This is Hans Schile from the Finishing Well Podcast. On Finishing Well, we help you make godly choices about Medicare, long-term care, and your money. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just seconds.
Enjoy it, share it, but most of all, thank you for listening and choosing the Truth Podcast Network. Welcome to Masculine Journey After Hours, and we are discussing freedom this week, and I was just curious in our intro, are we going deeper into the entrenched barricade or deeper into the topic? Hopefully, the topic. Well, Andy, set it up for us. If we go any lower here, we probably won't be in a good place. That's right, it's getting dark. Yeah, we probably won't be free. We'll probably be in some dungeon or something, right? Yeah, either that or a basement of something.
I always figured the entrenched barricades keeps gophers away. Yeah. I'm all right. Never mind, I won't think. Thank you.
Set our topic up for us, Andy. Okay, so I was reading in Psalm 81, and it just hit me about the freedom. I started thinking back. It's talking about the Israelites coming out of Egypt and how it's been a kind of a process for me. You'd like to think that once you received Jesus, everything was all right, and you just continually walked in freedom, but the enemy wants to keep you bound up in a multitude of ways. And Jesus said you have to continue in his word. Robby was saying earlier that you have to continue in his word to be free. It says you'll know the truth, and the truth will set you free.
It's not just like automatic. I mean, there's certain freedoms that you get from being a child of God, and really that brings a lot of freedom whenever you know that you're a son of God. You get freedom through identity, but you have to walk that out. You have to walk like a son. You have to walk like you know who your father is, who your big brother is. You have to walk in that, or you're going to continue to fall back into old bondages. It's all through the Bible. You see people that walk free and then dive back into it. And that's the challenge we have is to continue to walk in that freedom, that process.
All right. Well, we have Jim back from world travels and cruises and all that kind of stuff. And, Jim, you have the next clip.
For the two people that are online watching, you can see my Peru trip represented on my shirt. This topic, for some reason, just inspired music. I started with Jimi Hendrix, but that didn't work out so well. But the first cassette I ever bought was Crosby, Stills & Nash, and my second bit of music is what's going to play here. And it's finding the cost of freedom. But a little background on me because that's one of my favorite topics.
Most of the time, God takes precedence. But when I was in the – in 69, I was 14 years old. Summer of 69, I grew from 6'1 to 6'5. And that was a very growing experience. But as a early teenager, I was very morose, depressed. And in December of 69, I turned 15.
But I found that it's pretty easy on an ID to turn a 54 into a 51. So I started buying and drinking alcohol and was quite an abuser in my teen years, which did not help with my being depressed. But that's where I was going. I love this song. And it was a very sad one for me then. And then I finish it with a clip of Gladiator, which is a good theme for this. But let's listen to the song. It's pretty self-explanatory.
Find the cost of freedom Buried in the ground Mother earth will swallow you Lay your body down Find the cost of freedom Buried in the ground Mother earth will swallow you Lay your body down Now we are free I will see you again But not yet Not yet That song represented my sadness then. And I've had a very blessed life. I've had nowhere near the trials and tribulations most have had. But one of my problems then, and still to some extent, but now it's a blessing, is I feel the pain of others very closely take it to heart. And at this time, this was during the Vietnam War. And I had sisters that were hippies that were against the war. And I had my grandfather who was in World War I in the first anti-aircraft battalion in the army. And my father was a dentist in World War II and I expected to go in the military. And I was struggling during that time. This is talking about the death of soldiers paying the cost for freedom.
And that impacted me greatly. But the second clip with Gladiator, Maximus, and he's on here so he can tell us the date. Juba.
Juba. Maximus has to die in the arena killing the commode guy. Commodus.
Thank you. And commode is being nice. But Commodus has to die to win, well and so does Maximus, to win the freedom for all the gladiator slaves. And Juba comes out and he is in the middle of the arena. It's empty.
There's nobody in the stands. And he's burying two figures and I still want to figure out from watching the movie again what they represent. But he is burying to me idols.
And his freedom has been won. And the I'll see you again referring to his own death to join Maximus. But the not yet. Not yet to me was it made the movie.
And I think somebody else in the group said that was the most powerful scene for them in the movie. And bringing that all forward as I am in the middle of winter season of life. Death doesn't have the fear factor it did when I was 14 or 15. But dying to self is the way to freedom. And I have it's a lot easier to let go all the stuff as you get older. But we still have to love others and recognize we don't get to go home yet.
There's still time and as long as there's time here we can help others. And that was really this kind of took me from my pubescent time to the current time. And I still love the song but I recognize the one who died for me is the reason I don't have to be miserable. And I have freedom in Christ. And the closer I get to him the more free I am.
Both in time and in nature and the way I live. I have a suspicion we'll hear part of that clip again. But not yet. Not yet. But not yet. I'll hunt you.
Harold, you have our next clip. Yeah, I was born in 1941 in Alabama. And very segregated situation. But I was fortunate enough to be blessed with a grandmother and a mother that taught me different. I was taught that you didn't mistreat somebody because of the color of their skin.
And so a lot of that stuff was foreign to me although I was in it. And in fact my hometown of Prattville, Alabama was about 15 miles roughly from Montgomery. Montgomery was the hub of the actions that were taking place between the people fighting for civil rights and those fighting to keep segregation. I went to school at Auburn University which was about 50 miles from Montgomery.
And Selma, which might ring a bell, was only about 40 miles from Prattville. So I grew up in that kind of situation but I knew it was wrong. I didn't get involved on either side of the fight.
I probably should have but I didn't. But I knew which side was right. And I had some instances that brought it closer home to me. I used to hitchhike a lot because I never had a car until about a month before I graduated college. And I got picked up one time and dropped off at Tuskegee, Alabama which was about halfway between Auburn and Montgomery.
And while I used to have no trouble at all catching a ride, for whatever reason I could not get a ride. The sun's going down, it's getting late and I'm getting antsy being on the side of a road and it's fixing to be dark. So a car started slowing down and I pulled over and stopped. I went running up and as I looked in the window there was a great big black man driving.
He made about two of me and it's like, oh, what do I do? And I thought, well, if my own kind won't pick me up I'm going to ride with the kind who will. So I jumped in the car with him and he started up the vehicle. And then scared me slap to death because I had a little travel bag that I had put in the seat. He slapped it and said, got any whiskey in there?
And I said, no sir, I don't drink. And he grabbed the bag and threw it into the back seat and he said, well, get it out of our way. And I thought, oh Lord, what am I in for now? But we're driving down the road and people are coming by and they're looking at us.
And you could almost see their teeth, they were gritting, glaring. And that gave me a little bit more of an insight into what some people like my friend Terry at that time had to put up with. But we travel on down the road and get to talking. And it turns out that he had friends that worked in the cotton mill that was right across the street from this old grocery store that I worked in at times. So we just had a really good visit and a ride.
And as we got closer to Montgomery, I got to thinking that was when the Freedom Riders were getting their heads bashed in with ball bats and stuff. And I thought, this man has done me a huge favor, I am not going to let him get caught up in some of these idiots and get hurt. So I told a little bit of a white lie, I told him I needed to get out here. Well, I had quite a ways to go before I really needed to get out, but in order to protect the two of us, I told a little bit of a white lie. But it gave me an insight into the situation that here we were, he and I ride down the road enjoying one another's company. And other people just getting angry, they couldn't see straight.
And how stupid is that? And then that was in like 1961. 1963, I dropped out of school and joined the Air National Guard because my sweetheart said she couldn't be married to a pilot in the Navy.
So I had to give up that goal. I get out to Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, and one of my TIs is a young black man, but not much older than me, if any. And I thought, oh Lord, I'm dead now because he knows I'm from Alabama.
And in Birmingham back then, they were using fire hoses and German shepherds to try to break up the people demonstrating. About the second day we were out there, we were out marching and he yells for us to stop, called out my name. And I'm about halfway back in the Short Guy Squad.
And I thought, uh oh, I've had it now. But that wasn't it at all. The guy they had picked as squad leader couldn't march. I had two years of ROTC behind me, so I knew how to march. He made me the squad leader. And during the next, I was there for eight weeks. And during that time, he and I became about as good a buddies as possible for a TI and a recruit. You know, there's just a natural break there that you can't get past, but we did become friends.
And it was just, you know, several things like that that I experienced that told me that there was just no way. It was stupid and illogical and I didn't think I was either. So the clip has to do with the Freedom Riders. Boarding that Greyhound bus to travel through the heart of the Deep South, I felt good. I felt happy. I felt liberated. I was like a soldier in a non-violent army.
I was ready. I'm sorry, our management does not allow us to serve in here. The Freedom Riders of 1961 were a simple but daring plan to put blacks and whites on commercial buses. They would deliberately violate the segregation laws. These people are going from town to town and getting off the bus, Negro men and white women, to provoke back survival. The idea of going into Mississippi and going into Alabama and challenging segregation so frontally is something that alarmed not only those who opposed civil rights, but those within the civil rights community.
I don't question their legal right to travel, but I question their wisdom. Some people can get hurt. How was that feeling? I'd just like to punch some of them agitators right in the face. There was a mob, looked like a thousand people.
They had these iron pipes. They were screaming, kill them, and they had babies in their arms. I asked God to be with me, to give me the strength I would need to remain nonviolent and to forgive them. We'll take shame, we'll take beating. We're willing to accept death.
We're going to keep coming until we can rise from anywhere in the South, anyplace else in the South. It was America. It was interracial. It was interregional. It was secular and religious.
It was a shining moment. Your parents tell you, don't start something that you can't finish. Finish it. I'm of the free.
Well, it depends. Thank goodness we've made progress. I told people back then, I said, you know, you go put up some signs that say five feet seven or above, and you'll find out about some fighting. There's a sign that I see going up to Recreation Acres in King and Walk. Most mornings, there's a sign of Harold that says, it'll remain the land of the free as long as it's still the home of the brave. That's what that was about, to be brave and stand up for what's right, even if it's not popular. So, yeah, good clip.
Guys, I know it's in there. Who does it that says we must die to our self daily? Paul. There was a friend of mine who was Jewish. He came and spoke at one of our men's group meetings years back, and he made that statement about dying to yourself daily.
Then he looked around the room like I do here, and he looked around and he goes, we're not dead enough yet. That's good. Grant, you got something?
Yes. Being a contractor, I like this at times. But a lot of times, I put the price, the end price very, very low.
And, you know, I think that's the way Christ will like it. You know, I'm not bow guarding. But then again, I do get the benefit, though, occasionally. Big tips. But I don't come back. And if you are setting your price low, as you said, you'll get tips.
But if you set it high and then drop it, you might also be surprised at how kind folks can be. I hate dickering. Well, Andy, I have the next clip. And, you know, when you introduce this topic, you know, we talked about a little bit for after show last weekend and, you know, a thousand things come to mind. But I kept coming back to this clip. I didn't realize that that Jim had tagged on part of it at the end of his song there.
So but, you know, my clip is from the gladiator, the end scene where Max was just died in the arena. And so the and then it goes to what's the guy's name? To a communist or to know the guy who buries the idols.
Oh, Juba, Juba. You know, and it closes with that. I could never think about that because I thought I thought about freedom in lots of different ways. And, you know, I've said it a couple of times already is that, you know, very rarely is any freedom without a battle. And, you know, I thought lots about, you know, I've talked on the show many times about my addiction and, you know, the struggles there.
But, you know, so many things that, you know, cause life sometimes is just a constant battle. And but, you know, the interesting part of this clip is, you know, Maximus fought through all this stuff and gladiators were supposed to get killed in the arena part. That was part of the show. And he kept whipping everybody.
Yeah, that's a that's a southern term whipping. But I don't know whether they used that in Rome or not, but the but, you know, he dies and his his battle to freedom inspired. Not Drusilla, Lucilla, Lucilla, Drusilla, they were sisters. They were all sisters to a speech about Rome. And then you hear Juba.
And so, you know, our freedom when we fight for that freedom and get there, you know, it affects those around us in a positive way, just like our captivity affects people in a negative way. So I'll play this clip and then we'll talk about it again on the other side. Is Rome worth one good man's life? We believed it once. Make us believe it again. He was a soldier of Rome. Honor him.
Who will help me carry him? Now we are free. We'll see you again.
But not yet. You know, I've taught several lessons and, you know, they say that, you know, a caterpillar woman becomes a butterfly and people use that all kinds of different things. But, you know, unless that that butterfly goes through the struggle of getting out, it becomes underdeveloped. And the interesting part of it is, is that, you know, if you think about it, it goes from being a caterpillar, which crawls along everywhere, Harold. And then all of a sudden now it flies.
It nissans, Robby, how you like that? But the and all of a sudden it changes its appetite. It changes everything. And that's our freedom in Christ.
And, you know, but we have to struggle through the thing. And I was sitting here thinking and had thought about a long time, but, you know, I was pretty religious several years ago. Wasn't much relationship there, I don't think. But, you know, every time the church doors open, it's kind of how I was raised. And there's nothing wrong with that.
But there's no relationship there. But but finding some freedom in that and watching, you know, my family, you know, my son's in studio with us. And he's a you know, he he's quite a character himself.
Don't know where he gets that from, but probably his mom. But but, you know, it's battling through those things, you know, and the things you learn and the joy of it sometimes is to look back on it. You know, we sit here and tell stories, the war stories, you know, and but but in essence of victory and you know, but it's from out of one battle and into another one, you know, because I've talked about addiction and that thing. And I was just thinking this morning, Lord, I'm battling this weight, you know, do do pretty good for a while. And then but I like food.
I'm just going to tell you, I like food. But, you know, the battle has to be be one, you know, in some level or another, because I don't have it all together. And I hadn't met anybody who did so. But anybody else? Well, I was thinking, you think about America and how many times it's had to fight off tyrants and get involved in wars. Some, most of them are broad, but even from our revolution, the Civil War, we had to fight tyrants for that. Well, why not? Why wouldn't we? We know we're in a world at war. Why will we not have to fight for our own freedom, our own spirit? We've got a tyrant, the fallen Satan. You know, he's the tyrant that tries to lord over us and continue to encroach.
And anytime you get him a little bit of a place, agreements you make, things you believe, he's going to be back. Well, even as even as Robby was mentioning, you know, sometimes it's the flesh. Yeah. Yeah.
Because he's pretty much with me all the time. Yeah. Yeah, I hear you.
With the freedom, we have the alternative. We go right or left, which one is Christ? Yeah. Jim?
I sort of missed my chance because this really connects with Harold's. And I grew up a little later than he did, and I really wasn't aware of the racial tensions until I got jumped at an all-black junior high school when I was at an almost all-white junior high school across town. And it was weird because the officer, who was white, said, did they attack you because you were white?
I said, I don't think so. They attacked me because I was from Eastway. And until a couple years later when there was busing to desegregate the schools, and then there's riots among kids that got along just fine until their parents got involved. But all that to say that the older I've gotten, the easier it's been to love people because there are only two types of people in the world. One are the brothers and sisters in Christ, and the others are the ones that we want to join the family.
So knowing that, no other difference matters. We are to love God, love others, and we love God by loving others. I think we do a really good job around here. We pick, cut up, and carry on, but the shenanigans are steeped in love. Term of endearment. Term, yeah, because if there's no shenanigans, there's probably some tension going on, is what I figured out around here. But if you're interested in boot camp and learn more about this freedom, and I think November 21st through the 24th, the weekend before Thanksgiving, you can register online at masculinejourney.org. And as Sam would say, love somebody well this week.
