Theological Roundtable Gab Fest, a free-for-all forum with faith community leaders wrestling over the truth. In less than one half hour, learn more about what really matters than what most others learn in a week. The faith debate is on the World Wide Web at WFMD.com, keyword faith. Are you ready for the clash of ideas? Are you ready for the sound of freedom? Let's get ready to rumble in this corner, weighing in with a master of divinity from Reform Theological Seminary, the Faith Debate Master of Ceremonies, Troy Skinner. Two weeks ago, I had the privilege of being a guest on another show on this radio station, 930 WFMD, Jennifer Charlton, who hosts Success Happens. It airs every Saturday morning at 9 o'clock from 9 till 10. She's been doing that show for a while now. I think it's probably about three years, something like that. She's been doing that show and she finally got around to inviting me on. What does that tell you? She was finally desperate enough, I tell ya, that's what it tells ya. Anyway, it was a great honor and a privilege to be on somebody else's show as a guest, and last week we played the first half of that show, and this week we'll play the second half of that show. Why did I have to do it over two weeks? Well, that's because she has an hour long show. I only have a half hour long show. So anyway, here's the second half of that conversation that I had with Jennifer Charlton on her program, Success Happens, a couple weeks ago here on WFMD. As we sit here and talk, we're talking about life principles, some of which have a spiritual foundation, but I was thinking before, you know, when we went to break, we were talking about this idea of kind of grappling with, right? When is it, you know, we have to create a trusting relationship? And when do we frankly have random acts of kindness with maybe perfect strangers like our listener who shared about the Starbucks line. And opportunities to impact a life that may be put before us to help in some way. And I think that there, you know, I will tell you a very dear friend of mine today is somebody I met randomly many, many years ago when I was actually with the Commission for Women and we had the big rally. I don't know if anybody remembers in front of Winchester Hall. This was, golly, I don't even remember, many years ago. And this gal walks by with her son. We start chit-chatting and she is now one of my dearest friends. There have been many times that she's helped me and I've helped her. And it has become a trusted relationship, like you were speaking to, Troy. And I think as we grow older, for me at least, that list has gotten shorter, more refined and defined. Who are the people that I can truly trust in my life? And burned by too many of the ones that were on your list originally? There's some people that just had to go. They just had to go. But, but, you know, I do believe that people come in our lives for reasons or seasons, right? You know, for long term, short term, whatever the case may be. And we have to figure that out as we go along with them in our in our journey called life. Yeah, there's a book by a gentleman named Dan Alexander, the book is called To Be Told. And the whole premise and the idea of his book is that our lives are stories, like novels really. And these novels are being co-authored by ourselves in partnership with God. And so who's really writing the story of our life? Is it God or is it me? And the answer is yes. you know that that kind of idea and so if we think of our lives that way and our life is this novel that we're co-authoring with god that all these other people that are coming in and out for reasons and seasons are characters in our story so becomes important to try to figure out what is our story and then what's the back story for these other characters that's where the investing in their lives taking the time to get to know them uh... allowing yourself judiciously and i gotta get to know somebody before you reveal too much there can be a danger in this broken fallen world too much too soon they can take advantage you know, sussing it out and figuring out when can I be a little more transparent, a little more vulnerable with them, which will then maybe encourage them to be a little more transparent and vulnerable with me. And then you have true relationship where you can truly, you know, right before the break, you're talking about meeting people that describe their job as they were caregivers. We're all caregivers. Whatever job we have, we are responsible for caring for others, like at home, I'm supposed to be caring for my wife and my children and my home and my neighbor's interests by taking care of my lawn and keeping the house painted and things like that. I should be caring for in work. I host the Faith Debate show on Sunday mornings, so I need to care about that, but I don't get paid for doing that. I make a living by taking care of my clients who are advertisers on the radio station. And over time, some of these clients have become really dear friends, where they've allowed themselves to become vulnerable with me. I've been vulnerable with them. And I won't obviously say any names, but here's a classic illustration. I had a client who called me, wanted to get together, wanted to know if I had time for lunch. And I was like, yeah, I can make time maybe tomorrow. And he's, OK, great. I'm thinking, man, he must have some big marketing initiative he needs to talk about. And there was, you know, five or ten minutes of kind of typical at a lunch to have some small talk, but it was like an awkward kind of a small talk to kick off the lunch. And I was like, so I cut to the chase a little quicker than I might because of the awkwardness. I said, so what's the point of the meeting? Like, why are we having this meeting? You could feel something was up. Yeah, something was up. He said, well, I haven't told anybody else yet, and I'm not sure what to do. I've been having an affair. Wow. And I don't know what to do. Wow. So here's this guy who's cheating on his wife. And then he starts crying. And he didn't know who else. And I think his relationship with me was such that we were close enough that he felt comfortable making himself vulnerable, but not so close that I was within his inner, inner circle. Like I wasn't in his family. So you wouldn't be judgmental. Right. Or even if I was, you know, I was a friend he could afford to alienate if he had to, and yet he trusted me enough that he could take a chance. And so... But this comes back to you being a good guy and you have a trusted listening with this fellow. He felt he could trust you. Yeah. I mean, I don't know how good a guy I always am, but... Oh, just take the compliment and say thank you. I appreciate that. And I am. I think that he knew that I would take the time to listen. I think I demonstrated that over our history together, that he knew that that would happen. And he knew that I would listen. And he knew that I would be less likely than some others, perhaps, that he knew to be immediately judgmental. Now, I will say this. You talked early on about being sweet and kind. I'm gonna broaden that out and say we need to demonstrate love. And sometimes love doesn't feel all that sweet and kind sometimes when it's meted out. And so he's saying, so what- The tough love. Yeah, so he said, so I don't know what to do. I said, you don't know what to do? Of course you know what to do. First of all, you stop what you've been doing. Right. Right. What you're doing is wrong and you need to stop. Now, that wasn't all that sweet and kind on the surface, but it was the sweet and kind thing to do ultimately because he needs to correct a bad behavior. And I told him he needed to not only stop, but come clean with his wife. And he wasn't real keen on that. And I said, you know, I'm a big believer that when two get married, the two shall become one. And you can't have a secret from yourself. You know everything that you know. And if you and your wife are one, she knows everything you know. You're gonna have to work through that. And it's gonna create some short-term turbulence. It's gonna be mighty brutal. But in the long run, it will be what's best for your relationship because she's gonna know and you're gonna know that you're not keeping secrets from each other no matter how horrible they are. Great advice, Troy. So, well, it turned out that it was because they're still married. Well, and guess what? And kudos to you for being that straight in the conversation. You know, I think It really takes an act of courage to be that straight. But this goes back to that conversation about being authentic. You were authentic to yourself and your own principles, and you were very clear on that line. There was no blurry line for you. And by the way, I would have said exactly the same words, and clean it up with your wife. Yeah, and that's an interesting point. That's probably not the general direction that you want this show to go, but just as an aside, that's a problem in our society right now about, is there an absolute right and wrong? You know, because we live in a society where people question even the idea, is there an absolute truth? So who are you to say that having an affair is wrong? Could have been his response. And I would have said, who am I to say? It just is. And that's why I'm saying it. I'm not making this up. I'm taking kind of this universal truth and applying it to your situation. And by the way, you wouldn't be sitting here crying in front of me if you felt differently. So obviously you know there's an issue here. So, well, you know, back to this idea of creating the opportunity to contribute to the lives of others. I want to back up for a second and acknowledge that, you know, the last month or so, we've focused on nonprofits in the community, ways that we can give publicly, right? Now we're talking about ways we can give privately. And it may or may not be known to others. It doesn't even matter. Because I believe, and I believe my life is a demonstration of this, is that I have been blessed many, many, many times over. But I think it's because I've tried to be that person that I've been called upon to be. You know? And when I can give, I try to give. You know, when I can support somebody who's in need, I try to do that. Whether it's with advice or coaching or, you know, five bucks or whatever that looks like, right? So, you know, I was in... I had an episode this week and I ended up in the ER in inner city Baltimore. Were you mugged? No, no, I actually had a medical condition and I'm better now, but I wasn't sure if I was having a heart attack. So I thought, we're just gonna go get this checked. So just so happens. Did they joke that at least now you know you have a heart? Well, no, worse, they scanned my brain. I said, oh, that's what it looks like. And they found nothing, right? Well, actually, what they found, he's showing me my brain, and I'm thinking, that's fascinating, you know? And then I said, what is that little white spot right there behind me? I said, what is that? He says, oh, not to worry, not to worry. That's just a little calcification in your brain. I said, I'm thinking, that does not sound good to me. However, he's saying it's no problem. I've seen enough medical shows on TV, you know, the white spots on scans, not good. Not good. But then he says, I said, well, would that be the reason why I'm not good at math? He said, yeah, we'll go with that story. But at any rate, I'm in this ER and it's Wednesday night, so it's coldest night of the year so far. And every person who was homeless, I mean, anybody who had no place to go, they were in that ER. And they got slammed. I mean, they got slammed. And there were some addicts in there. So my husband's there with my six-year-old and I said, stay out, right? I'm sitting next to this woman. She says, starts to go into the story about how she has staph in her blood. And I said, okay. check please, we got to go because I'm not getting staff while I'm sitting in the ER. But I thought to myself as I was sitting there, here are all these people who are probably hungry, they're sick, they're not feeling well, they're in the ER, they don't have a place to go. And if they had a place to go, they probably don't have money to get there. And I thought, what can I do? And I thought about, I wonder if I could order Papa John's and have it delivered. But then I thought, oh, well, Jen, you'll... So I had this whole conversation in my head. You'll disrupt things and the ER won't like it. I don't know these people. If I was in Frederick, I'd probably have done it. When is it the opportunity to act on these thoughts in our head to do for others? And how can we contribute sometimes to these folks who are coming to our lives? And I will tell you, I sat there before I realized and thought further of it, we were talking about vaping and how people do this thing. And I said, why would you put that in your body? It's not good for you and this, that and the other. And meanwhile, in comes somebody who's probably a heroin addict. And I'm thinking, They obviously don't have those same views as I do because they put this stuff in their body, you know. But maybe those words would make a difference to somebody listening. Yeah, that's all on a sliding scale, by the way. I mean, we all put a bunch of processed garbage in our food and then into our bodies every day and we think nothing of it. So yeah, I'm not equating, you know, processed corn syrup with heroin. Don't get me wrong. But we all put stuff in our bodies. We know. And we know better. How many times have you been at like some sort of office function and there's a bunch of like jelly-filled donuts and people are grabbing them saying, oh, this is going to be so bad for my arteries, but it tastes so good. Yeah. We do it all the time. I have to tell you, I just lost 20 pounds. I'm not putting it back on because of a jelly donut. I will say this, in answer to the question of how do you know when or how to interact with situations, my wife's better at this than I am and I'm learning from her, but one of her big, almost a mantra really, is trust the leading of the Spirit. And so if in the moment she feels the urging of the Holy Spirit to have compassion and help somebody in a particular way, even though we have those urgings, those promptings by the Holy Spirit, sometimes we still ignore them. And so her thing is, you know, I don't always feel the spirit. When I do, I need to be obedient. And so in that moment, if I feel like I'm supposed to help that person, in spite of my reservations, I need to be obedient. I need to help that person. And not dismiss it as a silly thought. Yeah, like, oh, well, yeah, I don't have time. It's silly or whatever. Right, right, right. Well, we're going to take a quick break. you're listening to success happens i'd like and you're also listening to a special edition of the faith debate show uh... where i was a guest on the success happens with jennifer charlton and uh... this is a couple weeks ago in the second half of the hour-long it's a lot of things that i did and right now questions You're hearing audio underneath me as I'm trying to bridge the gap here. By the way, I want to make a correction. I said a book was by Dan Alexander. It's by Dan Allender, to be told. Dan Allender, not Alexander. I want to take a step back and kind of as we've been talking about creating random acts of kindness and being creating a world where we're all sweet and kind and respectful to one another, regardless of our points of view or our cultural, you know, backgrounds or whatever, right? Just, we're all one humanity. So let's kind of wrap up, I think, some of what we've talked about today. But I do in this, you know, world today, and back to this idea that integrity has been getting restored all over the place, one of the things that's come crashing down is this, I'm gonna call it, veil that's been around sexual harassment in the workplace or power and control, if you will, primarily over women by men in a work environment. But not only that, sometimes less frequently it can be against the man, but mostly it's against the women. And of course, you all know I'm a former Miss Maryland. And a couple years ago, I started reconnecting with former Miss Marylands and they created something called Forever Miss Maryland. And it's a closed Facebook group of former Miss Marylands. And so we have dialogue now and then. And it's nice to reconnect with women who have experienced what I've experienced because it's quite an extraordinary event that took place in my life. It changed my life for sure. But when this occurred, you know, we've been talking about Hollywood. I lived in LA. I have had people accost me. I've had people offer me stuff if I just did this or that. Believe me, been there, did it, experienced it. But when it came crashing down in the Miss America program, I thought, holy cow, that veil has really dropped. Because you're talking about an organization that's about empowering women. through scholarship funds. Whether they win the state title or don't, women who participate are put in law school, med school, educational environments to pursue their dreams and make a difference in the world, and these are extraordinary women. Whether they make the state title, win it, or go on to be Miss America, or they are somebody who competed once. And it's an extraordinary organization that has been suffering something we didn't even know about. Here I am, a former Miss, and I didn't even know about it. Now, I knew that there were some issues. You know, they've had issues. But that being said, I'm pleased to see that Gretchen Carlson's taking over as chair of the board of the Miss America program. She's an extraordinary woman. I think she will represent all of us well and hopefully transform that organization back to its intended purpose. But, you know, when people exert power and control over another, And frankly, there is, and I'm going to say this because it's tough to hear, but it's also incumbent on us, the victim, to be somebody that says, I'm out of here. I'm not putting up with this. Now, Had I stayed, would I be famous today? I don't know, maybe. Maybe that was the winning ticket. You're famous, you have a show on Saturday mornings on WFMB. I'm famous, yay! But the point is, you know, there's this, you grapple with this idea of power and control, and I think that We all need to work together to make sure that we're being authentic. We're not exerting power and control this power control is not authentic It's that's a that is very inauthentic actually to to push on somebody else so that I feel better about myself or my reputation or I look good or whatever and So, or, you know, in the case of sexual assault, you know, that's all, we know that's power. That's a power thing when somebody assaults somebody in that way. So, as a man, and we're coming up to the top of the show, this is kind of a tough conversation, but I want you to know at some point I'm gonna have Charlene Wells, Miss America 1985, who crowned me in Miss Maryland, in Hagerstown, and I have reconnected after 30 years. And she's now Charlene Hawks. She's a wonderful woman. And she has agreed to be on the show. So we're going to be talking more about this, but as a man, what is your thoughts about this? It's a very, as you said, we only have a little bit of time and it's a very complicated issue. And I might be a little contrarian with how some people have been talking about and thinking about this publicly, at least the stuff that I've been. So I'm going to put myself out there a little bit. But I, first of all, I try to abide by a pretty specific and clear moral standard. And so if men and women weren't involved in all sorts of outside of marriage sexual relations, a lot of these problems would go away. So what is that clear moral standard? If people are only reserving the sexual intimacy for the marriage bed, then a lot of these problems go away. You don't have that story about Matt Lauer in his office with a woman in the chair, for example. That doesn't happen if he's faithful in his marriage. So a lot of that takes care of that. So that aside, that ultra moral standard thing and how that would clean up probably 90% of this, it's still complicated by the fact that the power goes both ways. The men wielding power and influence because of their position and they're at a particular level in their office or a particular level in society where they could take advantage of women sometimes. leverage it for opportunity for the woman right right so there's that problem and it's serious and it's bad and it shouldn't be happening however the women oftentimes there are women who are playing the game in the reverse realizing that they can wield an awful lot of power and control through their sexuality knowing that men are attracted to their physical beauty or whatever and they'll leverage that to exert some power and control over the men And then when the man sometimes will inappropriately respond to that inappropriate behavior from the woman, the man's the one who gets in trouble and the woman doesn't. And so I think everybody's got to own their own nonsense in that situation. It's very complicated. And these pageants are an interesting case study. because on the one hand they're all about uh... empowering women helping them to you know advance with their education to the scholarships and giving them a uh... of voice on a larger stage to talk about important things and that's all good but at the same time you know these women are uh... uh... are put in a situation parading around in high heels in a swimsuit where they're objectified and they're saying why are you objectifying me well why are you parading around in the swimsuit then we're trying to have our cake and eat it too and so it makes it very complex well and you know as somebody who actually did that in front of 40,000 people, let me tell you, it's awkward. But this idea of physical wellness and mental wellness and the whole person, I think is the concept behind it. And perhaps there is some modification that could occur in today's world. But I think at the end of the day, just because something looks good, doesn't mean you should have it. Oh, sure. You know, and that goes both ways, men and women, right? Right. And so but, you know, all that being said, we're going to talk more about this as we go along. And, you know, I want to just leave people with this idea of be sweet and kind. And that's a good way to leave it, isn't it? Thank you for listening to this special edition of the Faith Debated program, where a couple of weeks ago I was a guest on Jennifer Charlton's show on WFMD, which airs on Saturday mornings at nine o'clock. It's called Success Happens. You should check it out if you're not overly familiar. She's been doing that show for several years now, so she might have an hour. long show, where I have a half hour long show. However, I've been doing my show for about 13 and a half years, so I got her beat by a decade there. So, there's no envy or jealousy going on here. Anyway, thanks so much for listening. Visit us online at WFMD.com keyword faith. Until next week, 167 and a half hours from now, God bless.