Jochem Hale on the For Real Life Podcast
I've been thinking about making videos for years now because if I need to know something – for example, if I need to know how to fix my lawnmower – I'm going to go on YouTube and find someone that shows me how to do it. It doesn't matter if it's some guy in his garage or a mechanic in a super clean, high-tech shop, as long as that guy tells me how to do it, I'm going to watch their video. We look up videos for questions we have about just about anything, so I thought, “you know what? I want to make videos to teach people about God, to learn more about God, and answer any questions that they have about God, about Jesus, about the Bible.”
I was always procrastinating and never really started making movies, and then the coronavirus started. At the time the markets were tanking and everyone was worried about everything. We can’t go to work and people are struggling with anxiety and stress and losing their jobs. I realized “I need to tell people why I'm not worried about this,” so I recorded a quick video and put it on YouTube and it was well-received. I think people found it helpful so I thought “you know what? I should do more of these.”
A lot of people have different ideas of what is truth. There's this thought that there is no such thing as truth or what might be true for you is not true for me. But if you tell me the building is on fire and I see the building is on fire, I'm going to run out of that building. I'm not going to say, “well, listen, this might be true for you, but to me, this building is not on fire” because in real life, that doesn't change anything. I have a building: it's either on fire or it is not. There are absolute truths. So that's where I want to hit at, that there is truth in this world, truth is found in the Bible, and it is applicable to real life.
The non-biblical prophet Nostradamus states things in his prophecies that are hugely open to interpretation. People have changed some of those prophecies to make them seem like they apply to modern day situations, but these kinds of statements could be interpreted in 60 different ways, whereas God says things like “the Jews are you going to be kicked out of their land, the place where they live,” which is recorded and there is lots of evidence that what God said actually happened. They were kicked out of their land, and then God brought them back from all across the world and placed them in the exact same land. It's not vague and it's not up for interpretation. God said, “this is going to happen” and that’s what happened.
In some of my shows we talk about different things that help show faith in God and the truth of the Bible, isn't necessarily blind faith. There are proofs that you can go to: prophecy, archeology and creation itself, the way this whole ecosystem that we live in is so perfect and if only one thing would have been different, it wouldn't have existed. There is tangible evidence to show that the bible is a trustworthy book, and knowing these things helps develop faith in something that cannot be seen. Even though I haven't seen God, I know that there is a God, because of these other reasons.
I'd like to keep the show practical by focusing on things we struggle with day to day. I heard an interview years ago by a Mennonite woman who said one of the reasons why Mennonites choose not to drive is because cars destroy communities. You have circles of people you live with, people you work with, people you go to school with, people that you shop with, people you worship with and they can all be completely different circles and never have to touch each other. So now you don't really have a community anymore.
Another example of change with unintended consequence is the smartphone. Having one is really convenient and I can do a ton of stuff from a smartphone, but it also means that I'm connected 16 or 18 hours a day, and watching my phone instead of talking to my kids and talking to my wife. There are a ton of these unintended consequences of things that we have just taken on in our life. And I think those kinds of things are hitting young professionals and students and children more and more because they grew up with it; they don't know a life without smartphones.
Focusing on, “do these things really matter?” Yes, it's good to have a good job, but is having a good job what matters at the end of your life when you die? When you’re lying on your death bed are you wondering “I wish I had a better job?” Or “man, I am so excited about living in this world forever with Jesus!”
To listen to the full interview with Jochem and Levi please check out our A Little Faith podcasts.
And do come listen to Jochem on the For Real Life podcast series