: Oh man, this is fascinating. This is, so this is now the longest continuous recording of a podcast I've ever had. Dirt. I don't know what we're going to do with this. I don't know. I know. And I'm, and I'm over 60, so I have to go to the bathroom. I haven't sat this long. Welcome to the Aggressive Life. This is one of those rare ones. Dirt, I always say rare ones. We have so many rare ones. There are so many rare ones. It's just because I get bored. I get bored and I gotta do different stuff that I haven't done. Let's try something new. Yeah, so I don't know that I've ever wanted to re-record the intro and I do right now. I generally have an intro that Dirt helps me craft and I read it, make sure I get everything right. All the... credentials of the person. And I normally read it in front of the person who I might be interviewing if I haven't interviewed that day. And I did that this time. And then our talk took a completely different turn or a different, a turn that I really wasn't planning on a taking. We're going to talk with Roland Warren. He's a man on mission, and he has the scars to prove it. He has a pretty impressive resume. He's a graduate of Princeton and the Wharton School of Business. He's amassed really an impressive business resume. He spent 20 years succeeding in the corporate world with heavy hitters like IBM, Pepsi, and Goldman Sachs. And then he left it all to become the president of the National Fatherhood Initiative, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that seeks to improve the wellbeing of children through the promotion of responsible fatherhood. And right now, he is the president and CEO of Care Net, which is one of the largest pregnancy resource centers, which is code word for trying to help you not have an abortion. That's basically what I was trying to soft to around or do a lot of meandering before we actually got into the heart of the issue. Actually, when we got into the heart of that issue, I just, oh, interesting. I hadn't thought about that before. I want to ask you again. Interesting. I really didn't want to talk about this at all. But what you said is so intriguing. Oh, I just kept asking question after question when I know, I know that if you're at all like me, you have OD'd on all things, pro life, pro choice, anti life, anti choice, anti boy, whatever moniker you have, Roe V. Wade, on and on and on. You're just, you're just sick of it, which is what I have been as well. And yet I wanted to have a conversation with them to maybe dabble in that. But as we got into this conversation, He brought some things up that I found really interesting and I wanted to lean into a little bit more. And so that's gonna happen. Hey, look, look, look, look, boys and girls, this is called the aggressive life because we don't got a bunch of weenie boys and weenie girls who just, oh, oh, I can't take that. Oh, oh, stop. And just stop. Oh, oh, I'm so offended, I have to leave. That's modern America. I'm so offended. I might not get affirmation for what I think and believe. I have to like, defriend you, leave you, cancel you. I know, I know Dirt, that the aggressive life audience is of a higher caliber. That's right. I believe, do you believe? I totally believe that. Yes, yes. And I also know I'm an equal opportunity offender. That's right. So I don't care where you are with this issue, you're probably gonna hear some things that you're gonna scratch your head on, like now that I've done it, like. my banana joke is just, you're gonna love. What could go wrong, me having a joke about a banana when we're talking about sexual reproduction? Not nothing. All that to say, here we have Roland Warren. He's been everywhere from Oprah Winfrey to the Today Show. He's featured in every major news outlet, newspaper you can think of. Today, he's bringing it to us. Welcome to the Aggressive Life, Roland. Warren! Hello, nice to be with you. Thanks so much for having me on the show, Brian. Appreciate it. Yeah, man, well, don't thank me yet because this may be a very painful situation for you. You know, I could totally bore you or totally offend you, so don't thank me yet. Okay, fair enough. It's a thank you on reserve. There you go, sounds good. Now, let's talk about your story. Take us back to your time at Princeton as a football player. I'm still surprised that actually Princeton has sports. Ivy League schools should just be people who have no muscles and they just work their muscle brain. I always think, oh, that's right, Princeton actually got almost the final four in basketball. There's some real studs that are in Princeton as athletes. You're one of them. Take us back to that time. What'd you learn there? What took place in your life? Yeah, well, it certainly was a great opportunity for me to go to Princeton. one of the first folk, I guess probably the first folk person in my family to have an opportunity to go to college and to end up someplace like Princeton was pretty remarkable in a lot of ways, especially given where I came from. I grew up in a single mother home and it's part of the reason why when you hear my story and the things I talk about, fatherhood and father absence and you have a book about single mothers raising boys and things of that nature, that really defined a lot for me in terms of you know, how I grew up. So, you know, there's a lot of ways I could have been just a different statistic, if you will, or maybe a too common statistic coming from that environment. But by the time I was in fifth grade, I'd gotten some stability and ended up going to a Catholic elementary school after going to four different grade schools by the time I was in fifth grade. And there was a teacher in my fifth grade year that, despite what was going on, said, you need to apply yourself. I was, you know, really, no one had really kind of said something to me at that point. Certainly not academically to give me sites for something more. So Ms. Bonhart, never forget her. She actually died this past year, but she just saw this kid that had some potential and then really poured into me. And then I still, I tell me about this all the time in terms of like setting visions for kids. You know, it is difficult to be what you don't see. And you know, when you come from a certain environment where you don't have a lot of folks who've gone to college, that's not something that people aspire to. You know, if you're not in that setting, you can set your sights, you know, pretty low. But when I was a freshman, I just remember like coming into the cafeteria early on. And what they would do is on the on the bulletin board, when you came into the cafeteria, they would list all the names of the seniors as it started to get time for people to apply to schools. And then they would put the seniors name and what school they got into. That's the first time I got exposed to all these different names Princeton and Harvard and Yale And I kind of remember from the Flintstone because I think it was Yale and Princeton You're a Fred Flintstone fan I was I was there we go Stop this crazy thing That was that was my that was my introduction to Ivy League if you will but a lot of these guys, I mean they were athletes and They did all kinds of stuff, but everybody went to college. And so I said, you know what? This is what you do in this environment. And that really set a perspective for me that there's an opportunity to go to college. And Princeton was one of the names that was up there, and along with some other ones that were new to me. In that Catholic school, I just have a picture of it being very white, true? Yes. And by the way, for listeners, not that I ever see color, I never even noticed color. Roland is African-American. I'm like this all day. I wake up in the morning and just like, okay. So I just roll with it. You're black all day, right? I've been like this all day for as long as I can remember. So I just decided, you know what? It is what it is. So yeah. So yeah, there were only, I think, maybe five or six black students in my senior class. It was an all-boy Catholic high school. But frankly, it was a good environment you know, going to Princeton, you know, the demographics there are very similar. So, you know, it wasn't sort of a cultural adjustment, if you will, for me when I went on a campus like that. But you're, I'm just trying to think back to your beginning here. Fourth grade, you have a vision set for you that you've got brains and go someplace and you don't know anybody in your family or in your neighborhood that's ever been to college? I mean, that's a pretty strong internal intestinal fortitude to get yourself OK with doing something that you've never seen before. How did you do that? Was that just something you think you had in your DNA? Or was there, I mean, that's a big jump. I mean, a lot of us, we don't like to admit it, we're just products of our environment. And we're just around people who do things. And if we hit the lottery, we're around people who do the right things, it's going to help our life. That wasn't the case though with you. Yeah, you know, there were just a couple of things that had happened. Actually, a couple of things that had happened, and a lot of it for me was around sports and football. I knew if you wanted to play football, you had to go to college. So at least in my fourth, fifth year grade mind. But also, I think that they really helped me a lot was, you know, sometimes folks that pursue athletics in high school and other settings, they kind of have compartmentalized it, which is like, I'm going to try to excel on the field in the classroom, it doesn't matter to me. And I never, I never, you know, kind of bifurcated that. And then when I went to that all-boy Catholic high school, that was the culture there, that bringing those two things together, like excellence in athletics and also excellence in academics, those two things came together in that environment. And you know, I was growing up without my father at that time, too. Pretty much, pretty much most of my life, my dad did not live in the home where I resided. And so I think the other thing which really had an enormous impact on me was just being in that environment with other males and particularly with men who had that perspective as well, who were kind of surrogate father figures for me, also had an enormous impact. But casting a vision for someone, helping them see what they can be is so critically important early in life, which obviously is that's a role that parents should have in a lot of ways, and particularly dads in terms of the context that I talk about it. But certainly the school really helped do that for me. So your dad was not in the home, largely, at least physically absent. What got you interested in fatherhood in researching that and working against that? Well a couple things. I mean, thing one was when I went to college, my junior year of college, I got my girlfriend pregnant. That's actually how the abortion issue came into play as well. She was a sophomore, I was a junior, both at Princeton. And when she went to get her pregnancy test, she was encouraged strongly to have an abortion because the notion was, how are you going to graduate from Princeton with a baby? Didn't make a lot of, how are you going to do that? And then her coming back and telling me what the nurse said, you know, that's, what do you want to do when you graduate? She wanted to become a doctor. She said, well, how are you going to graduate with a baby? Didn't seem like it made a lot of sense. And, you know, we kind of determined by the grace of God and really was the grace of God that we were going to move forward with a plan to get married. So I got married. When I was 20, she was 19. And she took a year off. Didn't graduate with one baby, but actually two. Both of our sons were born. She was an undergrad at Princeton. She carried our second son, actually, in her graduation. I carried our first son in mine. And then she went on and took a couple years off and then went to medical school. Has been practicing medicine for about 25 years. So way back then, that whole, it was sort of this, you know, conflating the fatherhood issue and the abortion issue together because I saw a perspective at that time that the reason why a woman may make that decision is because she has hopes and dreams for her life that don't include a child at this time and in this way. And the role that the guy has in that story is very central because that missing support that the nurse was talking to her about, that you won't be able to accomplish your hopes and dreams. What the nurse didn't know was that she had a guy who said, I'll be a husband to you and a father to our child growing inside of you. So the work I do now, I kind of bring together that fatherhood issue just from my own story, really trying to encourage men to step into the gap because he's the most influential in her decision to abort which I lived out of my own life. And then also to build strong families, marriage families and things of that nature. So the fatherhood issue was kind of kind of sort of like a river run through you. I became a father fairly early in life and then wrestling with the absence of my own dad and the impact that that had on me at the same time. And so I was actually working at Goldman Sachs and had joined the board of national fatherhood initiative. And the guy who founded it came to me and said, Hey, you know, would you be interested in leaving Goldman Sachs to come work for national fatherhood initiative full time? And, um, you know, I didn't grow up a whole lot. Uh, people at Goldman Sachs, uh, they had gold and they carried it in sacks. So I thought, this has got to be God's plan for my life. Right. So I kind of said, well, you know, they have gold, they carry it in sacks, but God just pressed upon me that that was what I should do. So I quit my job in nine days and went to National Father Initiative. And I tell people this often, that God really had me on a couch for about 12 years. because there was a lot of stuff related to the absence of my father, the impact that was having on me as a father, the impact it was having on me as a husband, and all these different things that I had an opportunity in that setting to really work through a lot of those issues and really, frankly, healed from that rejection that I felt for many, many years. And I would say this too, just around the performance things, I'd sort of psychoanalyze myself. You know, I think certainly a driver of my desire to perform was really to get my father's attention in a lot of ways too. So I think that that was kind of in there somewhere, that hope that I'd be enough, that it would matter enough for certain things to happen, I suppose subconsciously might have been in my head as well. What were the things that you felt deficient in or the things that you had to be on the couch for around the absence of your dad? Well, so first of rejection in general is difficult to deal with, right? Just rejection in general, right? Yes, yes. Like you didn't win a lottery or something, I mean like just, or whatever it may be. I mean people, it's tough to deal with rejection, right? But then, you know, you take a rejection and it's early in life. from someone who's like bone of your bone and flesh of your flesh, that's a pretty deep wound. And I always tell people what I was particular when I was at National Fatherhood Initiative, I'd say that folks, I'd say, think about your closest and your dearest friend. I mean, that you were just tight. This is just like, you're just tight, right? You can finish each other's sentences. And imagine that person just called you up and said, you know what, you're dead to me. How are you gonna deal with that? As an adult, right? How would you deal with that? You'd be like, well, now that's trouble. Now, make yourself seven, eight, five, and try to process that same thing. So I've always felt, certainly when I started doing this work that, you know, it's a spiritual issue because I feel like God whispers into the wounds of mothers, to the children that are growing inside those wounds, that there's this man who's gonna love them like no other. And... that if he's unable to do that or unwilling to do that, it can leave a hole that's not easily filled. And basically a hole in your soul. And I say often, kids have a hole in their soul in the shape of their dad. And I'm a wounded soul, which kind of took me some time to really see that that was the case, but I'm a wounded soul from that, from that experience. And so I was just drawn to it. I really was in a lot of ways, because even the first conversation I had with a guy who founded National Fatherhood Initiative, I he and I got on the phone the first time and I just called just to see what they did. I wasn't doing anything related to the issue or anything. And we were on the phone for like two and a half hours. I was just, I was drawn to this issue in a lot of different ways from what I saw in my own life. And then when I saw from the experience of other folks that I was connected to. Well, I've, I've certainly met my share of people and I am one of them who has, um, had the, had a void of a father. my biological father, my dad, my parents who adopted me, was wonderful, but there's that thing of, the guy who put sperm in my birth mother had nothing to do with me at all. And I did feel a hole from that, not so much from the mother, and I've met a lot of people who have felt that father hole, but I'm wondering, No one is having conversations with young boys about how awesome fatherhood is and how awesome it is to create life. I mean, the only conversations that are happening there are about how to not create life. Like I heard a guy recently said, you know, I had to have the safe sex talks with my boys. He said, so I pulled out a banana, I had a condom, and I started peeling the banana and they said, what are you doing? He said, you don't think I'm going to do this on an empty stomach, do you? That's a dad joke. That's not a dad joke. But the point being, the point being is that's what we have talks with boys how to not have children, which is a good talk to have when you're 32, but we're not having talks with young men about... Hey, man, it's an amazing thing to be a dad. In fact, that nurse had talked to your wife about, are you sure you want to go up your hopes and dreams? I tell you what, the older I get, the greatest hope and the greatest dream I have was having kids. The greatest hope and dream of your life will be hands down, hands down, that you brought life into this world and you have someone to spend your older years with and somebody to wipe your butt when you're older. That's the most important thing. That's the grand bargain. I'll wipe my butt when you're young and you'll wipe my butt when I'm old. Right. So, that is absolutely one of the things there. So, I do think that, certainly, if we want to have a transformation in terms of how men are thinking about these issues, it starts with starting to talk to boys in that context. That's A. But B, the other thing which we've lost is just the marriage culture. Right. that connects fathers to their children heart to heart is marriage, which connects fathers to the mothers of their children heart to heart. So there's so many ways that you can see this. So young girls and stuff like that, and all my sisters, they would play with dolls, right? So it would be her and the baby, right? She never grafted in. They never grafted in a guy, right? For the most part, it was like me and the child. So what happens a lot of times when there's a conflict in the marriage is everybody goes back to their normal state. I take my baby and you go. Every now and then you catch a slow boy and be able to pull him in and put him in the house with you. But for the most part, that's been happening for a long time. So as we've lost the marriage culture, that marriage culture has an impact on the fatherhood culture because the best societal glue to connect fathers to their kids heart to heart is the institution that connects mothers to fathers heart to heart, which is marriage. which is so critically important. And typically, it's hard generally to be a good father and a bad husband, and it's hard to be a good husband and a bad father because of how women think about children. Those things are connected. That's why sometimes, you know, particularly when I was doing fatherhood work, you know, I'd deal with some guys who were in divorce situations or father's rights type things, and they'd like say to me, like, you know, I did everything she wanted me to do. I mean, okay, I wasn't there for the kids and stuff, but I was like, you don't get it. Everything she wanted me to do except the kids. Exactly, right. Because we compartmentalize, right? No, for her, if you're not loving them, you're not loving me. Like, it's such a connection. So if you want to be a good husband, you're going to have to be a good father if you have children because of the way those things are so connected. And I think a lot of times as men, we disconnect those things in a way that can hurt us in a certain marriage relationship. I also wonder of... if we're not having men attracted to families, because men as a species are less committed. Now, I'm a big man guy. I am a man. Last I checked, I'm a man. I'll check again here in a little bit. I am a man and I work with a lot, lot of men. So I'm not gonna trash men by any steps of managization. But if I step back for a minute and I just was sort of a cultural anthropologist, I might look and say, hmm, more men leave the family than do women. More women than I know right now would like to be married, but men are not making marriage asks. More women are committed to a higher education or finishing college or finishing graduate school. The statistics I saw was in the next 10 years, 70% of all grad students are going to be females. I look at these things going like, do we just have as men just a hard time with good old fashion commitment? What do you think? Well, no, I don't think it's commitment per se. It's commitment to what? I think maybe to some degree. To finish it. Right. Yeah. You know, I think, you know, this is sort of a, it's an interesting dilemma that we have. And I think in a lot of ways, I think for a lot of men, we just sort of kind of lost our way. Yes. We kind of lost our way. in terms of like being connected to things outside of ourselves. I do think that, you know, we're wired in a way, sort of genetically, despite maybe what the culture would say, but I think we're wired in a way that we can be independent, if you will. I mean, it's part of the reason why, you know, guys can run, guys on average, against the generalization, can run into danger and kind of disconnect and kind of go there, that piece. And so I think there's a part of that. that's there. But I really believe that a lot of it is that, you know, these institutions like marriage, like family, right, that we do not socialize, we're not socializing our boys to value those institutions in a way that's constructed and leads them in that way. And we don't celebrate it that way. I mean, just think about this, you know, the way that the typical dad is portrayed on television, in media. You know, I always just say they're either dumb, dangerous, or disaffected. Yep. So if you're a young boy looking at, okay, okay, so here's, you know, you can pick the example, you can put that principle into some degree, right? You're either dumb, dangerous, or disaffected. I mean, who wants to aspire to that? You know, you're going to be, you know, what's the guy that married with children? You're going to be that guy, or you're going to be Homer Simpson, or you're going to be... And these are the images that we've been communicating. Now, in the past, you could have those images. but you had a guy in the home that was living differently than that. So you could kind of say, okay, that's just the character, a caricature, if you will, of what fathers are. But I have a dad here who's the opposite of that. Who's loving me that way. Right. Well, if you have a, an increase of, you know, sort of father absence, if you will, where they're not seeing guys who are living that out and then the media portrayals that you see of guys are the opposite of that, why should a young boy aspire to be that? Yep. Why should he aspire to be that? And I also think when that happens, it can be very difficult for the single mother who's raising him, right? To frame fatherhood and husbandhood in a context. If the guy who brought this child into the world is not stepping into that role, stepping into that role in a big, big way. And that's one of the reasons I wrote a book called Raising Sons of Promise, a guide for single mothers raising boys. And the reason I wrote that book, it basically kind of talks about my experience as a young boy growing up in a single mother, not just a single mother home, but a single mother culture where most of the women that I knew and loved were single mothers. And the insight that I had that for so many single moms, you've got to have this insight that if you're going to break the cycle, you actually have to raise your son to be not just a good man, but a good husband and a good father too. and there's some things specifically that you need to do to make that happen. Otherwise, what you're raising to be is not a husband and a father, but a baby daddy, right? Because he, like it's difficult to be what you don't see. So if you've never seen a guy in that context, well, it's, it's hard to be that guy, you know? And so I kind of walked through that. I use the story of Hagar and Ishmael as an archetype of a single mother raising a son. And, and, and, and one of the things that kind of blew me away when I read that story in the Bible was The last time you hear about Hagar is what you hear is that she found a wife for Ishmael. And from a biblical context, he wasn't the son of the promise that Isaac was. He was the son of a different promise. But she found a wife for him. So if you're a single mother raising a son, are you thinking that way? Are you thinking that way in terms of the guys that you date? Are you dating guys that you want your son to become? Are you doing things as a single mother? to break the cycle of father absence, to help him be a good husband and a good father and stuff like that. So there's a lot that's coming together that I think is putting men in the positions that they're in. And I'm hopeful, but we've got to start telling these stories again and building these narratives again that make husbandhood, fatherhood, these kinds of things aspirational goals for men because it doesn't bode well for society when men are not. kind of stepping into those roles. Yeah, I went into having kids. Well, the first child was premature. I guess you could call her a mistake. My wife and I were on the economy plan in terms of birth control. which means pull and pray. That's what we were on the pull and pray method. Oh, open and prayer? Right, right, exactly. And my gosh, are we thankful that, and it was my wife's fault, by the way. I'm not gonna get into too much graphic detail. It was my wife's fault, very, very clearly. But you know, we had our first one, Lena, and Mike, we would have never chosen to have her when we did, but as soon as we had her, we were like, wow, yeah, this is the right time, great. So it was like off the races, let's go. And so I had three kids and I separated my third kid from my second kid from five years. And about, I don't know, about three or four years after having my third child, Mariah, I started thinking, man, maybe we should have just really sucked it up and wedged her up on the back end of our second child pretty quick so we just had two years apart because we had that gap there. And then a couple years, a couple years later, or about three years later, then I started to ask the question, man, no, actually what we probably should have done was had another kid between number two and three to fill that gap. We probably should have done that. So you took a gap year is what you're saying. Yeah, a long gap. I tell parents all the time, or people who want to have families all the time, kids, hey, my recommendation is... If you're going to go for it every two years, pop them out. Boom, boom, boom. Because every kid is in the same culture. Every kid has the same memories. And you're in baby mode. And you're reading books to the kids' modes. Because when I had that five-year gap, it was like, oh, man, I'm back to diapers. Oh, it was hard. Then my daughter would say, no, daddy, read me another chapter. No, no, no. I don't go to freaking bed. No, I'm done. I've done it. I was in a baby mode for a while. I was out of kid mode. And then my third child, she has, we have more money when we had the third one. So she lived more by the silver spoon, at least compared to the other two. And they convinced her of that all the time. Anyway, all that to say, that's kind of the journey. And then I get to, wow, we could have had free babysitting with our older kids, watching our younger kids. And now I get to where I am 57. And I think to myself, man, I wish someone was telling me. When I was 22, 30, 17, what I say now, which is this, your life is going to advance much quicker than you think. Everyone says it goes by so fast, it goes by so fast. You start to feel that at about age 40 and it goes by real fast. And I'm telling you right now, I don't know a single person who's 50, who wished, who was happy they stopped having kids. Most of us are like, man, I could take another one You feel the satisfaction in your life. I brought life in. I've built a life. I've discipled somebody. Or just plain old fact, here's a relationship they're not gonna walk out of me like everybody else does. Here's a relationship that I'm gonna be with them forever. And on top of that, as you get older, I just learned this one a couple years ago. Someone told me this, like, duh, I didn't even think about that one. A guy was older. Yeah, what I tell people is have more kids because you can get to a place in your life where you're going to be bored if you don't have grandkids and they're going to be the most meaningful thing of your life. That would have sounded so surfacey, so not fun when I was 22, but at 57, I get it. So all I'm saying, Roland, I love to hear you play off of that. I love to be at least two guys here who are shooting a shot across the bow of any guy who's listening. Because men tend to be much more hesitant about families than women do. That just tells them, dudes, dudes, it's freaking great. Seriously, it's great. Your input, your pushback, your add-ons. No, I think I'm sort of in the same age demographics as you. And it's funny that you would say 40, because I remember my 40th birthday, and I had this epiphany that I was moving into a time where You know, I likely, you know, just given how people live, but certainly to a point where I likely have more yesterdays than tomorrow's and you really don't have like, like I would have never thought like I did. It just hit me all of a sudden that I was at that place, you know, because for sure I could live to 80, but you know, it's, it's kind of a peak thing here where you, you know, and every year now I'm 61. Um, and so, you know, you, you, you look at that and, and, um, and I have grandkids now and I've got three grandkids and it's just such a joy to have them. And I don't, I don't, you know, I've talked certainly from the different jobs that I've had, I've talked to a lot of older guys and stuff like that. And I, I never hear any of them say to me, Oh man, you know, just one more PowerPoint. Like no one talks that way. You know, and I mean, I, I used to wait, dude, go when I knew very, very wealthy people, very successful people. And it was always about family, their kid, that was the joy, they had enormous amounts of money. It was, that was the thing that was transcendent of all of that stuff. And it's harder when you're younger to have that, have that point of view. And, you know, I have this one picture that I just love, it's my wife holding one of our granddaughters and it's the granddaughter of the son who we were told not to have, to abort. And, cause the premise on that was that nothing good can come from. I mean, that's the whole note. You have to, like, nobody makes that decision to make their life worse. They always do it because they think it's going to make their life better, right? And that was where my wife was sitting there as a 19-year-old. Nothing good can come from this. And the look on my wife's face as she's holding our granddaughter, it's just now her 19 years, like 40 something years ago, and her 19-year-old self couldn't see that. Just to verify. And it's so powerful. Just to verify. The nurse at the clinic said nothing good can come from this? Well, that's the perspective that you have. The nurse didn't say that, but that's the view. That's the point you have to have. You have to believe that nothing good can come from you having this child. In other words, no one ever has an abortion to make their life worse, at least in their own mind. It's to make their life better. So the premise is having this child worse than not having this child. In other words, nothing good will come from this. Only worse will come from this. So, you know, it really is one of those things as you start to get older and you look back on just the privilege to bring children into the world. And I know that not everyone is blessed to do that, has that calling in life. And there's some folks that, you know, God gives a different path. So I'm not trying to oversell that because there are many people who don't have that role. But I'm certainly one who says that, you know, if you have that opportunity and God blesses you It is truly a blessing to be able to do that. And the older I get, the more I see that. Having somebody call you pop pop and run into your arms, I tell you, that beats a touchdown running. I can tell that for sure. So the unwed pregnancy issue that we have in our country, whether someone chooses to end it with having their child carrying through to turn, adopting a child, or aborting that child. Like, again, those three right now. But I'm just thinking as I'm talking to you, I think we spend most of our time talking about how to alleviate a pregnancy, how to make a pregnancy less likely. And I think that's good. I think that's a good idea. talking people with that. But I don't, you're right, we don't really talk about how family is great and how you can prepare yourself to be a father. And that really is probably the crux of most of the stuff. Most of these young girls who are in this situation, most of them are young girls versus 40-year-old women. Most of them don't see. a man that's going to be around that's going to make things easier for them. Right? Is that true? That's absolutely true. So that's absolutely the case. So there's kind of two sides to that same coin to look at. One would be how do we as a culture start to indoctrinate our young males to have a different vision of family and commitment. And then the second thing I would be, I guess it would also be what kind of things can, can culture society put into pray place that puts real bite to these men who impregnate women and have no, no desire to ever be a father, but they'd also don't have any, any negative outcomes. Cause they're not going to clinic. They don't have to wrestle with it. What's your thoughts on that? Well, you know, I try to get up. I try to get upstream. with that. And, you know, certainly, from my view is, is really that, you know, the notion of where sex by God's design is appropriate. And it's in the context of marriage, because that's where you have the guy, you know, the guy more committed. Like, there's no program out there that's no government program that's designed to try to get fathers who are married to the mothers of their kids to take care of their kids. You know, I mean, once you have the heart, you get the wallet too. It's the way that it works, right? So child support enforcement is about chasing the wallet when you don't have the heart. Marriage is about connecting the heart and the wallet together. So, you know, I try to get upstream and really start to have those conversations with folks because, you know, this is one of the consequences that can come from a culture where, you know, we de-link fatherhood, motherhood, sex, and marriage, and God's designed for those things. We end up in an environment where we have, you know, unplanned pregnancies and the questions there. And then frankly, in a lot of ways, we have women who, you know, are unsupported. And I call them in some ways like cultural orphans, cultural widows and orphans in the sense that, you know, instead of that husband and father being dead, which is when that scripture was written in James 1.27, it's the husband, proverbial husband and father saying to the mother and the child, you're dead to me. And so I just haven't grown up in that environment. I want to do everything that I can to help men link those things back together, to link fatherhood, motherhood, sex, and marriage and God's design for those things. it's better for them, candidly, but it's also better for the women and it's also better for the children as well who are the most vulnerable in this entire scenario, whether it's an abortion situation or whether it's a single mom situation, it's very hard and difficult for them and it's difficult and hard for the kids as well. And I think a lot of guys, particularly when you get older, you regret that. You know, you regret. You absolutely have so many guys that I've talked to doing the fatherhood work that just absolutely regret it and just wish that they could go back and redo this because whatever they thought was so important for them to be chasing at that time when they were rejecting their children turns out to be not that important. And you know, it's like anything else. I mean, for a lot of male culture, it's transactional. That's why a lot of times the guys. a retire, nobody calls him anymore. Right. Because they didn't really build any friendships. Right. It was all it was all transactional. You could do this for me. I could do that for you. And then now that you're out, you're not in the game anymore. Well, there's no relationship there. And you know, if you don't have family and community, you know, and faith and things like that connect you to others, it can be a very lonely, lonely existence. Very, very kind of a little bit of a some that My younger son and I, we used to go into DC and we used to give food and gospel tracts and stuff to some of the homeless guys. One of the things that blew me away was nearly every single one of the guys that we talked to that was homeless on the streets had family, had children. I mean, one guy told me he had like 10 kids. I was like, okay, you're living in a box and you have 10 children? What? He was like, it's kind of the reverse of the story of the prodigal son is the prodigal father, right? He just he couldn't go home because he'd have to go and he was you know, concerned that will they accept me and whatever. So one of the kind of social kind of tidal waves that's coming that I've actually seen is it's not just father, it's not just father absent kids, but it's family with his fathers, and guys on the streets and in other settings who have broken the social contract of I wipe your butt when you're young, so you wipe my butt when I'm old. And the impact that that has on society is pretty significant. So you've talked to a lot of these guys that are homeless, they have family, but they've broken the social contract. And it's not a better way, because whatever they were chasing that they thought was more important at that time, now they look back on that, and it's a difficult dynamic. Wow, I bet. So tell me what you're doing right now. You're doing Care Net. What's the stump speech for what Care Net's about? Yeah, so we... We're a Christian ministry based out of Virginia that was started in 1975. They really try to help folks have a compassionate alternative to abortion. So we offer compassion, hope, help, and discipleship through our ministry platform. We have 1,200 plus pregnancy centers across the country. And someone who's facing a pregnancy decision, we are there to kind of help and assist them in a big part of our work. is actually engaging the guys because he's the most influential in her decision to abort. We've done surveys of women who've had abortions and we've done surveys with men who participated and they both say that he was the most influential in that decision. So that's one of the reasons from our standpoint. Yeah, and I can see that myself. Look, when my wife got pregnant, I was 20 and she was 19, for the first five months there was one person who knew she was pregnant other than her. It was me. Five months. So she started to show up like, you got to tell your dad. You got to tell your dad. So to think that I wouldn't have some influence on that decision would be naive. Of course I had significant influence, but the reason she was less willing to make that choice of her faith in God, of course, but also she had a guy who said, I'll be a husband to you and a father to the child growing inside of you, which made her less likely to do that. And that's what the data shows. 86% of the women that have abortions are unmarried. In other words, they have no one who's going to step into that role. They see the missing support. That narrative that the nerds played out in their mind is real and compelling because they don't see that. And they see their hopes and their dreams and their aspirations for their life going down the drain. And so they make, they make this decision. So my view on the front end is that if we can really engage men to call, to help them understand the call and the privilege and the calling it is, you know, to be a father to your, to the point of you brought life into the world. And it's a privilege to be able to do that. It certainly goes a long way to stemming the abortion issue. So a woman never feels that she has to do that. I will say this, and I know again, I know it's a controversial issue, but for even women who've had abortion, I don't have enough fingers and toes to count the number of times I've heard them say this word. I had this abortion because I felt I had no choice. Now this is an issue that's built on choice. So. But, and they made it, and they thought it was a good choice, but they felt like they had no choice. And what that means basically is that we spend more time in our culture trying to remove obstacles to abortion than we do obstacles to birth. And a key obstacle to birth is the guy who got her pregnant. Yes. He's the first responder and how he responds dictates the directive of life in the same way that if I was starting to have a heart attack, the first responders come with the paddles, if they leave them in the truck station, leave them in the truck. The trajectory of my life is determined by the first responder. The guy tends to be the first responder. He tends to be the first one that she told. And I'll say this, I don't, if a woman tells a guy that she's pregnant, and then she tells, and then there's the quote, pregnant pause, and then she's waiting for how he's gonna respond. My view is I think most women who tell a guy it's not because they want to have the abortion or that they want to hear him say, I support whatever decision you make. Because they don't. I don't need you that affirmation. It's it's morally I mean, it's socially my responsibility. I like you have no agency here. Right? So why tell him if he has no, no role that's going to be significant? Well, you tell him because you're hoping against hope in the same way that my wife when she told me, well, she's hoping that I'll step that you'll step into the role and support. And what guys have been trained to do is just kind of reject all responsibility with an answer like I support whatever decision you make, which is basically volleying it back into her court, dropping your racket, getting off the court and saying, you're on your own here. And that's not really what men are called to do. We're called to step in, take responsibility, take the responsibility for our actions and to support the vulnerable. And in that moment, she's vulnerable and that child going inside her is vulnerable. And that's the definition of greatness is you step into situations where someone is vulnerable, you self-sacrifice in order to do that. And that's why, you know, that's why when you're an older guy and you've got kids and grandkids, you know, what you want to hear is, is, is don't call you blessed because you stepped in and you sacrificed for them. So what should a guy say instead of I'll support whatever decision you make, other than I'll mirror you right now and be your dad, be the baby's daddy for the rest of her life. All right. There'll be something in between there that'll be that he might actually feel more, right? Or not. Well, I think, well, at a minimum, I think he needs to become an advocate for the life of the child growing inside of her. But certainly, so many of these couples, they're already in relationships. And that's why a lot of this is really trying to help people build healthy marriages and understand that. We've lost a lot of that in our culture. But yeah, at a minimum, saying I'm gonna step in, I'm gonna provide that level of support, I'm gonna be committed to you and to that child in that context, and obviously the highest level of commitment is when you say, you know that I'm gonna. that I'm going to be a husband to you and a father to the child growing inside of you. So, you know, we try to encourage guys to help them be able to step up to that plate in that way. So I always focus on the high idea. Yeah. Yeah, that's good. Hey, this is Dirt, your executive producer for The Aggressive Life. I have some big news. On June 6th, we'll be releasing our 200th episode of The Aggressive Life with Brian Tome. 200 episodes! Freaking amazing! It's a huge milestone. We want to feature the most important piece of our Aggressive Life family in that episode. And that's you! We want to know, what's your favorite episode of all time? How has The Aggressive Life influenced you? Has it made you... make any big decisions. Do you have a burning question for Brian that you need him to answer? Leave us your voice on the aggressive life voicemail and it just might show up in our 200th episode special. You can go to bryantome.com slash your voice for the number and all the details. It's bryantome.com slash your voice. Get those submissions in. They are due by May 31st. And now let's get back to the show. So what do you, I didn't really want to get into abortion too much, but we're here. It may as well. And I'm really curious. I'm really, really curious what you say to some of these things because I am, I am a, I'm adopted and I don't meet many people who have been adopted, who don't say that they wish they could have had a chance at life instead of somebody else making that decision for them. I didn't ask my birth mother. I got to know my birth mother before she died. I didn't ask her if you had access to an easy out for me to abort me, would you have done that? Because it just wasn't easy for them. We have a guy who works for me. Him and his wife are white. They adopted an African-American baby, because those are the ones that are most in demand. They also want a multiracial family as well. And he tells a story. of they've gotten to know their son's birth mother. And she was going to have her son aborted the next day, but she got robbed and lost her money. So she couldn't do it. And that's why she had to go through and give birth. And so they're like, great, awesome, awesome. So you have people on one side who say, hey, look, this is life, no matter what. need to keep that child, and we need to pass every law possible to make it harder and harder and harder for someone to do that. And then, of course, you have people on the other side who are like, it's not life. It's an embryo. It's fetal tissue. It's my body. I can decide what to do with it more than some government agency or this or that. It's just a raging thing. And we're just not finding very many just open, open-hearted, open-minded discussions. So what do you say? from an emotional connection standpoint, a spiritual rootedness standpoint, to just somebody who's wrestling with what the US's role should be around abortion, abortion rights, abortion elimination, all that stuff. There you go. Just a very. That's a simple question. It is very simple. It depends on how you're looking at the issue. But. I think that what you have to do to support that decision is you have to kind of reject the science in a lot of ways. And one of the illustrations I use a lot with people is that if you, the old Polaroid cameras, right, if I took a picture with a Polaroid camera and I took a picture of you with a Polaroid camera, right, when I first show you what's on the film, it's just this blob of blackness, right? And you'd say, well, that's not a picture of me. I'd say, well, yes, it is in the fullness of time. Like it's intrinsically a picture of you, right? In the fullness of time, it develops. It has all of the essence of you. Right. And I think part of the problem that people have when they're wrestling with this issue is they think that children are constructed, not developed. Like, so you ask yourself a question, when does a Tesla become a Tesla? Right. Is it when they put the wheels on the plate on the A Tesla is never ever intrinsically a Tesla because at any point on the assembly line, you could turn it into a toaster. And that's why there are courses on human construction, but human development, right? So wherever I am in that developmental process, we all share a level of vulnerability. The most vulnerable place to any of us have ever been in our life is not some dark alley and some bad neighborhood or some, the most vulnerable place that we have ever been. has been in our mother's womb. That's a shared vulnerability that we all have. And the only reason why we made it out of our mother's womb is because she had mercy on us, right? So I look at the issue that way, but I also see the issue very much in the context of being as a black person, because I see what happens when you start to think about life in a way that is not proper. One of the first articles I read when I started doing this work was by this, this is a pro-choice writer. Um, and the title of the article was, so what if abortion ends a life? And it was basically the whole premise of it was, you know, um, um, she was trying to encourage pro-choice people to stop trying to make the argument that what's in the womb is not a life. And she's like, I mean, you're selling like flat earthers. I mean, the technologies, I mean, we, we know it's a, it's a life, right? We know it's a life. And then she ends the article with these words. But I would support the right. I would support the life of the mother over the life of the fetus, all the while acknowledging that the fetus is indeed a life, a life worth sacrificing. And that's the last sentence of her article. Now, there was no big hoopla or whatever. But for me as a black man, I was like, oh my gosh, because if you take the word mother and you replace mother and fetus and you replace it with slave, slave holder and slave. I would support, right, the life of the slaveholder, over the life of the slave, all the while acknowledging that the slave is indeed a life worth sacrificing. I mean, you can plug in a bunch of different things, and what you find from that perspective is that you're supporting a worldview that's the same worldview of folks who've done the most heinous things in human development. And that's exactly where we are now, because now we can't even, we're having a hard time even getting laws passed that say that if a child somehow somehow survives an abortion that you don't even have to render aid to that child. I mean, that's like the Dred Scott decision where he escaped slavery, right? Came to a free state, and they said, no, no, you're still a slave, right? Because once an aborted fetus, even when you're a child outside the womb, it's like you're stamped with, you know, to me, it just, over time, you start treating all the vulnerable. in this way and people have to understand that. So that's why me, in particular as a black man, that comes from a culture that where people made essentially the same argument that quote, this isn't a life, they're not really human, or they're a life worth sacrificing for our own pleasure. I have a legacy that kind of shows what ends up happening to not just the people, but also to the society that supports that perspective. And so that's where my heart breaks for, you know, they don't know what they're doing. I mean, what makes us human is that we, what makes us special, and we know this, is not that when we sacrifice the vulnerable for ourselves, but when we sacrifice ourselves for the vulnerable. That's why there are statues for Martin Luther King or all these different people who did what? They sacrificed themselves for the vulnerable. And this is exactly the same way. So saying it's not a lie, or it's, you know, you sound like a flat earther. in terms of having that perspective. You know it's a life, but we made a determination now, it's a life worth sacrificing. And candidly, that's not even the argument of the other side anymore. They're not arguing that it's not a life anymore. That's really not it. Oh, is that right? They're not? No, that's not even the central argument. The central argument is, yes, it's a life, but it's a life worth sacrificing for the mother. In other words, it's a life, it's a vulnerable life that's worth sacrificing for the more powerful person. And that... That perspective is really problematic when you think about it. And we're not talking about sacrificing for the more powerful person because they're going to die of fallopian tube pregnancy. No. But we're not talking about that. You're talking about, no, the preferred future I've mapped out for myself right now, that thing is going to have to die if I have to care for a child or if I have to pause the pursuit of that dream. for another eight months while I nursed this to wholeness to give up for adoption. Exactly. Right. And those are the people that you see coming out, actresses and all these other folks. I couldn't be who I am with the lights and whatever if I hadn't done. I mean, just unpack that down. Just rip it to see what you're basically saying is that I sacrificed this person so that I could have the life I wanted to live. And that takes us so far back. Isn't that the same argument that was being made? with the Aztecs or whomever we find these people that were doing child, well, what do they do? They sacrifice the vulnerable life for a better life or rain for crops or fertility or whatever. So I see that at its core, particularly as one who comes from a legacy of vulnerability of people who shared that perspective in a nation to see the damage that that had to the knowledge of the nation, but to the folks who experienced that. I want to save us from that. Well, that's what Mother Teresa said, right? When she spoke before Congress, before she died way back when. And of course, everybody is going to have her in high adulation, understandably, how you're not going to like Mother Teresa, right? The most selfless life anybody knew at the time. And she said, it's a sin for you to live the way you want to live, so that another child must die. That was like, wow. Now, having said that, gosh, I didn't want to get into this topic, but I'm finding it fascinating talking with somebody who actually boned up. Okay, true confessions, true confessions here. Okay, here we go. So, so don't, don't slam me here. Don't cut me off the knees. True confessions. And then you can like empathize with me or tell me I'm a weenie boy. Are you ready for it? I am just so sick of the abortion debate. I'm sick of it. I'm so sick. In fact, when Roe v Wade got overturned, part of me was like, wow, I thought this I'd never see this in my lifetime. Another part of me was like, oh man. Can we just leave it alone? I'm just sick of it. I'm just, I'm just done. I'm just tired of it. Can we, can we, do we have to outlaw this thing? Can we, can we not just have a, a guerrilla warfare thing going to help people understand the necessity of this? I just, man, I just, gosh, I'm just so weary of the same bickering and battles on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on. And so part of me goes, well, Brian, don't be upset about it because you're you wouldn't feel the same way if they were pulling out a revolver to a bunch of two-year-olds heads and killing them. Okay. I guess that would, but then the other part of me says, man, this is such a, this is such a cacophony of noise and divisive issue. Do we really have a chance for those who are people of faith to win people to faith if our lead in is you have to agree with us on these laws? I'm just sick of it, man. I don't want to talk about it. I want to deal with it. I'm just I'm just sick of it. So empathize with me, rebuke me, whatever you want to do, but that's where I am. And I think there's a lot of people who are too. We're just tired of it, man. There's just too many people. This has been your defining thing forever. And I don't know, it bothers me. So tell me, how should I feel? Well, first off, I'm sure if there was a podcast back in 1865 or whatever on the slavery issue, I'd imagine that you'd probably hear the same kind of. Ah, interesting. I'm just saying. Darn you, Roland, stop making sense. Stop trying to make the tie to your own oppressed past. Stop it. I'm just saying because I'm happy that folks wrestle with that whole thing. Because if not, I'd be getting you coffee and not getting paid for it. Because I know if I get it now, you have to pay me. But I'm just saying. She pays for the coffee. Yeah. That's right. So I'm sure there was that sort of fatigue. For me as a person of faith, though, see, I don't frame the issue. through that cultural narrative. You asked me reasons for abortion, I gave you more secular arguments, but the way that I think about it, honestly, that has really inspired me on this is that I look at this issue through the lens of the two great initiatives that as a Christian, I'm called to live out in the private square and promote the public square. It's the great commandment and the great commission. Right? And if you look at the great commandment, which is in Matthew, Mark and Luke. Right? And particularly in Luke, I love it. Jesus asked this question by a lawyer, abortion issue lawyers, what must I do to inherit the kingdom of God? Right? Question, good question. Everybody's kind of struggling with that, whether you're a Christian or not. They define God in your way, but everybody's trying to do that. And then Jesus says, well, what does the scripture say? And the guy says, love God with all your heart, your soul, your strength and your mind, to love your neighbor as yourself. And you say, well, what does that have to do with abortion issue? Well, a lot. Why? Because if you look at that word, For love that's used in that verse, it's agapeo, which is sacrificial love, agapeo. So for God so loved the world, John 3.16, like all of that loving our enemy, it's all agapeo, this sacrificial love. And then if you look at the word neighbor in the Greek, it means near one, near one. Now, here's the question. For a woman who's pregnant, who is her nearest near one? It's the child growing inside of her. Right, because we talk about nearness in two ways, either nearness as proximity, like you're next to me, or we talk about nearness in terms of relationship, you're my next of kin. So her nearest near one is the child that's growing inside of her. And for the guy who got her pregnant, who was his neighbor? The woman, yes, but also more centrally, the child that's growing inside of her, bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh. And so when I start to look at the light fish, I go like, wait a minute. So what we're actually trying to help people do is to live out the great commandment. the great commandment to you to sacrificially love her near one to get the guide to sacrificially love his near one and we are living out the great commandment right by helping them live out the great commandment because they're our neighbor. That's the way I think about it. So I can't stop doing this because as a Christian I'm called to basically to basically do that called to live out the great commandment. And so when Jesus says all that and does that, the lawyer then tries to, which is the question in our culture. So who's my neighbor? Right? So we've gotten away from it to blah blah sales. Now the real question in the cultures, who is my neighbor? Right? And what did Jesus do? Instead of answering the question with an answer, he answers the question with a story. And he tells the story of the Good Samaritan. And the story of the Good Samaritan, you know, you've got the priest and the Levi, they go to the other side of the road. In other words, they abort their neighbor. They abort the near one. rejecting a vulnerable life that you see and that you know. And the Good Samaritan goes near to the near one. It goes near to the neighbor, if you will. Jesus tells that whole story, then he asks the lawyer, so who was a neighbor to the man who fell? And the lawyer says, the one who showed him mercy. Now, the word mercy in Hebrew has the same root as the word compassion and as the word womb, womb. In other words, a womb is a place of mercy. And we all know that, because as I said, that's our shared vulnerability. And I believe that the heartbeat of a baby, which is the only language a baby has, is basically saying, have mercy, have mercy, have mercy. And the mother is responding with, I will agapeo you, I will sacrificially love you. And what does Jesus say? Go and do likewise, right? So this issue is central to what it means to be a Christian, it's central. Because when I talk to Christians, like Christians say I'm pro-choice, I always say to them, okay, well, help me understand how do you reconcile the great commandment with that decision? How is aborting one of God's image-bearers at the sacrificial love towards God? And how is aborting a neighbor a sacrificial love for that neighbor? And then it goes to the great commission, which is the other bookend, which is basically to make the site. And what are you supposed to make disciples of? Well, the child, your children, your family, that's your first discipleship. Well, one of the things that they would say, and understandably, I think I think that's a good argument was, well, right, exactly. My neighbor, I've got a lot of neighbors who are 13, 14, 16, 30, who are in deep poverty and are having a hard, hard time, and we need to be pro-life them and be throwing resources their way. Absolutely. Yeah. But here's the thing. We tend to be, and this is what distinguishes us as humanity, is that we tend to be the most compassionate for the most vulnerable. That's how you think about it. So if I'm a firefighter and I'm going up in a building and one room's got five babies in it, in cribs, and the other room's got five bodybuilders in gyms, and I come out with the five bodybuilders and leave the babies to burn, what are people gonna say? What the? What, I saved five people, what's the difference? Because we know. that greatness, right, as people, right, it's connected to being the most compassionate to the most vulnerable. Like this is a rejection of how we think about everything. We always operate, women and children first, all that's Titanic, all of that's all built on. That's what makes us different from animals because animals tend to be most compassionate for the most powerful. So if you're a lion on the Serengeti and there's a baby gazelle and the dog gazelle, who are you most compassionate towards? You let him go and you go after the baby. So all I'm saying here is to be consistent with how we view compassion and apportion, because you always have to apportion compassion. The whole debate is about apportioning compassion, and we tend to say when we're apportioning compassion, I call it the compassion pairing, we say who's the more powerful, who's the more vulnerable, and then we tend to apportion the most compassion to the most vulnerable. Not that there shouldn't be compassion for the powerful, but we tend to have the most compassionate for the most vulnerable. And that's what you see in the child. The woman has vulnerability, absolutely. And we have to have compassion. But the woman compared to the child has way less vulnerability. And we should be the most compassionate to the most vulnerable. That's a good point. Will Smith is getting zero compassion right now for his slap, right? Because he's like, he's powerful. He's, maybe a homeless guy did that. Maybe a little bit. You're right, we do have that wiring. You keep coming back and making the tie to slavery and being black. I've not really considered that angle before. Maybe just because I'm white and I was adopted, I never had to think that angle. So I'm thinking through my lens. You're thinking through your lens. Those are really compelling arguments I've never considered before. It seems like most. I should say it seems like most of the passion or compassion for the unborn is coming from the white evangelical community. And it doesn't seem to be very high on the radar of the African American community, whether churched or not churched. True false and why or why not? Well, I think there's two reasons. Well, first off, first I would say there's certainly some truth to that. And it's because of the conflating of the politics and race piece of it. And you know, quote, the life issue is a Republican issue and the abortion issue is a Democrat issue, if you will. And so since African Americans on average tend to vote Democrat, then that gets conflated. But frankly, you know, the largest denomination of African American churches, the Church of very much pro-life. They have a pro-life statement. They're very much pro-life. But it's difficult when you, you know, it's difficult sometimes when you conflate, you know, this issue with politics for it to kind of frame out the way that maybe folks would think about it. That's why for me, I reject that narrative. I look at the issue through the lens of the great commandment and the great commission. And when you think about it that way from a Christian perspective, It pulls all the politics out of that. And what it does is help you see that we are called to sacrificially love our neighbor and our most vulnerable neighbor is the child in the womb. And during slavery times, that's actually what drove it. So to me, slavery is important because it's the principle of why you held slaves. And the reason why you held slaves is because you did not view them as neighbors. That was the whole point. You didn't view them as neighbors. And once you started to view them as neighbors, it changed everything. One of the central things during the abolitionist movement was they started this whole campaign where they had this image of this coin, this was in England and also in the United States, and it was this black man making this argument, am I not your neighbor? Am I not a man? And what he was doing was harkening back to the great commandment. Because wait, oh wait, this is one of my neighbors, right? And so if you start to view it as a neighbor, then you tie the great commandment. That's why I'm free. Because over time, folks started to have that narrative that said, you know, actually, these folks are our neighbors. And if they're our neighbors, we're called to love them in a certain way. Now, we didn't complete that, frankly, during slavery, because we freed our neighbors when we didn't necessarily love them that way, because we had Jim Crow and a bunch of other stuff, which is an incomplete perspective of it. But the central point there was viewing these folks who were vulnerable. and dehumanized as neighbors. And that was the whole point there in the story of the Good Samaritan. When the priest and the rabbi went to the other side of the road, they dehumanized the vulnerable person and said, this is not my neighbor. And Christ was kind of making the point that no, this is your neighbor and you're called to sacrifice your life for him. Well, that's what we do, right? We need to dehumanize anybody we want to take advantage of. So we need to dehumanize. somebody of a different religion, somebody of a different race, in this situation, dehumanizing somebody who isn't breathing oxygen yet. I think that's pretty interesting that if you're saying, what you're saying is true, I haven't been following it that closely. Because I said, I'm just kind of OD'd on the situation. That's just my mea culpa. I am. But if the pro-choice movement is now admitting, hmm, no, that is a live person in there. That's really interesting to see that also follow on the heels of something else that the pro-life movement said for a long, long time. But I guess Planned Parenthood, which is sort of the beacon of the pro-choice movement, recently came out and said, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that was true all along. That Planned Parenthood was started by white supremacists to eliminate little black babies. Yes. And everyone thought, oh, that's ridiculous. No, no, no, that's the history. That's the history. And they finally came clean with that. Was it last year? They finally said, whoa, OK, yeah, it was. A lot about it forever. No, it's not. Showed all the documentations, quoting the founders. The dumbass, no, no, no. OK, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it seems like key things that have been used to justify the position are now not justified. OK, it is life. OK, it was racist initially. I find that interesting. Well, it is. And that's why, like I said, I always focus on the principle behind the principle behind something. And that's why I see a commonality between the slavery issue, the life issue, Nazism, you mean all these things. The first thing we do is we say that this person is not a neighbor in a biblical context. And once you can do that, then you can then you once you dehumanize, then you can do all the other things that you need to do. It's the strategy. That's what Hitler did. first thing he did was what? He said, these Jews ain't our neighbors, right? And then once that, they're not human. Once you do that, then you can, I can use their skin, I can use their hair, I can use their teeth, I can use their labor, I can use their, their body sexually. Once you do that, right? So that's the strategy. And you know, I think that we're sort of a canary in the mind, because this stuff has an impact. It changes the culture. You're going to tell me that what happened in Nazi Germany didn't change the whole culture? Right. course it does. And so that's why it's a clarion call for us to see things in this way and through a biblical lens. But we've got to also be there not to just declare this is my neighbor, but then we also have to provide the support mechanism because life decisions need life support. And that's a big part of what Care Net does through our ministry, through the Church, our Making Life Disciples ministry, folks can find it makinglifedisciples.com. The other thing that we're doing through our network of pregnancy centers, we're not just out there making a declarative statement, but we're also... talking about here's how you love your neighbor in the context of a very difficult pregnancy decision. Well, what Hitler did, did affect the culture. It's still affecting the culture. I was in Germany last year, I'm gonna go back to Germany a few months. It is still affecting the culture to this day. There are still battle scars on the psyche and the way people interact and just the hush. It's still there. And I'm so interested, it's so interesting to me how our culture, at this moment seems to dig up and cancel things. And yet plan paranormal definitely gets a pass on this. Like you can't, you can't start an organization that's, that's point is to eliminate brown babies. That's the point. We don't want brown babies around. We can't have any more. And the point of it is that you know, no, no, you can't start that. And no, you don't get to redeem that either later on in the current. American cultural context. It's interesting how that industry gets a pass. Well, it is. And I think the principle that I've, for me as a black person, which I really thought about is when you think about it in the context of nothing good can come from this. So black children are aborted a much higher rate, right? We're roughly 30, 35% of the abortions, even though black women are 6% of the population. So we are a 6% of the population. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on, hold on. I gotta let that sink in. Hold on. Black people are 35% roughly. Yeah. And the women represent six per Wow. Yeah, so we disproportionately, we're disproportionately, you know, aborting our children. And for me as a black person, when I talk to the black people say, hold on a second. Now, if in fact, we are aborting our children at a much higher rate, and society is supporting that. You got to link that back to what I said before, which is nothing good can come from. like that means the society agrees that on average a black baby right is more likely to be a net negative for the culture than a baby of another race I mean that's what you have to believe like like and if you're supporting that financially socially morally whatever you're basically say yeah that community has a much higher rate of abortion than the rest of the community yeah but we're not we're not gonna miss those kids I mean it's almost like this one woman for Giga Matthews green she has great illustrations she says if you came into a game preserve and you found that one species of animal or whatever or one type of animal was killing its young at a very high number what would you say you would say we got to figure out why this is happening this is not normal you wouldn't say well let's try to figure out how they can do it more efficiently I mean you you would question So if you see this happening in the black community at a much higher rate, then to me, you've got to question why is that happening and it's tied back to the fathered issue and all these other factors. But the point is, if society is cosigning and comfortable with a high percentage of black babies being aborted, it's not because society, I don't think that's worse for society, but it's because they think that's better for society and for anybody who's against racism or whatever. I mean, I don't see how you can kind of march in that parade and then go look at this and go like, oh, yeah, yeah, it matters with George Floyd when he can't breathe. But it doesn't matter when George Floyd when he's in the womb and he's trying to breathe. Like to me, to me, you're disconnected. If you're concerned about George Floyd there, I can't breathe. And you're not worried about George Floyd when he's in a womb, trying to have his first breath. Then to me, you're not consistent in terms of how you're thinking about the race issue. So as long as he's in the womb, we're good. But don't let him get out of the womb. So I just look at things with a consistent narrative, from womb to tomb, the same kind of thing in terms of vulnerability. And that's why, like I said, the principle behind abortion is nothing good will come for this child, for this family, for this woman, for society, for community. There's nothing good that can come from this child. That's why. we make that determination in an abortion decision. And that's a pretty, if you think about it, it's a pretty arrogant perspective for someone to have, given that we are finite in terms of our understanding of today, yesterday, and tomorrow. That's a pretty, we're outside of our, that's what's above our pay grade. Making that determination. So anyway. Yeah, Roland, this is, man, I made a real mistake getting ready for this, for our time together today. I thought to myself, man, I don't want to get into the hot topic of abortion. Even though it's part of why I wanted to have you here, I just wanted to look at a different angle, like a guy who's got different aspects of who he is other than being in the fight for life. And so I just kind of stayed away from a lot of those questions, wanting to get into it, but not really. And then once I started, I'm like, oh man, this is fascinating. This is, so this is now the longest. continuous recording of a podcast I've ever had dirt. I don't know what we're gonna do with this. I don't know. I know and I'm over 60 so I have to go to the bathroom. All right. I haven't sat this long. Hey, that's okay. Hang in there a minute. I'm done right now. I'm done right now. Hey, okay, here we go. Here we go. All right, aggressive life community. You know the normal spiel. This is not the interesting life. It's the aggressive life. We're here to do something. I don't know what you do with this one. I really don't know. I know some podcasts would say, so write your congressman. I don't know. Maybe you want to do that. I don't know. But there's some things we've talked about you could do. Like if you've got young boys in the house, you can start being a cheerleader for fatherhood. You can start casting a vision for them how great a family is, not just how great baseball and football and how great college is and how great money it is, how big the American dream is. You can start casting a vision for that. Maybe, maybe, Maybe an application for you is when you know somebody who has got a pregnancy that weren't planning, stepping up in the mix somehow, partnering with that person, being for that person. I've said before and I'll say it again, hey, if anybody's around a Crossroads church, that's my day job here, and you find yourself with a pregnancy that you didn't plan on, that you don't want, you can't afford, you don't wanna do it, call us. We'll cover you, call us, call us. We'll take, we'll care, we'll. We'll cover medical expenses. We'll walk through and figure out adopt. We've got plenty of people who would love to adopt. What were, that's one thing we would love to do. So maybe you can do that in your, in your own life. Maybe, maybe it's going to be how you, if you're, those are your men, how are you going to talk to your woman? How do you treating her? Are you treating her just like a, I don't know, there's deep stuff here that, that Roland's given us that, man, we've got to chew on this. So anyway, Roland's or anything else. You want to talk about that we haven't talked about? Yeah, as we go. As we go, yeah, I would just also encourage folks, please check out Care Net. It's care-net.org. That's where I work, my day job. And then also, makinglifedesiples.com. That's a ministry website that we have for, specifically for churches to help churches put a ministry in their church and connect with pregnancy centers. Life decisions need life support. And so there's a specific role for the church. So I hope you will check out one of those two sites or both of those sites to learn more about Karen and what we're doing. And this is really a call for the body of Christ to step into the gap. Life decisions need life support. And thinking about this issue through the great commandment and also the great commission is the way you should be thinking about the life issue. When you do it, takes it out of the political realm and puts it in the ministry realm and the call that Christ gave us, those two great bookends of our faith. So. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Roland, thank you for being patient with the meandering interview at times. I was trying to get my bearings. Thank you for being insightful in a topic that is often very bombastic and rarely level-headed. Thank you for being wise in your usage of words and the choices you've had. Thank you for being a great example and doing the things you did way back when you were 19 and 20. And and being a champion for it. Dude, you're a good man. I hope we get to be together live someday. And if you drink beer, we'll have some beers together. I'd love to. You're a good man. And we can- Thank you, thank you. By God's grace, man. And I appreciate what you do as well. All right, good. Oh, hey, we'll see you next time on The Aggressive Life. Hey, thanks for listening. For all things aggressive living, why don't you head over to bryantome.com, find my new book, Move, A Guide to Get Up and Go Forward, as well as articles and much, much more. And no matter where you listen to podcasts, why don't you take a second and leave us a rating, leave us a review. It really, really helps us drive new listeners to show we wanna help as many people as possible, just like we may have helped you, we wanna help others. So why don't you help us out. If you want to connect, find me on Instagram, at Brian Tome. Aggressive Life with Brian Tome is a production of Crossroads Church, Cincinnati, Ohio.