Leadership and Emotional Sabotage: Resisting the Anxiety That Will Wreck Your Family, Destroy Your Church, and Ruin the World by Joe Rigney w/Brian Bagley

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Hello. My name is Jesan Sorrells and this is

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the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast, episode

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number 135.

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There are some books that define

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what it means to be a leader in ways that are

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counterintuitive. And we spent a lot of time on the podcast

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last year exploring some of those books and exploring

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what counterintuitive thinking around leadership might look like.

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All the way from looking at, how

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to network via the war of 18 12, all

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the way to how to think about and how to engage

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against, propaganda and ideology and the power of the powerless

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by Vaclav Havel. And finally, wrapping up

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towards the end of the year, we looked at Huckleberry Finn and what it

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means for leaders to engage with humor in a world that

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might indeed be humor less or increasingly humor

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less. Although, I think we’re at the end of that. I think we’re in a

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slow healing cycle from that. Then there are

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some books that challenge us in deeper kinds of ways and

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combine ideas that have come from other places that we may not be

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familiar with and really make them succinct. And today, we’re

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going to be covering one of those books.

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Now I got to admit, when I first read this book, I was not convinced

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that it was a leadership book, at least not by the title,

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even though it has the word leadership in it. I was convinced that it was

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something else because of the provenance of the book, the nature of

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the publisher, Cannon Press, and the type of man who is

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behind the publisher, Doug Wilson. But

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we covered, in the final episode of 2024,

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Doug Wilson’s commentary on the book of Revelation when the man comes

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around. And so I decided to start off this year, a

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year where we opened up with Shop Class as Soulcraft by

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Matthew b Crawford. I decided to continue that process

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of noodling into what does it look like to engage with material

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reality in a world of anxiety, trouble,

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and strife with this book. And I’m not going to show it to

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you because, guess what, I don’t have a physical copy of this

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book. But I do have a digital copy, and we are

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going to be talking about, insights from that book, and insights

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from the digital copy of that book today with

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our guest cohost from the end of last year whose name and

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voice you will recognize when I say it. So today, we’ll be

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extracting leadership lessons from what I consider to be one of the best,

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probably straight leadership books of 2024,

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Leadership and Emotional Sabotage, Resisting

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the Anxiety That Will Wreck Your Family, Destroy Your Church, and Ruin the

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World by Joe Rigney.

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Leaders, here’s a question for you. How do you solve a

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problem like Ed Friedman?

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And today, we will be joined in our conversation by our first guest cohost of

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2025, who, as I’ve mentioned before, was our last

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guest cohost to the final episode of 2024, where

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we did discuss that commentary, on the book of Revelation by Doug

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Wilson, when the man comes around.

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We are joined today by my friend and former

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pastor, who I’ve never really mentioned that on this show, Brian

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Bagley. How are you doing, Brian? Hey, man. I’m

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I’m glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

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So, Brian has on his, very

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snazzy vest. I have on my flannel,

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which is lined with sheep’s wool that I got from, that I got

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for, for Christmas. My wife says that I look very

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much like a farmer now. I look like a blue collar guy, which

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kinda goes along, I think, a little bit with the nature of the book and

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the kinds of things that, Joe is attempting to get

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to here in Leadership and Emotional

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Sabotage. So you’ll

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see that on the video. You won’t hear any of that on the audio, but

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you’ll see that on the video. So it’ll be good for you. You look great,

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by the way. You look great, by the way. You know, I it’s interesting. So

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I was, like, I was looking at we were doing our prerecording, kinda going through

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our prerecording checks with my, my, production assistant.

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And I was looking at the video, and I was like, oh my god. Like,

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all gray on that side. What is happening?

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Well, you know It’s wisdom. We

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something’s well, something’s coming out. It might be might be that something’s coming out. I

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don’t know about coming, you know, going in. But, let’s see if we can get

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to some wisdom today. So just like with most books that are new

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or relatively new, we’re not gonna read directly from the book today.

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We’re gonna comment on it, and we’re gonna talk about larger themes in the book.

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And we’re going to I’m gonna ask Brian some questions, and we’re gonna kinda walk

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through some of the big chunky ideas in the book.

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This book is short, and, it’s only a 108 pages.

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So it’s easy an easy read. And I was kind of

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I will admit, I was kind of perturbed when I when I figured out how

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short it was because I was, like, really, how how good could it be? But

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short, small books are what Canon Press is known

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for. Books that distill down the BS and the

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nonsense and really get into just this is what this

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thing is, right, that we’re talking about. And we’ll talk

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a little bit about Joe Rigney. And we’ll talk about his

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background, why he wrote this book potentially, and sort of some ideas I

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have about that. So I’d like to kick off with a brief

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a brief summary of the book. So what Joe Rigney is doing is

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he’s taking ideas that were, formerly proposed in a

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book called The Failure of Nerve, by a guy named Ed Friedman,

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many years ago. A book that was,

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to my knowledge, never fully completed. And, he’s taking these

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ideas, which were written with a focus on evolutionary

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biology, a focus on psychology, and a focus on secularism. And he

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is applying a biblical worldview to

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these ideas and placing them in a biblical context.

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And Rigney, the author of Leadership and Emotional

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Sabotage, picked up a few principles that Ed Friedman had

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talked about. But not all of them. But he he picked up a bunch of

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them. And those include ideas of emotional systems

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being, around in the world. Chronic anxiety,

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triangulation, a concept called herding, which we’re gonna talk,

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a little bit about today. What

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it means to be and what it is what it means to be and and

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who is a well differentiated leader.

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Empathy. We’re sure gonna talk a lot about empathy today,

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particularly weaponized empathy. We’re gonna talk a little bit about that.

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And, because Joe got into a little bit of trouble talking about weaponized empathy a

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few a few years ago. And this idea of

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emotional sabotage, which, Friedman never really discussed

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because Friedman didn’t really believe, just like most secular atheists don’t

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believe in a fallen world. But Christians

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do, and they know that we have to we know that we have to operate

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within that very carefully. In chapter

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1 of Leadership and Emotional Sabotage, Rigney draws on the

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bible, Shakespeare, Homer. And he does all of this to

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show how anxiety that’s current in our society,

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is not just a general crisis, but a crisis of degree. And he

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he makes some distinctions with the difference in the book that I think are

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important in the first few chapters.

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In chapter 2, Rigney builds on that concept of a crisis of

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degree, by talking about and addressing this

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question, how can a leader lead through a crisis of

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degree? What does that actually look like? And then in chapter 3, Ricky

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describes the concept of emotional sabotage.

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One of the things that’s interesting to me and why I wanted to talk with

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Brian about this is because, the dynamic of emotional sabotage

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occurs a lot in churches, and has occurred a lot more, I

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think, as the crisis of degree has increased over the course of the

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last, I would say, 25 years. And it has led to church splits. It’s

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led to church leadership being questioned. The probably

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most public example that I could think of recently that has happened that’s

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in the public zeitgeist is all the dynamics between Beth Moore

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and anybody that you can mention in the Southern Baptist

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Conference.

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As growing leaders and this is from a review of Joe

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Rigney’s book. As growing leaders begin to exercise renewed biblical leadership, the

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pushback is often negative and pronounced at first. How can a leader lead

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through this? And I don’t think it’s just in I don’t think it’s just in

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churches. I think as leaders and we’re about to see this, I think, with the

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new Trump administration, at a macro political level,

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but I also think we’re about to see this at a micro political level. As

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corporations move away from DEI and other initiatives that they

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have that they have pushed for the last

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well, since that mostly peaceful summer of 2020.

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What you’re going to see is a lot of emotional sabotage. I’m

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already starting to see the little tiny spring shoots,

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the leaves coming up on the trees of that on places like LinkedIn and the

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Drudge Report as the quote unquote resistance

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to well, to being emotionally manipulated

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really begins to kick in. And it’s gonna be interesting to see how these

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CEOs and these leaders respond to the pushback,

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that is negative and pronounced against emotional

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sabotage. So these are some of the main ideas that are at the

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front of leadership emotional sabotage. And I’d like to kick off

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by asking Brian Bagley,

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what do you think about this? What do you think about this book? Talk about

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it. I know you had mentioned when we started talking about talking about this book

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that you had started it and then you put it down. Now you’ve gone back

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into it. What do you think of this book? Yeah. No. I think it’s

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a I think it’s a timely book. I think,

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there it there’s a lot of application in not just in

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the church. I think it’s I think your your

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analysis there, you’re you’re drawing the line between the the

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DEI, and emotional sabotage, I think

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it’s absolutely absolutely spot on. I think there’s,

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there are plenty of examples where,

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people have made appeals to a motion,

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that I think in a bygone era would have

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just been, you know, shrugged off. You know?

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In a more masculine era, there those

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appeals to a motion would have just been dismissed. But we don’t live in

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a masculine era. We live in a feminine era. And so there’s a lot

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more weight being been given to emotional

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appeals, whether it’s through mass media,

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politically, even, unfortunately,

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as much as I hate to say it, theologically. And,

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you know, you would you, you would hope that that theology your

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theology would be, you know, theology is the is the thing that’s at the the

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headwaters of any society. It’s their their what they think about God and

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man. And so, you know, if your theology is

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warped, then everything downstream of that will be as well.

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And so so I think, you know, just from reading the book

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and I I think Joe Rigney has

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I think he’s ahead of the curve with this book. I think he’s got

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some things he said some things that need to be said,

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and I’m excited that he wrote it. I’m I’m glad that I I was able

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to get through it, and, and I look forward to applying it in the coming,

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months years. Well, it’s interesting that you mentioned that religion

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and you and I have had this discussion. Theology is or religion is

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is upstream or other things. I let’s frame it this way. Other things that

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we value in civic and public life are downstream from

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religion. And someone who is non sec who is secular

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will listen to this and will say, rightly so,

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they will say, well,

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that may be true, but religion is just a social

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construct of man. Now, we’re not gonna get into the objections to that or the

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the the or the ideas around that. Otherwise, we’ll be here for 4 hours, and

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we don’t have that kind of time today. Instead, what we’re going to do is

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we’re going to grant that argument that religion

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is a social constructive man for the purpose of

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talking about where that social construct sits. Right?

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And religions all the way always go back to worldviews.

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Right? What do you view where do you view your place in

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the world? Where do you view Right. Who you are? I would

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assert that worldviews go directly to and and the misorderedness

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that we have in our worldviews go directly to the postmodern meeting

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crisis that we’ve had for the last now going on 60

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no. Almost 80 years, actually, in the west

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overall. We’ve had an increasingly misordered sense of

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meaning ever since, particularly in Europe, Christianity

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died its last death, in the bombing of Dresden,

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I would say, probably, in, in 1943, 44,

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whenever that happened. I think it just it just that event

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just wiped out. And it’s not just that event. It was a culmination of a

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lot of things, but that just sort of wiped out Christian Europe and

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allowed for the rise of deconstructionism that

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infected academia and other areas of our of our of American

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public civic life over the course of the last 80 years or so.

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Joe Rigney, I think, would probably agree with us in all this.

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Just a little background on the author. He earned a bachelor of arts degree

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in communication from Texas A&M University, followed by a master of arts in

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biblical and pastoral studies from Bethlehem College and Seminary, and a master’s

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degree in classical Christian studies from New Saint Andrews. That would be

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Doug Wilson’s outfit in, in Idaho, and a PhD from

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the University of Chester in England. He also served for

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a brief time as a briefing pastor or maybe currently serves

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as a preaching pastor at Cities Church in Minneapolis.

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Let’s talk a little bit about Joe Rigney. So

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John Piper booted him from his little conclave up there in, in

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Minneapolis. Can you tell the listeners why that happened and who John

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Piper is? Because maybe most folks may not know. Yeah. John

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Piper is a great preacher, pastor, and he’s kinda he

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kinda cut his teeth. He kinda became

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famous in the 19 nineties for a series of,

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I would say, college age,

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it was a movement of of mainly college students at that time in the early

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nineties. It was called the Passion Movement, and, it was

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it was sort of the the awakening of this, reformed

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movement among Christians, especially

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younger Christians, and that gave rise to other aspects of

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the reformed church planning movements such as Acts 29.

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And there were some other things that kinda sprang from passion,

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but but, Piper’s sort of the the grandfather of

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that that whole movement. But he’s very it’s interesting because,

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reform guys tend to be more Presbyterian

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ish. You know? You see you see there there are lots of reformed baptists. I’m

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probably gonna get the smack down online about this, but but there are reformed

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baptists, and and Piper is certainly one of them. I mean, I would say

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you know? And I’m Baptist, and I I I would say I lean more towards

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the reform way of thinking about things. But but bottom line

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is, Piper is he’s like the

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granddad in in all of that. And so so,

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you know, he founded Bethlehem College. He was the pastor there at

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Bethlehem Baptist Church and had a very, very successful

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ministry for a long time. Started, I think he was in charge. I

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think it was Crossway Press. I’m not sure. Maybe it wasn’t Crossway. But there’s there’s

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some big publishing outfit. It’s Crossway, I think, that he

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founded, and it’s huge. It’s got a lot of a lot of publicity. It’s a

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great it they’ve got a lot of great resources. So Piper’s been very

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successful. And, and so Rigney kinda grew

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up under him and and but Rigney, kinda

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took a little bit of a you know, he he developed his own ideas

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about some things, based on his own theology.

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And, and so I think that’s where you were going with that.

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Right? Yeah. Yeah. And we’ll get into a little bit deeper of

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that or around that when we talk about sort of some flack that

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Rigney has gotten. But I think, leadership and

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emotional sabotage comes directly out of Rigney’s

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experiences defining what is going on in the

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public culture in a way that goes that cuts

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against the grain of the pipers or the Tim

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Kellers, or even, I

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would say, Alastair Beggs of the world.

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And the reason why it cuts against the grain of those types of

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folks is because those folks, to your

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point about Piper, cut their eye teeth on building in the 19 nineties when we

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lived in a much more Christian positive culture. I mean, it was still

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becoming Christian negative, but it was it was nominally still Christian

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positive. And now we live, I would assert, in a fully Christian

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negative culture. Mhmm. You wouldn’t believe the kind of pushback I

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get from people when I talk about Christianity on this podcast. You wouldn’t

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believe the kind of pushback that I get. And

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it’s I’m I’m not talking about it in terms of, like, oh, I’m a martyr.

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Feel sorry for me. No. Like, that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m

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saying there are people who genuinely just sort of skip past these topics and

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go right to the other books whenever I talk about a book based in theology

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or the bible. Or they’ll they’ll skip past because they it doesn’t mean

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anything to them. They’re like, that doesn’t mean anything to me. Christian

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negative doesn’t mean hostility. Christian negative can just mean passive

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aggressiveness or even just, like, I’m just gonna ignore the thing

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because it doesn’t matter. And I think that’s where we’re

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at as a culture in the United States. So Rigney came up,

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like and I think Rigney is right around our right around my age. I’m in

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my mid forties now. He came up during a time when

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the transition from Christian positive to

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Christian negative was almost fully complete. And he could see it in his

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own peers. And so he writes from that perspective versus Piper who’s

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writing from the other end and leading from the other end of the telescope. The

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The other thing I would say to that, if if I can jump in, is

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just Yeah. There there’s another there’s another you’re absolutely

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right about that, Haysan. There’s another aspect of this, and

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that’s the s the eschatology. So

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Piper is gonna be more of a premillennialist,

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and Joe Rigney is gonna be more of a postmillennialist. And so that

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and the reason that gets into the the

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civil sphere and Christian nationalism. K? So

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so Piper and,

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oh, you Tim Keller, couple of other guys that you mentioned,

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premillennialists. Right? And so they take a much

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more conciliatory tone with the

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world. Why? Because they don’t really see it as their

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job to necessarily, build anything. I’m

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I’m not I’m not saying they don’t care about building things, you know, building a

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church or or ministry. I’m not saying that. But they fundamentally

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believe that that that things are gonna get worse and worse and worse, and

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god’s gonna Jesus is gonna come again in the second coming and just

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rescue rescue the church from a really bad situation.

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So they don’t feel any pressure to be involved in

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politics, to try to reform politics, to try to, reform

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the the the public sphere in any way. Right? We’re just gonna preach

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Jesus and be nice and pray this

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prayer, this simple prayer, and, you know, just think about keep you

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know, think about your life in a Christian way and just love God and

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and get along with folks and and it’ll be okay in the end. And

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Rigney’s you know, he’s not looking at it like that. He’s saying, no. Christ doesn’t

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return until until the enemies of God are are made a

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footstool under his feet. So that only happens through

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the execution of the, the the gospel plan, the the

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great commission, if you will. And so that means we have to go into these

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spheres and, conquer them for Christ, if you will. So

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that’s the whole the whole point of Christian nationalism. We have 2 different ways

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of thinking about how to confront a secular culture.

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And the and they’re they’re I I wouldn’t say they’re diametrically opposed,

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but they’re they’re clearly 2 different paths. And so,

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so that’s another thing in play. Well, in that and then you get into,

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like, essentially the article. You get into, like, infant

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baptism, which I’m not gonna get into. I’m just not gonna get into on this

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podcast. I’m a I’m a I always say I’m a

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recovering Catholic, a recovering orthodox

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Catholic. And so,

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maybe next time maybe sometime this year, we’ll come on and we’ll talk about the

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intricacies of infant baptism for our audience. That’d be interesting. I

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don’t care. Because there’s some definite, oh, let’s put it this

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way. We’re the the orthodox and the the orthodox Catholics and

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the Catholics, the western Catholics are reading the reading

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the, the passages around baptism differently than the baptists are. Let’s

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just say that. They’re just reading them differently. True statement.

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So True statement. It’s interesting, though. Let’s let’s talk about Christian

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nationalism because this one’s a little bit more this one actually irks

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or pokes the secularist right in the right in the eye.

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Particularly, the more leftist a secularist happens to be

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politically oriented, the more

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Christian nationalism riles them up.

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And the reason why, I think, and I wanna go to a

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deeper thing other than the nationalism or this weird

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heuristic shorthand that’s always put out thereof. Well,

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we gotta separate church and state. And Christian nationalism just wants to combine churches.

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We’re gonna have a theocracy, Handmaid’s Tale, blah blah blah blah. Then they start, like,

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foaming at the mouth, and they create a golf and create make a Hulu show

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or something that a bunch of people on the on the East Coast and the

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West Coast watch.

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Christian nationalism, I think, irks people of a political stripe

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because they are of a purton they are of a particular psychological

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temperament, I would assert. I think Rigney would agree with me, and I got this

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from the book too. So Rigney is very

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much concerned with what has happened and how to solve

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it, which is great. He’s describing the what. He’s saying,

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this is emotional sabotage. This is,

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this is, weaponization of empathy.

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This is, what what what what’s the other things on my list? Oh, yeah. These

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are the emotional systems. This is what anxiety looks like in the church. This is

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what triangulation looks like. He’s very much consumed with, like, this is the what,

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and now let’s move on to the how do we solve it, which is

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great, right, for for the podcast and for where we’re going this year. Great for

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our show. I am, of course, a root cause

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guy, which means I’m I’m very interested.

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And and you can say this is for my own self referential reasons.

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Sure. Okay. I’m very interested in the why

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and the how. Mhmm. So

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the reason why Christian nationalism hoax

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people of a certain temperament, I think, is because of the

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problem in our world today that if you mention it, we get you booted from

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polite society. And Brian actually already mentioned it. So but boom. Brian’s

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already been booted from polite society, so it’s fine. It’s fine.

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00:24:32,280 –> 00:24:35,800
And he still eats, and somehow his kids still have clothes, so it’s cool. Like,

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being booted. Yeah. Boot boot boot for life is fine. This is fine.

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But I think the problem is this, or the the why is

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this. We have we have a dominance

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or preponderance, maybe this is the best way to put it, of the

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prioritization of a more feminine temperament in communication and

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social situations. And that has slowly come to overwhelm

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public discourse over the last 40 years. As a matter of fact,

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probably the biggest example of this is the recent hearings for the

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secretary of defense, Pete Heggeseth, and

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just go online and search Pete Hegiseth female senators.

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And you will find all kinds of memes and videos that will pop up,

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in your browser. And if you are at work

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in a place where HR is looking over your shoulder, you might

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want to make sure to not go through the VPN at work

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when you look at this. Because HR will have feminine HR will have a

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conversation with you. Whether that feminine comes in the form of a man or a

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woman, I do not care. It’s a temperament issue. Right? That’s

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00:25:39,570 –> 00:25:43,264
right. And I think that but I think that people

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are searching around for why that feminine temperament has has come to so dominate

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public discourse in work, in churches, in schools, in government. And I think

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the why is because it’s it’s several factors. But I

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think there’s been changes in social structures and changes in

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globalized communication patterns, with the advent of the commercial

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Internet. I think the commerce this is one of the things that the commercial Internet

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opened up. It opened the door to a

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feminine temperament dominating

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public discourse because the nature of

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the applications built on top of the commercial Internet, most notably

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social media, prioritizes

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social norming, a a

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tamping down of conflict,

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and making sure that everybody stays in on track. And by the way,

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you can see this from a masculine version of the feminine temperament, which is surveillance

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and data gathering. That would be Google. And you can see this in a

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more softer feminine version of

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this in feminine temperament. And this would be, exemplified by

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Tinder and online dating. Oh, and even, by the way, OnlyFans. Let’s just

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throw it out there. What the heck? Why not? And I think that

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all of this has taken leaders who were raised again like Piper

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and made their bones like Piper, has taken them all

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completely by surprise. Because they came out of a more masculine temperament, a more

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masculine way of communicating and dealing with problems. And this has

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led to a failure to function in relational systems. And that’s

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what Rigney, I think, is trying to diagnose, but he doesn’t talk about the why.

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Otherwise, his book will probably be twice as long. Do you think I’ve hit on

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00:27:22,545 –> 00:27:26,309
anything here, or am I grasping at straws? No. I I think that’s

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00:27:26,309 –> 00:27:30,150
good. I I do think you’re I I I think Britney is not

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concerned about why we’re here. He’s assuming

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that you agree with him on that point, I think. Right. He’s just

442
00:27:37,350 –> 00:27:39,850
saying he’s just saying, hey. Just look around.

443
00:27:41,684 –> 00:27:44,985
There are people who, are resisting leaders

444
00:27:45,765 –> 00:27:49,525
through emotional manipulation, and and I think I

445
00:27:49,525 –> 00:27:52,825
don’t think you you you could disagree on the

446
00:27:53,059 –> 00:27:56,660
the temperament of of the, society, you know,

447
00:27:56,660 –> 00:28:00,500
whether it’s masculine or feminine, and know as a leader that there are people

448
00:28:00,500 –> 00:28:04,340
trying to emotionally manipulate you. I mean, that

449
00:28:04,340 –> 00:28:07,975
is that is happening in corporate boardrooms

450
00:28:08,195 –> 00:28:11,715
and cubicles all over America. So Okay. So

451
00:28:11,715 –> 00:28:15,554
so why has that worked so well in the

452
00:28:15,554 –> 00:28:19,235
formerly strongly nonpolitical or conservative organization

453
00:28:19,235 –> 00:28:22,669
like the church? And I mean the the the church in a western sort of

454
00:28:22,669 –> 00:28:26,510
context, not necessarily a specific denomination. Yeah. Because this is this disease

455
00:28:26,510 –> 00:28:30,049
is striking everywhere from the I mean, the orthodox are resisting,

456
00:28:30,269 –> 00:28:34,029
but I think they’re the last Yeah. Bulwark, you know, backed up

457
00:28:34,029 –> 00:28:37,205
against the wall. But everything else is like even in Protestantism,

458
00:28:37,905 –> 00:28:41,265
everything else has fallen to this. Why has that happened? You you you hit on

459
00:28:41,265 –> 00:28:44,785
something really, really good when you were talking about it’s a it’s it’s a matter

460
00:28:44,785 –> 00:28:48,545
of temperament. Right. Right? It so when we’re talking about men and women, we’re not

461
00:28:48,545 –> 00:28:52,240
talking about men and women, good, bad. We’re talking about we’re talking about men,

462
00:28:52,240 –> 00:28:55,680
women the way that they are. Right. So women are

463
00:28:55,680 –> 00:28:59,520
more emotional. They are, they tend to be

464
00:28:59,520 –> 00:29:03,280
more nurturing. Now I everybody can sit here and think of a woman who’s not

465
00:29:03,280 –> 00:29:06,365
nurturing at all. Like, you you’ve got one in your head. Nope. She’s not a

466
00:29:06,445 –> 00:29:09,645
not one nurturing bone in her butt. Okay? And then we can all think of

467
00:29:09,645 –> 00:29:13,405
the one guy who we know who’s like, oh, he’s the sweetest

468
00:29:13,405 –> 00:29:16,970
little guy I’ve ever met. So gentle. Okay. Okay. I’m not talking about

469
00:29:16,970 –> 00:29:20,750
your exceptions. I’m talking about broad categories in general.

470
00:29:21,210 –> 00:29:24,649
Okay? Women tend to be more nurturing than

471
00:29:24,649 –> 00:29:28,090
men in general. Okay? Men tend to be less

472
00:29:28,090 –> 00:29:31,635
nurturing, more direct in general. And so I

473
00:29:31,635 –> 00:29:35,415
think I I think that’s what we’re talking about here. We’re you’re talking about a,

474
00:29:36,275 –> 00:29:40,035
a society that has, deferred to a

475
00:29:40,035 –> 00:29:42,455
more feminine way of communication

476
00:29:43,940 –> 00:29:47,780
over time. And so I think you see I think you see

477
00:29:47,780 –> 00:29:51,160
that in you’re talking about in churches, you know, like with Piper,

478
00:29:51,860 –> 00:29:55,560
with with Tim Keller. The way that they planted those church

479
00:29:55,620 –> 00:29:59,294
efforts in those big cities, they knew they

480
00:29:59,294 –> 00:30:02,595
were going into negative world. New York City was already

481
00:30:03,054 –> 00:30:06,815
well on its way to, to negative world. And so

482
00:30:06,815 –> 00:30:10,620
rather than confront that world head on, they chose a

483
00:30:10,700 –> 00:30:14,059
more winsome approach. Like, they were you know, they wanted a they wanted a

484
00:30:14,059 –> 00:30:17,820
conversation. They wanted a dialogue. They wanted to, you

485
00:30:17,820 –> 00:30:21,580
know, rather than come in there with a Billy Graham crusade and pray this prayer

486
00:30:21,580 –> 00:30:24,585
and give your life to Christ and repent from your sins, it was like, well,

487
00:30:24,585 –> 00:30:28,424
hey. Let’s have a conversation with with someone who’s not a Christian or

488
00:30:28,424 –> 00:30:32,265
an atheist or, you know, a a seeker as it may be

489
00:30:32,265 –> 00:30:36,025
called, and and let’s see if we can convince them. Right?

490
00:30:36,025 –> 00:30:39,770
Let’s win them over, and those

491
00:30:40,730 –> 00:30:44,270
and and so but in an increasingly negative world, that just doesn’t work.

492
00:30:44,650 –> 00:30:46,840
Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. So

493
00:30:53,295 –> 00:30:55,555
We’ve talked a little bit about Brittany, his background,

494
00:30:56,735 –> 00:31:00,575
Christian nationalism. We have not touched on infant baptism

495
00:31:00,575 –> 00:31:02,915
because I’m just not gonna do that today as I already mentioned.

496
00:31:04,990 –> 00:31:08,370
But both all those things kind of led him to being booted out of,

497
00:31:09,390 –> 00:31:13,170
of, Piper’s outfit up there in, in Minneapolis, Bethlehem

498
00:31:13,230 –> 00:31:17,070
College. And, he landed on, and began to

499
00:31:17,070 –> 00:31:20,855
work with Doug Wilson and created this book, Leadership and

500
00:31:20,855 –> 00:31:24,375
Emotional Sabotage. And I think this is the

501
00:31:24,375 –> 00:31:28,075
first book of many that’s gonna come from Rigney’s, Rigney’s

502
00:31:28,135 –> 00:31:31,975
pen. By the way, the Internet has also given us

503
00:31:31,975 –> 00:31:35,220
the opportunity to publish.

504
00:31:37,760 –> 00:31:41,360
And so it’s taken the person who would normally have

505
00:31:41,360 –> 00:31:45,120
stood on the street corner with a clapboard and said

506
00:31:45,120 –> 00:31:48,825
the end is near ringing a bell. And

507
00:31:48,825 –> 00:31:52,585
now that guy just goes to Idaho and blogs

508
00:31:52,585 –> 00:31:56,265
all day. And, eventually, he finds people

509
00:31:56,265 –> 00:32:00,025
who are doomers and gloomers. But he also

510
00:32:00,025 –> 00:32:02,924
finds people, if he’s really sophisticated in his communication,

511
00:32:04,080 –> 00:32:07,840
who understand that if he’s taking flack for saying the end

512
00:32:07,840 –> 00:32:11,679
is near, he must be over the target. And so I wanna talk

513
00:32:11,679 –> 00:32:13,140
a little bit about that.

514
00:32:16,135 –> 00:32:19,895
One of the things that Rigney talks about in his book is courage. Right? Courage

515
00:32:19,895 –> 00:32:23,575
of the world, courage of the church. Talk a little bit about that, Brian. Like,

516
00:32:23,575 –> 00:32:25,755
what does it take to confront these

517
00:32:28,390 –> 00:32:32,150
individuals and even systems? Because it’s really systems thinking. That’s the thing that attracted

518
00:32:32,150 –> 00:32:35,270
me to this book. Because I’m a systems thinker. Like, I see how things click

519
00:32:35,270 –> 00:32:39,110
together and that’s also what makes me a root cause guy. Because if

520
00:32:39,110 –> 00:32:42,305
you could figure out how the system is clicked together, then you can go you

521
00:32:42,305 –> 00:32:46,065
could basically engineer reverse engineer the system Mhmm. Figure the

522
00:32:46,065 –> 00:32:49,745
thing out, and go, oh, okay. That was the seed. If we just go

523
00:32:49,745 –> 00:32:53,345
pluck that out, we can solve we can solve the problem. Right? Yep. So

524
00:32:53,820 –> 00:32:57,519
but that takes courage. Right? And the the venture capitalist, Peter Thiel,

525
00:32:57,659 –> 00:33:01,500
once infamously said the courage has always been in short brilliance is always in short

526
00:33:01,500 –> 00:33:05,259
supply, but so is courage, basically. And I’m butchering that that

527
00:33:05,259 –> 00:33:08,960
phrase. But it’s true. Like, courage has always been in short supply.

528
00:33:09,465 –> 00:33:12,205
So in a time where

529
00:33:13,304 –> 00:33:16,345
and I’m not gonna talk about I mean, the easy examples to bring up are

530
00:33:16,345 –> 00:33:19,705
cancel culture and things like that. Those are easy to bring up. But in a

531
00:33:19,705 –> 00:33:23,179
time where we,

532
00:33:26,440 –> 00:33:29,960
as leaders, have to have courage, how do we do that in the face of

533
00:33:29,960 –> 00:33:33,799
weaponized empathy and in emotional sabotage? How how do you

534
00:33:33,799 –> 00:33:37,565
avoid being emotionally manipulated as a leader? Yeah. I

535
00:33:37,565 –> 00:33:41,405
think you have to be willing to speak to the elephant in

536
00:33:41,405 –> 00:33:45,005
the room. So a lot of times, people will

537
00:33:45,005 –> 00:33:46,625
know that

538
00:33:48,445 –> 00:33:51,345
there’s something wrong, but because

539
00:33:52,490 –> 00:33:55,850
they don’t want to ruffle feathers or there’s some sort of

540
00:33:55,850 –> 00:33:59,690
protected, I don’t wanna say protected class, but like a

541
00:33:59,770 –> 00:34:03,210
there’s some protected idea. It could be protected class. It could be a

542
00:34:03,610 –> 00:34:05,870
you know, there’s just we we don’t wanna acknowledge,

543
00:34:07,415 –> 00:34:11,114
that this problem could be something else because of,

544
00:34:12,614 –> 00:34:16,455
you know, what whatever it is that we’re protecting. Right? So

545
00:34:16,455 –> 00:34:19,975
it could be, sexual orientation. It could be anything. It could be a number of

546
00:34:19,975 –> 00:34:23,639
things, right, that we’re we’re saying, oh, that’s off limits for voting. Don’t talk about

547
00:34:23,639 –> 00:34:27,080
that. Don’t address that. And then people use that to

548
00:34:27,080 –> 00:34:30,840
sabotage some some effort that’s being done. Okay? I’ll I’ll

549
00:34:30,840 –> 00:34:34,514
use an example even even better than sexual orientation. We don’t do any

550
00:34:34,594 –> 00:34:38,375
or not any. We do very little psychological research

551
00:34:38,755 –> 00:34:42,214
around IQ anymore in this country. Absolutely.

552
00:34:42,675 –> 00:34:46,355
Because it’s brutal. It’s absolutely brutal. That’s right.

553
00:34:46,355 –> 00:34:50,080
Particularly, the correlations. And nobody likes to

554
00:34:50,080 –> 00:34:53,440
use this term because now they think you’re leaning into causation when you say

555
00:34:53,440 –> 00:34:57,139
correlation. No. I’m saying correlation, and I have a relatively

556
00:34:57,200 –> 00:35:00,800
high IQ. So it’s okay. I’ve done pretty good. I know what I’m talking

557
00:35:00,800 –> 00:35:03,859
about. But the correlations between IQ and ethnicity,

558
00:35:04,695 –> 00:35:07,735
No one wants to do any research touching on any of that ever since Charles

559
00:35:07,735 –> 00:35:11,575
Murray got slammed back in the day. Yep. And if

560
00:35:11,575 –> 00:35:15,335
you don’t do that kind of research Mhmm. Then

561
00:35:15,335 –> 00:35:19,119
you can’t solve the problem because what that what that IQ

562
00:35:19,119 –> 00:35:22,800
research takes you into is a space where you

563
00:35:22,800 –> 00:35:26,640
don’t know what to do about IQ. Because as

564
00:35:26,640 –> 00:35:28,980
a researcher with a limited number of

565
00:35:30,654 –> 00:35:34,494
scientific materialistic tools at your disposal, you’re now wandering

566
00:35:34,494 –> 00:35:37,394
into a space where that tool those tools don’t work.

567
00:35:38,734 –> 00:35:42,134
And so there’s to your point, there’s a lack of courage around IQ. Forget it.

568
00:35:42,255 –> 00:35:45,640
Answer. There’s all kinds of beliefs. Yeah. There’s all kinds of things that you’re just

569
00:35:45,640 –> 00:35:49,480
not allowed to talk about because Right. You know, well, we

570
00:35:49,480 –> 00:35:52,600
don’t we don’t we don’t wanna talk about the underlying cause. The underlying causes are

571
00:35:52,600 –> 00:35:56,380
gonna cause us to confront some other truths that we don’t like. Right.

572
00:35:56,520 –> 00:35:59,340
So so I think when it comes to courage, it’s,

573
00:36:00,385 –> 00:36:03,905
you know, Elon Musk is a great example of this. I think,

574
00:36:04,305 –> 00:36:08,145
you know, Elon Musk has, you know, people were

575
00:36:08,145 –> 00:36:11,985
trying to bully him at Twitter, into silence

576
00:36:11,985 –> 00:36:15,599
or into, you

577
00:36:15,599 –> 00:36:19,119
know, like, I think it was was it him and Bob Iger? Somebody was

578
00:36:19,119 –> 00:36:22,660
trying to basically deny they were gonna

579
00:36:22,799 –> 00:36:26,645
punish Twitter by not they were gonna punish Elon Musk by by

580
00:36:26,645 –> 00:36:30,484
saying, hey. We’re not gonna give our advertising dollars to you until you can either

581
00:36:30,484 –> 00:36:33,145
shut your mouth or say what we want you to say. And

582
00:36:34,405 –> 00:36:38,085
and, Rogan had some or not Rogan. Musk had some choice words at that

583
00:36:38,085 –> 00:36:41,440
interview that he gave. I don’t know if you saw that. But, yeah, it

584
00:36:41,440 –> 00:36:45,200
was but but, basically, he was saying, like, like, look.

585
00:36:45,200 –> 00:36:49,040
There’s there’s this this whole this whole problem with free speech in

586
00:36:49,040 –> 00:36:52,740
our country, and people are trying to bully me with money.

587
00:36:52,800 –> 00:36:56,255
Like, like, I’m not gonna do that. Like,

588
00:36:57,435 –> 00:37:00,635
agree with me or don’t agree with me, but that’s not like, you’re not gonna

589
00:37:00,635 –> 00:37:04,395
back me down on that. And and I think when it when it

590
00:37:04,395 –> 00:37:08,190
comes to sort of this emotional sabotage and,

591
00:37:08,570 –> 00:37:12,410
oh, you don’t care about people. You you don’t like this person, this this class

592
00:37:12,410 –> 00:37:16,010
of people. You don’t care about them. You you know? That that’s that type of

593
00:37:16,010 –> 00:37:19,530
emotional sabotage that I think we’re Rigney is trying to

594
00:37:19,530 –> 00:37:21,785
address in this in this book.

595
00:37:23,605 –> 00:37:27,204
Brene Brown, the writer of Darren Greatly, talks about

596
00:37:27,204 –> 00:37:30,984
courage being a heart word. And and she’s coming from, again,

597
00:37:31,365 –> 00:37:35,060
you know, a social work background, which is

598
00:37:35,060 –> 00:37:38,580
a a field that is dominated by a feminine

599
00:37:38,580 –> 00:37:42,420
temperament. And that’s fine. That’s that’s sort of the

600
00:37:42,420 –> 00:37:46,180
nature of sort of where a, where

601
00:37:46,180 –> 00:37:49,895
a where a occupation is

602
00:37:49,895 –> 00:37:53,735
going to go. Right? And I don’t disagree with her. I do think

603
00:37:53,735 –> 00:37:57,415
courage takes heart. It is a heart word. But when we

604
00:37:57,415 –> 00:38:01,255
search our hearts, as it says in the bible, we find that they

605
00:38:01,255 –> 00:38:05,089
are, to paraphrase from Jeremiah, deceitful above all

606
00:38:05,089 –> 00:38:06,950
else. Right? Who could know them?

607
00:38:10,450 –> 00:38:14,150
One of the things that the heart of man has to run up against

608
00:38:14,210 –> 00:38:17,955
invariably, and we talked about this in our episode on shop class versus

609
00:38:18,175 –> 00:38:21,795
shop class at Soulcraft by Matthew Crawford. Invariably,

610
00:38:22,815 –> 00:38:26,515
the heart of man has to run up against the boundaries of limits of material

611
00:38:26,575 –> 00:38:30,210
reality. Like, I’ll give you an example.

612
00:38:30,430 –> 00:38:33,970
So no matter how much Brian and I,

613
00:38:35,070 –> 00:38:38,910
who are separated by a few 100 miles. Right? I’m

614
00:38:38,910 –> 00:38:42,365
recording this right now. No matter how much we may want to be in the

615
00:38:42,365 –> 00:38:45,725
same room physically, unless I

616
00:38:45,725 –> 00:38:48,305
can manipulate my atoms

617
00:38:50,045 –> 00:38:53,740
over distance to go to where Brian is, and Brian can

618
00:38:53,740 –> 00:38:57,420
manipulate his atoms to come over distance to where I am, we can’t

619
00:38:57,420 –> 00:39:00,860
physically be in the same spot. There’s a limit to that

620
00:39:00,860 –> 00:39:04,480
reality that we are trying to aggregate by utilizing

621
00:39:04,540 –> 00:39:06,960
this platform to have a conversation.

622
00:39:08,575 –> 00:39:11,935
There are limits to the material reality of me being physically in the same space

623
00:39:11,935 –> 00:39:15,375
as Brian and Brian being physically in the same space as myself. And no matter

624
00:39:15,375 –> 00:39:18,895
how much fantasizing or anger or

625
00:39:18,895 –> 00:39:22,335
disgust I have, no matter how many regulations I

626
00:39:22,335 –> 00:39:25,700
write, no matter how many senators I buy,

627
00:39:27,600 –> 00:39:31,360
there’s nothing that’s going to change the reality of me taking my Adams and going

628
00:39:31,360 –> 00:39:34,880
them taking them over to where Brian is, and Brian taking, yeah, his Adams and

629
00:39:34,880 –> 00:39:37,120
bringing them over to where I am. And by the way, the reason why I’m

630
00:39:37,120 –> 00:39:40,454
using that example is because we have a lot of people who right now are

631
00:39:40,454 –> 00:39:43,515
trying to defy material reality and claiming

632
00:39:43,815 –> 00:39:47,194
that the virtual world defies material

633
00:39:47,255 –> 00:39:50,234
reality. And if that’s true,

634
00:39:51,815 –> 00:39:54,800
that becomes a religion. Mhmm.

635
00:39:55,180 –> 00:39:58,880
Yep. But from those headwaters come the poison fruit of emotional

636
00:39:58,940 –> 00:40:02,700
sabotage. Because if I don’t get my way and I run up

637
00:40:02,700 –> 00:40:06,540
against the limits of material reality, I just I

638
00:40:06,540 –> 00:40:10,025
already said that, like, material reality

639
00:40:10,885 –> 00:40:14,405
can be abrogated. That’s my religion. But

640
00:40:14,405 –> 00:40:18,244
yet, the water’s still wet. The wood is still

641
00:40:18,244 –> 00:40:21,925
there. Something’s gotta break. Either I’m gonna break or

642
00:40:21,925 –> 00:40:25,700
material reality is gonna break. Talk talk to us

643
00:40:25,700 –> 00:40:29,360
a little bit about or talk with us a little bit about what

644
00:40:29,420 –> 00:40:33,260
leaders can do to help those people who can’t because there I think

645
00:40:33,260 –> 00:40:36,700
there’s a lot more of these people than we think there are. Navigate the limits

646
00:40:36,700 –> 00:40:40,405
of material reality. Yeah. And who and who default, by

647
00:40:40,405 –> 00:40:44,165
the way, to being inside of these Internet spaces and these social media

648
00:40:44,165 –> 00:40:47,704
spaces because there, they feel as though they are free. Mhmm.

649
00:40:48,645 –> 00:40:51,145
Yeah. I I think just just

650
00:40:55,920 –> 00:40:59,460
material the the world that we exist in is not

651
00:40:59,520 –> 00:41:03,300
material. It’s not merely material. There are all kinds of immaterial

652
00:41:04,000 –> 00:41:07,724
things as well. There are immaterial

653
00:41:07,945 –> 00:41:11,705
categories that we can’t define even science acknowledges that we

654
00:41:11,705 –> 00:41:15,305
can’t define. There are dimensions that we don’t

655
00:41:15,305 –> 00:41:19,145
have access to that physicists are just saying, yeah, like, we

656
00:41:20,510 –> 00:41:23,950
they exist, and there might be up to a 150 of them, and we can’t

657
00:41:23,950 –> 00:41:27,250
even get to them. Right. So so,

658
00:41:27,869 –> 00:41:31,490
you know, even the the, the old school atheists

659
00:41:31,710 –> 00:41:35,465
of, you know, the Scopes monkey trials are having a much

660
00:41:35,465 –> 00:41:39,305
harder time holding to that worldview as they

661
00:41:39,305 –> 00:41:42,605
get the further they get along. And, I mean

662
00:41:43,065 –> 00:41:46,665
and so, anyway, I just say that to say to the to anyone

663
00:41:46,665 –> 00:41:48,685
who’s, you know, a hardcore materialist,

664
00:41:50,300 –> 00:41:53,900
that, you are making assumptions about the

665
00:41:53,900 –> 00:41:56,480
unseen world that can’t be proven.

666
00:41:57,980 –> 00:42:01,660
And, you know, you can’t you can’t prove that everything’s material. You’re

667
00:42:01,660 –> 00:42:05,365
making that assumption. And and and that’s a

668
00:42:05,684 –> 00:42:09,145
and from that assumption, you’re drawing metaphysical conclusions,

669
00:42:10,484 –> 00:42:13,145
based on that assumption. And and that’s fine,

670
00:42:14,244 –> 00:42:16,424
but just know that’s that’s what you’re doing.

671
00:42:17,950 –> 00:42:20,770
The one thing that you you mentioned a little bit ago about,

672
00:42:21,470 –> 00:42:24,830
empathy, one of the one of

673
00:42:24,830 –> 00:42:26,770
the problems with empathy,

674
00:42:28,350 –> 00:42:31,795
is there are, yeah. And

675
00:42:31,795 –> 00:42:35,555
empathy is a good thing. Empathy can be can be wonderful. I mean,

676
00:42:35,555 –> 00:42:38,775
there are times, like, even if you ever dealt with somebody going through grief,

677
00:42:40,515 –> 00:42:43,990
the emotions that they’re dealing with cannot be

678
00:42:43,990 –> 00:42:46,970
explained in a material way. I mean, like, you’re

679
00:42:47,670 –> 00:42:51,210
you’re dealing with the departure of a

680
00:42:51,590 –> 00:42:55,190
human being. The grief that

681
00:42:55,190 –> 00:42:57,850
you’re experiencing cannot be explained

682
00:42:58,545 –> 00:43:02,224
materially. I I mean, it’s not just mere

683
00:43:02,224 –> 00:43:05,984
chemical, reactions in your

684
00:43:05,984 –> 00:43:09,744
brain. I mean, it’s a it it’s in your mind.

685
00:43:09,744 –> 00:43:13,579
It’s in your soul. It’s not just your body. You do have a a

686
00:43:13,579 –> 00:43:17,420
physical reaction to grief, but your your your reaction goes way

687
00:43:17,420 –> 00:43:20,880
beyond mere physical. And so

688
00:43:21,980 –> 00:43:25,555
so dealing with someone in grief, it

689
00:43:25,555 –> 00:43:29,175
does require empathy for sure, but

690
00:43:29,395 –> 00:43:33,075
you can’t stop with empathy. At some point, empathy

691
00:43:33,075 –> 00:43:35,495
has to give way to sympathy.

692
00:43:36,515 –> 00:43:40,150
And and what’s the the difference between the 2 and I

693
00:43:40,150 –> 00:43:43,910
think I think where where the discussion gets lost, and and I

694
00:43:43,910 –> 00:43:47,590
I I think Brene Brown’s great. I think she’s done some great things. I

695
00:43:47,590 –> 00:43:51,210
think Brene Brown, the one thing she has missed

696
00:43:52,315 –> 00:43:55,915
is is, she dismisses sympathy. And she’s

697
00:43:55,915 –> 00:43:59,195
even said so in some of her videos that I’ve watched some in her YouTube,

698
00:43:59,195 –> 00:44:02,795
and she’s like, sympathy is not blah blah blah blah. You I don’t

699
00:44:02,795 –> 00:44:05,215
care if you you have to have sympathy because,

700
00:44:06,680 –> 00:44:10,440
so let’s say somebody’s in a you know, stuck in some quicksand. Okay?

701
00:44:10,440 –> 00:44:13,960
An empathetic person says, oh, I see you stuck in that

702
00:44:13,960 –> 00:44:17,720
quicksand. I’m gonna get in that quicksand with you. K. The problem

703
00:44:17,720 –> 00:44:21,180
is now we’re both sinking in quicksand. We’re both going to die.

704
00:44:21,645 –> 00:44:25,005
A sympathetic person would say, that quicksand looks

705
00:44:25,005 –> 00:44:28,765
terrible. Hey. Let me hand you a stick. Let’s see if I can

706
00:44:28,765 –> 00:44:32,605
pull you out of there without getting in with you. Right? That’s the

707
00:44:32,605 –> 00:44:36,240
difference, I think, between, the the clearest difference that that you

708
00:44:36,240 –> 00:44:39,840
can make between empathy and sympathy. Again, it you know, when

709
00:44:39,840 –> 00:44:43,220
somebody’s grieving, empathy is very, very appropriate.

710
00:44:43,760 –> 00:44:47,360
But after a period of time to help that person move

711
00:44:47,360 –> 00:44:51,040
on, you have to move over to sympathy at some point. I’m not

712
00:44:51,040 –> 00:44:54,045
saying, you know, it’s gotta be day 1 or even day

713
00:44:54,505 –> 00:44:57,805
365. I’m just saying there is a difference.

714
00:44:58,345 –> 00:45:02,105
Right. Well, and Joe Rigney, in his book, Leadership and

715
00:45:02,105 –> 00:45:05,700
Emotional Sabotage, hits on something, I think, that is an extra

716
00:45:05,700 –> 00:45:09,300
aspect of this that Brene Brown misses. The

717
00:45:09,300 –> 00:45:12,900
scientific materialist mindset misses, the

718
00:45:12,900 –> 00:45:16,740
political progressive mindset misses. And they miss it because when you

719
00:45:16,740 –> 00:45:19,080
when you when you deconstruct God,

720
00:45:21,115 –> 00:45:24,875
when you do the Nietzschean thing and deconstruct God all the way down to the

721
00:45:24,875 –> 00:45:28,715
bottom, or at least you try, and you try to deconstruct the bible and

722
00:45:28,715 –> 00:45:32,335
it’s not really deconstructing God. It’s deconstructing the bible as an avatar

723
00:45:32,555 –> 00:45:36,089
or stand in for God. When you do that, you also

724
00:45:36,089 –> 00:45:39,309
deconstruct evil. And

725
00:45:41,609 –> 00:45:44,990
Ed Friedman, Renee Brown,

726
00:45:48,954 –> 00:45:52,555
both these folks on either side of the spectrum on empathy. And I

727
00:45:52,555 –> 00:45:55,835
think I think Ed Freeman would agree with you about empathy. I think he would

728
00:45:55,835 –> 00:45:59,595
absolutely agree with you about the difference between empathy and sympathy. Absolutely. And Ed Freeman

729
00:45:59,595 –> 00:46:03,350
was writing, you know, failure of nerve 30 years

730
00:46:03,350 –> 00:46:05,610
ago now. Right? 40 years ago now.

731
00:46:11,990 –> 00:46:15,750
Evil intent has to be factored

732
00:46:15,750 –> 00:46:18,285
in to people’s hearts.

733
00:46:19,145 –> 00:46:22,825
So to your point about sitting with someone in grief, I

734
00:46:22,825 –> 00:46:26,425
can absolutely sit in someone grief sit in sit with somebody who is

735
00:46:26,425 –> 00:46:29,085
grieving their loved one.

736
00:46:30,410 –> 00:46:33,470
The challenge for people who do not have a worldview that

737
00:46:33,930 –> 00:46:37,310
includes, quite frankly, Satan or Luciferian

738
00:46:37,770 –> 00:46:41,450
intent is that they don’t know what the hard

739
00:46:41,450 –> 00:46:44,265
limits this goes back to that idea of material reality. They don’t know what the

740
00:46:44,265 –> 00:46:47,785
hard limits of their empathy are because they don’t have a good Richter scale

741
00:46:47,785 –> 00:46:50,684
internally for when it goes from being

742
00:46:51,865 –> 00:46:55,464
grief stricken, genuine remorse about something that has

743
00:46:55,464 –> 00:46:59,109
happened to manipulation. And

744
00:46:59,109 –> 00:47:02,470
this is the problem we’re having. This is the core of the point of the

745
00:47:02,470 –> 00:47:06,010
problems we’re having today. And I think pastors are facing this in counseling

746
00:47:06,070 –> 00:47:09,750
sessions all over the place and talking with people who are, to your

747
00:47:09,750 –> 00:47:13,505
point earlier about Piper’s Church, seekers. They’re seeking. Well, what

748
00:47:13,505 –> 00:47:16,405
they’re seeking is a defined,

749
00:47:17,265 –> 00:47:20,865
clear, black and white, and I know we hate black and white, but a clear,

750
00:47:20,865 –> 00:47:24,065
defined black and white definition of what is good and what is evil and where

751
00:47:24,065 –> 00:47:27,780
the boundaries are. And the

752
00:47:27,780 –> 00:47:31,620
courage to say that in a counseling session I mean, as a former

753
00:47:31,620 –> 00:47:35,460
pastor, you’ve been in counseling sessions before. How many people let’s frame this

754
00:47:35,460 –> 00:47:38,760
question this way as we begin to round the corner for our close here.

755
00:47:40,464 –> 00:47:44,145
Short book, short episode. I recommend you pick up I recommend you pick up Leadership

756
00:47:44,145 –> 00:47:47,984
and Emotional Sabotage. You’re gonna get a lot of this from this book. But, how

757
00:47:47,984 –> 00:47:51,345
many how many folks as a pastor, as a former pastor, did you sit in

758
00:47:51,345 –> 00:47:55,160
rooms with where the line between what they were doing

759
00:47:55,160 –> 00:47:57,980
that was good and what they were doing that was evil was very clear?

760
00:47:59,960 –> 00:48:03,480
Yeah. It’s not clear at first. It takes a lot of time. It takes a

761
00:48:03,480 –> 00:48:07,184
lot of conversation. And and sometimes it’s not even clear to the

762
00:48:07,184 –> 00:48:11,025
person. That’s the thing. The person who’s doing the manipulating, they

763
00:48:11,025 –> 00:48:14,625
don’t even know they’re doing it. Right. It’s it’s a behavior

764
00:48:14,625 –> 00:48:18,325
that was learned maybe from their parents

765
00:48:19,059 –> 00:48:22,500
that because their parents were good at it and they just and they that’s just

766
00:48:22,500 –> 00:48:26,180
the reality for them. Like, they don’t know any other way to interact with someone.

767
00:48:26,180 –> 00:48:30,020
Right. And, and so it takes time and

768
00:48:30,020 –> 00:48:33,859
energy to work work through help them first off, they have to see

769
00:48:33,859 –> 00:48:37,485
it. They have to understand what it is. The the hard

770
00:48:37,485 –> 00:48:41,005
part for a materialist, someone maybe with a

771
00:48:41,005 –> 00:48:44,525
Darwinian worldview, like, if if, like, if if you’re the

772
00:48:44,525 –> 00:48:48,299
survival of the fittest, I mean, this is just another technique, right,

773
00:48:48,299 –> 00:48:52,140
to get what you want. I mean, this is a stipulation that just just gives

774
00:48:52,140 –> 00:48:55,839
you an edge up on someone. Yeah. Why wouldn’t you eat your neighbor?

775
00:48:56,140 –> 00:48:59,980
Yeah. Right. I mean It’s fine. Right? I’m trying to I mean, I’m in

776
00:48:59,980 –> 00:49:03,785
it for me. And so, like, if if you’re a secularist, you’re

777
00:49:03,785 –> 00:49:07,404
you’re worried about today. That’s what secular means. It’s a todayist. It’s a presentist.

778
00:49:07,865 –> 00:49:10,505
Right? I mean, there’s I don’t mean to worry about the future. I’m just trying

779
00:49:10,505 –> 00:49:13,404
to get what I need for the day. I mean so,

780
00:49:15,200 –> 00:49:19,039
you know, I I to your point, I just I I I I

781
00:49:19,039 –> 00:49:22,180
would say that that, that

782
00:49:22,799 –> 00:49:26,420
empathy is is definitely a tool that a leader needs,

783
00:49:28,675 –> 00:49:31,734
but you you you can stray,

784
00:49:33,155 –> 00:49:36,915
and and you can be played and you can stray away from that and get

785
00:49:36,915 –> 00:49:37,415
into

786
00:49:40,560 –> 00:49:44,320
core leadership and be taken advantage of as a leader, and then your

787
00:49:44,320 –> 00:49:47,840
business or your your people suffer because of that. And that’s,

788
00:49:48,160 –> 00:49:51,780
I think that’s the point of the book. Yeah. I think that

789
00:49:53,445 –> 00:49:56,905
one of the great things about Rigney’s book for leaders

790
00:49:57,445 –> 00:50:01,045
is that Rigney, in a positive way, kind of like Saul

791
00:50:01,045 –> 00:50:04,565
Alinsky did in Rules for Radicals, he’s provided a

792
00:50:04,565 –> 00:50:07,880
book where where he understands

793
00:50:09,619 –> 00:50:13,380
the rules of the system better than the participants inside

794
00:50:13,380 –> 00:50:17,220
of the system do, and thus, he can take apart the system. That’s what Saul

795
00:50:17,220 –> 00:50:19,319
Alinsky talked about in Rules for Radicals.

796
00:50:21,305 –> 00:50:24,985
And Rigney is continuing a tradition that Doug Wilson started in Rules for

797
00:50:24,985 –> 00:50:28,345
Reformers where he understands the nature of the

798
00:50:28,345 –> 00:50:32,045
system. And understanding the nature of the system means,

799
00:50:32,185 –> 00:50:35,339
yes, making a judgment about it because you’re going to you’re going to examine it,

800
00:50:35,339 –> 00:50:38,700
you’re going to hold it in judgment. Absolutely. But it also

801
00:50:38,700 –> 00:50:42,400
means that you’re going to analyze it, critique it, and,

802
00:50:43,099 –> 00:50:46,480
yes, I’m gonna use this term again, deconstruct it,

803
00:50:47,714 –> 00:50:51,555
but for the purpose of rebuilding something else. And I think

804
00:50:51,555 –> 00:50:55,394
that this book, along with the book that we covered last week and the books

805
00:50:55,394 –> 00:50:58,694
that we’re going to cover this year, can provide

806
00:50:59,589 –> 00:51:03,349
in toto a way to

807
00:51:03,990 –> 00:51:07,369
a way forward, for leaders,

808
00:51:08,550 –> 00:51:12,390
inside of a world of emotional sabotage. Although,

809
00:51:12,390 –> 00:51:16,115
I do think I do think that we are returning to a

810
00:51:16,115 –> 00:51:19,734
public discourse, at least to a small degree,

811
00:51:19,875 –> 00:51:23,555
a public discourse that is a bit more, and we’ve already used this

812
00:51:23,555 –> 00:51:26,994
word feminine, masculine in its temperament because of the

813
00:51:26,994 –> 00:51:30,829
nature of, bad orange man Donald Trump

814
00:51:30,970 –> 00:51:34,730
and the way in which she communicates, which is very much a masculine temperament method

815
00:51:34,730 –> 00:51:38,329
of communicating. And by the way, for those of you who don’t know, that method

816
00:51:38,329 –> 00:51:42,025
of communicating is you and I are gonna have an argument. We’re gonna tussle it.

817
00:51:42,025 –> 00:51:44,925
We’re going to confront each other directly about what the issue is.

818
00:51:46,185 –> 00:51:49,705
I don’t really care about your feelings. You don’t really

819
00:51:49,705 –> 00:51:53,145
care about my feelings. Not in the

820
00:51:53,145 –> 00:51:56,920
global Kantian one world, we are the world,

821
00:51:56,920 –> 00:51:59,800
we are the children kind of sense. I don’t care about your feelings. I care

822
00:51:59,800 –> 00:52:03,000
about solving the problem. So let’s solve the problem, and then we worry about our

823
00:52:03,000 –> 00:52:06,380
feelings afterward. We worry about how we feel about the solution afterward.

824
00:52:07,000 –> 00:52:10,835
And that is a masculine method of approaching conflict

825
00:52:10,835 –> 00:52:14,674
and confrontation that, Trump does very

826
00:52:14,674 –> 00:52:18,434
well, which, by the way, puts the

827
00:52:18,434 –> 00:52:22,275
fear of, if I shall be so bold, god, into those

828
00:52:22,275 –> 00:52:25,255
of those who have dominated the public discourse with feminine temperament

829
00:52:26,900 –> 00:52:30,280
currently, which is why you see so much catterwalling about Trump.

830
00:52:31,220 –> 00:52:35,060
Yeah. I think I think, you know, for for the for any leader who’s listening

831
00:52:35,060 –> 00:52:38,820
to this, you know, one thing I would encourage you with is, you

832
00:52:38,820 –> 00:52:42,125
know, there’s there’s nothing wrong with acknowledging

833
00:52:42,825 –> 00:52:46,585
feelings. The the thing that, as a leader, you have to do

834
00:52:46,585 –> 00:52:50,285
and and lead your people to do with their feelings is understand

835
00:52:50,425 –> 00:52:54,105
that, you know, feelings like, let’s say

836
00:52:54,105 –> 00:52:57,380
you’re on a road trip. Okay, and you’re you’re driving a car.

837
00:52:58,800 –> 00:53:02,579
You’ve got yourself maybe you’ve got your spouse in the car with you,

838
00:53:02,720 –> 00:53:05,839
and you’ve got your kids in the car in the back. Do you have kids?

839
00:53:05,839 –> 00:53:08,180
Okay? Maybe a pet, something. I don’t know.

840
00:53:10,505 –> 00:53:13,965
But, you would never let your kids

841
00:53:14,825 –> 00:53:18,665
drive your car. K? Especially if they’re, like, little kids. You would never do that.

842
00:53:18,665 –> 00:53:21,325
Okay? There’s gonna be 2 results. Either either,

843
00:53:22,560 –> 00:53:26,080
you’re gonna crash the car, it’s gonna be a terrible wreck, or you’re gonna get

844
00:53:26,080 –> 00:53:29,780
there late. Okay? And feelings are the same way. When you let feelings

845
00:53:30,000 –> 00:53:33,600
drive your life, k, when you let your feelings drive your

846
00:53:33,600 –> 00:53:37,115
decision making, drive how you respond to

847
00:53:37,115 –> 00:53:40,175
certain situations, you

848
00:53:40,555 –> 00:53:43,455
inevitably crash your life

849
00:53:44,234 –> 00:53:48,075
or you get where you need to go too late. Okay? You take a

850
00:53:48,075 –> 00:53:51,920
wrong turn. You make a mistake. You end up saying

851
00:53:51,920 –> 00:53:55,680
something you shouldn’t have said. A whole bunch

852
00:53:55,680 –> 00:53:59,220
of things. Okay? You become passive. Whatever it is.

853
00:53:59,599 –> 00:54:03,200
But, and so feelings are great because they can tell us that

854
00:54:03,200 –> 00:54:07,005
something is wrong, but they can’t tell us what to do.

855
00:54:07,385 –> 00:54:10,845
And as soon as we start letting them tell us what to do,

856
00:54:11,225 –> 00:54:14,985
that’s when leaders begin to fail. And so

857
00:54:14,985 –> 00:54:18,680
so I think this, you know, feelings are fine. It’s fine

858
00:54:18,680 –> 00:54:22,520
to know them and be and acknowledge that they’re there, but don’t

859
00:54:22,520 –> 00:54:25,960
take direction from them. And I think that’s where I

860
00:54:25,960 –> 00:54:29,720
hope the resurgence of this, you know, as you think of this

861
00:54:29,720 –> 00:54:33,405
masculine temperament and leadership, whatever, you know, I I hope that

862
00:54:33,405 –> 00:54:37,165
that’s where it takes us. You know, that, because I I I don’t wanna say

863
00:54:37,165 –> 00:54:40,765
we, you know, completely ignore feelings. Right? They they are

864
00:54:40,765 –> 00:54:44,605
helpful. They are useful. They’re they’re there to tell you something’s wrong. They just can’t

865
00:54:44,605 –> 00:54:48,010
tell you what to do about it. I would add to

866
00:54:48,010 –> 00:54:51,770
that. We also need to and and I’ve been saying this for

867
00:54:51,770 –> 00:54:55,450
many years in a lot of different contexts, in leadership development work that

868
00:54:55,450 –> 00:54:59,230
I’ve done with clients. We need to be able to

869
00:54:59,805 –> 00:55:03,165
very calmly and very quietly when emotional sabotage shows

870
00:55:03,165 –> 00:55:07,005
up, recognize it, call it out for what

871
00:55:07,005 –> 00:55:10,845
it is. Mhmm. And then, here’s a word that leaders need to have

872
00:55:10,845 –> 00:55:14,145
in their quiver. No.

873
00:55:16,100 –> 00:55:19,860
The word no. Now you could follow that up with

874
00:55:19,860 –> 00:55:22,440
whatever you want after that. However,

875
00:55:24,020 –> 00:55:27,780
no is a sentence. It has a beginning,

876
00:55:27,780 –> 00:55:28,920
a middle, and an end.

877
00:55:31,735 –> 00:55:35,415
It’s got a subject object. Subject. Yeah. Subject and a verb. Done. Subject

878
00:55:35,415 –> 00:55:39,255
subject verb. Done. Done. You yeah. It implies subject to you and then the

879
00:55:39,255 –> 00:55:43,015
verb is no. No. That’s right. And and

880
00:55:43,015 –> 00:55:46,500
by the way, female leaders can use no. Male

881
00:55:46,500 –> 00:55:50,100
leaders can use no. Oh, really? You know, people with a

882
00:55:50,100 –> 00:55:53,620
feminine temperament can use no, but people with a masculine temperament can use no. Anybody

883
00:55:53,620 –> 00:55:56,980
can use no. No is available to every leader out

884
00:55:56,980 –> 00:56:00,785
here. And because 2 things

885
00:56:00,785 –> 00:56:04,565
can be true at once, too many leaders equivocate on their nose.

886
00:56:05,025 –> 00:56:08,824
They want room to negotiate later on because no, while it is also

887
00:56:08,944 –> 00:56:12,464
while it was a sentence, no creates boundaries and puts

888
00:56:12,464 –> 00:56:15,490
you and puts the other party sometimes in a box.

889
00:56:16,670 –> 00:56:20,130
When emotional sabotage, however, has occurred, when emotional

890
00:56:20,190 –> 00:56:23,869
manipulation is occurring on your team, a box is

891
00:56:23,869 –> 00:56:27,630
exactly the spot where that manipulation sabotage needs to

892
00:56:27,630 –> 00:56:31,135
go so that it can be exercised and, and dealt

893
00:56:31,135 –> 00:56:34,655
with. I would also

894
00:56:34,655 –> 00:56:38,275
say that leaders need to appeal to an objective

895
00:56:38,575 –> 00:56:41,935
standard, an objective standard outside of

896
00:56:41,935 –> 00:56:45,329
themselves. Now Brian and I think the Bible’s pretty

897
00:56:45,329 –> 00:56:48,630
good. You may not wanna bring that to work. Okay. That’s fine.

898
00:56:50,130 –> 00:56:53,670
You may wanna bring the Bible in your heart to work. That’s fine too.

899
00:56:54,450 –> 00:56:57,655
But bring an objective standard, rules, regulations,

900
00:56:59,555 –> 00:57:03,255
something that exists outside of the participants in the conflict,

901
00:57:03,395 –> 00:57:07,234
something that exists outside of the participants in the confrontation or the really

902
00:57:07,234 –> 00:57:10,535
rough communication interaction that’s occurring. An objective

903
00:57:10,675 –> 00:57:14,190
standard, the word no, these are

904
00:57:14,190 –> 00:57:17,170
tools that will allow you to be successful,

905
00:57:18,350 –> 00:57:21,870
as a leader in the face of anxiety, which we didn’t even touch

906
00:57:21,870 –> 00:57:25,710
on. But the face of anxiety, the face of emotional sabotage, the face of

907
00:57:25,710 –> 00:57:28,415
emotional manipulation, and, of course, weaponized empathy.

908
00:57:29,915 –> 00:57:32,975
Alright. It was a short book.

909
00:57:35,115 –> 00:57:38,715
I don’t feel that we did it short shrift. If anybody knows Joe

910
00:57:38,715 –> 00:57:42,359
Rigney, get him a get him a link to, this audio right here. I would

911
00:57:42,359 –> 00:57:45,080
love to have him on the show, talking about the book. I’m sure I could

912
00:57:45,080 –> 00:57:48,599
reach out to him directly. But if anybody who’s listening could find him, go find

913
00:57:48,599 –> 00:57:52,220
him and tell him he needs to send me an email. Otherwise,

914
00:57:52,760 –> 00:57:55,740
Brian, do you have anything else to add before we close today?

915
00:57:57,215 –> 00:58:01,055
No. I would just, encourage encourage your leaders to to pick

916
00:58:01,055 –> 00:58:04,415
up a copy of that book. I think it’s, it was very helpful. And, yeah,

917
00:58:04,415 –> 00:58:08,015
Joe’s a great guy. Excellent. Yep. And it’s only a 100 and 8 pages. Six

918
00:58:08,015 –> 00:58:11,550
chapters. It’s like an hour and 12 minutes to read, something like that on,

919
00:58:11,790 –> 00:58:15,170
on Audible, but it’s a good, a good use of your time. Alright.

920
00:58:15,470 –> 00:58:19,250
With that, well, we’re out.