Joshua Keith Craft

0:52 Man, think about how much like you wonder if people have back problems. Your dad's strong, so he doesn't. But some people must have Dude, he would he would carry his wallet like a Bible everywhere. You know what I'm saying? Like the guy that holds the holds the leather Bible. Yeah, that was his wallet, too. Oh, hey. Praise the Lord. You know, he had he had everything he needed all in that one thing. And so, like, yeah. I mean, Christmas now compared to what what it was when we were younger. Uh it was you know what we did recently man which I actually was more excited to do this than I am or have been about receiving any gift for I can't even remember. So we have uh the same person that looks after our kids uh every single week. And we absolutely love her. And so she you know when she was over she had told us I've never been to a steakhouse which I couldn't believe. I was incredulous at that. Well she's only like 23 24 years old man. and she hadn't been she'd been to Fogo de Chão which is like I don't count that as a steakhouse because it's like yes you eat steak but it's not like the steakhouse experience like you don't have at a real steakhouse you don't have people coming up to you every two minutes to like shave off another new piece like you go to a good steakhouse it's like you know it's an experience and so what we did was we she was due to come over my wife and I have date night every night and she was due to come over and watch the kids and so what we did was we surprised her and said like we just said hey don't eat the kids have something special for you um and we were going to take her to 34 which is like, you know, the best steakhouse. And I was actually, what was so interesting for me, I was more excited about doing that than about any gift that like I'm going to receive or anything. And I I it was really kind of a a cool moment because I think it's like I enjoy doing that stuff for my family. I enjoy doing that stuff for people I love. It was the first time where I was like really kind of like, hey, how can we do something really cool that's going to bless somebody that we care about? And I I say the first time because you know I've given chunks of cash to people and stuff like that but like you know putting some thought and some effort and building a little surprise and it was actually like this generosity that I enjoyed in a whole new way. Like I I mean I felt like I was the biggest uh beneficiary because then so she shows up to our house and we're like hey she's in pajama bottoms and pajama top cuz she she was like planning her own Christmas special night for the kids and I'm like uh I can't take her to Three Forks and pajamas like you can wear jeans. So, we ended up fortunately she's the same size shoe as my wife. We give her a dress to she brought my wife's dress and we all go out and like for me I it's like one of these moments I've locked in my head. I put my memory maker on.

3:15 It's so funny. I can't go put Rian's clothes on right now. Well, I mean I can't take you to Three Forks in pajamas. I would have tried. H you know, you probably would have. But this is the ultimate This is the ultimate rich kid experience. Yeah, we're pajama rich. We do what we want. We're pajama rich kids. Everyone put pajamas on. It was my Well, my kids were dressed in like they were all dressed up nice. It's beautiful, man. Yeah. And so we Anyways, we go there and just watching them all like take their first bite of steak because like a bite of steak at three forks. Your kids had really well they I mean they've eaten good steak because that I've cooked uh but not like they you know three forks is it's not a cheap meal like you don't you don't just go there because you're like on a whim unless you're very wealthy. Um, and so we, you know, to to go out and do that and get to watch them all enjoy that, man, dude, I can like, it was honestly that to me feels like my Christmas gift. That's awesome. Yeah. Which is different, but you know, it's cuz I'm St. Nicholas, dude. Right. You're part of my Christmas gift, Nick.

4:07 Well, I don't even know what that means. I'm great. But, you know, thank you. I'm grateful for you, man. I'm grateful for recording this. This is a special Christmas episode. It I wanted to record and everyone's humoring me cuz I wanted to talk about Christmas. Well, we're not humoring on Christmas week. It's Christmas week this week. Merry Christmas, everybody. Yeah. Well, literally when this releases, it's Christmas Day. We're recording it. We're recording it heading into the Christmas production at our church. Christmas production starts tomorrow. Tomorrow night. It's going to be very busy. It's going to be awesome. I have a I have a Santa suit that I'm going to wear. I'm speaking this year. Okay. You're wearing a Santa suit. I have a suit. It's a blazer. It's a normal blazer, but it's a Santa. Oh, that's nice. It's going to be incredible. I love that you're saying this now. It's the first I've heard of it while we're recording this. The first anyone's heard of it. I'm saying it now cuz no one will hear this podcast until production's already over. But you know what? If you hear this and you want to go, you can go to Elevate Life's YouTube channel, Elevate Life Church YouTube channel in Fris and watch Josh preach the message.

5:01 Watch me preach in a Santa suit and see me as the main character. If you see it and I'm not wearing a Santa suit, it's because someone said you're not allowed to wear that anymore. Oh man, dude. I can't wait. Friday night. Friday night at least I'll be wearing. So tomorrow night, tomorrow night, I'm looking forward to seeing what it looks like, dude. It'll be fun, man. But I've always loved Christmas so much and I've always had this uh uh me and you were this is uh this is a I think this is maybe a child-friendly episode. Maybe not depending on what your kids perspective is on Santa Claus cuz I want to talk about Santa Claus and I'm such a Dude, I've loved Christmas since I was a kid. I'm a Christmas person. Christmas music. My kids get in the car with me this time of year. We do not listen to anything else except Christmas music. Yeah, dude. Time of year you can. Yeah. I mean, but it starts in November. All that stuff. And you know Courtney the way she is, we take she takes all the Halloween stuff down, which we decorate for Halloween. I know most people don't do that, but my wife's probably favorite holiday is Halloween.

5:58 Yeah. Uh which is a diagnosis we can do another day, but but she puts all the does all the Christmas stuff. And um so I've always just been this massive believer and lover of of Christmas. I didn't, and I was telling Nick this before we started, but I didn't start I didn't stop believing in Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on. If you have your kids and they're young and they believe in Santa Claus, maybe press pause and say them. I've never stopped believing in Santa Claus. The idea that I had of Santa Claus, like the Coca-Cola idea, I believed that that was Santa Claus until I was 13 years old. Like hardcore, you were like, "My presence came from Santa." Bro, imagine a seventh grader vigorously defending Santa Claus. That was me. I I grew up and my my parents I'm sure if I had them on the podcast they'd say why my parents were more than happy to let me believe in Santa believe in that Santa Claus for that for that long. And uh I would say from, you know, a lot of people have this perspective on Santa Claus that, you know, I know your kids probably aren't going to listen to this podcast and even if they are, they don't care cuz it's not that entertaining to them.

7:12 But a lot of people have this perspective like in our world in in Christianity that it's somehow damaging to have your kids believe in something that uh I I had a conversation with a friend about this a few years ago and they said, "Well, I can't let my kids believe in Santa Claus because then that would if if that's not real, then that means God's not real in their mind." So, I would be teaching them to believe in something that isn't real. And then that would probably extend to their relationship with God. And um I think that if if God and Santa Claus are on the same level in somebody's mind, you've probably already failed them as a Yeah, for real. Yeah. Well, you know what, man? Like, so you say that recently, so I've got three kids. My youngest is six. And like I was just in his room, like I'm talking like in the last month. I was in his room for bedtime. And he asked me, he said, "Dad, is Santa real?" And like you know whenever you are immediately brought to like the most present state I was like I I took like a real pregnant pause and was like this is a big moment cuz I'm not going to lie to my kid. I'm not going to I'm not going to lie to him. And I I took a breath and I was like man this is like a turning point cuz it's so fun watching him. We have elves that we bring down and like we move the elves and like the kids aren't allowed to touch the elves but adults are and so like we hide the elves in different places. My wife goes to great lengths to have the elves look like they're doing things. So the kids come home.

8:39 That's the but the real story of the elves is the elves move themselves but y'all don't see. Right. But the but yeah, exactly. The elves move themselves, but like we go to great lengths to like make it look really entertaining. So the kids hunt around. But your kids think that it's y'all moving them. The No, the two oldest know it is. The youngest one used to think it was us, but this is the night that it all died. Now everybody's in on it, but we still do it because it's so much fun. But so he asked me, he's like, "Is Santa real?" And I like I wanted to have my wife come up into the room, but she wasn't there. Cuz I was like, "This is a big moment for parenting." So I told him, I said, "Buddy, he he he was a real person to talk before the talk." Yeah. I said I said he was a real person. This is what he did and he's St. Nicholas. And I explained that to him. I was like, "But in the way that he brings presents, he's not real." And he like immediately was like, you know, and like I went over to his bed cuz I was sat in a chair in his room waiting for him to fall asleep and he just asked me this randomly. So I go over to his bed and then he's like, "Well, are the elves real as well or or do you do you guys do that?" I'm like, "We do that as well."

9:35 And so he's like, "I won't tell the girls." Like, so he he's like in on the secret now. He's preserving it. Yeah. He was preserving it for them, which I thought was so sweet. But like I I had I had Rean come up into the room with him and we had a talk with him and just you know let him know we loved him and just talked about all that sort of stuff. You know what he's never asked me? He's never said is God real? You know what he has asked me though is is Forrest Frank real? Cuz like because for him there's certain people like Spider-Man and the Hulk and all these people that he loves that at one point he's like yeah I want to go to to New York to see Spider-Man. I had to say ah buddy you know Spider-Man's a character that you know you're not going to see him swinging around in the buildings. And so for a kid, it's hard for him to perceive these things. So like we were listening to Forrest Frank and he comes over to me, he goes, he goes, "Hey," or he just goes, "Hey, dad, is Forrest Frank real?" I'm like, "Yeah, buddy. He's a real person." And then he comes closer to me and he goes like, "For real, is he is he like is he really?" Like he he wasn't sure if I was just trying to like keep the ruse up for for Eevee so that Eevee wouldn't be upset. I'm like, "No, dude. He's real." And I thought it was so cute. But it was like one of those things I felt I genuinely felt like sad when I walked out there cuz I I felt like a piece of his childhood had died. But you know what? He's still just as excited for for Christmas. He's like playing along with all the games. I've actually been pleasantly surprised that there hasn't been this like death of his childhood that I had made it out to be in my mind.

10:51 And it's been it's actually been amazing. And he's never once questioned God. Well, I think that cuz I think that leads to the question of like what does it mean for something to be real? Yeah. You know, I mean, and that's like like I'm I'm always I'm Santa Claus is real. 100% real. Santa Claus. we're always going to believe in Santa Claus because of what what Santa Claus means, you know, like with I think with for for me um I I want to I want to kind of tell the story of Santa Claus, but also uh you know, one of the one of the like you said that about, you know, the the the destruction of his belief or whatever. What what causes all of us I think that what causes all of us to experience that phenomenon is when uh in a in an adult like in an adult way is we we imagine things that are ultimately good, you know, like like Santa Claus represents.

11:48 Yeah. Just ultimate generosity like giving for just the sake of giving and blessing other people and all this stuff. And then we go through life and what people stop doing, it's like it's like Miracle on 34th Street. Such a great movie, especially the original one. What people stop doing is they stop believing that anybody's generous out of altruism, right? They start going, "Well, I don't they don't just not believe in Santa as a guy in a red hat and stuff." They don't believe in the idea of generosity that's working. And that's the death of innocence to me. Like the death of innocence is when you um is when you live your life and realize no one's really that for you. no one really wants to help you and you start to develop this narrative about life that that uh is oh the world really is not that good of a place and there's not good people out there right you know so like when you're a kid like when you're Elijah's age you know you think there's really good guys like there's really like guys that are purely good that are that are genuinely good that are out there trying to do the most good that they can and you ide idealize that and you say I want to be that person like I want to, you know, a lot of the attraction that I had to like, you know, like my my favorite all growing up was Superman. So, a lot of the the attraction that I had to Superman growing up that I could say now as an adult is because of like Superman was always going to be the good guy.

13:11 Yeah. Like there wasn't a part of Superman that wasn't like there's a simplicity fighting for the most good. Like even Batman, even though he was like darker and all that, Batman was, you know, he had his rules. He's never going to kill anybody, right? You know, and I always thought that was like I would read comics when I was a kid and I always thought that was like so fascinating that, you know, Batman would be chasing the Joker around and the Joker's doing all this really evil stuff and Batman's like not going to do evil to the evil guy. Yeah. As a standard and for most people, what's unfortunate is those people only exist in comic books. Like they get older and still good. It's like Elijah for you as a dad, you know, like he believes he believes in you the way he believes in the Hulk or Yeah, you're exactly right. or Spider-Man or Santa Claus or Forrest Frank . Yeah. Like he believes that you're you're like purely a good guy. Well, and for most people that are listening to this, like truthfully, what we've had to navigate is the the people that we put trust in really shattered and destroyed the trust because they weren't they weren't as good as we thought they were, you know?

14:16 Man, dude, that is such a deep cut, Josh. I'm so glad you pulled that out. I'm I'm really I really just hearing you say that made me think. But you're right. But you're right because you know what he does? So my son recently I took him hunting for the first time. We killed a couple deer together and he he is all about it, dude. He wears camo as much as possible now. He every he's like he's developing the identity. There's like a Nerf gun in every h in every room in our house now. Like he literally he'll go to the door. I saw him out on the street the other day like like tracking cars they drove by with his Nerf gun. Like dude, okay, we can't do that. As long as they're not painted black, you're okay. Yeah. No, they're not. Trust me, there's there's nothing. But like he's he is like on the hunt for like the bad guys or as he says, the villains. That's what he always he So, like I'm teaching him this cuz like he shoots BB guns and I'm I'm working them up to being on a real rifle. And I'm always talking to him about the four fire uh firearm safety rules, right? And so, you know, one of them is you don't, you know, treat every gun like it's loaded.

15:12 You never point anything unless you're ready to shoot. Keep your finger off the trigger until you're locked onto the sights. know, you know, the fourth one is, of course, know your target and what's beyond it. So, I'm like teaching him how these things all get applied. And so, he'll run through, I mean, I spend a lot of time every day listening to make believe scenarios in his mind of when it's okay to kill a villain. And so, like, he's in his head, he is just protecting us from all these villains. My son's never even seen a villain, man. We live in an amazing neighborhood. He's, you know, he's got nothing to be concerned about. But you're exactly right because he's his heroes are Hulk, Spider-Man, me, the Mighty Men. My son, his identity is Mighty Men. Which if you don't know what that is and you're listening to this, that's our men's group at church. My son's been coming with me since he was four years old. He's been coming for almost 2 years now, or yeah, over two years now. And so for him, he's just like, "Mighty men take pain." And he'll say things like, "Hey, Dad, if there was a bear in our neighborhood, the mighty men would go out and kill it." And I you know what I say to him? You're exactly right, sir.

16:06 Because we would. I'm not gonna let a bear terrorize my neighborhood. But like I I just I hadn't really thought of it till the way you say that. And man, I don't like you saying that actually like gets me a little bit emotional because I don't ever want him to in me and I I already had this vision to make sure that he knows what a man looks like, but in me I never want him to I don't want him to ever look at me and go like, "Oh, I guess all that stuff was just make believe." Yeah. Like I want to uphold the value of what a good man looks like for his entire life. Yeah, man. Yeah. And that to me is the is the um is the reason why I don't have a problem with my kids leaving Santa Claus, right? Because because what I want what I want my kids to understand is that the world's not like a it's you know we're going to be prepared to live. The world's not a safe place. People are people are not always for you. There are bad guys.

16:57 There are bad guys. But you can be a good guy. Like you can be a person who lives up to whatever the standard of greatness is and you can be like Dan Sullivan. He's a he's a he has a coaching business called Strategic Coach. He's a one of the biggest coaches of entrepreneurs in the world. One of the main questions that he asked in his coaching is who are you a hero to? So you can you can be a hero to somebody. Yeah. And um the problem that like parents have, the problem that uh leaders have in culture, whether that's like pastors or CEOs or u presidents or anybody else, is that they don't see themselves as anybody's hero. And they think that they can just we all we all think that, you know, at at some point we could just be human, like we could just be us. And really there's always this demand that's that's for more than that. M and uh what you what you don't want to do right is cultivate in your kids this spirit of um thinking that you know this spirit of entitlement or you know I I had a friend uh for a long time that he grew up in an environment where they would go they would buy nativity scenes from the his family would buy nativity scenes from the store and then it was a Christmas pastime they would destroy them like they would oh my god they would they would like hammer he he has distinct memory of hammering baby Jesus's face with a hammer like the little nativity.

18:24 Yeah. Because it was a graven image of Jesus. Oh my god. Right. This isn't like this isn't like the real Jesus. So this is from like a holy place. This is from like a Christian. So these are the Jews taking Steven outside of the the city to stone him to death for testifying to it's like we can't you know this is not that's not really what the like we talked about um you know in in in one of the money episodes that's going to come out. We talked about uh the three wise men and there wasn't three wise men and all that. So people go, "Oh, there weren't three wise men. We've got to have an authentic nativity." It's like, you know, I I understand all that. I understand this desire for realness and authenticity. But the thing is like to to me, people are going to get enough of that in life. Yeah. Um but but to Santa Claus, [clears throat] to this perspective on Santa Claus, I don't have any problem telling my kids like one day, so Charlie, my oldest, is eight. Uh, she still believes in Santa Claus. She's my daughter. So, she's going to believe in the Santa Claus for at least 13 at least another four or five years.

19:24 Awesome. Cuz I have every I have every objection already figured out cuz I was the one like I was s I remember going to school and I was the only one. Everyone was like, "Dude, I'm like, you know what? I'm still getting presents from Santa Claus, guys. Y'all aren't. I'm still getting them. Of course, you you know, whatever. You guys don't have to get presents from Santa Claus. I'm still getting them." And uh so I'll I'll always walk my kids through that. But um I want my kids to believe in who Santa Claus was as a person because St. Nicholas of Myra was was a was a real person. So he's the inspiration for the picture of Santa Claus. And like if you're on if you're listening to this and uh you don't let your kids believe in Santa Claus, shame on you. Wow. Just straight up just diving in there, man. Oh, I'm just kidding. There's a lot of reason like you didn't you didn't you were telling me this? My mom my mom never let us believe in Santa because she and the reason was is she said she didn't want to lie to us.

20:19 Mhm. And so I literally never for a day in my life believed in Santa Claus which was like and she also it's a tragedy. I mean it I don't I don't I don't know I don't know any different you know I mean like I had a happy childhood. It just you know it wasn't a very happy childhood with with uh with with Santa. So, I'm not I'm not like I well I'm advoc I am advocating for a position here and that is that is the belief in Santa Claus. And I think that people you know as my kids get older like I uh I'm going to teach them the story about who St. Nicholas was because what's important is that we live up to the example of the hero cuz the real guy is actually way better than the Santa Claus that we've idealized. So St. St. Nicholas of Myra. There's like not a lot of solid historical information about him, but there's a lot of stories about him. So, uh, he was born, the story goes that he was born in 270 AD and his parents were devout Christian and they were wealthy and they raised him and taught him scripture from the age of 5 years old.

21:21 So his parents died from a plague when he was really young and he inherited their wealth and he felt lonely for a lot of his life but he was determined to use use his wealth to help other people. So he once heard about a father who um was left destitute with three daughters, right? And at this point in history, if a father didn't have a marriage dowry, uh his his kids, his daughters wouldn't be married, right? Cuz you you would go marry a guy's daughter and then he would give you a dowry to basically help support his daughter, right? So if you didn't have that in the in the ancient world, your your kids probably wouldn't have gotten married and they would be condemned to a life of prostitution. like if you didn't have means. This is like the the world. This is the world of the Roman Empire, right? And so St. Nicholas, the story goes that he threw three bags of of gold coins into the window of their house. Some people say the chimney, but he walked by and threw three bags of gold coins into the window of their house and saved the man's daughters from a life of misery. That's awesome. Right. So there's all these other stories that you can go read of how he walked through the walked through Myra where he lived and was just massively generous and gave gifts. So as he got older, he he really felt like he wanted to be in what we would call ministry now. He really felt like he wanted to help people learn how to follow Jesus. And so he was ordained as a bishop, which the Catholic church didn't exist. So a bishop was basically the leader of a group of churches. Okay? Okay.

22:52 So they put him over a group of churches in uh the city of Myra which is um was on the coast of like modern day Turkey and he devoted his life to for the rest of his life he devoted his life to challenging paganism and emperor worship in the Roman Empire which was the primary religion. Oh wow. Okay. So I'll explain how um I'll explain how important important this is. So for most of his life, Christians were subject to martyrdom within the Roman Empire. You can read about uh Decius, Valerian, uh Diocletian. Hang on. These sound like things that you can catch. What was the first one? So Decius, these are these are emperors in Rome. So So Emperor Decius, Emperor Valerian, Emperor Diocletian. Um there was there's these there's these different there's hundreds of years of persecution within the context of the Roman Empire from different emperors.

23:48 Decius Valerian and Diocletian were probably the worst ones. That's where we hear most of the stories about um Christians being uh burned at the stake. Christians being put uh thrown into the arena and to be torn apart. Christians like the idea of, you know, that some of us are familiar with this um with this idea of a Roman candle, you know, and the the term Roman candle supposedly comes from um comes from this execution, this style of execution where Christians would be tied to a stake covered in pitch and oil and then they would be lit at the feet like first. Can you can you imagine if you were to go back in time and explain to them, "Oh yeah, we have Roman candles in our house all the time." And they're like, "Yeah, and this would according to all Tacitus all these different Roman I mean these are historians that wrote about this. So this isn't like hearsay stuff."

24:46 So um this was the context that Santa Claus was in. This was a big thing to stand up to them. this world where Diocletian Diocletian is probably the most famous uh for his persecution of of um Christians. He ordered any anybody who found uh copies of scripture, they were ordered to burn them immediately. Uh any any church property, anything that was seen as a church was ordered to be burned to the ground just on site. And they didn't have um you know in the Roman Empire, they didn't have like a police force. There's not like a civil defense force. So, um, if, uh, if people in your city found out you were a Christian, they would just come to your house and they would take all your stuff. They'd burn your house to the ground and you'd have to figure out, you know, may maybe they'd let you live, maybe they let you, maybe they wouldn't let you live.

25:36 So, they could just kill you knowing full well that the emperor was like, "Yeah, great job." Yeah. You were you were supported by the government to do that. And and there was no civility there. Again, like the idea of police didn't exist. There was the military. Yeah. Um, and the military was would aid in the persecution of Christians. Yeah. So, with the with the Roman candle thing, supposedly they would they would they would tie them to stakes in the in the city streets and then people would just watch these these people burn to death for for being Christians. Um, wow. You know, it's it's illogical that Christianity has grown the way it has considering that somebody tried to stamp it out. Like I often think about the miracle that we have so much scripture in the in all the scrolls that they found and how Jesus the most well documented historical figure of all time considering that there were people who were the most powerful people in the world and could make all the laws actively trying to stamp it out.

26:32 I mean for a very for a really long time not for like a year. You live in a you know we have the benefit to live in the western world and this is like a a whole other thing but I think it's something to be very grateful for. Yeah. on Christmas especially, we have the benefit to celebrate Christmas. We have the benefit to be in majority Christian nations where we're even talking about this stuff, right? For uh there was a time in history where 80% of Christians were under Muslim rule in the in the Ottoman Empire. This was after the Roman Empire. So the Roman Empire happens. During the Roman Empire, not only did the Jews want all the Christians dead, the government wanted all the Christians dead. If there was if there was if you needed any more kind of evidence to believe in Jesus and and Christianity and that this is something God wants to do when you have the most powerful state Yeah.

27:25 in world history at that time doing everything they can to destroy you and you don't get destroyed you actually flourish and you flourish and now now you've now Christianity is the leading religion in the world. Mhm. Right. um that could only be God because if you study these Roman persecutions of Christians, I mean it shouldn't have made it. No, you know, I mean it was a there's there's all these different aspects to that. So, and then after the Roman Empire, so it shouldn't have made it through the Roman Empire. Well, then after the Roman Empire, cuz there's all this knowledge that got lost, right? These schools of philosophy cease to exist. I mean, they would persecute philosophers and stuff, too. And whenever they would persecute philosophers, their school of philosophy would just kind of like die out, right? So, um, so then after the Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire shows up, which [clears throat] is, uh, the basically the the accumulation of the Muslim conquests of Muhammad. They became kind of a nation. It's a little bit more complicated than that, but I'm just simplifying that. And 80% of Christians lived underneath Muslim rule, which wasn't and isn't necessarily a super tolerant thing. Okay. So, um, so I give all that history because the context that Santa Claus was in was not like a Coca-Cola winking Santa, right, context. This guy was a real guy. And for me personally, I love history and all that, but I think a person's legacy like that deserves to be honored. So, so there's a story um that after he became a bishop, three innocent men were condemned to death by this governor in in this city. And he right when they're about to be executed, St. Nicholas shows up, he he throw he grabs the executioner's sword out of his hand, throws it to the ground, and releases these guys from their chains. And then he chastises a juror that had accepted the a bribe to turn against them.

29:20 Dude, that's gangster, dude. He's such an OG. I don't know why we wouldn't I don't We should just tell these stories. forget the elves are great. Forget the elves in the North Pole and everything else. But the but the persecutions of the Roman Empire started um these particular ones that I'm talking about. There were multiple ones. But they started 20 years before his birth which was like 280 AD and then till about 313 AD. So up until the time he was in his 40s, right? This is the context that he lived in. So um Christians again, Christians couldn't assemble in any size. untold numbers of Christians were executed for for or tortured for owning scripture or gathering together. And um so all these edicts so St. Nicholas lived in Myra which is modern day Turkey. All these edicts make their way to Myra where he lives and one historian wrote this whenever uh whenever he found out that they were persecuting all the Christians. This is what St. Nicholas did. It says, "As Nicholas was the chief priest of the Christians of this town and preached the truth of the faith with a holy liberty." So he was just like, he was just slaying it.

30:30 He was just playing free. Whatever. Come get me. Right. It says Nicholas was seized by the magistrates, tortured, and then chained and thrown into prison with many other Christians. So um after so the good news is after Diocletian died uh Constantine Y becomes the emperor of Rome and he ends the persecution of Christians and those who the people who this is just kind of interesting Christian history the people who survived Diolesians basically purges were called confessors so they called these people confessors because they wouldn't turn back on their confession of Christ Christ is Lord. So all these people received like this honored um uh not like a rank but like they received this honor like culturally like man you were willing to die for that. You're a real one. That's you were a real one. You're a confessor. Like you would not you would not turn to worship [clears throat] the emperor cuz so you literally had to worship the emperor back then.

31:27 You had you had to worship the emperor and it was it was just more of a state religion that was about everybody being in alignment with what the government says. So, if you didn't worship the emperor, uh you kind of destroyed the foundation of the way that they thought the whole empire would work cuz you weren't loyal. You weren't a loyal subject to the emperor, right? And Rome at that time was such a militarized nation. Like most the the vast majority of the power of Rome of the Roman Empire was militaristic. So if you read the story of the Roman Empire, all these emperors rise and fall based on their alignment with the military. Okay? So um so the alignment with the military was all about the emperor. The alignment with the emperor for the citizens was about making sure that the emperor was going to protect you, right?

32:18 And you know, so it was literally all about brute force power. Absolutely. There was not a lot of intelligence to this. So So the emperors, you know, it's a different time in history too. I mean, a lot of people were less educated and all that than we are now. So, the emperors were seen as like a form of a god in the earth, but it's not like u like it's not like we would imagine it like you're worshiping a spiritual being. You're just you're just basically giving uh credit. There were some people that believed the emperor was descended from the gods, but by that time in history, it was more like, okay, this guy's the emperor, and he's People are going, I want to be safe, so I'm going to go loyalty. This is our loyalty and our fealty to the emperor. So when when St. Nicholas walks out of prison, uh there were crowds supposedly around him that called to him, "Nicholas, confessor." And uh and so he was celebrated as a confessor all throughout Myra. And when he and he had been uh he had been they said when he walked out of prison, he had been beatated so beaten so much that his that his body was the color of vermilion. His body was like beaten raw.

33:27 And it's believed that he was beaten because he frequently intervened on behalf of unjustly charged prisoners and actively sought to help people survive by paying for food to be brought to people who were in jail. That's amazing. And uh so then so then what happens in the story of St. Nicholas is uh the Council of Nicaea and uh this is what led to us doing this doing this episode and talking about this because we were talking about this on on another episode that he got in One of the reasons why the Council of Nicaea started was to form kind of like the basis of right Christian biblical belief and he got into a heated dis heated debate with a guy named Arius who was a basically a well-known heretic and some people followed Arius and the the debate that he got into is whether or not Jesus was uh God or not whether or not he was fully God fully man or if he was just a human being and the debate ended pretty suddenly when uh Nicholas punched punched Arius and knocked him out in front of everybody. Like it was all these like prestigious church, you know, leaders in all their robes and stuff and Santa Claus just just punched a dude right in the face and knocked him out.

34:35 Man, I love that so much. And um that's amazing. The at the end of his life, so throughout throughout his life, at the end of his life, he became most famous for always giving secret gifts to people who had needs, many of whom he never met. And um so the perspective for me on heroes and all that is Christmas represents like a time of hope. It represents a time of just ultimate generosity. I think you know I think in in culture it feels this way but I think every generation kind of feels this way. We feel like we've lost a lot of purity. Yeah. I think that's an ongoing trend and and pure belief but every generation I don't know if we've really lost that. People definitely feel that it's it's it's all perspective, right? Because if you sit there and go like, "Oh, there was a time whenever half the world's population were slaves." I was really struck actually. There's a lot of people who I feel like critical race theory has kind of faded a little bit since its its height a few years ago, but there's a lot of people who only understood like, oh, this is oppression. And I sit there and listen to the story that you're talking about. I'm like, you want to talk about oppression? Like, go back to Roman times when it was literally brute force and that was that was what was understood. Oh, you don't you don't do what we say. we're going to kill you.

35:42 That's oppression. Yeah. Right. And like and so like you said, we all feel like we're things are getting progressively worse, but it's because we lack perspective. Yeah, man. I think, you know, when you look at and that's a that's that can be a complicated topic for a lot of people. Um but Oh, you know, I'll say this and then we'll get back to Santa Claus. You know, uh when you know, people talk about the affordability of houses all the time. Yeah. So, we've talked about money before. We'll talk about money again, but you know, people talk about how we're in this oppressive world and no one's able to afford a house and on and on, right? If you if you do the history, if you do the research, so the people go, well, there was a time in history where, you know, everyone in the 50s, everyone could buy a house if they wanted to buy a house. Now, no one can buy a house. Affordability crisis, all that.

36:34 And may maybe some of that's true, okay? But the average the average home size in the 1950s in the United States of America was 963 I think square feet. Really? Yeah. So a 900 today. So people go well you can't back then you could buy a home on the median household income in the United States of America which is $80,000 a year now. Yeah. So back then you could buy a house with you know with that money. 80,000. Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, you could buy a thousand square foot home today. Yeah. The problem that we have is not that houses have become less affordable. It's that we've become entitled to more now. Dang, that's good. So, I need a bigger house. I need to have certain amenities. I need this many bedrooms. I need this. I need this. I need this. Whereas, when when this uh when this golden age of America was taking place, what people were doing was buying thousand square foot homes, right? and they were living they were making the American dream happen within their means. So I think a lot of the idea that people have that that things are getting worse.

37:42 There's probably this direct correlation with things are getting worse and people are also getting more entitled at the same we need like an entitlement curve chart. Yeah. Like cuz who's studying that? Yeah. And so, so we've we've developed such a high level of I mean, I think even as a Christian, you know, when I when I read stuff like this, when I think about stuff like this, who said I'm not entitled to to being oppressed by the government, right? You know, I'm not saying that's going to happen, but who's like there's so many Christians that walk around and they're so afraid of what happens if if like Muslims get in power in our country? What happens if the government, you know, becomes hyper socialist and anti- good? What happens is the gospel moves forward. That's what happens. And and and we're going to see if people are real believers or not or if they see God or if they see God as Santa Claus. Cuz I think I think the challenge that a lot of people have is they think that the responsibility and the role that God plays in their life is like like kids think about Santa Claus. And just like people when kids get older, they go, "Well, I don't know if I believe in Santa Claus anymore because of all of the whatever." People do the same about God. They're like, "I don't know if I believe in God anymore because I've had hard stuff happen to me and quote unquote God wasn't there." And they don't have a mature approach to life. And I think a lot of Christians, like to me personally, some of the Christians who are the most, you know, insecurity a lot of times is masked as arrogance and overconfidence and aggression. Yeah. And a lot of the Christians that are the most aggressive nationalistic like we have to have we have to have God in our government. I'm not against that. But a lot of the Christians who are the most aggressive that way are the most fearful at what would happen if we didn't. Right?

39:29 I personally I'm going to play my part. I'm going to do do whatever it is that God puts in front of me to do. But I'm not scared about what's going to happen in the government if it happens. The gospel will move forward. My whole family's martyred. I mean, I'm not looking from I get it. I You know, I'm I believe so much in this truth that this is my race to run for sure. Right. And I think that that the the there's always a great hope for the future. I think that what the story of uh Santa Claus is the story of a person who h how's a person able to fight those fights? How's a person able to defend the weak? How's the person how's a person able to take the beatings of other prisoners when they're in jail? It's because of the hope that he had for what that would mean, right? If you [clears throat] look at the story of uh St. Nicholas, he had a lot of reasons to be kind of a hopeless person. So, he lost his parents at a young age and he was lonely and but he knew God and he helped other people experience good things that he didn't have.

40:32 He was persecuted and imprisoned for the hope that he had. Yeah. Yeah, I mean the hope that he had in Jesus and his belief in in God and all that and he continued to bring hope to other people despite his punishment for doing so. So his ultimate purpose in life like the purpose of Santa Claus, right, is to point people to Jesus was to bring people to like this environment and to this uh knowledge that man I if I can be and this is how this is how I want my kids to feel about me. This is how I want my kids to feel about Santa Claus. This is how I want my kids to feel about great people that are striving to be great is if a person can be this great. Can you imagine how great God is? And that is why you must believe in Santa Claus. So you got to believe in Santa Claus. In the in the Netherlands, in the Netherlands, he became known as Santa Claus and many traditions were developed for Dutch people to act like him around Christmas time. Right? So nothing to me represents the hope and expectation not just of Christmas but like of God than St. Nicholas himself. And so I don't ever want my kids to not believe in that, right? And you know, if you're listening to this, you can navigate this relationship to the, you know, the guy in the red suit with the funny hat as much as you want to, but don't let your kids not believe in the power of hope, man. I mean, that's that's what this that's what this this season that we celebrate is all about. And when we look when we look back at history, you know, the the thing that I think to the thing that I think causes people uh lose their innocence like you were talking about with Elijah is not, oh man, Santa Claus isn't a guy that flies around on a sleigh and does all that stuff and Rudolph is not flying around with his red nose.

42:12 It's them seeing them experiencing life and going, "Man, does anybody really believe what they say they believe? Does anybody live out what they say that they live out? Is anybody really a good guy? You know, and the opportunity that we have and the opportunity that Santa Claus had as a person that St. Nicholas had was to be like, "Yeah, it's possible cuz I'm trying to do it." You know, and that's and that's what to me that's the expectation and that's the hope of Christmas that Jesus came and he lived on this earth and he did all this stuff. You know, we're we're talking about uh there's this great song we talk about in in the message of our Christmas production at the church. We talk about Oh, holy night. Well, well, the word um means set apart. Just means set apart for an intended intended use. And this season represents Jesus being set apart for his intended use to bring salvation to the earth. All these things.

43:07 But God doesn't just want us to see that as Jesus's role and responsibility. God's also set us apart for an intended use, you know, and this is and I'm I'm going really deep on Santa Claus because I really that's like I really believe this like if if a person believes it that much, they'll be a Santa Claus, right? They'll step into bringing hope to people. They'll step into operating uh fully they'll do everything they can to fully realize their potential. They'll do everything they can like you're striving to do with your kids like I'm striving to do with my kids to be a great person to be a great man to be a great father, great husband, great parent, whatever because they know what it means to other people. Like I think the story of St. Nicholas is knowing what this stuff means to other people even if even if you don't have it. And that's the story of Jesus. But that's also us is knowing that man, we get the opportunity to be the people that Jesus brought hope to the world 2,000 years ago. So like Santa Claus, we get to give that same gift to everybody else.

44:10 Thank you for listening to The Dialog. Make sure to like, share, and subscribe. And also, if you think someone else would enjoy this, please send it to them. If you want to get in touch or learn more about me, what I think, speak, and write, you can go to joshuacraft.com. Or you can also follow Nick and I on Instagram. Our handles are in the show notes. We'll see you next time.