Loving in Spite of After Hours

Hi, this is Roy Jones with ManTalk Radio Podcast. Our mission is to break down the walls of race and denomination. Your chosen Truth Radio Broadcast will be starting in just a few seconds. Thank you.

Welcome to Masculine Journey After Hours. We are talking this week about loving in spite. Well, kind of.

We're talking about loving in spite of. Right? And just fill in the blank.

So if you've been in any type of friendship, relationship, you could probably, I love you, in spite of how you blank. Right? And you could fill it in with just a bunch of things. I love you in spite of how you blank. Right? And you could fill it in with just about everybody you know. Right?

Your beliefs on this, your way you eat, the way you snore, whatever it might be. Right? Just fill in the blank. There's lots of reasons to not love one another when it gets down to it because we're all broken, wounded people. Right? In the process of being healed, hopefully. Yeah, I love the quote of Abraham Lincoln that was made famous from the movie Pollyanna when in her locket it says, if you look for the bad in mankind, you will surely find it. And the cool thing about it is, as I think about the whole topic, Sam, is that if we can really look for God's glory, look for how he's reflected, you know, then we can begin to call out that. And often, interestingly, what it is that's been driving you absolutely nuts also just happens to be the way that they reflect God. And it leads you to the conclusion that at times God may drive me nuts.

Oh, yeah. As you were talking, I was thinking about my youngest daughter, Sydney, and when she was growing up, she was so justice-oriented. Like if I was correcting the boys, you know, which was her little brothers, if I was correcting them, she was the fairness judge on everything.

And it drove me so incredibly nuts. You know, I can't remember how many times I go, I'm the parent here. You're not the parent. You're 14, you know, whatever it might be.

Even though he acts like the child. You know, and at the time, that was an in spite kind of thing for me. I loved her dearly in spite of that. But what I've learned over the years is I really love that about her because she reflects it uniquely.

She really does look for the just thing, situation, you know, the just answer. And then she in law enforcement in some way? She was. She was. Now she does training. But, yeah, she was a prison guard, you know, for a number of years at a women's prison in Raleigh. But that's really a part of who she is, and it's one of the things I appreciate the most about her. I mean, I love her dearly, but that heart.

But what you just said is really what that was is she reflects God's image in that piece differently than most people I know. Yeah. And they when somebody is like that, it's been my experience that whatever it is in them, it shines so daggone brightly. You kind of want to put shades on like stop that.

Stop it. Quote Bob Newhart. Exactly. Andy, I'll get to you early because I went pretty much the whole show and didn't talk to you on the previous show. So we'll get you into this part of the show early. You have a clip for us, right? I do.

So go ahead. What? What? I didn't say anything. That's you. I thought I heard, but maybe I got some feedback. That's the voices in your head.

Just keep pushing through. We'll get to a beautiful mind in a minute. Wrong clip. Wrong clip.

It's a good thing I have a beautiful mind. It is. So I ran on to a movie from 1996. I think I may have seen it back in the day, but I don't remember any of it.

But it's called White Squaw. This captain has a sailing school that he takes students on from all over the country and they sail from like in the tropics to the U.S. And in doing it, you pull all these kids together and some of them bond quickly right away and some of them, you know, are on the fringe. But the more they spend time together on the ship, you can see how, you know, they they like because.

But over time, you see where they love, in spite, big time. There's several. And what we're going to hear is the trailer. So you'll get an idea.

There's not any clips out there for individual things. So, you know, get something from the trailer and maybe it'll pique your interest and go watch it. I highly recommend it as the movie.

But what's also cool about it, it's got all kinds of topics that we talk about at Masculine Journey. The wound you got the father wound, you've got community, you've got, you know, posing the captain, posing, definitely posing. You've got sonship where this captain bothers the boys that are coming together and being responsible and that kind of thing. So it's a really good movie.

The white squall reference to a particular type of storm that comes up instantly. And that's a big part of the movie later on in it. But really, what you're seeing is boys coming of age and how they're learning to interact with one another.

And like I say, they like because, but they love in spite. The ship beneath you is not a toy and sailing is not a game. Bill's character, Mr. Preston, of which you are in desperately short supply. They came from different places and this Ocean Academy isn't recognized as accredited. It'll be a good thing, Dad.

They sailed for different reasons. I don't want to be what I was when I left. There you go. Anonymous. But there was only one way. We'll do it together. I can't. Climb!

To survive on his ship. I will challenge them and they will come together. Become a team.

We go one, we go all. Because where he was taking them. What are they doing?

Claiming their place in the world. Could not be measured in miles. They saw they had survived the greatest challenge of their lives. We had come through every kind of seas imaginable. Except the white squall.

But it was only. White squall is a phenomenon of the imagination. The calm.

What happened to my ship was not imagined. Before the storm. All time!

Largo Entertainment presents a film about loyalty. Where we go one. We go all.

Discovery. But we're a crew. That's what this whole thing is about.

And Curry. Don't you walk out on a skipper, you don't. Captain, they're only boys. We listened to you, we believed you. They're much more than that, sir.

And we are still here. Jeff Bridges in a Ridley Scott film. White squall. Wow. That actually makes me want to watch that.

That sounds really good. It is. Was it on Netflix, if I choose? Now you actually have to go on Amazon or someplace like that and rent it.

It cost me three bucks, but it was a well spent three bucks. It was? Yeah.

Actually, I think it's on YouTube for free. I think I found it. Now you tell me, Andy. I don't know. Andy, send him a check for three dollars.

It's worth it just to pay him off so you don't have to hear about it. It's my glory. Though, Robby, you're very grace oriented.

That would not be the case. You know, listening to that clip, it sounds like a great movie, but honestly, I miss the guy that did the voiceover stuff. That's the guy that did the voiceovers for years and years and years.

He died probably, what, seven, eight years ago? But man, he was the guy that did all the voiceovers. Yeah. Yeah.

I remember watching a special on him where, you know, that's all he did for a living, because he did the trailers. He was good. Yeah.

Yeah, he was good. Yeah. So, Andy, on that show, I know you don't want to spoil it for people, but how does it tie into the topic, you know, in your mind? What are people going to get out of it in regards to loving and spite? So, there were several occurrences where the boys would not, you know, that they had to bond over time, I guess, and then, you know, they would make friends, and then there would be something happen. For example, there was a kid who came on late on the ship, and his name was Frank, and he had a lot of father wounds. His dad really was tough on him.

Frank came on, and he didn't dive well with the guys early on, but eventually he was kind of helping out some other guys to study and kind of became part of the team. Well, they're sailing along, and they run into a school of dolphins and Frank for whatever reason, because he hadn't been fathered well, I guess. He shoots one with a harpoon, and they end up having to kill it to put it out of its way, and the boys really give him a hard time, obviously. Well, the skipper kicks him off the boat.

Reluctantly, he wants him to learn the lesson, and he goes back. Well, his dad was the guy that was a jerk. He ends up pressing charges, or there was problems with the ship as part of the storm. There was a trial to find out what happened and all that. His dad was kind of behind all that. Well, Frank, as much as he had done wrong, he actually got involved. He couldn't do anything to help the boys out, but when it came down to it in the trial, he stood up and loved the boys in spite of it, and the skipper stood up for him in the trial.

I really hate that I put too much out there, because it's a lot of the movies, but it was a perfect example of just where somebody comes about in spite of it. Since you spilled all that candy out there, Andy, I wish I'd known this part when I saw the beginning part of the movie. What Frank actually does when the skipper's on trial and the skipper's trying to bail, like, I'm just giving up, I'm walking out, I'm going to go isolate and lick my wounds, so to speak, Frank had gotten the bell from one of the others, and the bell was significant to the whole movie, and on the bell, what did it say, Andy? When we go one, we go all. Right. So the skipper, all these boys are saying, you can't walk out on us, you can't walk out on us, and he stands up to walk out. Well, Frank has the bell, and he starts ringing the bell, which calls out, you know, everybody, all the guys, you know, are in this courtroom, and of course, they all stand together and they all meet in the deal because of this bell, and the idea of the community is when we go, we go all. Right. And so when I saw that, I was like, dadgummit, I missed the scene in the beginning of the movie where they were explaining what the bell exactly was, so if you do go watch the movie, since you kind of got an idea of what was going on near the end, it's really, really, and we didn't spill all the candy, there's much you do not know about that.

So you don't want to talk about Rosebud being a sled or Bruce Willis being dead the whole time, nothing else you want to share, any other movies you want to ruin the plot to while we're in the middle of it? It's free on YouTube. It won't even cost you three bucks. It costs Robby three bucks.

He's invested in it. Well, Robby, that brings us to your clip. Ah, beautiful mind. Yeah, so let's – Robby's beautiful mind. Robby's beautiful mind is how we're going to refer to this movie from now on. Well, the movie cuts really, really close to home because my first wife was schizophrenic, and what that means is the schizophrenic people, they hear and they see people speaking to them, which are not real.

So what's reality to them is a really distant issue. And so in this particular scene, what's the main character's name? John Nash, and it's based on a true story. He's a Nobel Peace Prize winner. Right, it's played by Russell Crowe after he became gladiator for the same, you know, producer that was just doing the – Yeah, Ridley Scott.

Yeah, the white squall. But anyway, Russell, you know, he is schizophrenic, and he's married, and his wife clearly loves him, and due to him being knocked off kilter by these voices and people speaking to him, he misses an emergency for the baby, which nearly causes a tragedy, which now the baby's mother has obviously been hurt deeply. And so the doctor has told her that it's no longer safe to be around Russell Crowe, as the character would be.

Yeah, John Nash. And so I have to – because it's a very visual scene, I have to kind of explain what's going on. So she's turned around and walked away. Now, she's coming back having embraced, you know, what would it be like to stay with him, and so she takes her hand, and she, you know, cups it around his face and says this is – you'll hear her say this is what's real, and you're seeing her loving response to that, and then she takes her hand and puts it on his heart and says this is real. And so when you're hearing her say this is real, you're seeing real love between somebody who knows that they dearly love this person, but they're no longer in touch with reality and showing them that what is beyond any reality is love. So I love that line at the very end, I need to believe that something very extraordinary is possible. And so as I mentioned, my first wife was schizophrenic, and actually the last days I saw her, she was in a straitjacket because she was dangerous.

I mean, she would attack you because she thought people were telling her to do stuff. And so I saw this clip, it took me right back to that place of wow, this is what real love is way in spite of something, where you're literally losing this person. And it made me recall an interview I did – I was asked to interview a hundred either psychiatrist, psychologist, counselors for the Association of Christian Counselors in Nashville. And God had given me this question to ask every counselor, and it worked every single time. Over a weekend I did all these interviews, heard so many amazing stories because it just simply asked the question, you know, in 2 Corinthians chapter 1, it says God comforts us that we may comfort others with a comfort that he comforted us with.

What does that mean in your practice? And as I said that to each of these individual counselors and psychologists and all that, they would tell their story of how, you know, they had an abortion, and they were now helping people that had abortions, or they had attempted suicide, now we're helping people with suicide, or had problems with their marriage, they were marriage counselors. But this one gentleman sat down, and he looked exactly like Sigmund Freud.

I mean this dude, he had the little wire glasses and the goatee, and you know, the little tight suit with the vest and the whole deal, you know. And as he sat down, and I asked him, well, I'm doctor so-and-so, and I said, so you're a doctor of psychiatry, you know. And I was like, man, I don't know if my question's going to work on this guy.

It seems a little tight. But anyway, I fired it away, asked him about God's comfort, and he said, well, I've actually never told anybody this, but I went insane. And he said that I'd just been married about two weeks, and I was absolutely certain that there was this red light that I was staring at that I was certain that was Satan. And that's all I could focus on was this red light, and I was sitting in my hospital bed, and my newlywed wife sits down on the bed with me crying.

She looks into my eyes, and she says, I do not know what to do. How do I get where you are, because I cannot live without you? And he said, there was such love in those words, in that statement, that although I didn't know anything other than that red light and Satan, I knew I had to fight my way back to sanity, because I had experienced a touch of real love that I knew that came from Christ. And that's one of those – you do a lot on the radio. You get to hear a lot of neat stuff, but that one has always sunk into my heart, like, okay, that's a touch from heaven. We got to hear that.

We got to hear that story. And if you ever see It's a Beautiful Mind, you'll see it in that clip. You'll see true love that comes from no self-surfing position. You know what? When you get the picture of Jesus completely loving you in spite of the fact that you have no touch with reality.

I mean, I don't know if you're seeing what I see right this minute, but I think when Jesus looks at me, he's – yeah, he's clue-free. He has no sense of what reality is right this minute. But this is real. This is love.

This is real. Yeah. In that movie, since we're in the realm of ruining movies, I'll go ahead and just throw it out there. But no, in The Beautiful Mind, it is based on a true story of John Nash, and he does win the Nobel Prize in economics, but he can take some medication, and he's taken some medication that makes him a complete zombie and doesn't let him live in his calling. It keeps him from being able to think about these mathematic equations that not very many people on earth can do. You know, obviously that's why he wins the Nobel Prize, right, because other people have not been able to do the things that he's done. And to watch his wife love him through that, knowing that he could take medication and not be quote-unquote dangerous, but loving him, knowing he needs to be who he's called to be, and finding a way to work through that is an amazing vision of love. And there's also a friend of his that is initially – you think he's an adversary – that loves him very well through this as well, you know, in spite of what he's dealing with. And it's a great show that shows the power of love of helping overcome things.

Darrell Bock Yeah. And so, you know, I'm sure several people are wondering what happened in my story. Well, my story is I wasn't a Christian. My wife betrayed me from my perspective, what I was told she did while she was in the hospital with other men, and I divorced her. However, you know, I did speak to her a few days before she died, and she really did love me. I really did love her.

And you know, that's not coming back for it. Thank you, Robby. So I guess the question I would have for all of us here in the studio, for Andy – you know, it's on the phone with us – and for the people out there listening is to spend some time with Jesus and asking him in your relationships, in your friendships, relationships with a spouse or girlfriend or boyfriend or whatever that might be, with your kids, with your friends, you know, co-workers, how are you calling me to love them in spite of fill in the blank? You know, Danny, you talked about this friend that you had that most people couldn't spend five minutes with, right? But you've learned to love him in spite of that behavior because there's something deeper underneath, right? Danny Yeah, he still is. He got his life together for a while, so we knew him sober, and I mean, he had a – now I'm an old country boy with a high school education, and he was a – he had two degrees in psychology, grew up an atheist. We were Doc Holliday, Wyatt Earp kind of thing, but you know, got to know him and could see his heart for people, and he would help people. And if he loved you, he loves you.

And he – I believe I could call him to this day if I needed him, and he'd show up. And so those are the kind of things that is interesting in my life that every meaningful relationship I've ever had, you know, friendship-wise, started on rocky ground and ended up loving somebody in spite of who they initially showed up to be. Yeah, I think it's a testament to how God decides to work relationships. You know, I do want to be clear on one thing. I think that, you know, the key to everything that we talk about on the show obviously is walking with God through it.

If we try to do it on our own power, it's not going to work out well. And so I do believe there's times that God calls us to confront each other in love, right? And maybe this is a time he's calling you to confront, and I'm not saying don't go do that. I'm saying walk with God and know that's what he's calling you to do, right? But maybe this isn't in spite of time. You know, I just need to focus on the things that I really love about that person, the things that make me feel endeared to them, right? And let me build the case of evidence for that, right? And then it'll help me get past some of those other things, because at the end of the day, we're all just works in progress. Yeah, and one of the things that when I started asking this week, okay, where have I loved in spite of and where should I love that I didn't love and that's where he really took me was to the, well, where have you loved and where have you not loved, and really going through that and kind of reliving some things and it was just very peaceful to kind of go back through and see things in your past that was like, okay, here's some place where you loved well, here's some places where you didn't love well, and just being able to understand them a little bit deeper and go over them in your head and make sure you kind of relive them because there's like, you know, your life BC, and your life now and it's just, you know, you're a different person now and your different context and letting those things come into your heart and kind of relive them is very therapeutic to walk through those. Yes.

Yeah. And just because we're Christian doesn't mean that we get it right. No stretch of the imagination, all the atrocities that's done from Christian to another Christian could do plenty of shows, but I think it's walking with him in that. I think it'd be an interesting exercise to sit down and say, and be careful not to give the enemy a foothold here, but God, I know you love me in spite of filling the blank on your own stuff, and then really realize how much he truly loves you because, man, I promise you, I know I got a lot of stuff that he could go, wow, I'm done with that guy, right? He's not as grace-oriented as he needs to be or he's not this or he's not that or he's harsh sometimes in this situation.

Fill in the blank. But then at the end of the day, just say, okay, above all that, the greater thing is you love me regardless of any of this stuff in spite of that, because you know that that's not my true person. That's my response to the world.

That's Mike reaching out in a way that keeps people away from him, the guy you're talking about, Danny. We all have ways we've adapted to deal with life, and God deals with us on the level that's not there. Which is so wonderful because all that grace gets poured upon you, and you're like, you can either beat yourself up over it or live in the wonderfulness of that grace and just say, I accept it and just love it for what it is. That's very, very, like I said for this past year, you get very content in that. Yeah, and it may give you some capacity to have some grace for others, and you realize just how much grace God truly has on you. Yeah, it's helped. Yeah, you know, because I know I need that once in a while.

Yeah. Go to maskandjourney.org, reach out to us, let us know what we could talk about on the air that would help you, a topic suggestion, a great movie that you've seen. Honestly, we'd love to have the opportunity and the privilege to pray for you, so just send us an email, reach out and say, hey, can you pray for me in this?

You don't even have to put your name on it. We would do that. We would help you in any way we can from a spiritual standpoint, but go to maskandjourney.org. You can get our contact information and any upcoming events we might have. Talk to you next week. Grace is the Truth Network.