Prophecy, Revelation, & the Spiritual Battle | John Rich | EP 470

He says, "I stand at the door and knock, and if any man hears my voice and opens the door, I'll come in with him. I'll sit down with him." If you hear him knocking on that door and you walk up, you open it, and you let him in, that is what that means; you have invited him into your house. Let's call your body this is my house. He won’t knock forever. At some point, if you reject him long enough, it says he’ll just turn you over to your desires and go, "Well, we gave it a good shot. Move on." It's very simple. You don’t need a preacher. You don’t need a priest. You don’t need anybody. Open the door.

Hello everybody! So I had the privilege of speaking with musician John Rich today, and we really focused on a new song he released called “Revelation.” I guess we hit that from two different perspectives because by John’s testimony, the song came to him like a revelation—the lyrics and the music sort of pre-made. And that’s a fairly common phenomenon among expert musicians, and I wanted to delve into the psychological preconditions for that to occur. It's a very religiously oriented song, and so we talked about his movement away from the typical studio musician relationship and his foray into being an independent musician, why that happened, and what it meant. How it freed him up creatively.

We also talked about the psychological and theological or spiritual implications of the song because the song itself, "Revelation," is a revelation of the Spirit of the book by that name. So we talked about all of that and the personal elements of it too because Rich regards himself as somewhat of a prodigal son who went way out as a young man into the domain of extreme temptation and then straightened out his life. And so we also discussed why he did that and how he realized that that was necessary and what that has meant to him as a man, as a father, as a musician, and as an agent of public influence as well. So join us for that.

Hello, sir. Well, we might as well jump right into this. I listened to your song “Revelation” three or four times on the way over here, and I guess I'm kind of curious. You made some references to it making the case that it came kind of came to you in a way that was different. If I understand properly, it was different from many of the songs that you've written. So you want to lay out the structure of the song for people who haven't heard it yet, and then we can talk about the inspiration behind it and also what it is that you're trying to either understand or convey.

Well, first of all, thanks for having me on. I've watched you a long time, and I've written over 2,000 songs in my career. So I’m 50; I started right on the road at 19 years old. So I've got 31 years of being on the road and writing songs and making music videos and all those things. This particular song, it was November of 2023, minding my own business, not thinking about writing a song of any type, much less this one. And out of nowhere, it felt like almost like a wave hit me from behind, like something you didn't expect. It felt like a hammer hit me in the back of the head, and I had this melody with these lyrics rolling with it firmly implanted in my mind. Almost like a download that hit my brain.

It was saying, “Oh, Revelation! I can feel it coming like a dark train running. Oh, get ready because the King is coming— the King is coming back again.” And it just was rolling over and over, almost like when you've heard a song before and it gets stuck in your head. That’s what it felt like, except this song didn’t exist, except it’s stuck in my head and rolling. So I thought, “Okay, I guess I should probably write this down.” I mean, the hair on my arms was standing up at that point. So I pulled a guitar off the wall, grabbed a pencil, grabbed a notepad, went to a quiet room in my house, and I sat down and started to write what I was hearing in my head. Wrote the chorus first and then spent some time writing these verses, and not very much time; the song “Revelation” was written.

Well, that’s when you, as a songwriter, pull out your iPhone, you turn on the voice notes because you don't want to forget what you just played. So you make a little work tape, is what we call it in Nashville. You turn on the record button, and I sang it into the phone, then put my earbuds in and just walked around the house listening to it over and over and over again. And I had this just this like basically chills all over myself hearing this thing coming back because I felt like I didn’t even write that. Truly, that’s what it was like. Where did this come from? How did why did this happen? Where did it come from?

And after about an hour of listening to it, I walked over to the window of my house and looked up and I said, "What do you want me to do with this? Because this is not a hit song; this is not something you would write ever. And if you did, you definitely wouldn’t probably put that out." What do you want me to do with it? Because I knew where it came from. And the message I got back, the phrase that hit me was, “Take it all the way to the mat, take it all the way.” Meaning what I took from that was every bit of skill you’ve got, every bit of know-how you have over these past 30 plus years, make that audio as great as you possibly can and make a video that is as compelling as you can possibly come up with, and when you get those two things done, blast it out to the world as wide and as far and as loud as you possibly can. That was the task I felt like I’d been tasked with.

So I wrote the song in November; in February of 24, we shot this video. Which, if people haven't seen this video, I urge you to after this interview to go find it. It's just look up John Rich “Revelation,” and you'll find it. The video is depicting spiritual warfare; it's depicting what's going on on the other side of what the Bible calls the veil. If you could see on the other side of the veil, what would that look like? What would it look like to see good and evil actually battling it out outside of the physical realm? So the video is actually my attempt, anyway, of showing people what it would look like if that was happening.

So we got that done, and then the thought was, “Okay, how do we get this out there?” Because I don’t have a record deal; I don’t have a publishing deal; I don’t work for anybody, doctor; nobody, which I used to think was a bad thing. You know, when you grow up your whole life, and you're American Dream is, “I want to land a big record deal. I want to be on country radio. I want to write hit songs,” which I did all those things. And so to not be on a record label, to step away from that industry at the time seemed like a terrible thing. But what I’ve realized, especially with a song like “Revelation,” is that if I still had a record deal, if I was still answering to a big company, this song would have never been heard by anyone. They would have taken this song, shoved it off on a shelf, and said, “Okay, cool song, John. What else you got?” They would have never promoted this.

So I don’t have that physical machine behind me, but I do have a spiritual machine behind me. And I did what He told me to do. He gave me the song; He told me to make it as great as I could. I did that. Then He said, “Blast it out there.” So I did that. So at that point, I said, “All right, what’s on you now? Do what you will. You're my booking agent and you're my marketing director. So have at it, boss.” And next thing I know, doctor, this thing has got millions and millions of views. Tucker Carlson is calling; I'm going on his show. People like yourself start reaching out going, “Hey, let's talk about this for a minute.” And then online, it’s unbelievable what has happened with this.

And I think that speaks to the nature of where it came from, that it was thrust upon me. Trust me, it’s somewhat of an unnerving experience to take a song like that about that subject and just blast it right out, especially knowing how our culture works these days and how much pushback you're going to get from people or look at you funny or whatever. But nevertheless, I was told to do it, so I did it.

So that brings us to this conversation where, to me, this song is what it is, and it says a lot. I mean, it says a whole lot. And we can go through those lyrics; what it’s really done is it crowbarred the door open just enough where we get to have the big conversation. The really big—more than just a three-and-a-half-minute song, we get to go in-depth now and talk about what that song really means and where we really are today. Well, let’s do that.

I got a couple of questions from what you just said, but then I would like to walk through it lyric by lyric and discuss that. I think that would be very, very interesting. I do some piano improvisation for what it’s worth, and one of the things I've noticed that's quite strange is that if I haven’t played for a while and I sit down, I usually have something new right at hand. It’s as if there’s something operating in the background that's continually working that I’m not really aware of but that's available. Like, I only play, I suppose, every couple of weeks because I'm on the road so much and moving around. But there is a stream of melody that’s running in the back of my mind; it appears to be constant in some ways because it’s there when I play. And that’s interesting; it’s interesting to speculate about why that might be the case.

You said with this song that it was both melody and lyrics that came to you, and you said that that was different from other experiences of musical writing you’ve had. So I would like to know how it differed. But I’d also like to know there’s something else you said that’s quite curious, which is that when you wrote the song—and perhaps at the moment, I don’t know your contractual arrangements at the moment—but that you’re not beholden to any record label or any industry. And so I guess one of the things you might suppose is that you think that freed up your creative imagination in a way that was new and allowed this to sort of spring forth. Like, do you think there's a relationship between the fact that you're not bound by industry contractual obligations or even by the necessity of serving a particular market that increases the probability that you would have a song like this enter the theater of your imagination?

Yes, so let me take those questions. So the first question is, why is this different? How do you normally write a song? I think basically your question, yeah. You know, I've written over a couple of thousand songs in my career. Generally, when you’re writing a song, you try to write a hit song, which is what I have always tried to do. You got a particular thing; you kind of look at the trend in my world to be country music. You're looking at the trends of what hit songs are sounding like right now; you look at the top 40 and go, “What's hitting? What's not hitting?” And so you try to land in that kind of a vein of a song.

And then you'll sit around and think up song titles or think up some angle of how to come at a love song or a sad song or a party song or whatever it is you're trying to write. And then you’ll go after it, and you may write eight or ten trying to land that perfect one that sounds like it’s a hit where all the factors about it have just got that hit factor to it. I’ve also written a lot of songs for other people, so I’ve had songs everybody from Taylor Swift to Faith Hill, Gretchen Wilson. I mean, if you go look me up, it's a lot of songs. And in those instances, they’ll come to me and say, “I want you to write me a song about this; I want it to sound like this and talk about that and be XYZ.” Like, they gave you really specific instructions as to what they’re trying to cut.

So I call that sniper songwriting. That’s like, “Okay, they showed me the target. Now I got to find that target and I got to hit it with this song, whatever that is.” And I’ve had a lot of success doing that as well. “Revelation” was neither of those things. “Revelation” I wasn't even in a songwriting frame of mind like you’re talking about your music that hits you as a musician. Sometimes you're just in the frame of mind; it’s just, “Wow, I just, okay, I feel like my mind is opened up right now on the musical side.” I feel the incoming.

It’s like Tom Petty; I got to sit with Tom Petty one time at a songwriter conference in Los Angeles, and a lady out in the audience says, “Mr. Petty, how do you get your ideas for your songs?” And Tom Petty goes, “You know, he’s slouched back in the chair and he goes, ‘Well, I just stretch my antenna out there and wait for a song to pass across it.’” Like that, he just sticks my antenna out and waits for one. And there’s a lot of truth to that when you're a songwriter or a musician. “Revelation” was none of those things. This was something that hit me out of nowhere. I used the word thrust upon me; it was downloaded to me, and I had no choice but to sit down and put pencil to paper and try to capture what this was and bring it into the physical.

Alright, so a number of things there. So one of the ways that you distinguished what you had been doing previously from whatever happened when you produced this song, or when this song came to you, was that it was funny while you were talking, I wrote down the word target before you said the word, right? So one of the ways you can think about your imagination operating is that your imagination and your verbal thoughts—they search for abstract ways of moving you forward to a goal. And so you specified the goal you said that you were attempting to hit with your more commercial work. You said you familiarize yourself with what was popular. So that means you're communicating with your audience. Comedians kind of do that when they go to their clubs before they do a big tour and they try out jokes, right? You kind of want to see what's hot in the popular culture and hit that.

And then you said, as well, that you were listening to Top 40, you’re aiming at something commercial, and that’s the target, and that people are actually hiring you for that. So in some ways you’re harnessing your imagination to that end, and obviously, that’s been extremely successful, as you pointed out, because you’ve written and you can do that. But it also means that—and this isn’t a criticism; it’s an observation—it also means that you’re subordinating your creative imagination or you’re directing your creative imagination to something approximating a commercial goal.

Now, you know, there’s art, there’s artistry in that. I have a friend named Greg Hurwitz who’s a very, very smart guy and he writes popular slick popular movie-oriented fiction, you know, and that’s his niche, and that's a valid niche. It’s the sort of the niche that film Noir motive—in and there’s art in hitting that target squarely, but that is quite a lot different from—you might say that that’s quite a bit different from letting your imagination or the revelation take you wherever it will.

Now, you said you also didn’t exactly have the luxury, so to speak, to do that if you're bound by contractual obligation to people who expect you to produce hits. And you can understand why because things have to be commercially successful. So when did you stop being bound by those sorts of contractual obligations that were directing you more in the specifically commercial direction?

It’s been probably six or seven years at this point. And the way that that began, that relationship began to unravel was for a long time I played their game. You know, people think Nashville, Tennessee is all the good country boys and girls. And what they don’t realize is that Music Row Nashville, Tennessee, it’s owned by basically the same big three companies that own Hollywood; it’s Sony, Universal, and Warner Brothers. And between those big three conglomerates, you've got 90% of every record label wrapped up there.

So it’s the same ideology of the Hollywood companies just now in Nashville. And so because of that, the presidents of those labels, the head of their departments—not all of them, but most of them—that are in charge, it was coming down to me that, “Hey, we really don’t want you to go on that network; we really don’t want you to talk about that subject; we really don’t want you to post about this; hey, John, we need to have a meeting; this is too controversial.” And I played that game with them for a while because, you know, you got a lot on the line there, man. I mean, you’ve been working at this your whole life; you've got records coming out, you’ve got band and light guys and sound guys and bus drivers and all kinds of people's income depend on you, on you maintaining your career.

And so I played that game for a little while, but at one point, it got to the point where I said, “You know what? My two sons were getting old enough to really start paying attention to me; they're 14 and 12 now, at this point; they were probably seven and nine.” And I said, “Well, what kind of example is that for me to set for these boys? I mean, I'm going to sit here and rant and rail against the system and how bad it is, but then I'm going to shut my mouth and put on my gear and walk down to the red carpet with these people and go in here and do what they’re telling me to do?” So at that point, I said, “So my integrity is for sale and my freedom of speech apparently is for sale; it has a price tag because that’s the game I'm playing right now.”

And when my boys got old enough where I realized they saw what I was doing, it hit me really hard, man, I mean really hard. Because if it's this bad for me, what's it going to be like for my boys when they grow up and leave? They're going to run right into the buzzsaw, and their blueprint is, “Well, how did Dad handle it?” Well, Dad just rolled over and kept taking the paychecks. What Dad did. So I guess that’s the right way to do it. I said, “Yeah, we're not going to let that happen.” So we broke away from that system, broke away from the record labels, the publishing companies, and all those levers of power that exist over music.

Now, because of that, I’ve never had another hit song at country radio; I’ve never had another song that blew up like some of our big career songs. But the inverse of that is the people out there, the American people that know I don’t have that system in place behind me anymore. If I give them content that strikes them, whatever that is, if it moves them, here they come. And I would say that I think that the amount of support I have today out there among just the general public, as compared to back when I had a record deal, has multiplied 3 or 400%. I mean, I wouldn't go back for anything in the world, never.

And so as far as freedom goes, Dr. Peterson, I’ve never been more free to do what I want to do than I am right now. And I will say that a song like “Revelation,” like I said before, if I still had a contract like that, you guys would have never heard it. And to me, that is disconnecting; that is short-circuiting what God's plan is for me and for the abilities he’s given me and the talent and the opportunities he’s given me. If I'm still connected to some nasty record label that doesn't believe in what I'm doing and what I'm saying, that can stop that. Well, that had to go away. Even though at the time, I really I hated to lose it because I knew how powerful that is, and I’d been in it my whole life.

But it wasn’t too long after that—a matter of weeks—that I realized, “Wow, I’m actually free at this point. I’m actually a free man. I can say whatever I want, sing whatever I want, promote it however I want to.” And that led to answering your question from earlier—that led to, yes, my songwriting, my artistry, and what I want to do literally became wide open at that point. I could do whatever I wanted to do, which brought us to this song “Revelation.”

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Okay, okay, okay, so let me weave my way through that a bit here. So you started by talking about the fact that when you wrote the majority of the 2,000 songs that you wrote, you did have commercial Top 40 success in mind and were often commissioned specifically to do that. And we talked about the fact that there can be real artistry involved in that.

Now, but then it sounds like the addition necessity to toe the party line, let’s say, started to put constraints on your creative ability, but also on your conscience that began to plague you. And you said that one of the things that plagued you about that in particular was your sense that you were giving the wrong message to your boys, and they were pretty young when you started thinking about that. So let me ask you two questions about that.

The first is what risks do you see? The reason that it bothers me so much to see creative people become ideologically possessed is that the only thing that creative people have is the genuine creativity of their production, right? And that's really the goose that lays the golden eggs, and that’s rather a fragile beast.

I mean, first of all, most people don’t have it; high-level creativity is a relatively rare trait, and then it’s easily crushed, and it only flourishes under some conditions. And one of the conditions it flourishes under, by all appearances, is something like freedom, right?

Now, you can maybe put a couple of constraints on it, as we discussed, with regards to your commercial aim. But if you keep piling on the impossibilities or the arbitrary restrictions, then you risk doing yourself damage. So, two questions there: what did you notice, if anything, happening to your ability to write creatively under those constraints? And also, like, how did you become aware, for example, that you weren’t setting a good example for your boys?

And like how did you discover that or come to realize that?

So under those constraints, your songwriting at that point is completely superficial. It’s only to make a check; it’s only to make a dollar; it’s only to get a plaque; it’s only to further yourself, which is highly superficial to me. And so when you talk about my two sons, well, man, that’s as deep as you’re going to get. I mean, there’s nothing more important than that to me.

And so when I saw that the example I was setting and that they were going to be following was superficial in nature, that, “Wow, Dad’s—we know Dad. Dad’s a Real McCoy. But Dad’s willing to go superficial if it means he keeps getting that money and getting those plaques—that is no way to live. I’d rather you be completely broke in your life, poor as a church mouse, but have your Constitution about you and have integrity about you.

And be a real McCoy, as we would call them in the country. I’d much rather my boys be that. I don’t care about them, what they do when it comes to financial stuff. And so turning that corner and getting away from those shackles of what the industry was limiting me to turned me loose.

I mean, it turned me loose for a minute. It’s almost like, “Wait, you mean I can actually step over here and nobody’s going to pop me?” Okay? And so I step over there, “Well, can I take another step?” Yep, and nobody popped me.

As far as the industry, nobody popped me. Now the press and other people, they come at me all the time. But the way I look at people attacking what I have to say is it’s validation that I hit the mark. It’s validation that I said it correctly. You know, if everybody likes what you have to say, you’re not saying it correctly. That’s the way I’ve always thought.

And that’s the way I feel today. So it loosened me up, doctor, in such a way that I could be more of a just a wide-open instrument for whatever comes in that I think’s important that’s been laid on me, that I can make that happen. There’s no guarantee it’s going to be a quote success, but I can make it a reality; that’s all you can really ask for.

I think about the Declaration of Independence when it says we have the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It doesn’t say we have the right to be happy or the right to be successful or the right to be rich or any of these other things. It says you have the right to pursue happiness—to go after it.

The word pursuit in itself means in motion. That means happiness is a moving target. I'm sure you would tell me if what's happiness to you in your 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s—well, it does change as your life changes.

So those are the principles that I look at, and at the end of the day, I know who gave me the ability to do it in the first place. You know, I yielded to Him a long time ago, and so if you're yielded to Him— to the Lord, and then He knows that you’re willing to run through a door that He opens for you, He’ll give you stuff. He’ll send you things, and “Revelation” is one of those things.

Okay, so a couple of questions about that. The first one is— I guess I have three questions really—what gave you the sense that you were leading your boys astray? I mean, they were very, very young, and the sorts of things that you're talking about are relatively subtle, and so was it guilt on your part, or was it something that you think they could actually see? Or was it something that you were afraid they were going to be able to see?

You know, I’m not clear about the actual details, but what was plaguing your conscience? Now, I can understand that you were increasingly uncomfortable with the constraints on your free speech, and obviously that’s at least in part because those constraints pose a danger to your creative ability, but I still don't quite exactly understand how it was that you became convinced that you were setting the wrong model, let’s say, for your sons. What do you think it was that they were seeing? Was it reflected in the way you were talking to them or in a bitterness?

Like, what was going on?

Yeah, well, I think we’ve all found ourselves watching the evening news and going, “Can you believe these people? Can you believe what’s going on in our country right now?” Or they’d overhear me talking to my wife about, “Can you believe what this record label is doing?” Or “I just got in trouble for doing an interview with this guy,” and they’re hearing these things. But then I’ll gear back up and walk right back out there and go play ball with the exact same people that I’ve been yelling at at the house.

That’s called being a hypocrite. That is the essence of being a hypocrite, which is probably the worst thing you could be. I mean, even in the Bible, it says, “I’d rather you be hot or be cold. But if you’re lukewarm, I’ll spit you out of my mouth.” That was from the Son of God himself said that. So you do not want to be lukewarm. If you’re going to be a bad guy, be a real bad guy. If you’re going to be a good guy, be a really good guy; don’t be in the middle.

There’s a lot of fence riders. And so I felt like just looking at myself: I’m trying to ride the fence here with this deal, and I’m commanded to not do that. And so knowing my boys were on the edge of really starting to maybe put those things together bothered me. But what bothered me at that moment was knowing I was bothered by it. I realized that’s who I had become. That’s the game I was playing. And I'm not really much of a game player, as you can probably tell.

So I said, “Yeah, I think I’m going to exit this game now.” I know that means I got to let go of what I’ve been doing for 25 years at a high level in this town, and I don’t know what I'm going to be able to grab onto when I let go of this one. I’m in freefall for a while, but hey, you got it, so make something be there that I can grab onto. And He certainly did.

So that’s really how it played out. I was bothered by it; it was bothering my conscience, and my spirit was upset by it. And, you know, if you can’t sleep well at night because you know you’re being a hypocrite, you better fix that.

Yeah, well, you see that—that’s a very interesting observation because I’ve just written a new book called “We Who Wrestle with God,” and it comes out November 12th. And what it's—a journey through the characterizations of God in 10 Old Testament stories about 10—there's some forays into New Testament material, but I'm saving most of that for another book. And God is characterized in these stories at least in part in two ways.

And one is as the spirit of what calls to you. So, it grabs your interest, compels you forward, fills you with enthusiasm, makes you want to move towards a goal—makes you want to hit the target properly. And the other characterization is the constraints of conscience. You know, and I think about this biologically and instinctively too, because I think the thing that those things dovetail.

It looks to me like conscience, the voice of conscience, is something like the voice of the longest possible term game. So you could imagine that in your situation there are two forces that are striving inside of you, and one is the forces that say, “Maintain your relationship with what’s essentially high-level commercial success that comes at the price of pleasing the marketplace.” And also, not displeasing the people who control your access to that, and that’s not nothing, as you pointed out.

But then your conscience comes up, and it’s saying something like, “Yeah, but you might be giving up something more important here, and you don’t want to do that because that’s a bad long-term game. Bad for you, bad for your kids, bad for society; it’s a bad social game too.” And if you play the longer-term game, you might pay a short-term price, right? That’s the price you pay for speaking your mind when there’s a certain amount of pressure against doing so.

But it’s an unbeatable long-term game in my estimation if your conscience is clean. Now, you said something interesting, though, too, from the practical perspective. You know, two things you said that you let go of a sure thing, although you were paying a price for that. But what you gained in consequence were two things: you gained an increase in creative freedom that was at least in part unexpected, right? That you could now make forays into various directions that you had hesitated to tread on before.

I was kind of wondering about how that might have made itself manifest musically, you know, because you can imagine that you might have been restricting yourself with regard to the content of the lyrics, but you might have also been restricting yourself with regard to the plethora of musical forms that you might introduce into your music.

Like, one of the things that strikes me about your music is that, you know, you cover a very wide range of genres. So I’m curious about whether your willingness to detach yourself from the dictates of the politicizing marketplace increased your musical creativity, as well as your lyrical creativity. And then what was there?

Was one other thing? Oh yes! The other thing you said was that the other advantage was that you established a more genuine connection with your audience. So let’s take those apart step by step. So the first thing is when you freed yourself and you stopped being, in your own words, a hypocrite, what happened to you on the music creative side, as well as the lyrically creative side? And then let's talk about why the effect that had on your audience and why you think that happened.

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Go look that up after we get through talking. So a Tennessee Walking Horse is a big powerful black horse. And they start these horses off when they’re colts, and they put these really heavy weights on their front two feet, and they make those horses walk with those for years and years and years and years, even when they’re adults. But when they want the Tennessee Walking Horse to do what the Tennessee Walking Horse is known for, they take the weights off the feet of the horse, and they get up and they spruce the horse up.

And the Tennessee Walking Horse walks like this, and their front feet are just going up and down, and it’s one of the most impressive things you’ve ever seen, and it’s because they finally took the shackles off that horse. And that horse is like, “Look at me now!” And the rest of the time the horse is like, “Man, I wish somebody would get this weight off my feet; I can’t—I’m not doing what I’m capable of doing. Please get these off.” And then they do.

I think it’s possibly somewhat cruel honestly to do that to those horses, but the same thing would be how I felt. I mean, you could still, just like the horse, I could still walk; I could still run. You're just weighed down with it. And so the second you break away from that and the chains and the shackles are broken, now you’re free. You almost don’t know what to do with it for a little while because you're not used to being able to do what you want to do and say what you want to say without somebody trying to restrain you.

And so what that does on the creative side—and being a musician, you know this—can you imagine what that does? I mean, once you finally figure out, “I can write a song like ‘Revelation’ if I want to,” like if that’s something that hits me hard, I can write that and I can actually put that out. Yes, you can actually do that.

And so, you know, you got to know this: when you go look at Jesus Christ and what he talked about, he talked a lot about freedom. He talked a lot about it; he talked about the truth; he talked about freedom. And he says the truth will set you free. I mean, what a statement that is. The truth will set you free.

So if you look at my situation, was I living truthfully at that point when I was shackled down? No, I wasn’t because I was playing a game. I was living a hypocritical existence at that point. That’s not truthful. So the second I was able to be totally truthful and come on with it exactly how I wanted to do it, which was—that's the truth; here comes the freedom part. They coexist—the truth and the freedom. The truth will set you free.

And so that’s where I find myself currently is that we’re speaking the truth. And I’ve never been more free in my life. Now, it doesn’t mean it’s easy and that everybody likes it; it doesn’t say that at all. But it does say those two things absolutely coexist. So what you’re seeing in this song “Revelation” and what’s happening with that song right now is a result of the truth will set you free.

Right, okay, so that makes sense to me. It also psychologically makes sense to me too because, you know, you describe the appearance of that song sort of as a unit and also as a surprise. And because thought and imagination serves aim, I was very curious about what must have or might have transformed in your aim to make that sort of thing possible.

The song is reminiscent to me of two other songs that I really like. It’s reminiscent of a song “Democracy” by Leonard Cohen, which is a very revelatory song. I mean, Leonard Cohen had a lot of revelatory songs, but that’s definitely one of them. And Johnny Cash recorded a great song, “When the Man Comes Around,” which is a deadly song. I don’t know where the hell that came from. I mean, that’s a killer. Johnny Cash wasn't playing around with that one.

No, that’s for sure. That’s definitely hair-standing up on the back of your neck. That song is—that’s actually, by the way, that feeling of having your hair stand up on the back of your neck—that's piloerection. So the reason that happens, at least biologically, the reason that happens is for the same reason that a cat puffs up when it sees a big dog, right? It’s an instinctual reaction to something that inspires awe.

And so people who are high in openness, which is a dimension of creativity, are much more likely to experience that particular phenomenon. And it is a phenomenon that emerges when people are in the presence of something that inspires awe. So that's very cool. That’s another place where the biology and the divinity seem to unite.

Okay, now, alright. So we got that established. So you changed what you were aiming at. Now, you said that that's put you in touch with your audience in a different way and also in a way where a lot has come to you in consequence, right? It’s been a positive thing, so walk me through that. What’s changed? What’s changed in how you treat your audience? What’s changed in how your audience treats you? What’s that meant commercially on tour? What’s that meant in terms of how you're promoting and presenting your music in the new media landscape?

Well, I think we all realize now, regardless of your politics or anything else, that we are being lied to, have been lied to, and will continue to be lied to this entire time. Your entire life, you've been swimming in a sea of either lies or contorted versions of the truth, and people know that now. They really have woken up to this. I think when COVID rolled through, and we saw and busted them on a lot of their lies, people just were in shock that these people actually would lie to us like that.

And they all realize that now. So to answer your question, they know I'm not lying to them. And they know when they hear that song, for instance, “Revelation,” you don’t write that song as an angle, as a lie, as an angle, as a maneuver, as a way to have a hit. I mean, really, I mean who would do that? It makes no sense to even do that. So they know that what I'm telling them in my music and also what I talk about in interviews like this one we’re doing right now, they know I have absolutely nothing to gain from saying those things—nothing.

Nothing this world is going to bestow upon me. “Thank you, John, for singing about Revelation. Thank you, John, for talking about spiritual warfare or thank you for doing all this.” That's never going to happen. It’s quite the opposite of that. So I think my audience has grown because they know I’m not lying to them. They know that if I say it, I mean it. It’s an authentic position, and I won’t back up off of it because they see me get banged up pretty good.

You can go on social media and read the comments; it’s pretty nasty, as I’m sure it is for you sometimes, but you keep coming. And the bigger point of that is when you do what the Lord tells you to do—and it is a difficult thing to do, but you do it anyway, he’s told us time and time again in the Word, if you’ll do what I tell you to do, go where I tell you to go and be who I told you to be, if you’ll do those things, the world’s going to hate you. A lot of them are going to hate you, but I’m going to reward you, and you’ll get your reward whenever you get it, but trust me, it’s coming.

So there are your marching orders. Now, that’s a tough set of rules because that is an uncomfortable position just as a human being to step into those things. But my position is I fear Him a lot more than I fear them. You know there’s a scripture that says, “Do not fear the one who can only kill your body; fear the one who can kill your body and kill your soul. Fear Him; fear the Creator.” Fear the Alpha, the Omega, fear Him.

And that is who I fear. And so even though it’s an uncomfortable thing sometimes or a nerve-wracking thing to come with something like “Revelation” and then do an interview like this where we're talking about it, it’s a lot less scary to do that than not doing what He told me to do.

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Right, right, well that’s interesting. That's very interesting, you know. People often compliment me on my bravery, let’s say, and that doesn’t sit very well with me fundamentally because that’s not actually accurate; I’m just afraid of different things.

So for example, like I spent a lot of time studying totalitarianism, like a lot of time. I spent half my life, likely for 40 years, studying the psychology of totalitarianism and what that meant for me was by the psychology of totalitarianism, I was very interested in what it was like to participate in a totalitarian state, to let that take you over.

And totalitarian states take you over by requiring your submission to the lie. We like to think of a totalitarian state as a state where an evil charismatic leader like Stalin or Hitler or Mao takes over the state and forces otherwise freedom-loving people to the knee and shut their mouths, but that's not how it works.

What happens is that a society starts to become possessed by lies, and then everyone starts to lie. And eventually, everyone lies about absolutely everything they’re saying and doing to everyone, including themselves and everyone they love 100% of the time. And that’s hell. And if you know that, then you're way more afraid of that than of anything else.

Because there isn’t anything worse than that—including death, and there’s plenty of death that accompanies it too. And so part of being willing to abide by the truth—let’s say—is getting your fears in order. I kind of think that’s what Christ means in the gospels when he says, “Get thee behind me, Satan.” It’s something like you want to have your fear—it’s more than this, but it’s something like you want to have your fear behind you pushing you forward in the right direction rather than your fear in front of you stopping you and making you cowardly.

It doesn’t mean you get rid of the fear— but it’s put in the right place. Now, I'm curious about something here that’s quite personal. Like you made a comment earlier about yielding, and then obviously you're motivated by religious considerations, and so— and then you talked more specifically in our last exchange about the truth setting you free and also you being afraid of the judge of your soul, let’s say, more afraid of that than afraid of public opinion or loss of financial stability or opportunity.

How did you come to these conclusions, and when?

Well, when I was a kid, my dad has been—my dad's been preaching since he was about 19. He’s now in his early 70s. He preaches in a lot of prisons. My dad did a lot of street preaching. Now you want to talk about a challenge, my dad hit about 34 Mardi Gras in a row standing on the French Quarter as the parades are coming by, got a guitar around his neck and a little speaker standing next to him, and he’s singing, and he’s preaching. And the ridicule coming back at him was like a tidal wave.

And I’ve asked him, “Why did you keep standing there letting them do that to you?” And he said, “Because about one out of a hundred of them would stop and ask me what I was talking about. And then I had a chance to witness to that person on the street.” And he goes, “The reason I’m not in some big church somewhere is because the people that really need to hear it are never going to walk into one of those church buildings. They’re out there in the world. They’re stuck behind bars; they're at Mardi Gras; they’re at wherever they are.” So his calling was to go to where they are.

Go out there in the middle of it and do it. You’re talking about a courage. I mean, that’s something else. And so I come from that—you got to understand that if you look at Jesus Christ himself, He went to where the people were. He had a real problem with the Pharisees and the Sadducees—the religious elite of his day. He had a real problem with them too, and so He would speak the truth, and He was performing miracles; He was drawing big crowds, and man, it was driving them crazy because what are we going to do with this Jesus guy, you know?

And so if you follow the example of what He said, we are supposed to speak the truth and go out boldly and speak it, knowing that they’re not going to like it. Matter of fact, He said if they persecute me, what do you think they’re going to do to you? And He says rejoice when you’re persecuted for bearing my name. Not have a grin on your face or clap your hands—rejoice! Like be exuberant when you are persecuted for bearing my name—Jesus Christ saying this.

I mean that’s quite a thing to ask people to do. That runs counter to the entire human condition, but that’s the point—that’s the point. You can’t do those things on your own, doctor; you can’t. I can’t do it; my dad can’t do it; Billy Graham couldn’t do it; anybody you want to name—it’s humanly impossible on your own speed to do those things.

But when you accept Jesus, and you really do, and I use the word yield on purpose with you to it, knowing that Jesus existed, knowing all those things—well, the devil knows those things. The devil’s been battling Him for millennia; you think he’s going to heaven? I don’t think so. Knowing it is one thing, but yielding your will, turning yourself over, turning over all authority to Him as it refers to it in the New Testament as basically being a bonder servant to Him—like, you become His property at that point where your will no longer matters.

What your aspirations are do not matter. If you get to that point, that’s what an actual saved person is.

Okay, well, I got some more questions about that. So you said that one of the influences on you was your father, and so I presume that you respected and admired your father. And so we could talk about that because that’s an important detail, but then I’m also curious about two other things: like, how do you distinguish between doing your will, let’s say, and pursuing the path of truth?

How do you distinguish between those two? You know, I think it was St. Paul who said that we have to test the spirits to see if they’re of God, right? And it’s—I suppose you might say that there’s a certain proportion of religious hypocrites who truly believe, perhaps truly believe, who certainly have told themselves and tell other people that they’re walking the straight and narrow path even though they’re not.

You know, deception can reach very deeply into people’s hearts, and so I’m curious what it means to you, okay; why exactly you admired what your father was doing, and what other sources of revelation led you to the religious realizations that you had. I’m curious about how you know the difference between your will and what should be done, right? What’s the prayer to do the Father’s will on Earth as it is in heaven? That’s different than pursuing your own short-term interests.

But that doesn’t mean—I mean, you can be deluded about that. So how do you know? How do you test your own motivation to determine whether what you’re doing is truthful or just another snare of deception?

See, I think one place with respect that I think you are wrong on this subject and that you miss it is that you think human beings have the capability to divine between decide between left, right, truth, lie, all these things that are going on, and we’re just not capable of it. I mean we are.

I’ll put it to you this way: I am not looking at the real Jordan Peterson; I’m looking at what Jordan Peterson lives in for a while. You’re not looking at John Rich; I just live in this thing for a while. The real Jordan lives forever; he’s an eternal being. He was created by the Creator, and he was put in that body that you’re in right now to last as long as it’s going to last, and then that body is going to die, and then the real Jordan is released from that body.

The same way it goes for me. So the only way a human being can discern what is true and what is a lie is you better have Jesus inside of you because he’s the ultimate truth.

So when things come at you that are lies—which is every single day, including lies you might tell yourself or make yourself think something that’s not true—have a notion about something, and it seems really strong, you ask Him, “Is that true? Like, am I thinking about this right?” And you pray about it and you go, “If this is wrong, man, don't let me do that. You know, put me in the right spot. Even though it seems totally obvious that I should do this in my own eyes,” and He will.

But the only way that works is if you have yielded to Him, turned over the entire control to Him, become a bonder servant to Him. He’s the ultimate truth. If a lie comes into contact with the ultimate truth, which one is more powerful at that point? Is the truth more powerful than the lie? Of course it is. It’s the ultimate power is the real truth.

So if you’ve got the real truth living in you, which is not something you have on your own. We’re inherently evil, doctor; we are born into sin. Sin is anything that is less than perfection; you don’t have to be a murderer to be a sinner. You don’t have to be something terrible to be a sinner. Anything less than absolute perfection in the eyes of the Lord is sin. So we are sin; we are in a continual state of it.

And you can’t escape it, but the only way you’re able to navigate through that and go to heaven when you die is that you brought the Son of God; you’ve asked Him to come in and turned over your will to Him. And so when this body that I have to live in here for a while finally kicks the bucket and I'm out of here and I take off and I stand before the ultimate judge before the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, you're standing there looking at them—they’re not looking at nasty old John Rich in his sinful form. He sees His Son; He sees His own Son there because you invited Him in, you gave your will over to Him, and that’s who He sees.

Well, you think He’s going to let His Son into heaven? Well, of course, because you belong to Him. That’s what it means to be a child of Him; He’s going to let His kids come on in. Perfection is not even anything you can shoot at. Matter of fact, understanding that you live in a constant state of imperfection—that's the point.

And for human beings and psychologists and anybody else to go, “Well, there’s a moral compass,” blah nonsense! Humans don’t have the capability in my opinion on their own to be moral. We are inherently immoral. We were put in these situations as a test. Even if you live to be 200 years old, it’s just like that He takes something that is eternal, which is your spirit and my spirit; He takes an eternal situation, places it in a very, very temporary, badly made, very flawed human body, and then the whole entire world is turned loose on us.

We can make any decision we want to make, and the toughest one we have to make is to give up our own control over to the one that created us in the first place.

Okay, so that’s the question—that’s the place I’d like to drill down into. Two things: one more practical, which is when you were deciding to move away from the studio and record label life, how did you come to the determination? You mentioned prayer, but how did you come to determine that that was the appropriate path, that it wasn’t just another form of ego game, let’s say?

I know you said that there was part of it; well, why would anyone do that? There’s a big risk in it, and obviously, so there’s an obvious sacrificial component to that, which speaks of its truth. But I’m really interested in the details. And then the other issue that I’m curious about is when you talk about prayer and you’re using your prayer to discern the truth, let’s say, what is it that you’re praying for that enables you to benefit from that discernment?

What a great question. So the Holy Spirit—it says in the Bible that He will send to His children, the real ones, the ones that have turned it over to Him—that He will send the Holy Spirit to help you and guide you and navigate for you. You have to ask for that. You have to say, “You know, you pray and say, ‘Please send the Holy Spirit to me because I can’t figure this out. I’m having trouble. I don’t know what to do. What am I supposed to do right now?’”

You ask for that, and He will send it. And then in your being you feel if something is—if I'm making a wrong move, am I supposed to go left, right, straight, or not move at all, or step back? Which one am I supposed to do? It will become very clear to you. It’s called discernment. We’re told—we’re commanded multiple times. If you read Proverbs, you read what King David wrote; discernment was everything. I mean, that’s like King Solomon asked for that. King Solomon asked for wisdom and discernment; he wanted to be able to discern because it’s the hardest thing for a human being to do: how do I know? How do I know what I’m supposed to do?

And if you’re only relying on your own physical self to figure that out, you’re never going to get it right—ever! You’re never going to get it right. And so the Holy Spirit—that’s who comes in and that is the discernment that you’re asking for.

Now, he may not tell you the second you asked for it, but if you ask for it and you’re serious about it, and that’s what you really want, He’ll send it to you, and you’ll get it. And so I think to your conversation about the music industry and all that stuff, I could feel it. I could feel He was telling me it’s time for you to get out of here, bud. Time to go. Time to go.

And He was—things like my kids reacting to things, my wife reacting to things, me personally reacting to things—that was His way of going, “Ding ding ding ding ding! Pay attention, John! Time for you to move.” I know you’ve been doing this your whole life; I know this was your American dream. I know this is what you think you were built to do. And maybe you were for a period of time; I got something else for you to do, and it’s going to hurt a little bit, but rip and pull you away from it and then put you on the path He wants.

It’s like, do you know what repentance is? I’ll give you a great analogy for repentance. Repentance is, let’s say I’m driving down a road, and I look over there on the side of the highway, and there’s Jesus Christ standing there on the side of the highway, and He needs a ride. And I go, “That’s Jesus standing on the side of the highway.” So you pull over and you roll down the window and you go, “Hey, Jesus! Come on in; you need a ride?”

And instead of Him getting on the passenger side, He walks around to your window, knocks on the window, and says, “Scoot over!” And so you do, and He takes the steering wheel and does a U-turn, and now He’s driving the car and He takes you wherever He wants to take you. That’s what repentance actually is!

It’s like, what’s the difference between belief and faith? You know, you’re sitting in a chair right now; I'm sitting in a chair right now. The only reason we’re sitting in these chairs is because first of all, we walked up to the chairs and we looked at them, and we believe those chairs would hold us up. “Look like a pretty good chair; pretty strong chair. I believe that chair will hold me up.” But until we sat down in the chairs that we’re sitting in right now, we didn’t have faith that the chair would hold us up. That’s the difference.

A lot of people in the world believe in Jesus; they believe He’s real; they believe He existed; they believe they read the Bible, and they go, “Okay, yeah, I mean I believe that.” But so does the devil; so does every demon that ever existed. They all believe in Jesus. Do they have faith in Jesus? Now, that’s a totally different question. Do they lean on Him? Do they rest on Him? Do they give their security up?

I gave my security up for this chair I'm sitting in right now. You got to give your security up all the way around to Him, and you’ll never get it right. It is a constant struggle because you always want to grab the reins and pull it back; that’s just your nature. So it’s a constant exercise of letting—you’re going to grab and go, “Ah, okay, I’ll let it go again.”

It’s a constant, constant position.

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How much of your decision to leave the, say, traditional commercial confines of the music industry behind, how much of that dovetailed with the development of your faith? I mean, did those occur at the same time, or what’s the—or is it a constant sort of unfolding? What's the sequence there?

Because I’m still curious about why you decided to, you made a very important distinction there. It says in the gospels, Christ says to His followers that not everyone who says, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven. And what He means by that, at least in part, is the mere proclamation of a conscious belief is not sufficient to ensure redemption or salvation.

It has a lot more to do with, let’s say, putting your money where your mouth is. And that’s the faith that you described; you used the analogy of the hitchhiker and the passenger and the driver, right? To let something that isn’t your narrow self-interest take control. Well, you obviously made a decision when you decided to say and create what you needed to say and create instead of staying within the confines of your contractual obligations.

And how is that related to the revelation or the development of your faith? Well, listen. There was a long time that, you know, the story of the prodigal son, I’m sure you know that one well.

Well, man, I was the embodiment of that. I mean, imagine what my dad—the street preacher who had been to Mardi Gras 34 times—must have thought when he sees his young son saying, “I’m not going to go to college; I’m going to go out on the road and play in places I’m not even old enough to be in all over the United States because I want to have a career in country music.”

Can you imagine what my dad must have thought? I mean, and then to make matters worse, I was really successful at it, and I lived that lifestyle for a very long time; very long time. And at one point, it got to the point I think I had upset the boss so bad because I knew what the truth was. I was just going, “Ah, some other time, I’m busy doing what I want to do.”

I upset Him so bad; I remember I was sitting in a hotel room and felt like I got abandoned. I felt like all of a sudden, I could feel like something left the room—like completely unprotected at all—like the Lord just walked out of the room. He had had enough. “Okay, you know what to do; you’re going to call your own shots. Good luck with that, buddy!” Like that. And I felt it like ice water rolling down your back; you could feel it.

And that persisted for several months, and it was horrible. Matter of fact, in Psalms, David writes about that a lot—about, “I cry out to you, but you don’t answer.” You know, because David did a lot of things wrong. He did some really bad stuff that he had to repent for and come back from, but his punishment was God just left him standing there. Just left him.

And so I felt that; I felt that many years ago. And I didn’t want to ever feel that again. And so I realized at that point, “Okay, it’s time to put this nonsense away and go be who I’m supposed to be because otherwise, what’s the point?”

How old were you when that happened?

I was in my late 30s.

Oh yeah, oh yeah. So you’d been on the road a long time by then.

Been on the road a long time by then, yeah, I certainly had. You know, people say, “Well, I’m a good person; I’m a good person; I’m going to go to heaven. I’m a good person. I feed the homeless; I give money to charity; I’m whatever; I go to church every Sunday; I’m a good person.”

The problem with that is if you believe that the words of the Bible are true— which I do—it says all your righteousness is as filthy rags in the sight of God. Meaning there is no such thing as a good person—none of us are good! Nobody! Not even the ones that wrote the books of the Bible. They’re not good either.

The only good in any of us is Him. It’s like we talked about earlier, how do you discern what a lie is? The only way you can discern what a lie is is to put it up against the actual truth. When you put it up against the actual truth, it's obviously a lie at that point, and Jesus Christ said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no man comes to the Father except by me.” He said that. So there you go.

So if you really want to know what the truth is, you got to bang those lies up against Him. There are a lot of people that get in these comfortable positions, and I think that the churches in America are largely to blame for it that they will not preach what I would call the hard parts of the Bible. They will not preach the parts that prick the hearts of the people that are sitting in those pews. They won’t say the things that make them uncomfortable. They want to keep the church full; they want to keep the offering plates full; they want the money to keep coming, right?

But that doesn’t work; it’s—well, ultimately, certainly not working in Europe, that’s for sure.

Well, no, I mean the churches still have some people in the U.S., but the Christian church is having a hell of a time in most of the West, and I think it is in part because the demands aren’t high enough on the people who are attending.

Well, they’re not—the road's being made too easy.

Yeah, they’re not preaching and teaching things that convict people that make them have to step up to the plate and realize, “Oh wow! I’m not doing what Jesus wants me to do! I’m not living up to what He said! I haven’t really given my will over to Him; I’ve just been lip service this whole time and feeling good about everything.”

And that is so dangerous, doctor, because when your body dies and that spirit is cut loose and the next thing you see is Him, He’s not going to care how many times you went to church; He’s not going to care how much academia or intellectualism or any kind of things that you applied to Him and what He said. He’s not going to care. All He’s going to do is say, “Do you belong to me or not? Did you ever yield to me? Did you turn yourself over to me or not?”

And there are a lot of people going to be disappointed when that day happens, and that is a dangerous thing for people. There are so many people with so much potential in this world that have swallowed that lie and swallowed versions of it. And they’ve put themselves in a state of being comfortable about it and go, “You know, I think I’m good; I think I’m good. Yeah, I checked my IRS, man. I gave a lot of money last year to charity; I’m good; I’m good with them.” That’s what they think!

That is not how that’s going to work! And so the reason people are so afraid to turn their will over to— to become a bonder servant to Jesus Christ is because it scares them to death.

Because I’m used to controlling; I’m in control of what’s going on, and to turn that over to Him, He’s going to control what I’m doing. Well, what’s He going to do? How’s my life going to change? What’s my life going to be like at that point? It scares them to death, and a lot of people have a lot of built-up barriers around them. A lot of people, as you well know, were abused when they were a kid, for instance; they were treated terribly; they were abused—some, some people abuse so bad you wouldn’t even mention it in this interview; it’s so horrible; it’s going on right now, and you’re talking about an epidemic of this has happened.

And a lot of people then wrap themselves in various things to protect themselves from anybody ever being able to get to them again, including the Son of God! Including Him! They don’t want to give it over to anybody because it scares them too much to think about what would that be like?

I actually watched a lot of your stuff, and there was one time—it was three years ago; I don’t know if that's accurate or not—but I actually wrote down what you said, and I wondered if you’d let me quote you for a minute?

Oh, can I quote you in our—in your— it’s your interview; can I quote you?

Okay! Hey man, go right ahead; go ahead!

I appreciate that. Alright, this is Dr. Jordan Peterson: “What you have in the figure of Christ is the actual person who actually lived plus a myth, and in some sense, Christ is the union of those two things. The problem is that I probably believe that, but I’m amazed at my own belief, and I don’t understand it because I’ve seen that sometimes the objective world and the narrative world touch—that’s union synchronicity; I’ve seen that many times in my own life, and so in some sense I believe it’s undeniable. You know we have a narrative sense of the world for me that’s been the world of morality—that’s the world that tells us how to act; it’s real; we treat it like it’s real; it’s not the objective world, but sometimes the narrative and the objective world touch, and the ultimate example of that in principle is supposed to be Christ, and that seems to me oddly plausible, but I still don’t know what to make of it partly because it’s too terrifying a reality to fully believe. I don’t know what would even happen to you if you fully believed it.”

Yeah! So what struck me about that when I heard you say that was the terrified part. Because to me, I would think it’d be the greatest thing in the world. If Jesus is who the Bible says He is, if that is true, then you should go running straight to Him because He controls heaven and hell; He created the universe; He’s the Alpha, the Omega; He is the way, the truth, and the life; He’s every answer you ever wanted to have— every answer to every question. He is the ultimate—He loves you more than anybody will ever love you. He created you; you are His creation. The last thing He wants to see happen to you is for you to go and follow the other way and wind up in eternity separated from Him.

So I know it’s your interview, but I wanted to ask you, “What terrifies you about the notion that Jesus might be who the Bible actually says He is?”

Well, it’s been, as you pointed out, a number of years since I said those things, and I know more and understand more than I did when I said those words. I’ve reconceptualized my perspective I suppose or deepened it partly as a consequence of writing these new books because I have three books finished, and one of them is coming out soon, and they’re all analysis of the biblical narratives.

This is something we can talk about in relationship to what happened to you after you decided to leave the confines of the safe confines, let’s say, of the music industry. See, I started to understand in the story of Abraham, for example, God comes to Abraham as the voice of adventure, right? Because Abraham is an old man by the time God shows up, and he’s living in comfort, and he has everything you might need if all you wanted to be is a satiated infant.

And God is really what calls Abraham out into the world, and he has the whole catastrophic adventure of his life, right? He encounters famine and totalitarianism and war and malevolence and the destruction of cities and the necessity to offer up even his own son. I mean, Abraham’s life is quite the spectacular catastrophe, and that’s what would you say the religious injunction is—the deepest religious injunction is to have exactly that catastrophe of adventure, and there’s no real limit to that.

And that’s part of what’s terrifying! You know, you said if the terror wasn’t there, that holy terror, in a sense, you wouldn’t have had any compunctions about giving up your contractual relationships and the financial stability and the fame that that offered, right? You already had that.

There’s a terror in letting that go, let’s say, and only doing what—what would you say? What you’re commanded to do or what you’re invited to do by the Spirit of the Truth. But the payoff is an adventure that’s so disproportionately greater than whatever you would have gained by staying with your, what would you say, your hedonistic comfort that they're not even in the same universe.

And that is—it’s the kind of terror. So, you know, when God casts Adam and Eve out of the garden or when they separate themselves from God, God puts a sword to bar the way back to the eternal garden, and this—the sword is on fire and it turns every which way, and what that means is that it’s a sword that cuts and burns away everything that isn’t worthy of being in the kingdom of