ReFOCUS with Jim Daly

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David Benham: You have to be powered by the Holy Spirit and governed by the written Word of God. Then you can walk the midpoint of biblical tension. Because to be all truth without love is not Christ, but to be all love without truth is not Christ.

Jim Daly: That's David Benham sharing his heart about representing Christ in the culture in a loving way. He's our guest today along with his twin brother, Jason, on ReFOCUS with Jim Daly, a podcast production of Focus on the Family. I feel like we're living in a time where it's getting harder and harder to speak honestly about what you believe. We're very timid to do that, especially when it comes to faith.

There's this growing tension in the culture. On one side, the pressure is to stay quiet, and on the other side, the call to stand firm in truth. A lot of us are asking, "How do we do that well? How do I stay grounded in my convictions without coming across as harsh or unkind?" That's exactly what we're going to talk about today with the Benham brothers. They have lived this out in a very public way, from their background in professional baseball to building a successful business and then losing a national TV show because of their beliefs.

They've experienced firsthand what it costs to stand firm. They've written a tremendous book called Bold and Broken: Speaking Truth Without Backing Down, Showing Love Without Letting Go. It really gets to the heart of this specific issue: how to be bold in your faith but also broken and humble before God so that you're not pushing people away, but actually building those bridges. I think you're going to be encouraged and challenged by this great conversation on ReFOCUS with Jim Daly.

David and Jason, thank you so much for joining me on ReFOCUS. What a privilege.

David Benham: It's an honor to be here, brother.

Jim Daly: It's always fun talking to jocks. So, you guys played baseball, right? Let's get that out of the way. Tell me all about how great you were in baseball.

David Benham: Well, this is David, the older twin, and I was great. Jason was decent. So, we'll just say that right out of the gate. We're 50 years old now, so the baseball was a long time past, but I was drafted by the Mets and also by the Red Sox. Jason was drafted by the Orioles. We played baseball at Liberty University back when Jerry Falwell Sr. was still at the helm.

We ended up losing to Florida State in the regional 10 to seven. They ended up winning the College World Series that year, but we could have gone a little further, but Jason booted a ball against Auburn and we ended up losing three to two.

Jason Benham: I did. You know what? I think I told the story on one of your shows several years ago when we released our book Miracle in Shreveport. I told the story how I booted the ball in a really important game. So, thanks for bringing it up over and over and over again.

Jim Daly: That's so funny. You know, it's actually been great to see Liberty and ORU compete in these national competitions, whether it's the March Madness basketball or football or baseball. Christian schools that are competing at that level, I think that's awesome.

David Benham: Right. It's been really fun to watch. You know, back in the day when we were at Liberty, Jerry Falwell Sr. would always say, "If it's Christian, it ought to be better." And so that really just stuck into our minds. Yeah, if it's Christian, it ought to be better. I mean, we should be the best at arts and athletics and making movies and, I mean, heck, doing the ReFOCUS podcast with Jim Daly. If it's Christian, it ought to be better. It's been awesome.

Jim Daly: Let's get into it. You've written this book Bold and Broken: Speaking Truth Without Backing Down, which sounds great. It goes on to say, Showing Love Without Letting Go. You guys have kind of felt that cultural backlash, that cancel culture. I admire your courage in that regard. How would you describe the clash of kingdoms going on today? We'll get into that experience that you had, but just generally at 40,000 feet, what is going on where there is so much conflict in the culture today?

David Benham: Well, ultimately it's a spiritual battle, Jim. I mean, we all know this. Ephesians chapter 6 is very clear that our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, rulers, and authorities of darkness. But those spiritual clashes manifest themselves across multiple spheres of culture. Politics would be one, business would be another, movies and music would be another.

The Lord, Jesus, as He teaches us in scripture that we're to be the salt and the light. As salt and light, that means that there will be a clash because the Kingdom of Heaven, capital Big Capital K, collides with and overcomes the kingdom of hell, which is a small k. So, there's a level of dominion and authority that the devil has in the world today. And yet Christ, thank you for what He did on the cross because He has defeated Satan, has not yet destroyed him. That happens in the end.

So, we're fighting against a defeated foe. And so we as believers have to now take our stand in a biblical way, first in our own hearts, then in our homes, and also in the culture. The reason why we wrote Bold and Broken is because we see this spiritual battle manifested best in Peter's life. When Peter was bold but not broken in the garden when Jesus was being taken captive, and what did he reach for? He reached for his sword. He went to cut a guy's head off, right?

But Jesus was like, immediately, "We don't hurt, we heal. We're not going to be bold. Boldness apart from brokenness makes a bully," and we don't want to be Peter in the garden. But then fast forward a little bit later, it's Peter in the courtyard. He's now broken but he's not bold. He actually denied the fact that he even knew Jesus, that he was one of His followers. Brokenness apart from boldness makes a bystander.

But then later on we see Peter at Pentecost. God used him mightily when the Holy Spirit came. Peter takes his stand, he spoke boldly and yet he was on the foundation of brokenness and 3,000 were added to the church and that makes you a bridge. So, when we wrote the book, we said boldness apart from brokenness makes a bully, but brokenness or being broken over your sin, being humble, but not bold makes you a bystander. But when you are both bold and broken, you can become a bridge that connects Heaven to Earth. We felt like this was a cultural moment where a lot of spiritual battles are happening and we don't want to reach for our sword and just sit there and take people's heads off with whatever your conservative politics might be. But at the same time, we don't want to back out of the conversations that desperately need truth that people are being held captive by. So, we want to be both.

Jim Daly: I think that's really good. You know, I'm going to set up this next question which relates to a cable show you did on HGTV and kind of is evidence for that cancel culture and what you guys went through. I'll say that, but before I want to just quickly relate a story of a friend of mine who ended up doing a Bible series for one of the cable shows.

He told me, and this is just so funny, he went with this idea to the studio heads, who are mostly Jewish, and said, "I want to do the Bible, would you be interested in the program?" He had quite a track record of number one shows in primetime and if I listed them you would know them. But he said he asked the studio heads, "Would you like to participate financially, etc.?" And the one that was so funny, he said this Jewish studio head said, "Yeah, you do the Bible, but leave the Jesus parts out."

It's such a, and it's just such a way the world looks at things. When you got to do the cable show HGTV, and you can tell me more about how that came about, but it was similar pressure. If you can just leave the spiritual stuff out, when you come to the arena, in essence, what they're saying is, "Just leave your faith at the door. We don't want that stuff." It seems like they just fail to give us any kind of respect that this is who we are.

You know, if you're in the LGBTQ category, you say to us, "This is who I am," and we've got to somehow accept that. But if Christians step into the public square, "Hey, leave your faith back there, we don't want to see it in the public square." I guess the question is, why this double standard for the rest of the world pressuring us that way?

Jason Benham: It's such a great point that you bring up, Jim. But this is the battle of our time. See, here's the crazy part. You can bring your faith into the public square. They're fine with that. There's just certain aspects of the faith that you can't bring in. David and I have said before, we didn't get fired for having an opinion. We got fired for voicing an opinion, but it was an opinion on a couple key political—and I'm going to put these in scare quotes in case somebody's listening to this and they don't see it—politically incorrect positions.

One on marriage, two on what they call gender, we'd call sex, three on life, life beginning at conception. So, David and I brought in, you know, Jesus said that if you are ashamed of me, and then he goes on further and says, "and my words, I will be ashamed of you." So, Jesus didn't just say, "Hey, if you're ashamed of me, I'll be ashamed of you." He didn't say that. He added in "and my words." Why? Because He knew that at some point that people would be ashamed of some things written in Leviticus.

They would be ashamed of some things that He talked about in Matthew 5 in terms of marriage being between a man and a woman. It's like, so the minute David and I brought truth into the cultural context, not just, "Hey, we love Jesus," and then we didn't get canceled for loving Jesus anymore than Elijah. Remember when he stood against 400 prophets of Baal? Like, he stood strong against 400 prophets of Baal who were saying God is not the real God, our God is the real God, and he stood strong against those guys.

But he ran from one woman who stood in the spirit of Jezebel. Because the Jezebel spirit said, "If you touch this," and what's the Jezebel spirit? It's dominance and radical sexuality and combining both of those. "If you don't agree with what I believe on that, I will kill you." Now, the prophets of Baal, they didn't want to kill Elijah and he stood against them. But the minute a killer showed up like Jezebel and says, "I'm going to kill you for your opinion," he ran.

It's no coincidence that Elijah was taken up into Heaven, he didn't die. I don't believe that his assignment was fully completed. But we have it as an example of, "Hey, now is our time to stand." So, David and I experienced that with HGTV. It wasn't that we said that we love Jesus and people should love Jesus. It was because we said God's Word says that marriage is between a man and a woman. Oh no, you can be a Christian and not talk about that and be fine. But you can't be a Christian and bring God's words to an issue like that and be okay, not in today's cancel culture.

Jim Daly: Let me ask you this question. The sexual ethic, you're so right, this is really the crux of the issue because we—and you know, now you even have to say we conservative Christians because there are some Christians and some churches that I feel, my opinion would be have capitulated to a modern sexual ethic in order I think in some ways simply to be acceptable to the culture rather than the other at work where the culture bends to the Word of God, not the Word of God to the culture.

But that is the tip of the spear when we say, "Yeah, we believe in marriage defined as between a man and a woman," that He created us male and female, the two shall become one flesh, that Jesus references this in Matthew and says a man will leave his mother and father and cleave to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. That kind of outlines that sexual ethic. Then when we say something different, we are tagged with bigot, homophobe, transphobe.

Focus is back on the Southern Poverty Law Center hate list for not embracing that. I can remember when the New York Times did a piece on us being the Kingdom of Nice. The person came in the door here at Focus, experienced nothing but smiles and graciousness and said, "They must pay their staff extra." Like, somehow we were being treated at a different level, but I think most people that come here, if not everyone, I think when they visit in the summer, they get that experience. We're joyful people. We don't hate anybody. But in that context again, that labeling and that ability to caricature an organization or people as Christians who are haters. Speak to that and drive a little deeper if you would with the HGTV lessons that you learned where you did on one occasion capitulate and then you asked for forgiveness if I remember correctly.

David Benham: Well, the way we see this spiritual battle as Jason and I got to see it front and center in the middle of cancel culture was the first thing that the devil wants to do is marginalize your words. But it doesn't stop there. Then he wants to demonize you as a person. But he doesn't stop there. Eventually he wants to criminalize your actions or your faith.

That's what we see. It goes marginalize, demonize, criminalize. As we see this, a prevailing worldview coming to the culture, I love Glenn Martin who wrote a book called Prevailing Worldviews. He said when a prevailing worldview comes in, we as believers are supposed to restate, reaffirm, and reapply biblical truth. We are not to reconcile the Bible with the prevailing worldview.

And that's really what you just said, Jim, is just to lower it down to a common denominator so everyone gets along. The problem is when you do that, that creates a clash. That's what happened with us with HGTV. They already knew who we were. Jason and I had built a company. We got out of pro baseball and we decided to move our young families to Charlotte, North Carolina. We had nine kids between the two of us. I had five, Jason only had four.

But we decided to start a business and that first company was a real estate company. We grew it to 100 locations in 35 states and that's when HGTV found us. They had just signed Chip and Joanna Gaines to a one-hour pilot for a show called Fixer Upper. They said, "We're not going to give you guys a pilot. We're going to give you six one-hour episodes guaranteed to series for a show called Flip It Forward."

We said, "Wait, do you know who our dad is? He's the guy that baptized Jane Roe, Roe v. Wade, right? We, he's very, very active pro-life." And they said, "Oh no, no, no. We've already done all of our research. We know who you guys are." The production company that had found us, they actually said, "Most of us and your agents, who happen to be the Kardashian agents at the time," we had no idea about that when we hired them, and they said, "and many people at HG believe like you guys do, we just don't talk about it."

The reason why is because that's the stronghold. You can say certain things, but there are certain things you cannot touch, which is exactly what we've been discussing. So anyway, HG said, "Listen, we want to offer you guys the six one-hour episodes straight to series and we believe that your family and the Gaines family will be significant on our network."

I remember the first phone call I got after we signed with HGTV was Chip Gaines. He called and he said, "Hey, isn't this exciting? Your family and our families and we're going to be raised up to the top of the network." It was just a really fun time. HGTV had already done all the research, so they knew that we were very vocal pro-life. We were pro-marriage Christians. When President Obama flipped his position in 2012 on marriage, Jason and I stepped up and we basically said—and I'll paraphrase—"God's blessings are found inside of God's boundaries. If the boundaries are removed, the blessings are replaced with burdens."

It's not bigoted or intolerant to put boundaries up. That's what we do with our kids, right? Even when your 12-year-old daughter's like, "You hate me, Dad," because you won't give her the keys to the car. I mean, it's like we would never as good parents say, "Well, by all means, I don't want to be called a hater, so here are the keys." No, we keep the boundaries in place. That's really God's love toward us is the context of marriage and sexuality and all those things.

Anyway, while we were filming with HGTV and the commercials started getting out, that's when Right Wing Watch and GLAAD and GLSEN and the Southern Poverty Law Center, Human Rights Campaign, that's when they found out that the Benham brothers were getting a show and they circled the wagons, they went after the advertisers, and after a few weeks of that, HGTV called us and with tears in their eyes—the general manager was crying—and they fired us. But it was in the middle of that that we felt like maybe we ought to try to save our show. Jason will tell you a little bit more about that.

Jim Daly: Okay, how'd that happen, Jason?

Jason Benham: Well, so in the middle of all this, they were really calling us consistently. HG was saying, "This activist group is putting so much pressure on us." David and I actually drafted an email to HGTV. We didn't send it to them, but we drafted an email that basically told them, Jim—I'm ashamed to say this—"Hey, these are the things that we believe. We're never going to back off of them. However, when we represent your network in public, we'll be quiet about them." Like, we actually wrote that, I'm ashamed to say.

Fortunately, we decided to send it to a pastor friend of ours who we thought would agree with us. We were like, "Hey, let's get some approval from a spiritual leader." Your judge-shopping a pastor. Right, yes, that's right. But within three minutes he sent the email back and said, "How dare you guys send an email like that? This isn't who you are. Don't you know who you are? God's raising you up for a time just like this. And trust me, it's not to have some dumb reality show, but it's to tear down a stronghold that's keeping Christians silent about truth."

That's when David and I honestly got the bold and broken message that we understood that boldness apart from brokenness makes a bully. God had to break us of our fear of man and our man-pleasing spirit because what David and I were doing in that moment when we wrote that email was we were focusing on that platform we didn't want to lose rather than the person who put it there in the first place.

Anytime you start focusing on that thing that God has given to you—and you know what? God wants you to have it—but the minute you start focusing on it and you take your focus off of Him, you wrap your fingers around that thing and now that thing that God gave you has become your idol. You're enslaved by the very thing that God wants you to have. We were deaf, blind, and dumb, we didn't even know it until that pastor rebuked us, and we thank God for that. Then David and I got our act straight and we're like, "Alright, we're not going to back down now." That's how we understood that when you're bold on the foundation of being broken, after God broke us and humbled us, God can then use you as a bridge to connect Heaven to Earth and that's, by God's grace, since that HGTV debacle, we've been able to do.

Jim Daly: And I think it's important. I appreciate that openness. Not many people talk about their moment of despair. But it is a good lesson. Well, David wrote the email, David wrote the email, Jim. Don't judge me. I love it. This is what twin brothers talk about. But it's good to learn lessons and it's great that that pastor spoke truth back to you rather than, "Yeah, whatever," and didn't care.

So that's good too, that's a form of love to be able to say to you guys, "Hey, wake up, this is bigger than just you." Now, most people aren't going to face that. Most people don't have a cable television deal, but it works all the way down to your work environment wherever you're at. You don't want to be obnoxious. You want to be loving and kind and polite and all those things.

But nobody should control the thought life of another person, especially around spiritual things. That's a God-given right to believe as you deem appropriate and hopefully we can win that in a fair public court that Christianity is the way and Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. But that is, you know, the Lord Himself gives you that freedom to choose. In that context, why do you think we struggle so much between this idea of grace and truth? We tend to treat it like a light switch. It's all truth or it's all grace, as opposed to the Jesus model which was so beautifully bringing both of those together. Why do we as humans struggle so mightily to do that well? It's like, I don't know, it's like two poles of a magnet. We either go whoop or we go whoop over here. We don't really do that that well. Why?

David Benham: It's always so easy for our flesh to err to the extreme of either side. But it's much more difficult to be powered by the Holy Spirit and governed by the written Word of God. It's those two things. You have to be powered by the Holy Spirit and governed by the written Word of God. Then you can walk the midpoint of biblical tension.

Because to be all truth without love is not Christ, but to be all love without truth is not Christ. And so it is that delicate balance, and that's what we actually see in Peter's life. When he actually was broken over his sin, right? And like, by the word "broken" we mean broken horses are useful horses. Our dad used to say when we were a kid, "Only those horses willing to be broken by the Master are fit to pull the King's chariot. The rest are left to pasture."

So, broken over your sin and allowing your own personality to be molded into the image of God. But then on the other side, to be bold, to understand that this world is not about you, that we are day-players in the story of God redeeming all mankind to Himself and that there are spiritual forces of darkness that do not want that.

Jason and I, as we talk to business owners because we run multiple businesses, we say that to be both bold and broken in business is to be excellent with your skills, to be the one as a believer to do what Jerry Falwell said, "If it's Christian, it ought to be better." If you're a hairstylist, an architect, an engineer, a plumber, we should be excellent at what we do. And if they cancel us, it should create a massive hole and a vacuum because they've canceled the best in the business.

And we see that happening, Jim. I'm really encouraged all over the country. We're seeing business owners that are Christians and that hold to conservative values. By the way, conservatism does not bleed Christianity. Christianity now has conservative values attached to it because conservatism on its own is pretend salt. It acts like salt and tastes like salt, but it is not salt. Anyway, so when we're in the workplace, we actually can truly touch people. When we meet the needs that they're paying us for, it opens the door to meet the needs that they're not paying us for, quite often the needs they don't even know they have.

Jim Daly: I like that. In this context, I think when we do it well, maybe not perfectly, but we just blend those two sides of truth and grace a little better, we end up typically with somebody who sees it for the first time. You had that experience, I think, with a self-professed gay man who connected with you guys. I think he lived in Chicago, if I remember correctly. But how did your Christian aroma bring him into the discussion and where did he go from there?

David Benham: Well, it's interesting, right after we were fired by HGTV, it became a kind of a social media firestorm. And so we were getting thousands upon thousands of direct messages. And for some reason one night, I was up—and I didn't read them all—but I was up one night and I just clicked on Facebook messages and I saw like a three-paragraph rant on me and Jason from a guy that said, "I'm a gay man, I live in Chicago," and he just went off on us, saying things that I'd never even heard of before.

I simply responded. The Holy Spirit was great because I was in the quiet of my bed just laying there and I heard the Holy Spirit whisper to me, "You need to be tender with this man." And I just simply replied, "Hey bro, I think you're yelling at me through your own hurt and through your pain. Tell me a little bit about your story." And then he sent right back. So now we're actually dialoguing at like 1:00 AM.

He sent back this paragraph about his dad and the relationship he had that was just a terrible situation and he found love in the arms of another man and yet it's not working out. Then I replied back to him and I said, "So tell me more about your childhood, about the things that you really enjoyed." He told me, "I loved going to Chicago Cubs games with my dad." It was one of the only good memories I had with my father.

So, I then, while I saw that message, I went on the Chicago Cubs schedule and saw that they were in town that weekend and they were playing against the Cardinals, I believe it was. So I went on to Ticketmaster or StubHub or whatever and I got him front row—I got him two front-row seats at the Cubs game and I bought them right there on the spot. It was like almost $1,000 or whatever.

I just shot him a quick link over Messenger and said, "Hey, take a friend, enjoy the Cubs game. I just want you to know Jesus loves you. I have no hate for you whatsoever." Well, he didn't respond at all. I later on fell asleep. I wake up, and the next morning I wake up and I'm looking at the message to see if he got it. Didn't respond. The next day, same thing, didn't respond. But on the third day, Jim, I got the response.

He said, "I'm sorry I didn't reach back out to you for the last two days." He said, "To be honest, I was stunned. I didn't know how to respond." And he said, "I've not ever had someone treat me like this. And to be honest, I didn't even have a friend that could go with me to the game. But this, what you just did for me, caused me over the last two days—and I promise, this is exactly what he said—and the Huffington Post made fun of me and Jason about this—but he said, 'I have been listening to that Mercy Me song, I Can Only Imagine.' And he sent me the link to I Can Only Imagine. He said, 'I've been listening to this song for 48 hours and I truly believe the Lord wants me to come back home to Him.'"

I'm just telling you, Jim, it just gets me choked up even thinking about it. I immediately said, "Hey, you need to connect with my buddy in Chicago." So I put him in touch with a friend of mine because I knew that he needed some connection. But I just, when I told that story at NRB of all places and the Huffington Post was there and they put a headline out that said "Benhams Say Chicago Cubs Tickets Will Heal Gay People." All we're trying to do is love people like Jesus would love.

Jason Benham: To go back to your point, Jim, when you said, "Why is it so hard when we think about truth and grace and people want to go all truth or all grace or whatever?" Well, I really believe it's because people misunderstand what love is. Love involves two things: compassion with standards. That's what love is. If you have one without the other, you don't have love.

If you have all standards but no compassion, how's that going to work in your marriage relationship? How's that going to work with your kids, where it's rules but no relationship? Or if you go the other way and you've got compassion but no standards? Well, tell me how that's going to work out for a marriage. Like, I'm very compassionate for my wife, but I got a date with another girl tonight. Is that going to work? No, no, no.

You've got to have compassion with standards. Tony Evans is the one that taught me and David this. So we learned the whole definition of love, and Jesus shows us this. When we look at truth and grace, when we look at love as compassion with standards. It says that before Jesus fed the 5,000—we all remember that story—it said He felt compassion for the people.

And what did His compassion look like? It looked like giving them something they didn't ask for. He fed them with a tangible product. He met their tangible need for food and He fed them. That's what compassion looked like. In another story, remember when the rich young ruler comes to Jesus, like, "Hey, what can I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus tells him, "Hey, you need to follow the commandments," or whatever.

He says, "Well, I've already done all that." Then it says Jesus felt compassion for him. And you know what His compassion compelled Him to do in that moment? To tell the man something he didn't want to hear. Jesus says, "Hey, you've got to sell everything, then you can come follow me." And it says the man turned around and walked away heartbroken.

So on one hand, Jesus' compassion, His love, it brought food, it filled someone's belly. On the other hand, it ripped out someone's heart. But it was the same love. Love is compassion, but love is also standards. Jesus shows us this. What's happened now with Pixie Stick Christianity and the churches out there that have backed out of cultural conversations, they just want to be Jesus feeding the 5,000.

But there is no way on God's green earth that they would turn away a rich young ruler who wanted to come to their church and pay them tithe and all that kind of stuff. They would not talk about the thing that needs to be talked about that might upset a guy like that. So they pull out of conversations and now we only see one side of Jesus. So you want to know why it's hard for believers to balance truth and grace and why they naturally gravitate to one side or the other? Because our pastors are failing us. We need our spiritual leaders to step up and show us what it looks like just like Jesus did.

Jim Daly: That's good. The culture raises up acceptance as the new religion. If you're loving and kind, you accept me. Again, we're dancing here because we're saying, "Of course God loves you and He is for you in every way. However, He doesn't accept behavior that is outside of a biblical context." I love John Burke, who wrote Imagine Heaven. He's a pastor down in Austin, and he said over his church is a banner that says, "Come as you are, you just can't stay that way."

That's a great line. That's what the Christian life is about. Jesus accepts you where you're at. He is loving toward everyone, every sinner. But as you grow in Christ, you become better in Christ. I guess the question bottom line is this issue of battling the world's greatest cause, which is acceptance—that you have to love me no matter who I am. At one point that's true, but how do we as Christians with that discernment and the responsibilities of God's design for humanity in our sexuality, in our makeup, in our every part of us? He didn't accept the Pharisees for who they were. That was obvious.

David Benham: Right. You know, Jim, Romans chapter 12 verse 9 says, "Let love be without hypocrisy. Hate what is evil, cling to what is good." We can't have hypocritical love by not talking about good and evil. Now, one of the reasons why we get so wrapped up in this whole acceptance culture is because Hebrews chapter 5 verse 13 and 14 says, "He who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is only an infant. But solid food is for the mature who through practice have their senses trained to distinguish between good and evil."

So it's milk sermons or TEDx messages as opposed to the true meat of the Word of God. And what that will show us is we are accepted because we are the jewel of God's creation. Read Psalm 139. That's what I did to a woman on the plane who was a feminist who wanted to rip my head off because I was reading the Bible. But I read to her, I asked her if I could read to her Psalm 139 and I did. I read verses like 13 through 18 about God knit you together in your mother's womb. Marvelous are His works.

I said that and she starts bawling on the plane because I opened the Word of God. But yes, so I told her God does accept you, but He does not love all ideas. While He loves you, He doesn't love all the ideas that you hold. And sometimes those ideas become an identity. When the culture is taking an idea and forcing an identity on our kids or on you, then we as believers have to stand against that and not be hypocritical in our love. We have to hate the identity or the evil idea that's holding someone captive and we have to speak the truth in love. When we begin to do that, we just start seeing the chains being broken over people's lives.

That woman ended up by the end of the plane ride wanting to surrender her life to Christ. This is what happens when we have that level of boldness, but we do it in a way that the Holy Spirit pricks our heart. What we write about in the book is that if you do not see yourself—if you fast forward like if you're about to engage in a conversation or what some people would say would a debate or an argument—if you can't see yourself praying with that person to receive Christ at the end of that conversation, then you're not in the right spirit and the right heart.

If all you think is you're just going to win the argument or debate them and show them why their worldview is wrong, that's the wrong spirit, that's the wrong attitude, that's not Christ-like. But you also can't stay out of it because you're afraid of hurting their feelings. You want to see yourself speaking to them in such a way that they could hopefully—not all the time it doesn't happen this way—but hopefully they'll say, "You know what? I do want to read the book of John. I do want to open my Bible. I do now see clearly that Jesus does love me."

Jason Benham: We see the two different aspects of Jesus. We see that He was the friend of sinners and He was so kind and compassionate to them. But then with the Pharisees and the religious hypocrites, what did He do? He called them whitewashed walls, a brood of vipers. He really called it out.

David and I have seen this. There's a difference between an idea and an individual. God calls us to love all people for sure, but God does not love all ideas. And what are we supposed to do with bad ideas that we know hurt people? 2 Corinthians 10 tells us we're supposed to demolish those. That's what we're supposed to do because Jesus showed us there's a difference between the enslaved and the enslaver.

The enslaved, 99% of the people out there that are simply enslaved and need the love of God to guide them to the truth. But then you have a small minority that are the enslaver. Those are the leaders, those are the ones with loud voices that are saying, "Hey, you can be gay and Christian. Hey, you can change your gender identity. Hey, you can become whatever you want." No, we don't deal with that gently. We demolish that in the name of Jesus. We demolish arguments and pretenses that set itself up against the knowledge of God. We've just got to make sure as believers that we don't lose sight of the fact that we serve the King of the angel armies. It is a battle. We serve the God of the King of the chef at a five-star restaurant. That's great, I like good food too, but we are in a war and that war is in the raging war of ideas.

Jim Daly: I think somebody who has been at the point of the spear on this was Andrew Breitbart. He paid the ultimate price for being in the public square and expressing his opinions. I didn't know his efforts very well. I started watching probably just a few months before he died. I would see the reels on YouTube or what have you.

I thought so many of the interactions he had with those that came to the microphone, at least what I saw on YouTube, were very effective, deeply Christian, and I think he matured along the way. I think the earlier reels I would say were more—in the public arena, there's a certain amount of snark that can work because you're trying to point out error and misjudgment or poor judgment. So I think in the culture, a certain snark works in that regard.

But I think again as he matured spiritually, he got very effective at dealing with people. Probably one that I remember the most was a 20-year-old, I think she was 20, and she stood at the mic. I thought to myself, "What a courageous person," because she stood at the mic and said, "I've had gender dysphoria since I was in third grade."

Now, I don't know how accurate that is, but obviously she was struggling, perhaps teachers, school administrators along the way were encouraging that. I don't know her story that well, but she got up to the mic and spoke of this. Andrew Breitbart was very effective. He said, "Listen, I want to give you advice that I don't think others are going to give you and that is you're wrong. I would much rather see you deal with the mental side of this problem than to inject foreign things into your body, hormones, etc., to correct in your mind what is something that God intended for you to love.

I would much rather see you get to a place where you could love the body God has given you." Bam. I went, "That's the problem." You're dealing with a mental disorder. That even now becomes a problem to say, but it used to be in the diagnostic tool for psychiatry, the DSM-4, it was listed as a mental disorder along with other adjacent mental disorders like bulimia and food eating disorders, ironically like control issues.

So in that regard, speak to that effectiveness of appealing to the soul and you're giving those stories, but I think we're wired, every human being is wired in such a way with spiritual DNA that when somebody comes to you, David, like you were discussing the woman on the plane or the gay man in Chicago, when people feel cared for—like who had ever done that for that man to send him a $1,000 gift out of nowhere? What? But they get so blown away that their spiritual heart cracks open and now the Holy Spirit can do some work.

David Benham: Right. God puts us in that business as believers. We're the ones. Jesus gave us the keys to the kingdom. So we're praying. Every time I get on a plane, I usually say, "God, give me keys to the person's heart that sits next to me." The key is way easier to use than a battering ram. What is it that God—what door does God want us to open?

In terms of like that girl with Andrew Breitbart and how he just spoke that truth to her, it's almost as if we would never, if our daughter was struggling with anorexia and she's like, "Dad, I'm fat," and I'm like, "Sweetheart, no you're not," and she's like, "No, I want you to embrace my identity as fat," love would not say, "Okay, well, you are fat. I'm just going to embrace it with you, I'm just going to accept that."

Love would say, "Sweetheart, you're not fat. You're struggling with something and I want to come alongside you." And that's really where we need to be as the church. Now for Andrew Breitbart, what we saw was not just a political assassination, it was a spiritual confrontation. That's the reason why millions of people across the world were chanting, "We are Andrew, we are Andrew."

A lot of them didn't know what they were chanting, but what they're saying is we are tired of the thought mafia and the thought police telling us how we have to think and believe and act. Andrew Breitbart even said as Christians, we're supposed to go into the public arena and correct error with truth. Now the way Andrew started, he started conservatism first, Christianity second.

But as he matured in his faith, he flipped it: Christianity first, conservatism second. As a 31-year-old man, married, father of two daughters, he was really spot-on with the way this bold and broken message was. I find some Christians were like, "Well, you can't sit there and support everything Andrew Breitbart said," and they send me a quote from when he was 20. And I'm like, "Dude, if you got a quote when I was 20, I can't imagine."

But he was very effective at that balance of saying, "No, you're wrong, however," and then pointing to the healing, the ways of Christ, and the way that Christ created people to flourish. So I'm very thankful for Andrew's life. I feel like he was martyred for the faith. He would not have been killed if he would have just stayed inside of a church, but he didn't. He went right into a place which is the public universities. Many of those universities, if not all of them, have become places of indoctrination where they force belief, and the only belief you can't have is in the lordship of Jesus Christ as it relates to your sexuality and to your life choices when it comes to pregnancy.

Jason Benham: And I think he ignited something that is spiritual in nature and that is this boldness, a backbone from the Christian community to say enough is enough and to reassert those truths in a public square that's lost its way. Romans says that God gave them over to the deprivation of their mind. Many Christians that I talk to who are cultural experts feel like we may be in that moment again where the culture has lost its way, they don't know what truth is anymore.

You see the hearings on the hill asking over and over again, "Can you tell me what a woman is?" And Supreme Court nominees to business leaders all the way through culture, like no one can answer the question because they're afraid to. It seems they're looking—you can see it in their eyes in front of Senate hearings where they're looking off into space thinking if I say this that won't be good, if I say it that way that won't be good.

You can just see their wheels turning and that to me is deprivation of the mind. You can't just say a female human is a woman with female reproductive organs who can produce a child in their womb? I mean something of that nature. It's so misunderstood now that you can't even say that. So in that context, has Andrew lit a fire in the global culture now saying it's okay to have a backbone?

Jason Benham: Oh, absolutely. Here's what I love. I love that the Apostle Paul was writing a letter and he said, "You know what? You've got many teachers but few fathers." Right there he showed us something powerful when it came to spiritual leaders. He's like, "You've got plenty of good teachers. You've got guys out there, they can preach a sermon and they can do so well. But very few spiritual fathers."

What's the difference between a teacher and a father? A teacher can tell you all about the wolf, but a father will point him out when he shows up and he's willing to lay his life down in front of his sheep. So David and I, we were raised by a pastor. Our dad lost his church because of his pro-life stance, and this is back in the early '90s. So we saw him lay down his church for something that was actually true.

But what we also remembered back then when we were teenagers and our dad lost his church was the number of pastors that would never say anything about pro-life because back then in the '80s and '90s, if you talked about pro-life from the pulpit, you were getting political and so there were plenty of spiritual leaders, guys who were gifted communicators, gifted teachers that weren't acting like fathers.

Now you fast forward and we see the same type of void taking place in culture where we have spiritual leaders who won't talk about certain things. When all these young kids are talking about it and it's the conversation. Can you change your gender? What is true sexuality? How are you supposed to express it? And all these questions and we've got our most gifted spiritual leaders saying nothing about it. Andrew Breitbart steps in and he starts addressing it and all of a sudden just millions upon millions, especially of young people 40 and under.

There was a time in Christianity where we would say that the generation needed authenticity. We just want to be real. Okay, that's great, that was like 25 years ago. I get it, they want authenticity. What they need now is authority. Andrew Breitbart stepped in with authority and was like, "Nah, you're wrong, here's why you're wrong, and you need to find hope and faith in Jesus Christ." This is why in the last two or three years of his life when he started going kind of that direction, Christianity more than conservatism, I believe that's when Satan put a contract out on his life because he was getting people too close to the truth. If he would have stayed in the conservative realm, he could have raged against the machine and done all that stuff and probably still be alive. But he started getting people to the truth and that was something that the devil couldn't handle. I would say we as spiritual leaders need to step in, encourage our pastors to be bold and broken and bring truth into the conversations that everybody is talking about and then let the chips fall where they may and we need to make it chic and cool to be canceled. No more running from it, let's just embrace it and lean into it.

Jim Daly: And I think it's moving that way. It's so interesting. Let me pose this example and get both of your responses to this because it just happened not long ago. But you look at Europe when it comes to gender dysphoria and transgenderism and the fact that Europe took a look at—and they were kind of first to the hormone treatment, the mutilation treatments, helping minors try to transfer from being a female to a male, male to a female through the use of hormone treatment and surgical intervention, etc.

But then a couple of years ago they backed off and said we're doing more harm than good. They looked at the data and they said that the mental well-being of these patients is worsening after treatment, not getting better. I applaud that. They're still doing small trials, but in the dozens in places like the UK. And of course in the UK they had Tavistock which was a hospital geared for minor gender transfer and they shut it down after 1,000 legal actions from parents and minors who woke up and said no, this was not what I want.

The US seems to lag in looking at the data. And here's the point, I give you all that background to say just the other day a judge, I think in California, put a stay on President Trump's executive order that those treatments needed to stop. A judge came out and said no they don't, not in the state of California, we're going to continue to do these treatments. And I'm just thinking again, how do you not get upset about a judge coming to this conclusion that the mutilation of minors is okay after we have hundreds, thousands of teenagers who have come out to say I made the biggest mistake of my life getting a double mastectomy, taking hormone treatment?

Chloe Cole being somebody that we're close to and her testimony that she made a mistake and no doctors had any negative downside in the consultation leading her into that decision. And you think, why does this judge have that kind of authority to mutilate these children? And that's the question, how do you restrain that anger to say, "Man, what is happening?" And we must, but how do we do it?

David Benham: Right. You should have a visceral response when you see a judge doing that because it is wrong what they want to do to these kids. That righteous indignation, the Lord even teaches us in scripture, "Be angry and yet do not sin." So that anger, what is it going to lead? Anger is actually energy in motion. That's what emotion is, energy in motion.

So which motion is that energy going to head toward? We always want it to be redemptive and restorative, but we cannot fix this overnight. This is a generational abandonment of the public square from Christians for so long. The reason why we have these judges in place is they've been—what we have been watching—radicals and revolutionaries and non-believers running for office, getting into office, appointing judges.

And then what we find ourselves now as believers, we're like, "Wow, that we have vacated that public sector, that public space." And it's very hard to get these judges out. I mean, it is a blight on our land. Now God can change anything, but while we're waiting for the Lord to do some kind of a miracle, we're going to say, "I'm running for office."

I would hope that pastors across every church in America would encourage their men and women, "Hey, if you're in a place where you can actually run for office, we would love you to run for office," because Romans 13 says that government is a minister of God to punish evil and protect good. When we don't see government protecting good, which would be to allow a young girl to be a young girl and to go through some of the mental disorders that she's having and yet we're going to get her some help, but we're not going to get her a mastectomy at 14.

When we see that the government's not doing that, we as believers have to run to the battle. And it's going to take time. It's not, we live in a microwave society, but success for God comes in a crockpot. So we have to get generationally get back involved in our culture.

Jason Benham: And I would say to your question, how do we balance this, if we're finding ourselves getting angry? Emotion is an impulse to act. So we're supposed to feel emotion, and anger is one of those emotions that God gives us. We even see in the scripture that God gets angry. What is the impulse to the action that we're supposed to lead people to? It's the justice of God.

We do not bring about God's justice, but when we feel anger like that, then we need to use our voice. We have to use our voice and we bring people into the truth. Now, if you're going to respond in anger, that's why David and I wrote the book Bold and Broken. We don't just respond in boldness. We also respond in brokenness, understanding that every human being has a beating heart made in the image of God, even that judge.

But we cannot back out of the conversation because we're scared we're going to hurt the judge's feelings. Otherwise, Jesus needs to apologize to the Pharisees. But we never see that he did that. He actually at times said, "You are wrong. And not only are you wrong, you're a brood of vipers." He called it out. That is so non-woke, Jesus acting like that. So I would say let's not calm the anger. Let it fuel you to pray even harder and to use your voice to see that truth is paraded in the public square.

Jim Daly: I so often think about the fact that God created three institutions: family, church, and government. Gave government one role. It said this is what government should be about: restraining evil. Can you just do that? And it looks like not only can they not restrain evil, they can perpetuate it. Now we're in a very difficult circumstance where you have people either elected or in judgeships, etc., who are uncorking evil toward certain classes of people, which is unfortunate.

Let's leave it on a high note. You call people to action: commit to prayer, commit to God's Word, commit to fasting, commit to writing our testimony, commit to share. Just speak to any one of those about the importance of doing them and what it does for us spiritually.

David Benham: Right. When we shine our light, it's Matthew 5:16, "Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in Heaven." Where are we on a consistent basis every single day? We're in the workplace. That's what we do, we work. Everybody, you got a job. Well, okay, are you excellent at what you do? Are you praying and asking the Lord to give you keys into the meeting the needs of a human heart that you're meeting their need physically, and now how can I meet their need spiritually?

As we stay very forward and out front with that, we are going to stumble into a conversation or actually hear a public argument of something that needs truth. We have to make up our minds, just like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego back in Daniel's time. They said, "We've made up our minds. Let it be known, we're not going to bow to this image." We have to make up our minds that we are going to speak the truth in love.

Jim Daly: I so appreciate that. I think the aim, thankfully, the Lord wrote it down. "If you're in me, here are the fruits of the Spirit that will be on display in you." And so often we—it's so great that He just said, "Here it is," through Paul. We are always seemingly asking Him, "How do we know we're in You?" Well, love, joy, peace, goodness, mercy, all the good things of the fruit. It's like one of the things I try to do when I'm traveling, which is an arena where we can be very short of patience, is try to remember God's fruit in that moment at the rental counter.

One of the things I do with United, because I fly out of Denver so much, I go to the baggage claim area and I'll go to the poor souls that are writing down all the lost baggage and I'll walk into the room when nobody's in there and I'll say, "Hey you guys, you didn't lose my luggage. Thank you so much for taking care of me today." And they're at first as tense as can be like, "Here he comes, the rotten customer." And then I just flip it on them and give them a gift card to coffee or something because all they get is bad attitude all day for eight hours.

Think of that, but just trying to do something a little different. So God bless you guys. Thanks for being with me. This has been a great conversation and just pray God's blessing upon you as you continue to work in the culture with your neighbors and the business associates and all the people you touch. Thanks for doing it in the name of Christ.

Jason Benham: Thanks for your witness and the leadership in the example that you show, how you've done it with Focus on the Family and the fact that Focus is on some hate group lists is proof that you are over the target and you are following the Lord. So thank you, Jim, for your leadership.

Jim Daly: Thank you so much. God bless. Well, what a meaningful and thought-provoking conversation today. I think one of the biggest takeaways from our time with David and Jason is that balance they talked about: being both bold and broken. It's so easy to drift to one side or the other. We either speak truth without compassion, or we show compassion and avoid truth altogether.

But as they reminded us, it's in that tension, that middle zone where conviction meets humility, that real impact happens. And I so appreciate how practical this is. This isn't just about big public moments or being in the spotlight. It's about everyday life: your workplace, your family, your conversations with neighbors and friends. Man, I'll tell you what, now that I have two boys in their 20s, conversations with them as well.

Each of us has opportunities to reflect both grace and truth in the way we live and speak. If today's conversation resonated with you, please pick up a copy of their book Bold and Broken. It goes deeper into these ideas and offers encouragement for anyone who wants to stand firm in their faith without losing a heart for people. With a gift of any amount, we'll be happy to send that to you as our way of saying thank you for supporting ReFOCUS.

Alright, for the inbox segment today, here's a voicemail from Claire.

Claire: Hey, Jim, I just wanted to let you know how much I appreciated your conversation with Jennifer Sey on the podcast just talking about protecting women's sports. And she said she was an atheist and a Jew and I found it just so refreshing to hear how you showed her such great respect and represented Christ to her in that conversation. So thanks for modeling that kind of interaction for us as believers.

Jim Daly: Claire, thank you so much for that kind remark. I mean, hopefully I'm doing that, and it's coming from my heart. I'm not trying to do something artificial. If the love of God is in us, we're going to be able to speak to people who may not agree with us on everything, but there is some common ground that we can form relationship and a touchpoint of communication.

And I felt that way with Jennifer. Although she doesn't embrace Christ, there are many things we do agree with. Start there. And again, thank you for your comment because I mentioned it here on the podcast, I'm going to send you a copy of my book ReFOCUS: Living a Life That Reflects God's Heart. Now if you have a question or a comment for me, please send me a voicemail or leave a comment in the contact form.

Let me know what you thought about this conversation with the Benhams. The links are in the show notes. And as always, if you found this episode helpful, be sure to share it with a friend or family member who could use a little encouragement. Thanks for listening to ReFOCUS with Jim Daly. Be sure to like, listen, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Next time on ReFOCUS, Denise Shick will share her personal family story and will help you as a parent to have loving conversations about LGBT issues with your children.

Denise Shick: And yet to take a look at how the Lord has used that pain and the desire for families to know they're not alone in this type of situation and to let the loved ones out there that maybe feel unlovable by God or by us, their family, to say, "You know what? We deeply, deeply love you and care about you. Let me show you Jesus."

Jim Daly: That's coming up on Monday, May 4th on the next ReFOCUS with Jim Daly. Live your truth. A lot of people say that, don't they? But truth isn't something we decide. God has decided it for us, and it's our job as believers to share His truth with a world in need.

I'll encourage you to do that through my podcast ReFOCUS with Jim Daly. I visit with fascinating guests about important topics like gender confusion, cancel culture, and more, while helping you share God's love with others. Listen at refocuswithjimdaly.com.