speaker 2:Oh, 6, 7, 8, 9. Okay, sweet. How much more elevation is that than where we are now? Do you know?
Speaker 3:What are we at Salt Lake? Anyone know? The 5,000, 4,000, 4,000, 5,000 feet, so less than Denver.
Speaker 2:but still up there. So if I'm already struggling now, I need to make sure I go to that class and get prepared to go.
Speaker 3:Well, I mean with elevation, it depends where you're spending the night beforehand. So like, if you want to climb Mount Everest, you basically have to live at the base camp for about two to three months before you can make the ascent, because your body needs to become acclimated with the altitude.
Speaker 2:Would you ever do that? Would you ever want to do that?
Speaker 3:I wouldn't want to be away from my kids for two or three months. That's the only thing that would hold me back.
Speaker 2:So like in 20, 30 years maybe. Yeah, I'm up for it. Yeah, I love it, I'm game. I heard that you're super into CrossFit. Yeah, I love CrossFit, and I'm surprised that you are, because you hadn't told me that't. So you've got humility and you get to do this. Tell me a little bit about CrossFit, why you love it so much, and would I be okay trying it, or is there a level I have to? Orange theory first and then CrossFit?
Speaker 3:No, you can jump right into CrossFit because you can scale any workout and they'll teach you, if you don't know Olympic lifting, how to work up to that. But everybody's got their kryptonite in it. Some people are really good at some things the bike or the rower and Olympic lifting, deadlift, running but it really forces you to compete in a sense against the other athletes in there and some of them are just so grueling. I mean, my favorite one is called Murph and what you do is you put a 20-pound vest on, then you run for a mile. Then you have to do 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, 300 air squats and then run another mile with the vest on and just do it straight through and it just pushes you at a level you would look like a maniac at a normal gym to do.
Speaker 3:But you've got that community at the gym as well. Like if I died at a normal gym they'd just keep charging my membership. At this gym one of the women died of leukemia and the gym guy was like, okay, we're doing a fundraiser, they raised like $5,000, and then we just gave it all to the husband to help take care of the kids. Like that's the kind of family environment you'll find at a typical CrossFit box.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's incredible. So right now, I think, as you know, there's a lot of Andrew Tate style, these influencers, if you will, out there who are influencing these young men.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:To be a good leader, to be strong, to eat well, to work out all these kinds of things right. I think you would agree with all of those things. Do you often ever talk about how important those kinds of things are for Catholics? Because I think a lot of our young men are kind of following these influencers and it can be really easy to get pulled away from the faith. I'm wondering if you kind of incorporate that at all with what you're doing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I understand why there's such an appeal behind those things, because there's been such a softness. You know that's. You know you don't want toxic masculinity, you don't want any of that. And so guys are afraid to even open a door for a woman anymore. And so when you have a guy, no, no, be a leader. You know work out. You know you own your own, have radical ownership of your decision. You know guys like, hey, someone's calling me out, someone's placing demands on me, I like this, instead of being told my masculinity is something toxic, that it can be something good.
Speaker 3:I think the challenge with some of these platforms, so to speak, is these men want to conquer everything in the world except for themselves. So, like I want to conquer finances, I want to conquer to the gym, I want to conquer women, I want to conquer this, but conquering my ego, conquering my lust, it's like no, let's do these other things. So it's almost like there's this external jihad that we want to fight, but not the internal holy war. And so a lot of these people that are almost hyper-masculine, in a sense, there's almost a twinge of effeminacy in them, and what I mean by that is and I'm not going to call out people by name. I haven't met them personally, but Thomas Aquinas said that what effeminacy is is what a man refuses to do what is arduous, preferring what is pleasurable instead. And so we might say, well, I'm not effeminate because I can lift all this weight and I can do all these things, but okay, but can I resist a single image that appears on TikTok? Can I resist the temptation of wasting my life scrolling on Instagram for 30 minutes before bed, Like, do I have an inordinate attachment to the pleasure? Because Aquinas says that's what makes a man effeminate it's a disordered attachment to the pleasure and not willing to do what is difficult. And so I understand these guys have a big appeal because they're calling you to do demanding, hard things. But we just need to get it to the next yard.
Speaker 3:It's like, okay, it's not about conquering a woman for the sake of myself, it's about conquering myself for the sake of the woman. Then I become free. Because sometimes they celebrate freedom as an end in itself. But John Paul said freedom exists for the sake of love If I value freedom as an end in itself. But John Paul said freedom exists for the sake of love If I value freedom as an end in itself.
Speaker 3:I end up becoming a slave, thinking hey, I don't have a wife, it's like a ball and chain. I don't have a girlfriend, I don't want to be tied down, I don't want kids, it's game over. It's like wait a minute, you haven't become free. You're a slave to your own ego, and so your freedom is best measured by your capacity to love. So whatever impairs my ability to love my loss, my self-absorption, my pride it's to that extent that I'm not free, and so I think these online influencers have done a good job in telling guys hey, whether it's make your bed or go to the gym or start a business, go do something, but we just got to take it to the next step.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. Take it to the next level and live out our radical Catholic faith.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I love that and do you talk about that?
Speaker 3:a lot when you're doing the talks that you're traveling now and doing. Yeah, I mean, most of the talks that I'm doing are chastity talks in high school and then in colleges. I do one called Dating 101, where I actually teach the college students how to date Because they're told I mean you grow up Catholic high school, Catholic grade school and especially the guys you get told everything you're not supposed to do with a woman, Don't do this and don't do that and don't do that, Okay, whatever. Then you get to college and it's like, okay, I got this down. I can't sleep with my girlfriend, I can't look at porn with my girlfriend, I can't have an abortion with my girlfriend. You know, I can't live with my girlfriend, I can't clone my girlfriend.
Speaker 3:Like okay, what am I supposed to do with one? It's like, oh, we don't teach that, Good luck in college. It's like, well, that's not fair. So we try to give basic dating etiquette of when to date, why to date, how to date, who to date, how to pursue all that stuff. And I find the college is just remarkably receptive to just not have a finger wagged at them being like, hey, here's some principles that you can put into application to go risk and go and give it a shot, and I find they're hungry for it.
Speaker 3:That's awesome.
Speaker 2:I needed you. In college, I was just dating all the time, and then I met my wife, and it was amazing and turned out great. Yeah, so that's beautiful. When you're doing this kind of ministry, like as someone who I'm streaming what I kind of call what I'm doing show people that you can be a normal person, a Catholic who's in love with their faith but has other interests, similar to a lot of the interests that you've already shared, which are awesome. And the appeal, though, is that like, why am I joyful? You know, john, how are you joyful? And I get to then share the gospel with people who may not have heard it for the first time, and there's these beautiful stories that end up happening. And it's of course.
Speaker 2:Then, as you know, when you're doing any kind of ministry, you start getting attacked a little bit. Right, the evil wants you to stop. In my opinion, you are doing one of the most important ministries in the church. You seem to I know there's a bunch of people who talk about similar things, but you seem to have kind of been leading the charge over the last I mean 25 years. How do you handle that? Do you feel that attack from the evil and that pressure and what do you do to handle it?
Speaker 3:No, it's been insane, it's been off the charts. I mean, the attacks have been nuts. But the most important thing is that we don't need to be afraid. Our primary role is just to stay in a state of grace, to live out the sacramental life. And so I've got my routine of doing my morning consecration to Our Lady.
Speaker 3:You know, morning mass I do, daily mass, I spend time in Eucharistic adoration each day. Daily rosary, you know I have spiritual direction once a month I go to confession at least once a month. Like this is kind of the bread and butter. You know, morning prayer, evening prayer, all that stuff. And if we're living in grace then we don't need to live in fear, because the devil's like a dog on a chain. As long as you don't go within that chain, you don't have to worry about him biting you. So we don't need to have this inordinate fear of the evil one, even if, just because we're doing good stuff, I mean attacks are going to happen. But God can use all that to the good. But yeah, it gets pretty dicey for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I heard a story about something that happened in Australia, maybe worth sharing here.
Speaker 3:Yeah, australia was nuts. I've been there a half dozen times and every time I went it was just great, totally peaceful. Nothing went crazy at all. But this last May I was flying out there and as I was getting ready to leave the airport, people were like hey, I just want to give you a heads up. There's some rumblings on the ground here that it's going to be a little dicey this time around. There's protests going on that you're coming. People are trying to block you from getting into Catholic schools.
Speaker 2:For you just being there to speak In Catholic schools.
Speaker 3:Wow, protests from parents at the Catholic schools that don't want a chastity talk to their kids. We don't need this misogynist chastity preacher telling our girls to be modest. And it's like whoa, whoa, whoa. That's not how I'm coming in there. But I said, okay, we'll pray, god will figure it out.
Speaker 3:By the time I landed in Australia, it had just a dumpster fire. It exploded, three high schools canceled their assemblies because the pressure coming against them and it was all over the ABC News out there and the news outlets online and on the TV. And I'm like what is going on? And then a group came forward and said we want to take credit because the cancellations happened. We're going to explain who was behind this. It was us. It was a group of witches who had a Twitter following of 60 plus thousand people, and some people are like, oh, they're not real witches, mate. And then people were tweeting back. Speak for yourselves. We're going to go scorched earth on this guy. I'm like, wow. And so they started trying to cancel my hotel speaking events that I was due by contacting management and taking all the tickets. I'm like, oh, this is getting really dicey. So I'm like, okay, you want to play this game. I'm going to fly in the big guns.
Speaker 3:So I started calling up convents of nuns, the Sisters of Life and all these things back in the States. I'm like, hey, sister, bethany, madonna, you got me and I was emailing them. She said I will have all of the sisters covering you in prayer especially, and so she got all the nuns here praying. I reached out to an exorcist I know, monsignor John Esif, and I'm like, hey, monsignor, and he picked up the phone right away and prayed with me about all the stuff. And then it got real interesting. I put a post on Instagram saying, hey, all this stuff is going on. And I said, you know, witches are trying to do this thing. But I said, hey, before I came here, I consecrated the trip to Mary, and to think that a bunch of witches can kind of overtake that is like thinking a bunch of house cats can take on, like some, you know, siberian tiger, it's not going to happen. The news took that clip, edited it up and said the American chastity preacher is now hitting back against moms who don't want them to speak to their girls, and it clipped the video. So it said, yeah, so if these witches think that they're and I'm the tiger and I'm like what the heck? And so they all cut, edited this thing to make it look like they're house cats, they're witches and I'm a tiger and I'm like this is it just got nuts and so.
Speaker 3:But what was amazing about the last talk is a young adult thing. For about a thousand young adults. I'm like, wow, nothing really happened. I mean, the schools that canceled, we got other ones to fill it in everything. And I'm putting the mic down after the last talk and we're just getting ready to set up the altar for adoration and I just feel, and someone dumps a can of tomato soup on my head in front of a thousand people, and then the security guys tackled the guy and dragged him off the stage and then they got in a fight with the guy off the property. And then he came back with two other guys who had hoodies and ski masks on that were trying to get in to do more stuff.
Speaker 3:And at the same event, priest told me he was in the back and a group of people came in that looked kind of fishy and he kind of walked over and said, hey, can I offer you a seat? And they said, no, we want to stand and move, we're cold. And I was like, okay, that's weird. He said so I'm just going to kind of sit back and see what they're up to. So the priest watched them and, sure enough, as soon as they started speaking, they started these rhythmic incantations and hexes and curses. It was like a coven of witches showing up. And so he's like, okay, let's roll. He pulls out his rosary, starts praying the rosary next to them.
Speaker 3:But what was amazing about the whole thing? I went once more like after the tomato soup got dumped on me, I'll straight on, was like, oh, I'm so sorry, mate, you know that happened to you. And I'm like, hey, look, I've got eight kids. This is what I look like at the end of the day anyway. So it's all par for the course. But to show how God brings good through all of this, because they were putting all this stuff on social media, attacking me, they took my and that thing started going up the algorithm because so many clicks were happening, because they were putting on these news stations. And what ended up happening? That showed it to a lot more people who wouldn't have otherwise seen it, one of whom was a college-age young adult girl who's in Australia visiting her boyfriend A Catholic girl visiting from Hawaii found out while she's there he's cheating on her and she's like that's it.
Speaker 3:I am so done. I'm so sick of holding out for some Christian guy that really is going to value me when those guys don't even exist. That's it. I'm just going to lose my virginity now. So she gets on. She got on Tinder pick three guys. She said I'm going to pick one of these guys. Give my virginity to tonight. No-transcript. He's here. And so she DMs me on Instagram. I'm like, yeah, I'm here. I got to talk tomorrow night for young adults. Why don't you come? And she's like yeah, I'll come. So she comes to the talk, doesn't sleep with the guys, goes to confession, eucharistic adoration, renews whole commitment with chastity, then comes with us on one of our wilderness backpacking retreats and then it's like hey, my family has a ranch in Yosemite, you want to start having retreats there. I'm like let's do it. So now we're going to do retreats at her ranch in Yosemite. She came on our podcast all because people tried to oppose it and God was able to bring good out of the evil.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's beautiful. Thank you for sharing that, and I'm sure there were hundreds, if not thousands, of people that have similar stories when they were there who were impacted by what you were saying. But even if it was just for that one absolutely worth all the stuff. I'm sure I can't say that because I haven't had tomato sauce jumped on my head besides my kids. Yeah, people are pawing on my kids.
Speaker 3:Yeah, People are like, hey, it could have been worse, it could have been like cream of broccoli or something like that. But you know, one of the girls came up to me at high schools and she said you know, I feel like you're talking to. It was only for me, I needed this so bad. And I said you know, I wasn't supposed to be here today. The only reason I'm at your high school is because that high school.
Speaker 2:Praise God when that stuff happens to you, does it? It has to affect you a little bit, right, like, or does it not like all the kind of the hate messages you get? You get way more affirming ones, as do I, but sometimes the hate messages, or I don't know if you're familiar with swatting. Swatting is when you pretend to call. You call the police and you pretend you're at this house. And you say the police and you pretend you're at this house and you say I've killed my entire family and uh, and I'm going to kill myself if you don't show up.
Speaker 2:And then the cops will show up and awful things have happened in the last 10 years to like video game streamers who do this, um, and so that happened to me once and this like it was unbelievable, so that like I look and I already warned the cops that this was a thing, wow, and so I walk outside cause my wife walks in and tells me and I look out and my kids are like looking at my wife with like lasers pointed to her, wow, and thank God they're super young and so we were able to just be like yeah, somebody called and said something bad happened at our house and they came to help us like, but that's like not always how it ends, and that stayed with me for a long time, like, and I'm sure that maybe that's not happened to you when you're out there doing the ministry that you're doing.
Speaker 3:Well, when I think of this guy who poured the tomato soup on my head, you know, as soon as he did it, you know I was like what is going on here? Then I saw the security come and grab him and I said okay, everybody, let's pray a Hail Mary for our brother. So, all thousand people. I started praying a Hail Mary for the guy. Security guy told me later. He said yeah, I was him off stage and he was trying to scream something, but he couldn't scream as long as we were doing the Hail Mary. It was like he was just blocked from speaking and as they were dragging him off, I just thought I wonder what his story is, because anger comes from a place of hurt that's at the root. What's that guy's hurt Like? What happened to him? Like did he get hurt by somebody in the clergy, by some Catholic person who claimed to be Catholic? That's coming out of a wound, he's living out of a wound. So I can't take offense that this is happening. In fact, the security guy, we circled back at the end of the night and he said I just want to show you what's going on here. And he says I do work with the priest as deliverance ministry in the diocese here and he rolls out a napkin and gets a pen, and Right here in this part of town is a bunch of satanic cults. These are the covens of witches. There's a lot of new age activity here. And he said and you are right here. He said good on you, mate, you're over the target, meaning you're kicking a hornet's nest here, and so you shouldn't be surprised when it creates kind of this anaphylactic reaction.
Speaker 3:When I was down in Tasmania, there's a great bishop there who's an exorcist and he was explaining that spirituality can't exist in a vacuum and that place has become so secularized, the Holy Spirit has been so disinvited. A different spirit comes in and the nuns were telling me like yeah, we can look right out our convent window at the neighbors through their living room window, and it's witches and they're doing seances and their own kind of liturgy of the hours on a daily basis as well seances and their own kind of liturgy of the hours on a daily basis as well. And so the whole trip helped me to take, you know, inventory of my own life. Okay, am I taking this spiritual battle as seriously as the witches are, or are they taking it more seriously than we are.
Speaker 3:Archbishop Fulton Sheen once was flying and the lady next to him was on the airplane. They started talking and she wasn't eating anything and he asked her he's like you know. May I ask you know, are you Christian? You know, are you fasting? And she said well, I'm not Christian, but I am fasting. I'm a witch and I'm fasting for more abortions.
Speaker 2:And it's like whoa like.
Speaker 3:And this is Archbishop Fulton Sheen doing the story. There was another priest, no-transcript. Are you Christian, are you fasting? And they said, no, we're witches and we're fasting for the destruction of Christian marriage. Wow, and it's like okay if the enemy is taking the game more seriously than we are. We got to get our stuff together.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so for you, you talked about daily prayer, daily adoration, daily rosary, daily mass. You've got eight kids right. How do you fit that all in? And I wasn't even in this for 15 years, so I was doing a lot of those things. Often I'm trying to do them all as much as I can. Now, what are some of the hobbies that you have? Do you not have any? Do you just pray? Oh yeah, no, I mean Other than I mean CrossFit, hiking, all that stuff.
Speaker 3:But Well, one, a lot of outdoor stuff. I've been taking my kids what's called shed hunting, which is like come February, march, elk and deer drop their antlers out in the woods and then you can go hiking through the woods and you find, you know, these six point elk antlers out there with your little boys and girls and it's just, it's just fun. I mean, you're just out there off the beaten path exploring and finding all kinds of stuff. So to me I just want to go outside with the kids, whatever it is. So we do, you know, shed hunting a lot. I'll take them golf and do CrossFit.
Speaker 3:To me, you just got to get outside and go do stuff. So I not last night, but the night before I left I've got a rooftop tent on my truck and so the kid's like, well, we just camp out in the driveway. I'm like, let's do it. So you know, we pop out the tent, and you know me. And then four of the kids just slept on the top of a truck for the day. So to me it's kids spend the word spell, the word love, t-i-m-e, you know. And to me, just go do stuff with them. So we, so I try to get them off screens as much as possible and just out in the beauty of creation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, same. So what you're saying is I need to move away from Illinois.
Speaker 3:More or less Because there's nothing fun to do there. I'm sure there's some deer there, yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm outside all the time with the kids and we're playing, throwing the football around and that's all you can do. Yeah, so I need to move. That sounds shed hunting.
Speaker 3:Oh amazing it's so much fun to just stumble on some massive set of antlers sitting in the middle of nowhere. My four-year-old found his first one this year and we're just walking around the woods and then boom, he found it and he was just elated. He brought it to show and tell at preschool the next day. Other kids got little transformers. He's got an elk antler to bring into school, so yeah, Dude, that is, oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:That is so fun. How important do you think it is? It sounds like a lot to go on adventures with your kids, and do you think that that's part of what's missing, with a lot of young men and women now who are, like you said, kind of stuck in front of screens all the time?
Speaker 3:No, I remember hearing a stat from a psychologist. He said the average level of anxiety of today's teenager is the same level of anxiety as teenagers in the 1950s who were admitted to mental hospitals for mental health anxiety disorders. That's the average and it's typically pretty parallel to the amount of time they're spending on screens. Because I mean, you think of an adolescent female going to bed at night. The light switch goes off and then the phone goes on and she's looking at everybody's perfect body, perfect boyfriend, perfect hair, perfect life, perfect that. And after 45 minutes of doom scrolling she just kind of gives up and goes to bed feeling less than everybody else.
Speaker 3:And if you're doing that, I mean it moves from the point of being a habit to a routine, from a routine to a ritual, and it becomes a devotional of sorts. But it's a false devotional and so we've got to replace that. Okay, you want to do screen time? Do hollow, you know, do liturgy of the hours you know. Have that be the bookends of your day, begin with the gospel, end with evening prayer, examination of conscience. So screens aren't all evil, but we've just got to make sure that you know we're very careful about what's coming in through our senses and how much, not just quantity but quality, but quantity of time we're spending on them 100%.
Speaker 2:So I'm assuming that you don't play video games.
Speaker 3:I don't, I just I mean I don't. I maybe watch one movie a year. Okay, If that I don't watch TV. Maybe a little bit of NBA at night before going to bed, you know if I'm at a hotel for a few minutes, but you know like I'll see my kids watching TV. I'm like, dude, go make TV, like go make an adventure, have someone film you instead of you watching, cause I saw my kids the other day watching a TV show of someone watching, someone watching a video game or something. I'm like, dude, you're like four steps removed from the adventure at just absorbing the content. And uh, you know I'm not like, hey, screens are evil type of thing, but but it's just, there's just got to be healthy boundaries to it, and you know. So if we're going to do video games, I like to do them together with the kids. Yeah, so it isn't like you're locked away in your room for four hours with some gaming system. It's like, no, let me play with you, I'll race Mario Karts against you. So it's dad competing against.
Speaker 2:I love that People are usually surprised to learn that, as somebody who plays a lot of games for a living, that I don't love video games. I never play when I'm not streaming and when a bunch of people this week would come up to me and they're like, john, are your hands shaking, do you miss Fortnite? And I'm like, no, I've thought of Fortnite zero times since I've been here. It's something I'm doing.
Speaker 3:It's a means to an end. It's not an end in itself.
Speaker 2:And they're surprised to learn that my kids don't play. Yeah, so my kids are nine, eight and four and they don't play any video games. A little Madden here and there, like three or four times. But yeah, they love filming stuff and making little movies and that's what it's all about. Yeah, I absolutely love it.
Speaker 2:Total agreement. If you had to share, we've that. A lot of my audience is not super Catholic. There's a lot of Catholics, a lot of priests, nuns, who watch me stream, which is cool. A lot of them I've met here in person for the first time, a lot of fallen away Catholics, a lot of Christians, a lot of atheists, a lot of agnostics that watch my content, and they're super open oftentimes to whatever the Holy Spirit has to offer, and that's a beautiful thing. What would you say to people listening here but people also listening later? Maybe three things that are really important for both men and women to start doing now, to be living their life to the full.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, we got to greet those who are watching. We say what's up, chat? Is that what we're saying? To welcome them to the whole program? What's up, brother?
Speaker 3:But one I think of in the Bible. In the Old Testament, god gives lots of commands Do this, don't do that. In the New Testament, from my reading of it, that God, the Father, only commands one thing. In the entirety of the entire New Testament, there's only one command that comes out of his mouth, which is this is my beloved son, listen to him. And so if there's only one thing the Father wants us to do, it's to learn how to listen, to create time in our life where it's not constant noise, noise, noise. Because you wake up and it's the phone, it's this, it's, you know, texting. There's no room for silence. And so I think, if God's asking us to do anything, just create some room for quiet in your life.
Speaker 3:Like, sometimes on Lent, I'll just give up noise in the car. And so, like, when I get in the car, I can't listen to audio books, can't listen to podcasts, can't listen to music, can't listen to anything. And you get in the car and you're like okay, and you, just you reach for noise and you're like, oh no, remember it's Lent. And then you start driving like 10 seconds later, like why is it so quiet? And you're like I got to listen to a podcast. No, no, and it's life. So I would say, first, that thing. Second, if there's people that you know maybe aren't in the church and are kind of looking at it, you know, maybe I don't know if that thing's for me, I remember thinking I don't want to get all into my faith because to me the church people are weird, right, and I just didn't want to be weird. And a friend assured me he said look, you're going to meet holy people that are weird. But he said they were weird before they were holy, and so that's a bit of a consolation. At least that, okay.
Speaker 3:But I discovered is that sainthood, and what God wants of you is not to stick you in a mold. Sainthood is the full bloom of the human personality. Look at the worst sinners in the world, the drug cartels and the terrorists, and you know whatever. They're like clones of each other. But then you look at the saints and they're so radiantly, intensely unique. You know, from the blessed Pere Georgios to the Therese of Lesue, to the Joan of Arc. They're so intensely human. And that's why God's not calling you to be Mother Teresa, he's not calling you to be Pere Georgio, he's just calling you to be you. And so don't be afraid.
Speaker 3:John Paul II said every person who seeks the kingdom of God will find himself. And so, in terms of a last and maybe third and final thing it would kind of tie into the first, but it's that a priest of mine back home. He said the Holy Spirit talked to you a hundred times a day. How often are you listening to that? And it's like really. And then you start thinking, oh yeah, he's telling me. Oh, go sit next to that kid in the cafeteria who doesn't have any friends.
Speaker 3:You know, just do that little yes, because sometimes we get so overwhelmed. What's the big yes? Am I going to get married? Am I going to be a priest? Am I supposed to become a Christian? Don't get all stuck in the woods like that. You can complete a journey of a thousand miles completely in the fog, as long as you can see one foot ahead of you on the path. God, god will always give you that one foot. And so if you're in a toxic relationship and you're like, how do I get out of this. I don't know what I'm supposed to do. It's like, okay, you might not know what to do long-term, but, short-term, you know what you need to do right now. Quit doing that you know and start opening up to people who love you and just do what you know you're supposed to do, because some graces are only available to you if you've responded to the graces that have already been given to you. Once we respond to those graces, new light is given and then we'll see further down the path. I love it.
Speaker 2:I'm going to have a hard time doing the first one because our baby's due on Ash Wednesday. Yeah, so, that's going to be interesting, but I'll do my best to spend more time in silence. Jason, where can people find everything it is that you're doing right now?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so we've got the website, chastitycom, and so people can go there to click with us. Connect with us on. Instagram is just my name, jason Everett. Twitter, it's just Jason Everett. We've got a Facebook page YouTube it's just Jason Everett. We've got a podcast called Lust is Boring, where we've done more than a hundred different episodes on how to break free from pornography, stuff, on the transgender issue of how to respond to that with charity at the same time as clarity, all kinds of stuff how do I find the right person for me, marriage, discernment so all that stuff is at Lust is Boring. That's the podcast, and then the backpacking stuff is at jp2trailscom, and so we've got several hikes that are opening up in the near future, even a ski trip that we're going to do here in Utah with Christopher West teaching theology of body and skiing for the week, and so the idea is that not every retreat needs to be in a monastery. You know that sometimes the cathedral of God's creation is one of the best places to hear what he's trying to say.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. And are you giving a couple more talks, I think over the next day as well?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I've got. The next talk is going to be tomorrow on the subject of gender. It's going to be theology of the body as it applies to what does it mean to be male and female? How do we respond to people who say they're trans or non-binary? What about my friend? Or what if I have gender dysphoria? We'll take a deep dive into that tomorrow afternoon and I'm doing the final keynote of SEEK, which will be Sunday, I believe, right before mass. So I'd ask all the listeners to please pray for your speakers and pray for me that just God give the gift of apostolic preaching for that talk.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Thank you for the gift that you are to the church. I'm excited to have you on my Twitch stream at some point in 2025.
Speaker 3:Be happy to come on, you don't have to play video games with me. I'll try Fortnite for the first time.
Speaker 2:Okay, that would be content.
Speaker 3:That would be content. That would be a lot of fun Comedy content.
Speaker 2:What is the A button doing for taking the time? We'll be around here for a few minutes after, guys, Thank you so much for listening and for showing up. God bless friends for all your families. Thank you. Thank you, my friend.
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