0:00:00 - 0:00:24 Not too long ago, I had a conversation with a friend of mine and he was looking at things he could do to help people more than he was. He had this desire to, to help out. And so he had scheduled an appointment to talk to his local big brothers, big sisters organization. And he asked me what I thought 0:00:24 - 0:00:47 about that. And I said, look, I think you have a ton to offer in this realm. Frankly. I, I don't know if I communicated this because I can't remember now. But looking at the guy, I would consider myself lucky to have a father like him. And, uh anyway, I said, I think you have a lot to offer. But I started 0:00:47 - 0:01:09 to enumerate what I think are some limitations to that approach because there have been so many things in my life that I was drawn into so many activities in my life that I was drawn into thinking that I was going to be able to make a difference. Only to find out that my hands were tied from doing the 0:01:09 - 0:01:29 things that would actually achieve what I was after the kind of impact that I was hoping to have not that any of it was about what I was getting out of it. What I mean is that I was willing to make tremendous sacrifices for the benefit of other people, but I was unprepared to discover to what degree 0:01:29 - 0:01:51 the limitations of the situation impeded me from doing what would need to happen in order to make that sacrifice worthwhile from doing what would be required to achieve the outcomes that would make the sacrifice worthwhile. And so I explained a couple of reasons why I thought something like big brothers 0:01:50 - 0:02:15 , big sisters would turn out exactly the way that I saw my military service turn out my time as a university professor and as a mentor in all these different ways, whether it's uh it was through employment opportunities or church or anything else. And he agreed with me somewhat and, and at least somewhat 0:02:14 - 0:02:38 uh because he ended up starting up a youtube channel and he's been focused on putting out messages oriented to men, especially young men and just giving them good uncle advice kind of material. And I've watched every video he's made so far. And II, I think that it would be really helpful for young people 0:02:38 - 0:03:05 to hear. I'm aware of other channels that are like this on the female side of things. And I, I want to hopefully encourage us to network with each other on this. And if you know of a good channel like this person on youtube or Instagram or, or Tik Tok or whatever the channel might be, the, the social 0:03:04 - 0:03:24 media type might be if you know of a producer like this, a creator like this, put a link down in the comments and people can check it out and, and when you do that, pick, pick the video or the clip, the real, whatever it is, that means quite a bit to you to lead with your strongest argument that this 0:03:24 - 0:03:46 person's worth listening to. Now, I wanna share a little segment from Tituss two. This is the NRSV version. I think it's a little more easy to understand than the King James in this case. But I wanna read this and I want you to think about the opportunity that we all have as we go through life to turn 0:03:45 - 0:00:00 and share what we've learned with others who haven't necessarily gone through those experiences yet. So I'll just start reading in verse one. But as for you teach, what is consistent with sound doctrine. Tell the older men to be temperate, serious prudent and sound in faith in love and in endurance. 0:00:00 - 0:04:30 Likewise, tell the older women to be reverent in behavior, not to be slanderers or slaves to drink. They are to teach what is good so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their Children, to be self controlled, chaste, good managers of the household kind being submissive 0:04:29 - 0:00:00 to their husbands. So that the word of God may not be discredited. Likewise, urge the younger men to be self controlled, show yourself in all respects a model of good works. And in your teaching show integrity, gravity and sound speech that cannot be censured. Then any opponent will be put to shame, 0:00:00 - 0:05:24 having nothing evil to say of us. I think that this is really reasonable advice and it's good to see more and more people speaking there. I won't say speaking their thoughts, but sharing what they believe to be wisdom because we can make a difference. And there is a very obvious lack of mentorship in 0:05:24 - 0:05:52 the world today through technology. We've been given this great blessing to mitigate much of the consequences of a lack of wise parenting. But it's a situation that's impossible for any one person to change. If you have found anything of worth in your life, you've been given a great gift of potential 0:05:52 - 0:06:15 joy through, through sharing it with others. And I think that's a gift that for the most part has not been recognized or taken advantage of in, in regards to my friend that I was talking about earlier. He was kind of surprised at my, of my perception that that the things that he had to say were worth 0:06:15 - 0:00:00 hearing and that would help people. So I think that's surprising because he's gotten through his life with a measure of success against some reasonably difficult obstacles. And he's been through situations that young people today, I, I think are poorly prepared for. And so I encourage all of you if, 0:00:00 - 0:07:05 if you think you have something to say that would help someone to make a platform for yourself to share that with others. But even if you really truly feel you have nothing to offer in that regard, or if what you have to offer, you perceive to be less valuable than something else you know of. And this 0:07:05 - 0:07:23 gets back to a point I've made many times. If you find something interesting that you read in a book, the most helpful thing you can do is probably not to write a book that contains all of that same information. Unless you truly believe that you can convert it into something more accessible to people 0:07:23 - 0:07:41 that don't have access to the original or maybe you have stronger arguments to make and you can actually make something better than the original. And by all means, but odds are your contribution is going to be helping to get the water to the end of the row because what is accessible to you might not 0:07:41 - 0:08:09 be accessible to someone else. And maybe you can clip that down or present it in a more concise or easy to understand light. And we have that opportunity. It's also a duty. But I think that the benefits of the opportunity are much more useful to think about than the obligation of the duty. So I hope 0:08:09 - 0:08:37 that you think about this because it's something that as a community, a religious community, the religious community, I think does this very poorly if you compare the transmission of ideas in other domains. So for example, suppose you're going through an undergraduate degree with a cohort of students 0:08:37 - 0:09:08 , they share ideas very well, very well compared to the religious community. If you look at the group of people that are into the business self help domain or that there's kind of an overlap there with the Jordan Peterson, deep intellectual philosophy domain or any kind of demographic like that, you'll 0:09:08 - 0:09:36 find that they share information so much better than the religious community. And there are a lot of reasons for that that are, that would make this a long video, but you can attack this head on by sharing more of what you know, whether that is in the form of making your own content or in the form of 0:09:36 - 0:10:06 sharing the content of other people, the resources we have available are astonishing. It's astonishingly abundant. The only thing that's more astonishing might be how little use we make of it. So please make your voice known. Don't be discouraged if it seems like one or two people are watching the video 0:10:05 - 0:10:34 or whatever you, you post, maybe one person clicks on it or whatever, just keep cranking it out. I mean, by all means tweak your approach to improve it over time, but don't be discouraged at numbers. This is not a numbers game. This is, this is a, this is a fitment problem. You are the jigsaw puzzle 0:10:34 - 0:11:05 piece that solves part of this puzzle and you have to stand up and do what only you can do. It's not a question of numbers. It's a question of fitment and completing the picture. I don't know that there's a person on the entire planet who doesn't have something to offer to someone somewhere, something 0:11:04 - 0:11:37 that is irreplaceable, something that no one else can do. And that belief holding to that belief deeply that you do have some unique role to play in life that there are good things in this world that just aren't going to happen if you're not here to do them, that's a very important belief to hold. And 0:11:37 - 0:12:03 I promise you that if you dare to believe it and to act according to that belief, it will be a self fulfilling prophecy. I promise you that you will see things in this world that happen that you know, would not have happened without you. Of course, the other funny thing about it is you won't care that 0:12:03 - 0:12:37 it happened because of you. You will be fully focused on the difference it made for others and that is much more beautiful. So I dare you to try this out and uh let me know how it goes. Please put some links in the comments to this video of resources, people, people online that you have found to be valuable 0:12:37 - 0:12:54 as mentors. Um And what I mean by that specifically is people that have something worth sharing. So please post things and let us all know why it's important to you. And there's no rule that says it can't be your own stuff so have at it.