Parent Compass Radio

Kevin Sorbo: I wrestled with God. Don't wrestle with God. You're going to lose. I realized the voice was His, and He was trying to stop that from happening, but He opened a whole new door for me in the way of looking at things. I have always had faith, but I never needed faith until I was hit with this. This is the first time I was ever put to the test. I just remember that. I felt like the old me had died, and now I had to find a new path and a new door to go through.

Real Christian Families: We have a gentleman by the name of Kevin Sorbo here with us tonight. You're going to be hearing from him. Kevin is an actor, director, and producer now for over 35 years. He's an author, a speaker, a family man, and also a powerful Christian voice in the film industry and the nation. He was born in Mound, Minnesota, and you may not know this, but Kevin is 100% Norwegian and he's very proud of his Viking heritage.

You may know that he is renowned for his role as Hercules in the seven-year series, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, from 1993 to 2000. Hercules, by the way, became the most watched television show in the world at that time, impacting over 100 million viewers globally. Now transitioning into faith-based cinema, Kevin and his wife Sam, whom he met on the set of Hercules, have dedicated their careers to producing and starring in films that champion Christian values and family unity. They have three children: Braeden, Shane, and Octavia.

Committed to instilling courage in the young man facing life-threatening trials, Kevin Sorbo plays the park ranger in the upcoming Parent Compass feature film, Nathan Todd Sims' feature film, Miracle on the Precipice. Let's watch this video clip of Kevin in action.

Kevin Sorbo: When a 12-year-old watches his mother dying of cancer, it's only natural to beg God for her life. He'll promise anything to his make-believe grandfather in the sky, including to love and worship him forever if only he would spare her. Sometimes the answer is no. Tell that to me the day you lose someone you love. She died believing a lie. She died believing that someone out there loved her, even while he was strangling her to death. A God who would allow that is not worth believing in.

Rather than being vindictive, I just chalk my son's death up to bad luck, or maybe a quirk of genetics, a bad roll of the cosmic dice. With the help of some fairly effective chemicals and a healthy dollop of vodka, I can somehow make it through the night without blowing my brains out, because I accept that's just the luck of the draw. But don't you dare tell me about the love and the compassion of your so-called God. Because if he felt like sacrificing his only begotten son, well, that's his business. But he should have kept his hands off of mine.

Why couldn't you have done this 30 years ago? 20 years ago when I was still an honest man before I became a ten-horn huckster and a defiler of widowhood? Why'd you have to do this in Oklahoma where, for the first time in my life, I believed every lie I told? Why'd you have to let me sink so low, Lord, and just dangle it right in front of my face? Let me be one or the other: a crook or a righteous geologist of all matters petuliferous who struck it rich. Do you think this is funny? Do you? I know funny, Lord, and this is not funny.

Hey there, kiddo. How are you holding up?

Guest (Female): Pretty good, thanks to you. I guess I ruined your surf shirt, huh?

Kevin Sorbo: I never liked that one anyway. Why don't you just concentrate on getting better, okay?

Guest (Female): Thank you.

Kevin Sorbo: You were amazing out there. You were the one that kept me calm. You never let go. You are incredibly brave, Bethany.

Guest (Female): Where were you, Daddy?

Kevin Sorbo: If you must know, I was having an argument with an angel.

Guest (Female): Did he have wings?

Kevin Sorbo: No, he had greased-stained coveralls. He's a mechanic. He had bad breath and a nine-dollar haircut.

Guest (Female): This angel, what did he say to you?

Kevin Sorbo: We both agree I'm Ben Walker, but I'm not your Ben Walker. More specifically, I'm not your husband and I'm not their father.

Guest (Female): Is Daddy having a nervous breakdown?

Kevin Sorbo: You're all very sweet in your own parallel universe, it's a wonderful life sort of way. If I had to choose a family to be my make-believe family, it would be you.

I remember that we had this picture of Jesus that we hung at home. It was up there forever and it said, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock." I never knew what it meant, but I do now. He's knocking at your door right now. You don't have to meet him halfway. You just have to open the door.

Guest (Male): The boy finds God and he is elected to the American Congress.

Guest (Male): Well, you have to be 12 and you go through membership and confirmation class.

Guest (Male): I know that, sir. But it has to be now. I read the book and I want to be like that man. Ronald Wilson Reagan, I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Real Christian Families: I was thinking since you were a demigod and everything that maybe you shouldn't have him at a Christian event. Is there hope for demigods?

Kevin Sorbo: Well, it was a mythological show, but I've got to tell you something. The writers back then, they actually put very good moral values in Hercules. We had a lot of humor in it, but if you watch the show, there were a lot of good moral values. I think if they did it today, it probably wouldn't be quite the same.

Real Christian Families: That's right. So, aren't we glad you flew in here on eagle's wings for us tonight, Kevin? One of the things that I didn't know that much about you is you've had quite the wilderness journey. But start us off. Did you have, growing up, a family of faith?

Kevin Sorbo: Big time. Typical Norwegian boy. I grew up in a Lutheran church, St. John's Lutheran Church. I'm the fourth of five kids, four boys and my sister is in the middle. I grew up in a little town about 30 miles west of Minneapolis called Mound, Minnesota. It is on the shores of the western shores of Lake Minnetonka. My home was the home of Tonka Toys. So there is your trivia question right there.

It was church every Sunday, but my mom did a lot of Bible readings with all of us. So it's always been in my structure and all that. I think the biggest influence on me was when I was 13 years old. We had a youth pastor that came in, a Pastor Lee. We had a place called The Room at my church. Every Wednesday, year-round from 8:00 to 10:00, it was 7th grade through 12th graders that would go to The Room. We had what churches could afford: beat-up couches and bean bag chairs. We had a ping-pong table and things, but he also brought the Bible for me and for my other buddies in my class. He brought the Bible more into our world.

Our main pastor, Pastor Sands, scared the life out of me, which is good, to get the hell scared out of you. But he was just so breathing was a sin with this guy. I remember as a child, I told my parents, "I just don't think God is that angry with us. I think He loves us." But he was scary. Pastor Lee was huge. Another thing happened that summer when I was 13. Reverend Billy Graham came to speak at the St. Paul Fairgrounds.

It was a hot August night. Yes, Minnesota gets very hot and humid in the summers. There was a full moon. There were 250,000 people outside at the fairgrounds. Something I normally wouldn't have done, he called everybody if you want, we've got a lot of volunteers, please come up if you want to talk, pray, whatever. I started going up. One of my buddies, Jeff, goes, "Where are you going?" I said, "I don't know, I just have to go up there." I'm sitting on the ground talking to this guy. He was like 35, so he was really old to me.

We were just talking, and all of a sudden a hand went on my head. I turned around and it was the Reverend Billy Graham. His head was perfectly behind the full moon, so there was light coming out. It was kind of like those paintings of Jesus always have the light around His head. We talked about sports, and we talked about school, and then he prayed for me. That was huge. I told that story on the Larry King show.

Larry Ross, who is based out of the Dallas-Fort Worth area and does a lot of publicity for the Graham family, called me up and he said they're doing a Chicken Soup for the Soul book for the Reverend. It's the only time they ever did a hardcover book, and they asked me if I would tell my story. So I'm in there with Mother Teresa and the Presidents. I was a 13-year-old kid at that time when the story was years later, of course. Then they invited me to do the publicity on the book for him. They traveled me around the country doing the publicity, which was pretty cool.

Real Christian Families: So you moved into the godly realm from the demigod realm. But in your book, True Strength, you go from demigod to mere mortal, how nearly dying saved your life. Seriously? Wow. I thought you were Hercules.

Kevin Sorbo: No. It was the end of season five on Hercules. I was having all kinds of problems with my left arm and I couldn't figure out what was going on. I was doing most of my own stunts because my ego said that I could and I enjoyed it. I was a jock playing football and basketball through high school and college and everything. I loved doing it. My stunt guys made me look good. But I was always getting cuts and sprains and bruises. This one was really weird. I came back at the end of season five to do publicity on my first big-budget movie called Kull the Conqueror.

Kull was the prequel to Conan the Barbarian. Kull is the father of Conan. Arnold Schwarzenegger played Conan. He's older than me, but I'm apparently his father. So I look at that as common-core math. I don't know. I'll ask Bill Gates about that. I'm on Letterman and all these talk shows and my arm is almost falling off. They sent a doctor to my hotel room in Boston. His name was Dr. Die. D-Y-E, I know, but change your bloody name, okay? Take your mother's maiden name. You're a doctor.

He said he thought it was cardiovascular. So I went to check it out. They found a lump way up here in my left subclavian. My doctor back in LA said we've got to check this out, maybe do a biopsy. Next morning, I go to see my chiropractor. For eight years, I'd seen this chiropractor and he'd never cracked my neck. I don't like my neck cracked. Leave my neck alone. I'm laying on the table. He's working on it. I hear a voice inside my head say, "Don't let him crack your neck." Which I thought was weird. He's never cracked it in eight years. I don't like my neck cracked. "Don't let him crack your neck," louder.

While I'm arguing with the voice, he unwittingly did the thing that ultimately broke me. He cracked my neck. I suffered three strokes. I had an aneurysm that had been spitting blood clots down my left subclavian down my arm, suffocating the flow of blood into my hands and fingers, which were always cold and numb. But that crack, what doctors call retrograde flow, and because of the location of the aneurysm, it took me four months to learn how to walk and balance again. It took me three years to fully recover from it.

I had a lot of battles with God, I've got to tell you, because it was the why me syndrome. But my wife, we were four months away from our marriage at that time, and I was going to actually call off the wedding. I said, "I don't know where I'm going to be. I don't want to be like this. You're getting the worst part first before I even say for better or for worse." I didn't want to put her in this situation. She stuck by my side.

One doctor, the head of neurology at USC Medical Center in Los Angeles, said to me, "Don't ever put your life on hold." I say that to all of you here because we do. We always kind of forget to do things, or we just bypass things, or we don't pay attention to our kids or our grandkids. Take a minute. I learned a lot from that. I actually gained a lot of patience. But God, ultimately I knew that He—I wrestled with God. Don't wrestle with God, you're going to lose. But I know the voice was His and He was trying to stop that from happening.

But He opened a whole new door for me in the way of looking at things. I've always had faith, but I never needed faith until I was hit with this. I'm telling you, I've always had it, but this is the first time I was ever put to the test. I just remember that I felt like the old me had died and now I had to find a new path and a new door to go through. That was really life-changing for me.

I wrote the book. I didn't want to write the book; my wife made me write it. She wrote a few chapters as well, and she says that they're the best chapters. They probably are. But I wrote it and it came out about 13 years ago. Initially, it came out and people asked me to speak, but as motivational speaking. I remember speaking to a group of 1,600 neurologists in San Diego and I said, "There's a reason what you guys do is called a practice." Half of them laughed; the other half didn't.

But then people read the book and said, "Oh, he's a Christian. Will you come speak at our church? Oh, you're pro-life." So most of my speaking is really pro-life right now. That's what I do, pretty much. Because we've got to wake people up to the reality of what we're doing. I mean, it's crazy. You talk about roughly 65 million lives we've snuffed out since Roe v. Wade, and it's murder. I don't care. There's a heartbeat in 22 days. Don't tell me it's not a life. And "this is my body, my choice" thing drives me crazy. I tell women, "If it was your body, you'd be dead too."

It's not your body. It's a body that you're hosting inside of you. But anyway, I get off on tangents with that. Sorry. But the book really—it's amazing what it's done because I've had people come up to me after they read it and say, "I stopped feeling sorry for myself." Because my wife was really—I mean, I've had a lot of miracles happen. Not only meeting God, but the miracle of meeting my wife, Sam, because she was huge and instrumental in my growth.

Every time I got down, she said, "Kevin, it happened. What are you going to do about it?" I'm very strong-willed and I needed that support not only from her but also from God and my family and friends. So it was huge for me to have that because I don't know how I would have survived without her constant nagging and just overwhelmingly optimistic point of view in life. So it was huge for me.

I'm grateful for that book because I've had people walk up to me and say, "Your book has made me just be more positive about things." Bad things happen. God never promised us, Jesus never promised us, an easy life. Bad things happen to all of us. We all have stories. Everybody's got one. The book is about when you hit a roadblock, how do you react to that roadblock? Are you going to blame God? Are you going to blame the world, blame friends? Look in the mirror. I always say cue the Michael Jackson song, "Man in the Mirror," because really it starts with you and your attitude and what you're going to do.

It's going to make you stronger if you don't be negative about it. Be positive about it. I was told to look at the strokes as a gift, which was hard to look at. But I had to find a way to accept it as a gift because it's like kids. Kids are a gift. I wanted to abort this aneurysm, but I couldn't. So it was a long road, but I'm grateful for it and I'm glad the road that God has put me on now.

Real Christian Families: Okay, switching gears here to Hollywood. You have said Hollywood likes to put out their own messages a lot of times, and the messages aren't the best for everyone. That's a very nice way to put that. But what do you mean there?

Kevin Sorbo: Well, you see Hollywood's agenda. Every movie has an agenda. Every movie. Every movie is a faith-based movie. If you believe in nothing, that's an incredibly strong faith to believe in. I feel sorry for people like that. I've got atheist friends and I say, "You know, if I'm wrong, I've lost nothing. But if I'm right, see you later." That's the way I look at it.

Hollywood's agenda has changed so much. It really kind of started happening in the '60s where they started celebrating the anti-hero. It wasn't the hero anymore. It wasn't the John Wayne days and things like that. But that's when they didn't have a rating system until the '60s. That was born because movies got more violent. But I got to a point where I said, "This is ridiculous what's going on right now and the movies that they're making, the movies they're doing."

I got called in about 12 years ago. I'm the first cancel culture victim before I knew it was a term. My manager's on one side of the hill in Beverly Hills, and my agent is in Beverly Hills. They never cross that mountain if you know LA at all. They never cross that hill because it's always a pain in the butt with the traffic. They call me in and they're both in the same office. I said, "What's going on? Is this an intervention?" They said, "The studios don't want to work with you anymore."

This was a dozen years ago. I said, "Well, why?" "Well, the things you post, you're Christian, conservative." I said, "But I always have been." They go, "Yeah, but the winds are changing." So I said, "Oh, they don't want to hear the truth. Okay, I understand." They booted me out. So I had no choice. I love the industry. You love the industry. We love what we do. I don't care what side of the camera you're on within the industry of making movies and TV shows. Anybody that does this business, you can't say, "Well, I just kind of fell into it." No, you do it because you love it and you want to be part of it.

So I just—my wife and I, we formed Sorbo Studios. We've been doing our own thing. We've been blessed to raise money. It's not easy raising money on these movies, but we've been very lucky. Every time I've raised money for a movie that I'm directing, it's been a God thing. It's just—other indies like what Todd's doing and other independent people have come to me. So I'm very blessed the last 12 or 13 years, I do about four movies a year and documentaries as well. I've been very lucky to be part of that. So we're grateful for the other road. Once again, the door could shut; God opened another door.

It started with me with What If. What If is my first—you saw the trailer for that, at the dinner table with my wife and realizing I'm in an alternate universe and I realize I'm married with two kids. What If was written by the same writers that did God's Not Dead. What If came out two years earlier. Who saw God's Not Dead? Pretty good movie. Thank you. That two-million-dollar budget movie made 140 million dollars. That doesn't happen. That is like the guy who invested on that, Troy Duhon, it was the first time he ever invested in a movie. I told Troy, "That is like the same baseball team getting two grand slams in one inning." I said, "It's very, very rare that a movie that's a low budget with very little advertising—it came from people like you giving it word of mouth. That's what really helped."

And What If, in my book, is a much better movie. Much better movie. And it did okay. It was my first Pure Flix movie as well. Dallas Jenkins directed it. You've heard of him. And he even says it's the best movie he's ever done.

Real Christian Families: So there's an onslaught out there on media for the family. What is the biggest battle and how do families combat it?

Kevin Sorbo: Here's the thing. Hollywood, Andrew Breitbart was a friend, and he said, "Politics runs downstream from culture." Maybe somebody said it before him, but that's the first time I heard it. Who runs the culture? Hollywood does. The bubble of Hollywood and the bubble of the Democrats in Washington D.C. have such a huge influence in the mainstream media over what's been going on. The public school system has been deteriorating. We took the Bible out of the schools in 1964.

Everybody was homeschooled before the late 1800s. Our founding fathers were homeschooled, and they were brilliant guys. We're homeschool advocates. My wife travels the country. We homeschooled all of our kids. I think one of the blessings of COVID is two million more families in America woke up when they saw how bad our education system is. There's always exceptions to the rules, I get it. But really, we were number one in the world through the '50s, and we're 40th now. America, we're 40th in public education. We should be so proud.

So we have to fight back. I'm glad to see a lot of people are leaving Netflix and places like that. They're waking up. They're finally waking up. But look, I did a movie called Let There Be Light that Sean Hannity funded. It's a wonderful movie that did very well in theaters. It opened number two per-screen average against Thor: Ragnarok that opened that same weekend, a 300-million-dollar movie with a 100-million-dollar advertising budget against a 2.3-million-dollar movie with a million-dollar advertising budget by the grace of Dan Whitney. You know him as Larry the Cable Guy. He came in and gave me a million dollars to at least try to do some sort of way to get it in the theaters.

It stayed in theaters for four months. We opened number two. I get a call from Netflix on Monday morning after opening weekend, this is in 2018, saying, "We want to open an inspirational division and have you run it." So I was excited. I went in and had four meetings over four months with them. Ultimately, they did nothing. In my last meeting, I said, "You guys called me in. There's 80 million homes that want the kind of movies that I'm doing. You are a capitalist industry. Let's not kid ourselves. So if anything, why not appease those 80 million 'nuts' that you want to call the people who believe in God and make good movies?"

I think they're waking up now. They're starting to tilt because they actually reached out to me about six months ago and asked me to send a couple scripts to them. We'll see what happens. But it's amazing to me that the country is going through what it's going through right now, and that we've got to fight. Parents need to be totally on top of what your kids are watching. The internet is the Wild West. And I'll tell you, with this AI thing, it's only going to get worse because we're not going to be able to tell the difference between what's true and what's not. They can put anything out there right now.

Real Christian Families: What do you see as God's greater purpose for you and I and all of us?

Kevin Sorbo: I think involvement in the industry because Hollywood's winning the battle with their secular movies. I think the biggest killer, not only politically in America but also spiritually, is apathy. People just give up. And churches don't work together. There's too many churches that won't work with other churches. I keep saying, "Excuse me, is there a different God out there that I'm unaware of?" There's one God.

He said, "Let there be light." So we've got to fight the darkness of the evil that's coming out of Hollywood and not be afraid. It's in Proverbs: the only thing to fear is God himself. So we need people to wake up and not let fear control your lives. We need people willing to stand up and willing to be canceled. They took four million followers away from me on Facebook four years ago for speaking the truth. I'm very sarcastic on X. You can follow me on X. At least I'm up to two and a half million followers there.

It took me a long time to get back on Facebook. I just got back on there after four years. I'm starting from scratch. Where's my four million followers? But this is the craziness we have that one side gets to control so much of the narrative out there right now and cancel you for having faith, cancel you for having a different opinion than them. Charlie Kirk was a dear friend. I'm still very angry what happened. I've known Charlie the last 10 years of his life. It still doesn't seem real to me. But what came out of that was 80,000 new chapters of schools across this country want to continue Turning Point USA. So Charlie is still alive, well alive.

Real Christian Families: Why do you think the work of Parent Compass is important for fighting for children and families today?

Kevin Sorbo: Because you're showing true stories. You're showing true stories of miracles. I think miracles happen every single day and people just forget about it. It doesn't have to be walking on water, folks. Just be—you know, I've got atheist friends and I say, "I know you don't want to pray, but do something called the grateful prayer." And they go, "What's that?" The grateful prayer is you're stuck in traffic in LA, be grateful you've got a car. Be grateful you've got a pillow. Be grateful the sun came out. Be grateful you've got a place to live.

We're so caught up in the quickness of the world and the spontaneity of it all. Our attention spans have just gone downhill. We just need to really go back and thank God. Talk to God like we're talking now. You don't have to put "thees" and "thous" in there. Just talk to the God. Talk to Jesus. They'll listen to your prayers. It's not always going to be yes. "Give me the lottery numbers, God, please." It doesn't work that way.

But really, it's just what you guys are doing is awesome because you're going to real families and showing real things. People need to support what you're doing. They need you to support things that you're doing and hopefully support the things I'm doing. We need people to financially support, otherwise Hollywood will win this battle. They will. They're waking up, but they just don't seem to care. So what you're doing here is awesome. You just need people to keep going and keep showing true families going through true things in life and how they battle through the roadblocks that life gives to all of us.

Real Christian Families: Do you have a last comment for us, Kevin?

Kevin Sorbo: Really, it just comes down to the support of what we're all doing. It really comes down to that. If you guys want to change the world, you've got to help us change the world. We're able to reach millions and millions of people with these movies, but we can't reach them without the support of you people letting other people know that it even exists, that it's out there. You do the exact opposite of what Hollywood has done. If you look at sitcoms, every sitcom you go back to the '70s up until now, what do they do?

The mom's a babe, the dad's kind of fat and out of shape, and the teenage kids use dad as a pincushion. They on purpose are denigrating the father. They on purpose are saying you don't need families. They do it on purpose. They're trying to destroy us. It's satanic what they're doing. The devil's doing a darn good job of pretending he doesn't exist, but he's out there and he's laughing the whole way right now. What you guys are doing is the opposite. You're showing miracles within families, you're bringing joy and love. The biggest thing we need in this world right now is hope. That's what people need. That's what people are looking for. Thank you for being here. I appreciate you.