How to Keep Your Cool When People Attack Your Catholic Faith w/Steve Ray

[Music] welcome to catholic feedback i'm your host keith nester on this podcast we connect the eternal truths of the catholic faith with everyday life send in your questions and comments to feedback at catholicfeedback.com this podcast is brought to you by down to earth ministry a ministry of stewardship a mission of faith and by the generous support of our patrons for more information please visit downtoearthministry.org that's down the number two earthministry.org let's get to it welcome to catholic feedback with keith nestor i'm your host this is an incredibly amazing day for me this is like one of those days that you know sometimes you think things in your life and your faith come full circle well this is like full circle and then another half a lap around because today on our podcast i have a special guest a a man who he's no stranger to catholic podcasts and different things you i'm sure you're all going to know who he is but for me he's a a special person in my life even though we've never really sat down and had a conversation this will be our first really extended conversation but this is a man that god has used to to um work mightily in my life and i consider him one of the key players and why i became catholic and i've even written about this in my book and i've talked about it a lot in my testimonies but today on the podcast we have none other than catholic apologist steve ray with us so welcome steve to the podcast i'm so happy that you're here thank you thank you very much keith good to be here and i love seeing enthusiastic manly young guys like you grabbing a hold of the faith and running with it it just it does my heart good well i'm i'm excited that you said um young uh because uh my kids remind me every day that i'm getting old but uh you know i'm just i'm fired up for the faith and i think that's one of the things that attracted me to you because when i would watch your talks about the eucharist and about the papacy i always sensed in you like you have this fire and this passion in the way that you live your faith and the way that you talk about your faith i was i remember just being instantly drawn into that and it's super awesome well um i've always ever since i was 17 i was raised in a baptist family and i always appreciated my baptist tradition and the bible but it was in 17 years old back in the hippie days this was back in the late 60s early 70s so you'll see how old i am yeah you mentioned your kids telling you you're old wait until your grandkids tell you oh my goodness i have 18 of them now 18 grandkids um two of them are going to be 18 and then two weeks so that that makes me feel old but anyway when i was 17 years old i was a long-haired hippie kid bell-bottom blue jeans and i remember hearing billy graham on the radio and i snuck out the back door of the house and i walked down the old country road that i lived on then and i said jesus i'm only 17 years old and i'm a rebellious hippie but tonight i'm going to give my whole life to you and that was the most important day of my life and it set the trajectory like a rocket ship taken off and that set the trajectory for my life and i've never left that but and and over time i mean became an evangelist and a bible teacher and everything else now when i was 39 i like to say that when i was 17 god jesus introduced himself to me personally and when i was 39 he said okay now it's time for you to meet the family and brought me into the catholic church i love that that that is so awesome um and you know one of the things that i think converts a lot of times there's so many things that we don't know we're gonna love about being catholic and to me we get into the church we know we're gonna love the eucharist we know we're gonna love um you know maybe even the liturgy or whatever but i find that there's so many things that are unexpected that we go wow i didn't know how did i ever live without this and the whole idea of the saints and the intercession of the saints and that family aspect isn't it incredible fashion is one of those things too confession who's going to think that you would enjoy going in fact i've always hated confession and i hate it more now than i did before but who wants to go in and sit down in front of a man looking right in the eye and tell them all the stupid things you thought and your sinful things you've done i don't i have some pride i don't like doing that but then again there's nothing i love better i love going who would have ever dreamed that i would say that i love confession but coming into the catholic church and going in there it's kind of like being very cathartic and just cleans you right out and come out of there i feel like i'm floating on air every time i come out of confession so all these things about the church that you fall in love with that you may not even know you're going to fall in love with until you actually get there i love that isn't that amazing i mean when you think about it like the church i i like to look at it like it's a treasure chest and of course i always think back to that that um example in matthew where jesus talks about the man who had the the treasure in the field and he digs up he buys everything or he sells everything that he owns to buy the field and then it says that in his joy he digs that treasure and i think two things i think number one he's got to work for it because the treasure wasn't just sitting there he had to dig for us and there's that element of of um the effort that we put into to our faith you know i know we get accused a lot of you know you catholics have to earn your salvation or you work for your salvation which which you know we could talk about that but the idea that it's true that we have to invest ourselves in the exploration of our faith but when we do it says that he had joy and he wasn't this miserable guy he he had joy in what he was doing and i think that's something that a cop that i think converts can really relate to if they've done that they're like wow what is the magic is good imagine finding a treasure chest full of gold coins in your backyard if you're not excited about that you're dead and the catholic church i think is the church is the best kept secret in the world and to discover it you get a whole lot better than gold you get eternal life amen well the the idea for what i want to talk to you about sort of the framework of this is how to keep your cool when people attack your catholic faith and the reason why i wanted to ask you specifically about this and i do want to i want our listeners to hear a little bit more about how you came to be a catholic when you said the lord 39 introduce you to the family and i can imagine and i've heard some of your talks about this but you were a pretty passionate anti-catholic uh guy for a while i remember hearing stories about you with like a luther t-shirt and leading tours around germany you know i can't even imagine what it was like for you to make that shift but let's just tell everybody briefly like how did that happen like what what made you become catholic well uh my wife started it actually because we went to a baptist church one sunday morning like we always did and she got in the car and said on the way home i can't listen to that man preach anymore and call it worship she said it's not the kind of worship god wants i have all of the sermons of um the great uh baptist preacher um i'll think of his name oh come on i think of his name but anyway he's the great one of the greatest baptist preachers ever that'll come to me i'm getting old like i said and he said in one of his sermons that there is no form of worship that is higher than a good sermon that's the highest form of worship is to listen to a good sermon so my wife's intuitively knew that was wrong says something's not right well we that started the whole thing um we began to see the problems with protestantism what is the source of authority we said bible alone and yet all of my friends we couldn't agree on what the bible said and how to interpret it we had we think we'd get together and we'd argue the whole time about verses in the bible we could what about morality or contraception masturbation abortion all these things you know who says that they're wrong doesn't say that in the bible and if it doesn't say it in the bible then it's not wrong so with the bible alone you can do but pretty much anything you want and we started to realize there was a lot of problems within protestantism and disunity and fragmentation and we came to a point in 1993 where we almost became agnostic i do a whole hour conversion story while i explain these problems and what how we began to experience them and so after um a period of time a good friend of ours named al cresta we were best friends for 12 years he drops his bomb on us one sunday afternoon steve shelley and i are going to return to the catholic church of my youth oh he was a protestant pastor he was a evangelical radio talk show host we studied the bible together we homeschooled our kids together we did that this was like the most stupid thing i've ever heard in my life and i remember saying hell that's the stupidest thing i've ever heard in my life you're way too smart to be a catholic what are you thinking well my wife and i then started to really look into it more from the standpoint of trying to prove to him he's wrong than to discover anything on our own and for us i have all i have was so staunchly evangelical all of our friends were evangelical protestants that if you'd ever said you're going to become a catholic i would have told you you you're going to the nut house and you're insane and i would could have never dreamed myself doing that but as this started to happen i remember being terrified by it because it was making sense as we started to read the fathers of the church these are the guys that twisted my arm behind my back and i write about them in my book crossing the tiber i tell the story of how the fathers of the church because they didn't have a new testament yet they still had the words of the apostles ringing in their ears that's what they knew and they believed in the things the catholic church believed in the real presence of christ and confession to confession of sins and all the things that we practice as catholics the early church did even though it may have been in a grain a seed form it was there but at the same time keith i was i've always been a rebel i've always been counter cultural i never have followed the crowd and if i see the crowd going somewhere i'll go the other way and i thought you know what there's no way to be more rebellious and more counter cultural than to be a catholic in today's age if you want to really when my son came to me when he was 16 he's almost 40 now he's got eight kids but when he was 16 he says dad i'm thinking of getting some body piercing here in the nose and you know earrings and get some tattoos and stuff and i said why he said to be like everybody else now i'm not commenting on tattoos because i like yours but i said why are you gonna do that and he said because dad i want to be different and i said yes everybody's getting tattoos you're not going to be different by getting that if you want to be different son be an authentic catholic and everybody's going to notice you and he took me up on it that kid took me up and i don't find it more catholic guy now so even though we were at a stage where my wife and i at the end of 1993 seems like a long time ago now but it still seems like yesterday i was scared about this whole catholic thing because we did not want to be catholic and we knew it would change our life and we'd lose all our friends and it would change our world but at the same time i couldn't think of anything more countercultural and radical than to do to become a catholic so eventually the radical side won wow so when you you know we're talking about what it's like when people attack your faith which i'm sure you went through that obviously you can't have not with your background and i know a lot of our of our listeners go through that because i get i get emails and messages from people all the time that are saying to me how do i deal with this like i'm being attacked and i remember for me you know it still happens but um what was it like for you to go from being like hostile towards catholicism to now you're on the other side you're receiving those questions and those those um you know points of fact or whatever that people were putting that you were putting towards other people now you're the one getting them what was that like for you for me it was exhilarating i've always been a combatant i've i've never been one that just wilts like a flower i i was exhilarated by my wife not so much she's a gentle gentle soul but i was exhilarated by it because i used to be on the other side and i knew their arguments better than they did so for them to come and challenge me the worst thing that can happen to an evangelical who attacks a catholic is to find out the catholic used to be an evangelical and knows the bible better than they do amen amen so when someone comes to me and says uh hey steve are you born again my first reaction is yes i love it they asked me the question because i used to ask people that question are you born again do you know you're going to heaven if you died today and god said why should i let you into my heaven what would you say and the catholic would always go uh i haven't killed anybody but for me now on the other side i knew the arguments i used to teach classes on how to convert catholics so now to be a catholic i understood their arguments i understood the bible i knew how they think so for me it was very exhilarating and at the same time and i know when when you're young and when you've discovered something i also was very passionate like you said earlier and i wasn't quiet about things so i did make waves and i regretted some of them with my family especially my older brother i did it when i first became a christian at 17. i went right to my brother and told him he's going to hell and he needs to get saved you know you know the drill yeah you got to tell everybody now when i become catholic i was a little older but i was still now just as excited and i went and told everybody they had to leave the evangelical church and become catholics because that's the fullness of the faith so i burned some bridges back then so what we're talking about today i've learned the hard way yeah i think you know i talk about this a little bit too sometimes that you know and i i heard this originally this term with from calvinists they talk about the cage phase you know when a person becomes a brand new calvinist you gotta lock him in the cage for a year before you let him talk to anybody because you know i had buddies of mine when we were younger that discovered calvinism and now it was like all they wanted to talk about were these doctrines of calvinism whatever and i remember feeling like dude whatever you know i don't care about that but it was everything was boom boom boom and i think sometimes for for catholic converts for new people we can wind up in that place too and and i think it's important to to walk that line of being able to engage people and defend your faith but at the same time not but winding up in in situations where you're going to regret later so like how do you know how do you know when someone is just too hostile to engage with them i mean is there ever a point because i i i know you can go toe-to-toe with anybody and you probably wouldn't back down but do you ever find yourself like in front of somebody or somebody's just interacting with you maybe it's online or through an email or whatever where you're just like okay this is just too much because let's face it a lot of the people listening to this aren't going to be i know i'm not you know that we're not going to be nearly the level of apologists that you are and be able to just grab church father quotes and and scriptures off the top of our heads so is there ever a point when you just look at someone who's trying to engage you with hostility and say yeah we're not doing that um when i was younger as a catholic i usually didn't back off and i have to say that's where i it's like lifting weights if you're a wimp and you want to not be a wimp anymore you go to a gym and you start exercising the more you lift the weights the stronger you get there was probably a period of 10 years that i'd take on any comers even if i thought i might lose i'd learn i'd get stronger from it and i really have to say that's how i learned apologetics i i have a lot more to learn and i've forgotten a lot that i have learned i'm not i'm not my head's not in the clouds i'm i'm very realistic about what i don't know still and what i have forgotten even and but i do have to say that over time that's how i learned i would and one of the things that catholics hesitate to talk to people is they're afraid they're going to get asked a question they don't know how to answer i think that's the number one fear that keeps us from sharing our faith and the church with people what if they ask me this i don't know those bible verses i don't know that quote from the father so i'm just going to shut up well first of all we can learn those things and that's what we should be doing we should be learning those things like lifting weights like getting into a gym and working on it because it may be your grandkids or your kids that ask you the question you darn well better have the answers because well dad doesn't even know so i'm gonna leave we it's it's incumbent on us to know we are required to know even if love of our own family but i in those years even if i didn't know the answer we catholics have to realize that there's no shame in saying you know that's a really good question i don't have the answer for that right now but i know there are answers so let's have a cup of coffee or a beer next week and i'll tell you the answer now first of all you are not on the spot to give an answer right now your interlocut interlocutor that's i didn't say it right but your question or your opponent there will respect you for having the honesty to say you don't know and they'll be anxious to hear what you have to say so then you go home and you've got a week study do your homework on that topic get ready come back and and then you may he may knock you over again good i'll come back in another week this is how we learn so is there times where i've walked away or did it i remember a lot of times that i would if it was a personal thing i realized i used to write letters if people go on my website catholicconvert.com i've got letters on there that are some of them 200 pages where i i had more time back in those days than i do now and if someone would write me an email i would write them back and answer and sometimes it was a long answer and usually i never heard back from them but i learned that way and i made material that other people can use now i've got hundreds of documents on my website under catholic convert dot com resources that people can print out and read and use they're free but there were times where then i realized i'm wasting my time with this person this person is not listening this person is talking to me but he's not hearing a thing i have to say and the whole time i'm talking he's going waiting for his response now i've learned over time not to waste time with people like that i will say to them email or something you know i love you brother and i'm glad you care for my soul enough to want to convince me the other way but i'm really not interested in arguing with you right now but if you ever get to a point where you want to have an honest discussion let me know that's a good point you know because you can't really have it's sort of like watching a political debate sometimes where you recognize that the candidates aren't really engaging with one another they just have this list of things that they feel like they have to say and no matter what the question said to them is or no matter what the other person says that doesn't make a difference they're just going to go with my next point is someone could say you know when it comes to our our conversations about our faith if someone says to you and you're a catholic and they say well are you born again and then you go into this this explanation of the truth of yeah of course we're born again we invented that you know and and we we talked through then instead of engaging that they're just going to say well you know the bible says call no man father right they gave them they jump that's another point you've got to keep them on one topic say no no no we're talking about being born again let's go now there are times though keith where when i was at a con i i just traveled to the philippines six times doing big conferences uh six different times for some three weeks at a time my wife and i and we would have big auditorium sometimes of 5000 people many of those catholics in the philippines have been converted out of the catholic church and they are very rabid they are very angry and they want go right back after the catholics and the poor catholics in the philippines they're naive in a good sense they love the lord and they they've never been attacked before and so they come to the conference and they want to hear me and they want to be reaffirmed in their belief when they know is true so i'll give you one example when i didn't back down and i and normally i would not have even talked to this young man but i did it for the sake of the other 5 000 people sometimes you will do a conversation or a debate because other people are listening and you're doing it for them even though you know your debater isn't listening to you but you're doing it for us so this young man stood up at and yelled out in the middle of my talk you call the pope holy father and you're wrong because the pope is a sinner like everybody else and you're not supposed to call anyone father and he's a sinner so nobody should call him holy father and i said young man before you stand up and make a fool out of yourself in front of 5 000 people you really ought to get to know your bible a little better because that's what he's trying to say is i'm catholic and don't know my bible now he does and i said when you get to know your bible better you'll know that the word holy has two meanings not one one meaning is sinless and the pope is not the second meaning is to be consecrated or set apart for something it means that you're called and set apart for a purpose so the holy father is not holy in the sense of being sinless but he is holy in the sense of being called out and set apart for a special task and i said in you young man should also become holy and realize you've been called by god and you should really study your bible more before you stand up in front of all these people and make a fool of yourself well everybody in that auditorium got to their feet and applauded because they've never been defended like that they're attacked all the time nobody's ever defended them in public and they love saying hey catholics can do it he did it i may not be able to do it but i know i'm in the right place being a catholic now i didn't do it for that young man because he wasn't going to listen to me but i did that for the other people who were in the audience that's a great point that i don't think i've ever really thought about before is that sometimes sometimes the way we respond to people who attack us who are hostile towards our faith isn't about that person it's about who else is a part of that you know ecosphere of conversation or whatever which is also why you have to keep your cool and not lose your temper you have to be the one who's christ-like yeah you can be strong jesus was strong if you ask was jesus nice no he was not nice he went into the temple with a whip and he told the pharisees you snakes and vipers so jesus wasn't nice but he was honest and so but i have to be when i am talking to somebody i have to keep myself within certain parameters my own conduct yeah that that kind of goes to my next question which is what are some things catholics should avoid saying when they're challenged um do you do you have any insight on that as far as like well you sh you shouldn't call the other person stupid um yeah you shouldn't say you know what you're an ignorant buffoon so you don't want to insult people one of i i know that you're probably going to ask me this later too um what can we expect when people argue with us but you don't want to use ad hominem arguments right and what that means for people it's a fancy latin word that means an argument against the man like say you and i are debating something and you're getting the best of me so i say you know what keith you're ugly and you're stupid now that's an argument against the person and i'm not doing very good at making my point with you so my weakness shows when i start attacking you as a person and not the ideas that you're espousing and i think that's one of the things that we need to avoid doing is making it personal we should at any cost avoid making it personal and making it impersonal keeping it third person keeping the ideas ideas but not attacking that person i and i i think in my own experience that's something that when i've been attacked from my faith like i get attacked personally all the time like people and and the way it might sound like and for the listeners out there this could happen to you someone's gonna say you're a liar you're a deceiver those are ad hominem attacks yep right when someone you're a liar you're a deceiver you're a you know you're you're you're demonic you're whatever and you're a liar and a deceiver i mean i get that when people and i think that's something that we can't do i'm glad you brought that point up no we can't do that yeah and in a conversation when they do that you already know that you're probably wasting your time talking to this person at this moment because once the tempers rate once the the temperature raises and the smoke starts to fill the room then you know that really we we always say there's more smoke than light and more heat than light being generated and that's a point where you go over and you put your hand on their shoulder saying friend you know i really love you and the lord and i i think maybe we ought to take this up again another time maybe under certain different circumstances depending on where you i know that in my family i've learned a lot of this in my family because i have family members who are i wouldn't say atheists but they're non-believer new agers abortion's the best thing since sliced bread and let's get uh let's you know the whole liberal thing and then some who are still baptists and then here comes this new catholic contingency and so now we got these three armies around the dining room table and there's many times where my one of my brothers will come after me and i will and i have i've risen right up and say let's take it out in the park let's take it out in the driveway but we're not going to finish that in here if you want to finish this outside let's go outside for mom's sake and he's safe and i don't mind doing that at times just because i know my brother and i know that's what he's going to respect so he said oh okay okay i said i i know i'm not in a good position to go outside with you he said so what and i said good then why don't we just discontinue this conversation for now and i said and i was kind of tough on him that day i said you know the reason i win all the arguments is not because i'm a good debater it's because you have stupid positions and he doesn't argue with me anymore because he says you think through your thought you think through things you think about them and you know what you're so it's calmed the whole family down but there are times where i just said this is not a good place mom gets nervous when we do this this isn't a good place to discuss this now so there's always sometimes our tendency though especially us guys maybe more so than the ladies us guys we want to win the battle i mean we're in this thing we're punching i'm not going to back off i'm not going to be the loser in this battle i'm going to go to the mat but we have to remember sometimes it's better to lose an individual battle than to lose the whole war sometimes you can win a battle against someone today but you lost their soul and so i think we have to be wiser than jesus is wiser than serpents i think it is why serpents innocence is doves you know yes that's that's a good point you know i think about a lot of the hostile conversations that i found myself in you know i depending on who it is and depending on how we're going i can find myself getting real worked up and i'm sure a lot of the listeners can the same like because i think that our faith is such a personal thing to us especially if we've sacrificed for it if we've if we've changed our lives to become catholic and then and truth matters yeah and then people put us down and put our faith down it's just hard we're ready to fight for what's true yeah i am but i don't want to lose a soul in the process i remember and we should never lose our temper too that that can happen to us at times i remember my dad telling me stories when i was a boy he wouldn't get me a television by the way for father's listening out there if you want to do the best thing you can do for your kids is get rid of the television and read them stories instead at night my dad didn't get us a television and i didn't get my kids television and my grandkids don't have television my dad used to read me stories and he made up stories and he used to tell me about your temper don't ever lose your temper steve when you get older he said once there was a snake and he got in an argue with a man and the snake was much more powerful than the man and the man knew that he had to outsmart the snake because the snake could out muscle him so the man got the snake mad and he kept getting the matter in matter and the snake got so angry he tied himself all up in knots and then the man killed him he said don't ever lose your temper because if you do you will be the loser you'll tie yourself a nut you'll lose your temper and you'll lose and your opponent will win now that applies in business with your family in politics and it applies in religion as well so i've always maintained my cool and i always because my dad taught me that never lose your temper stay even and cool in a discussion i think that's really really important steve because i think sometimes people and i think everybody you know there's different types of people out there but i think sometimes people will engage you it's sort of like the bully on the school in the school yard they'll engage you just to see if they can make you lose your temperament oh sure and that's the point they're they're not trying to actually convert you they're they're just trying to they're just kind of like hey watch what i can do to this catholic guy you know they get mad because you don't get mad back yeah that's and that's the thing so so like if we talk about things not to do okay i think you said number one was ad hominem attacks so don't just attack the person and say something like you know and i think that there are there are ways that catholics do that i think that they don't really recognize it like for example if if a catholic person just says to a protestant well that's just because you're a heretic you know that that there might be elements of truth in that but it's probably not a good thing because you're still calling somebody a name but so no ad hominem attacks don't lose your temper and you know don't let it get personal right i mean those those are very and and i think even just those three things right there are enough for a lot of people to to um really really improve their interactions when they get into these hostile environments you know but i always tell people this an argument takes two people you don't and you don't have to be drawn into something if someone's just trying to bait you and mess with you because they think it's fun or they want to humiliate you or whatever you don't have to take that bait you can you can you know you can choose not to do that i i agree completely i i've told people like for example with jehovah's witnesses when they come to the door that the worst thing you can do with them is to act like you don't care about them or to say oh you're dumb or we don't believe in that because the jehovah's witnesses are taught that we hate them because they're taught to hate other people who are of another religion you can't listen to them you can't talk to them you are to you really are supposed to dislike them and they don't know how to handle love love is an argument that nobody knows what to do with so when a jehovah's witness comes to the door you go to go out of your way to let them know you love them and in an argument or discussion or a debate or a conversation they should know bottom line that you you are doing what you're doing because you love them not because you hate them or because you want to have an argument they come across because they're angry at you they hate you a lot of times but you've got to let people know that you love them i remember once when a lady came up in my face and she was so mad at me for being catholic in front of a bunch of people she started yelling at me you turned her she got right in my face like this and after about 30 seconds i just when she went her hand when i ducked and i went and i gave her a big hug and i kissed her on the cheek i surprised her and i said thank you for loving me enough to care to argue with me about this i said i appreciate that you love me that much and i love you too what did that lady do she turned as red as a beat she blushed and was embarrassed and i won that bout why not because i counteracted her arguments but because i loved her i hugged her and i kissed her on the cheek i don't this lady was not a lady that gets kissed off and i'll tell you so i think it took her by surprise and that was the end of that discussion and she'll she never knew what to do with me because that was the response i gave her so now i i think i told you ahead of time or your your assistant that i came up with a list of six rules for healing non-catholic family and friends and these six rules and i've made them seven now um i've added one since i wrote the article is that on your website because i was looking for that earlier i couldn't find it is it is it on there where is that on your web the art on your catholic community i'll send you the link to it okay because we'll link it in the description to this video so people can can check it out yeah it's it's called six rules for dealing with non-catholic family and friends it was published in catholic answers magazine great about 10 or 15 years ago actually and it's still one of the main most viewed documents on their website catholic answer so you might be able to find it just going to catholic answers website look in their documents and and uh steve ray it might show up but i'll send you the link it'll be down below and um but the first one is don't argue with people i'll just run through them really sure that's awesome yeah it kind of summarizes what we're saying is don't the number one is don't argue with people now i don't mean don't get into discussions don't even have heated discussions but when you see that it's not going anywhere or you're making an enemy or tempers are flaring it's better to discontinue the conversation end gently i love you thank you very much you know why don't we get together again when we can uh in a little more calm situation where family members aren't there where it's like a war let's so there's a time where you don't argue especially if it's a husband and a wife because one of the worst things that can happen is you could have become catholic and your wife duggar heals and says no i'm gonna stay at calvary chapel and then now how do you deal with your wife how do you two deal it's going to be very easy to take snipes at one another take pot shots at one another make fun of one another's ideas of their churches and so arguing is don't argue discuss love yes argue but you know when it's time to stop it the second one is to love the other person more than you've ever loved them before now i'll use the example of a husband and a wife if the wife is angry at her husband she'll go tell him to go sleep somewhere else and you go sleep somewhere else for the next 10 days you're being punished well you know that that doesn't help the husband and their relationship it actually puts people further off and i always say that especially in a husband and wife love your spouse more than you've ever loved them before be more love them with your whole being more than ever before if it's a friend or a family member love them more make sure that love is the predominant thing when they walk away from you saying you know if nothing else he loves me and then that's the important thing always display that love because that's the one argument you cannot argue against the number sec third one is to pray and make sacrifices we always say we're going to do that it's like a cliche oh yeah i'll pray about that i'll pray how many times do we really do it but we really make a point and i'm i say it this way make a list a chart make it in front of god here's my request and in this column is the date i made the request and now god in this column is the date you give me the answer i'm ready you said if you if i ask you'll answer if i seek i'll find well i'm doing that now and i'm putting you on the i'm putting you to the test here a little bit you know i had a great dad so i can relate to god that way i i have a good he's a wonderful father yeah he's to be feared too but he's a wonderful dad so okay god here's what i'm going to ask for for this family remember this one this one this one here's the date i ask it and i can't wait to fill in the third column when you do something about it and put and and be bold with god he doesn't want us to be wimpy be bold with god ask him tell him what you need tell them what you want the third one and and to really make sacrifice there okay i'm going to know that number four study and do your homework learn apologetics learn the bible verses that are going to be used against you learn where you can find the eucharist in the bible learn where you can find confession in the bible you need to know these things because just think how sad it would be if your own kid and this is the number one question i get what do i do about my kids that i paid tens of thousands of dollars for them to go through catholic school now they've all left the faith how tragic would it be if your son and daughter at 35 or 40 comes to you and says dad you know we're starting to think about this again why do you believe in the real presence of christ and you uh you know i really don't know how sad is that wow so if you're gonna pray for these people to come into the fullness of the faith you better darn well know how to answer their questions when they ask or say i don't know but we should learn so that's number four number five is show the joy of the lord in your life if you come home from mass and say that damn preacher he was just that priest he just went on and on and the people were very friendly and uh do you think anybody's gonna want to become a catholic and go to church with you never if you're scowling all the time and you never have any joy you're always angry because the pope said this or vatican 2 was that come on come on don't you realize that people are attracted to joy they're attracted to pleasure happiness if you have the joy of the lord people are going to say what was he smoking whatever he's been smoking i want some of that well i'll tell you what it is i'm a catholic and i love the lord and i love going to mass and being with god's people and hearing the word of god and receiving christ into my own body then people say well i want to go there what you mean it's that cool then so show the joy and the enthusiasm about the faith number six be patient god's not gonna do it today with your family member with your friend you're not gonna win the argument today necessarily give god time give him patience when i look back at me if anybody had tried to come and tell me to quit being a protestant be a catholic i would have said get away from me but over time the patience of the lord it says consider the patience of the lord to be your salvation the bible says so give god time you know there's even keith we may not even see the answer to our prayer we may be dead and gone before god actually brings the answer to the prayer of some of our family members but then last number seven is the most important one ask god to bring somebody else into your family's life to your member friend because they're never going to listen to you but ask god to bring somebody else to influence them and they'll listen to them and that works man you have said so many things in there that as you're going through that list i think yep yep that's huge that's huge because for me like i'm in that spot man i mean my kids i came into the church three years ago my kids were the preachers kids you know and and when we came in my wife came with me but my kids they weren't into it they they came to mass with us a few times just because they didn't know where to go or what to do and that you know they're older i couldn't just basically say kids now we're all catholic but i you know i wanted them to experience that and they came to mass a few times and they were just like we don't get this we don't understand why this is going on we don't like it and now they're just like they don't want anything to do with it and i'm trying to do everything that you've said in the midst of that to to help them because you know i know a lot of people ask me the same question they ask you how do i get my kids in this and a lot of those things that you talked about that's exactly what we need to do and i think depending on who we are we'll struggle with one or the other we might be really good at going oh sweet he said go find the answers i've got all the answers but i'm really aggressive and angry all the time and i just send everybody articles and videos and and i'm always beating them up well no you gotta have patience and you get frustrated when it doesn't happen right now and a lot of times what we do when we find something exciting and new you mentioned preachers kids pks and they are always known in my past as the worst kids in the church because dad spends all his time with the other families and ignores his own kids so the pks the preachers kids tend to be the worst but i i know families that have become catholic and either a husband or a wife they start going to daily mass they start praying three rosaries a day they start joining men and women's groups they start marching in front of the abortion and they're never home because they're doing all these new things and the kids feel neglected the wife feels neglected the husband feels neglected if the wife's doing it and it's almost as that the wife or the husband has found a new lover that now is in competition with the spouse or the kids say dad doesn't really love me he's found this new club he's a part of and dad loves the new club more than he does me so i always said that when you become a catholic don't let the parish eat you alive because they're going to try to get you to sign up for everything under the book they're going to get you to want to do this and do that and we want to do it because man we want to be good catholics we want to help the parish but don't do it to the detriment of your family i i remember when i first started going to my men's group which i love i was i was like why is it that catholics have flyers for everything it was like and every time i turn around somebody's like here here's a flyer for this we're you know we're gonna go bird watching here's the flyer we're gonna go do this here's a flyer we're gonna and i remember walking in like i'm like i need to just bring a folder with me for all the flyers i'm gonna collect and i remember one time i was gonna do something at the church i didn't remember what it was but it was something really simple and i was telling somebody in the leadership and they're like okay well we need the information so we can make a flyer and i was like no we don't need any more flyers there's too much you know sometimes it's it's so that that's a great point steve is the fact that in our catholicism that can't be the thing that takes us away from our families we have to practice our faith but if you spend all your time doing stuff at your parish and you're never with your wife you're never with your kids and then oh and you go well i invited them i had to ask them to come well of course they're not going to come they don't they don't understand that they're not going to want to be involved in that i think sometimes the mistake that we make is we think that because we're into this catholic stuff because we've experienced the truth now every little thing that the church does that we're interested in they should want to be a part of it too and when they're not it can be frustrating i remember when i took my sons to to see all these relics that were coming through you know and we had the tour of the relics and this guy came with this priest came with and and i remember telling my my boys i'm like hey i want you guys to come check this out and they were sort of like what so i actually convinced them you know i'm like all right they're going to come so we came to the church to to look at the relics but instead of looking at relics we heard an hour and a half presentation first and they were just looking at me like dad why did you do this to us why now they were good they and they they made it through and they went down and they looked at it and they they didn't you know hate it but sometimes we have to be we have to understand look you can't push all this stuff on your family when i took our kids to see the relics and things i said now this is going to be kind of morbid guys because we catholics are a morbid bunch we're going to go see a bunch of body parts we collect people's body parts what are you talking about what are you talking about i said it is it's our hall of fame well it's super cool you know it is super cool that we still have these and then we look at them and say we want to be like them they inspire us but i i think that we also when dealing with kids and people we have to be a little bit radical and and put things in a new light that they're not used to yeah make things exciting where they're not um they don't find new ways to describe things i remember the boy that wanted me to be his confirmation saint uh he wanted you to be his confirmation he wanted me to be his sponsor i was like wow nobody's going to ask me to be there saint not yet and uh i remember saying no i wouldn't do it because i'm too busy i had my own kids and stuff and the lady said well would you just meet with them one day and i said sure but i knew what i was going to do because i don't do things normal like anybody else so i knew when that boy was coming i had just bought a roman helmet when i made one of my movies and i just bought a three foot sword a real double-edged sword i could cut a head off with that if i got the momentum they'd go right off it's a real sword not a toy so when i knew that boy was coming over to my house i went out on the on the front porch and i put that helmet on and i put the sword in my scabbard on my belt and my wife pinned a red blanket a sheet over on one shoulder and i looked just like a roman centurion and i waited in this in the shadows of my front porch and when that kid came up the steps i jumped out with a sword and i go and i pushed that kid against the wall of my brick wall i said matthew are you ready to die for jesus right now if not don't waste my time i'm a busy man if you're not ready to die for jesus right now you're not ready to be confirmed buddy let me know that right now and i put the throat you know like this and he said i will i can i do that made more of an impression on that kid that's family said everybody he talked to for a year he said told them the story of the sword on steve ray's front porch but that kid will never forget what it means to be confirmed and i think we really need to present things and argue or share things with people different than they're expecting to hear something more interesting you know that's a okay that's that's a great point and i think would make an incredible article if you haven't already written one but like more examples because i'm thinking of so like one of the other questions i have is how can we help people prepare for these for these um hostile conversations and i think you've already said so many things that everyone's probably grabbing something right now so i feel like we're we've got a lot to to take from that so yeah i mean it's important to think about how we can put things in different ways i remember for myself like a new way for me to think about like the virgin mary was to think about her as the new eve and the new ark of the covenant and when i began to like think about that and learn about that and know that that was like part of the church teaching it's like oh now i understand where the immaculate conception comes from where the assumption comes from you know because we're still we're stuck and a lot of our protestant brothers and sisters are still stuck in this world where they're just like well show me the chapter and verse where it says that and we have to think deeper than that and come up with new ways i like to even not do it in that and also other ways what was mary and joseph what were they really like mary was only a 15 year old girl well now all of a sudden all the young teenage girls their ears pick up because what do you mean she was only 15 and i said and she didn't look like what she looks like in the pictures you see her with her hair just done out of the beauty product her fingernails are all just done i said this girl was 15 years old she carried the water from the well every day she had flies buzzing around her head she was walking up to her ankles in manure and mud all the way back and forth to the well joseph was not a carrying flowers around joseph could pick you keith up anytime he wanted and throw you over a wall if you wanted to joseph was a manly man he was a tough man and i think we present these saints as as flower children as sissies and i don't they weren't joseph and jesus and mary were some of the toughest people you'd ever want to meet they lived a rugged life they worked as carpenters humping rocks around that's what jesus and joseph they work with rocks these guys were manly men but we know we make a big mistake at presenting them very feminine and effeminate but i don't believe we have to present things we don't change the gospel but we have to find interesting creative ways to inspire people to want to think about it that's that's awesome and i i think that's a great topic for a book or an article or something or a video maybe i mean i'm sure you've got a lot of things going on we'll talk about that in a minute but add that to your list steve like 55 cool ways to say things in a different way to engage your protestant brother and says i don't know maybe it could be cool sometimes when i'm doing these conversations with people it's like we start brainstorming on different ideas but i love that i think that's really cool so man we've said so much or you've said so much about how to engage with people who are hostile i just want to follow up by by just saying look here's the deal everybody this isn't something that you're going to be able to avoid and understand this is part of what christ meant when he said that i've come not to bring peace but a sword division you can't walk around with the fullness of the gospel and the fullness of the truth in a world that's so hostile toward it and of course we could talk also about why is it that the catholic faith gets attacked so strongly by everybody it's like what unites everyone against what unites people that hate each other is they hate us worse you know sometimes and i know it can really feel like that but i want to just encourage you all to remember what steve said remember the the idea of of loving people and and just learning some things in your faith and having that patience and perseverance to pray to get through it's not always going to be easy and you're going to have plenty of times when you walk away from a conversation you go man i blew it you know i blew it i mean that happened to me last week you know and i'm just like oh i have to go back now to this person and and try to fix this and it's okay but at the same time you don't have to be somebody's punching bag either you don't have to because because you love jesus and you're a catholic you don't have to sit back and just take garbage all the time you can choose to engage in ways that can be helpful and useful or you can choose to just walk away and not be involved in that it's it's okay it's okay um but steve you've been you've been so so awesome today tell us a little bit um what else you've been working on lately i know you're the pilgrimage guy but tell us about what that's looked like in the middle of a pandemic for you well because of all the virus stuff going on we are grounded for a year we are one of the last groups out of israel before the world shut down and but we have eight trips planned for next year five of them going to israel one st paul cruz one trip to ireland and we're following the marian shrines through portugal spain and france lourdes and fatima wow so we're we're going to get back in the air next year um i'm working on my book on genesis it's going to be a commentary on genesis which is very unique i don't think there's anything like it in the catholic world so that'll probably be out in a year it's going to take a year to get the final editing and everything done but one of the things i'm excited about right now keith is that on january 8th through the 10th coming up january 8 through 10 i started something called a uh it's a virtual catholic bible conference and it's the title of it is take and read a journey into the bible and it's going to be free for those three days and i've got the best speakers in the country i've got over 50 speakers that are going to be part of this conference it's all going to be virtual so you can get on your on the computer and you can walk in and hear scott hahn give his talk jeff cavins father uh um chris allar father mitch pacqua kimberly hahn's gonna do a talk on how to introduce your children to the bible wow i've got so i've got 50 plus talks that are going to be going on during that weekend and it's and it's all free i'm going to have how to use bible software to study the bible what bible catholic bible study programs are out there for people to use how do i get started reading the bible i'm scared of the bible it's a big big book what do i so we got everything bible for the catholic coming up and it's it's gonna be great so i'll give you the link for that if you can put it on your podcast absolutely i'll put it in the description and you better believe i'll be watching that that's incredible and uh people can sign up now register now and then you'll be all set to go for free during that weekend wonderful wonderful those are just some of the things we're doing and your website is just convert dot com just catholic catholic convert dot com yes yeah catholic dot com it's everything's there it's it's like the hub of a wheel when you go there you'll see pilgrimages you'll see resources my stores i get all my books and movies you see uh conversion stories they've got hundreds of conversion stories yeah we've got if you want to take a pilgrimage to ireland and you don't have money to go go to my pilgrimage site all the pilgrimages we've done in the last year there's two hour movies of those pilgrimages you can watch them and join them virtually wow and of course you have this book upon this rock yep which is and then this one i really encourage people too this is my conversion story yep i have that in the other room yeah this is the one where i go through all the reasons why and the fathers of the church and how we argued with protestants and so on so a lot of fun it's been a good being with you keith keep up the good work thank you steve god bless you thank you so much for your ministry and just for like you know what you what you the role you played and you know you didn't even really know but the role that you played in my in in my journey the is the lord's work you know and that's the thing you gotta remember it's like like you said earlier we if we live our faith passionately and we do the work that god's called us to do we're not always going to see everything it's not always going to happen right in front of us but that doesn't mean that it's not being used and and you know the the the way that god used you in my story was was a ripple that um you know has meant everything to me so i thank you for your yes i thank you for your for your ministry for getting in a car and driving to milan illinois and giving a talk you know because i mean there's a lot of other places you could be obviously with going overseas so much and different things but you've still taken time to fly around the country and give talks in parishes and and do all this stuff and i just want you to know from my perspective like that's huge and i really really appreciate you and your ministry and i i encourage all my listeners to follow you and support you and and if you've always wanted to go on a pilgrimage you know this is the guy to take with you or to go on his trip so and one word of encouragement with family and friends we've all made mistakes in the past we've all burned bridges but remember today is the first day from now on love the family love your family and show the enthusiasm of the lord because kids love what their parents love they will always come back in time just be a good example be don't push love be a good example be excited about it and kids will love what their families love and in time god will bring them all back but to remember tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your relationship together so it's a whole brand new start amen well i want to thank all of you for watching this episode of catholic feedback and if you have a question that you'd like me to tackle send it to me at feedback at catholicfeedback.com i'm so appreciative of those of you that take time to write those questions out so that we can connect the eternal truths of the catholic faith to everyday life and that's certainly what we've done here today and i'm so grateful and thank you and and thankful for all of those of you who've watched and shared this episode god bless every single one of you and i want to thank you my dear brothers and sisters for being a part of what god's doing here at catholic feedback so once again thank you to steve and we'll look forward to seeing you guys here next week for another episode of catholic feedback take care and god bless you

Channel: Keith Nester

Views: 32,304

Rating: 4.9528422 out of 5

Keywords: Keith Nester, Catholic Feedback, Catholic, Catholic Podcast, Catholic Talk Show, Catholic Radio, Catholic TV, Catholic Show, Taylor Marshall, Matt Fradd, Mike Schmitz, Robert Barron, Catholic Answers, Catholic Stuff You Should Know, Church Militant, Bishop Barron, Unpacking the Mass, Rosary Crew

Id: P2v8nIhR8w8

Length: 58min 26sec (3506 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 05 2021