The Warrior Priest Podcast

A bonus episode about sobriety, setting a standard and standing fast when others avoid conflict, consequences, and us.

What do athletes and fitness fanatics share in common that can be their greatest asset but also their  ultimate downfall? Perfectionism and obsession. When this leads to over-training. You want to be training more than everyone else. Working harder than everyone else. You put in the hours even when your body is crying out for you to stop. It’s a fine and difficult line.  So how...

No matter what goal or challenge we take on in life, there tends to be that moment that occurs along the journey where you make a decision because you are forced with a choice of quitting or not quitting. The goals, the timelines, the processes are different for each of us, but we typically have to rely on pure will, guts, determination, and remember “our why” in order to be successful with the pe...

This message, this confrontation between God and his people is why the prophets were executed by the people that they were sent to preach to. This message, which was born, lived, and ministered to his people, is why his people executed him on a cross. This message makes fake saints into haters and real sinners into saints. This message isn't safe, but it's good. It’s good because it points you to...

Ethos is a derivative of the same Greek word for  ethics , and for the warrior comprises a code of conduct that guides his values and actions. It is often an oral code, passed down from one warrior to the next. Warrior ethos dictates not just how a warrior should behave towards his enemies, but also how he should relate to his people and overcome his own weaknesses. It is a philosophy that mu...

God's Word creates life, so we invent abortion, suicide, and euthanasia. God's Word creates man and woman, so we invent over one hundred different genders. God's Word is the big T truth, so we invent our own truths. God’s Word gives us leaders so we invent rebellion, banana republics, and civil war. God’s Word gives us marriage and family, so we invent divorce, domestic violence, and child abuse....

“First off, don’t let the force of the impression carry you away. Say to it, ‘hold up a bit and let me see who you are and where you are from — let me put you to the test’ . . .” — EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 2.18.24

Jesus is not, as so many paint him, and even Christians do this now, Jesus is not an impotent, feminine, passive, weak individual. He is the Lion of Judah. He is our shield and fortress; a mighty warrior, as the psalmist writes, who fights for us against sin, death, and all evil.

“There are a few things to keep in mind when faced with a seemingly insurmountable obstacle. We must try: To be objective. To control emotions and keep an even keel. To choose to see the good in a situation. To steady our nerves. To ignore what disturbs or limits others. To place things in perspective. To revert to the present moment. To focus on what can be controlled”. - Ryan Holiday, The Obstac...

And you need not think that you will have God's word and gifts forever because your ingratitude and contempt will not make them stay. So seize and hold fast, wherever you can, whenever you can, to God's word and gifts because those who don't will soon discover that God has taken away even the little that they have.

An old man was doing his daily walk along the beach one morning, when he spotted a young boy crouched by the water, scooping something up from the sand and throwing it into the sea. The beach was normally empty at this time of day, and so the old man stopped to watch for a while. He noticed that the boy kept on shuffling a little further down the beach, then repeating this same action again and ag...

There's only one thing, one person, who makes you a Christian, and it's not you. It's Jesus Christ alone through the work of the Holy Spirit because the Father wants it. That's the only thing that translates sinners into Christ's kingdom.

In this episode, I ruminate on what it's like to get old, and what that means for training and life. 

...without Jesus Christ, you would be right to revile God for evil. In that case, you should try to run out of this world and find some better god. But your mistake was to run to what you imagined was a god while the true God was coming into the world to end evil.

When Christians confess together their belief in the forgiveness of sin, it's like pinching themselves to make sure that what they heard isn't a dream. Absolution seems somehow illicit, frightening, and joyful all at once. Can this be true? May God just forgive me? Can a word of promise accomplish what's promised? Is it right? Is it binding? Will it last? Is it legal? Is it even possible for the G...

In his fictional world of Middle Earth, J.R.R. Tolkien has adapted old world ideologies by removing the parts he deemed to be un-Christian and in doing so created a warrior’s code for the new world.

Deliver us from evil, we pray. That's what Jesus taught us to pray. But, in Greek, the petition in the Lord's Prayer is this: Deliver is from the evil one. Evil is not an abstract concept. It's not an outdated, old-fashioned idea like swinging a dead cat over your head to ward off evil. Evil is personified and personalized as the work of the evil one. The devil, Satan, the father of lies, the Prin...

For the Anglo-Saxons, a man’s value to society was dependent on his ability to take his place in the social order: to pledge unshakeable loyalty to his lord and in return for the lord to prove his value as a leader by rewarding loyal warriors with gifts and status. This transaction is what imbued a man with his “worth”, or  weorð  in Old English, and this was what constituted honor. The...

What you need redeeming from, deliverance from, is your slavery. You are in bondage. You are in a pickle. And I tell you, soberly, you are in a big pickle. In the end, there's no escape. But there is deliverance. There is redemption. There is a way for you to get into the wedding feast.

“There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.” – Epictetus, Dis courses

You have to remember, that in Jesus' day, there was a great fight going on. Who's the hero of the Bible? Who's the big kahuna in the Bible? Who's number one in the Bible? The two front runners were Abraham or Moses. The big fight is finally about whether the Bible, the Old Testament as we call it, was finally about Moses or finally about Abraham. But, there was even a fight about why Abraham was s...

Nihilism consists  in an inability to find value and meaning in the higher aspects of this life and world . It empties the world and purpose of human existence. Nietzsche defines nihilism as: “the radical repudiation of value, meaning, and desirability” - Friedrich Nietzsche, Will to Power, Book I: European Nihilism

Many techniques of meditation try to achieve the same results, but often they rely on a relatively passive way, involving the body only marginally. In this way, since relaxing becomes more mental effort ("Now I must relax") rather than a natural, physical process, they end up producing more paranoia than harmony. On the contrary, what martial arts point out is that individual harmony can only begi...

Is the Holy Spirit a what or who? Well, we have good news, he's a who. Usually, it's kind of hard to keep this straight because whenever we use the word spirit, we think of a what, a thing. So we say: I've got school spirit or something like that. Well, that's a thing. It's not necessarily an object. But, it's still a thing, and usually when you say you’ve got spirit or you’re spiritual, it means...

Rather than being confined to a separate dimension, martial arts should be an extension of our way of living, of our philosophies, of the way we educate our children, of the job we devote so much of our time to, of the relationships we cultivate, and of the choices we make every day. - Daniele Bolelli, On the Warrior's Path