Kirk Cameron Speaks Out on Hell, Demons & the Dark Side of Hollywood

My response to the outrage, I mean, I really caught hell talking about the afterlife with my son. I'm like, hey, hey, hey, this is a private conversation. I'm just giving you a window into father and son stuff here. I wanted to answer those who said, can you go deeper into this topic for us? If we don't teach these things to our kids when they're young, no doubt, ChatGPT and Grok and Google will teach them other things when they are young. And they are. And the Bible will be this mysterious thing that's been buried or hidden away somewhere. And only by the grace of God will they ever find it. We don't want that to happen. Kirk, how did you find God in Hollywood? He said, remember this. You didn't find God. He wasn't lost. You were. And he found you. So one of the most important things we can do today, if you want to get healthy, if you want to experience spiritual breakthroughs, is tell the truth and discuss hard topics. And today I've brought on my friend Kirk Cameron. He is a really well-known star in media. He's got a great podcast and show. He's a father of six. And today we're going to be talking about a lot of hard truths, everything from parenting to wellness trends to farming and so much more. And so excited to have my friend Kirk on the show today. Kirk, welcome. What's up, my brother? Good to see you. Yeah, good to see you too. I know it was great. We got to meet recently and talk about chickens and farming. And you gave me great parenting advice. What's more fun than chickens and farming? And kids. And kids. Yeah. And faith. I mean, you recommended a book for me. It was on shepherding your kid's heart. Yes. So good. Oh, I'm so glad that you got it. Yeah. I remember we were having lunch, and I think you ordered it right there. I did. You just went online, and you ordered it. One for me, one for my wife, Chelsea. And your wife's name is Chelsea, too. My wife's name is Chelsea, as well. For my wife, it's actually her stage name. Did your wife have a stage name? No. Okay. She's just Chelsea. Yeah, and so my wife chose that name. Okay. So your wife probably didn't. Her mother did. Yeah. Her father did, but my wife actually loved it so much, she picked it. That's so great. Yeah. It's so great. We were after an actress on Growing Pains. That's why she has a stage name. She's just not – she's not just a strange person who picks new names for herself. But I'm so glad you got that book. That was the book that helped my wife and I when we were new young parents and we were losing our minds because our son was not sleeping through the night. And so once we solved the sleeping problem, then it was like, well, what do you do with the terrible twos and the threes and the fours? And how do we do this in a way that's going to be honoring to God? And this book, Shepherding a Child's Heart, was our Bible of parenting. Our pages are stained with the tears of our gratitude. So I'm so glad that you got it. One thing that I noticed with our first child, our daughter, Arwen, she's five. I've got a two-year-old named Aelyn. And one thing I noticed, I mean, just amazing what kids absorb and how something you could feel like this is harmless is harmful. I'll give you an example of this. Like our, you know, I will notice, you know, when she was really young, like two and three, we would have her watch, you know, different shows. And so it was a mixture of things like she liked Paw Patrol. She liked the show called Peppa Pig. You know, we would play VeggieTales, those things. and she started watching the show peppa pig a lot and i started realizing after about a year wait like you feel like this show's harmless because there's nothing bad necessarily happening but the way the kids are acting yeah isn't isn't that great teaching our kids yeah and so and so honestly it was one of those things where it's like wow there's a really big difference between this thing that i think is harmless peppa pig and again veggie tales or a great you know christian based you know uh you know tv show and the same goes for books this is one of the things i love by the way, I started following you during COVID when you did that campfire thing. You go out there in the campfire and start telling the truth. I thought that was you following me around. Were you in that pickup truck just following me everywhere that I went as I broke the law in California? Exactly. That's right. That's right. But I love that. I love that you did that because reaching our kids and helping kids get healthy spiritually is the same with health, but spiritually even more important. And so what kind of brought you into, you know, doing that library tour and really focusing on, hey, we got to get kids spiritually well? Well, I think what you're saying is absolutely true. My wife would always tell our kids, you know, you're a whole person and you need to be healthy in body, mind and spirit. And so I think that's actually true. Sometimes it seems like when the scriptures say things like trust in the Lord with all of your heart, lean not in your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge him and he will direct your path. And then it talks about if we don't do those things, if we're not trusting in the Lord, we're actually not built to be able to do that. And when we do, it's health to our body, it's strength to our bones. And so I think spiritual practices actually impact our physical and emotional health. At least they do for me. And so I guess early on, I was always interested in physical health because my mom and dad, they were trying things like the Pritikin diet and the South Beach diet and all of the different longevity strategies. And so we ate healthy, so to speak. We didn't go to McDonald's every day for lunch. And as I got older and became a Christian, I, of course, recognized that having a strong, healthy body is good, but that having a strong and healthy spirit and mind to know God and to love him and to be able to be used by him to care for others and advance his kingdom is even more important. And so they all work together. And that's why I have always been pretty healthy minded. And by that, I want to be healthy. I mean, I want to be healthy in body and in mind and in spirit. Yeah, that's so good. You know, one of the things I remember watching you on Growing Pains, watching your sister on Full House. And, you know, one of the things that is sort of notorious in Hollywood is kids that kind of get into Hollywood early end up having major, major depression or going bankrupt. I mean, just a lot of issues. Why do you think you and your sister turned out so differently compared to what the majority of Hollywood actors and actresses that get in there young, that tend to have a lot of – their lives ruined? Well, thank you for suggesting that I turned out differently than all of these messed up kids. But remember, I'm an actor. I could be faking the whole thing. I am so twisted inside. But I'm – no, I'm kidding. But you don't know. The truth is you don't know. I know you're all right because you just came here from working on your chicken coop. That's right. And you're picking up compost. So you can't be that bad. That's right. You could tell by the smell of my denim that I have been with the chickens. Yes. Yes. First, let's talk about why so many young teenage actors struggle and go down a road that is so dark and dangerous. Let's start with that. I think it's because they don't have a moral compass that actually leads them to health and blessing. If you don't have the north star of the word of God, which actually fits perfectly with the way God made us and the way God made the world so that we can flourish in his world, we end up making decisions based on a moral standard that just feels good, or it's maybe what my teacher taught me, what my parents taught me, or some other false religion. But if I'm aligning my journey with the right compass and the right map, morally, spiritually, ethically, emotionally, physically, then I've got a great shot of getting to the desired destination. And that's the place of blessing and protection. So for me, I can see how so many of my peers – you think of Corey Haim back in the day, those who grew up in the 1980s and 1990s. Corey Hame, Corey Feldman, River Phoenix, even those who were my co-workers on Growing Pains, Andrew Koenig, are no longer here, have gone down a road either of suicide or drugs or addiction to other things that have really led them down a road. And without the kind of moral compass and parental boundaries and people who who are just on their side not yes men but people who will say that's not good for you people who can hold you up when you're down and hold you down when you stray uh it's a very natural thing to wind up in jail or worse yeah yeah and that was back in the 1980s in the 1990s think now with ai think now with all the opportunities that we have particularly in success, you now can buy what you want. You can do whatever you want as a celebrity, and that's why they get into so much trouble. For me, at 17 years old, I came to faith in Jesus Christ, and the Bible became my North Star. And how did you come to faith? I don't think I know the story at 17. Well, I was an atheist at the time. It wasn't through your parents? not really okay i was an atheist uh up until about 17 18 years old i didn't believe in god never went to church i just thought the idea of an invisible being who made everything hiding behind the cloud keeping the track of the good and the bad kind of like a glorified santa claus was silly to me uh i thought i was too smart for that and then i started to to read books and and realize that that fathers of modern medicine and modern science and astronomy and and geology and all kinds of disciplines were men of deep faith and christian biblical faith and not even einstein was an atheist in fact he would complain that people would cite him as an atheist and he would say um i resent that they do that i'm not an atheist uh he just didn't understand how it all worked but he knew that somehow god put this together uh for me i i followed a girl into church it wasn't like I was on a spiritual quest. I was on a quest to get the girl. And she told me I had to meet her at church on a Sunday morning. And I sat there through a church service and heard the gospel preached. My conscience was awakened through the preaching of God's law. And the gospel was the answer to the sin problem and the death problem. And it was kind of this, Well, it was the carrot and the stick in a way that resonated with my soul. There is consequence for evil and pride and wrath and lust and all of the bad things. And there was the reward that was really purchased for me by someone else who laid down their life. And my response was to be faith and turn my heart to the God that I've ignored my whole life. And after wrestling through a lot of questions about science and other religions and evolution and other competing philosophies, I became persuaded that Jesus really did rise from the grave and I decided to trust him as the Lord and Savior of my life. That's how I came to faith. Now, having said all of that, I'm not the smartest guy in the world. I didn't come from a spiritual background. It didn't help my Hollywood career any to tell people I was a Christian and believed the Bible. But I felt compelled to this by something that I can't really explain. It didn't conflict with the evidence or rational thinking, but I didn't just arrive there because of those things. Um, my pastor said this to me, uh, at my very beginning stages of being a Christian. He said, Kirk, if anybody ever asks you, uh, I didn't think he, I don't think you know who, who Dr. Axe was at the time, but if he ever asks you, Kirk, how did you find God in Hollywood? He said, remember this, you didn't find God. He wasn't lost. You were, and he found you. Yeah. I think that's how it happened. Yeah. It's so good. Yeah, I look back in my life and I think about you just see God pursuing you. You know, you see God orchestrating things. And yeah, yeah, I like that. That's good. It's a phenomenal concept. And you wonder how much of it is me pursuing God and how much of it is God pursuing me. And the scriptures say some there's enigmas in scriptures when it comes to this kind of a thing, because the scriptures say there's none that seek after. god not even one nobody seeks you know you read that in the psalms and you see that and the scriptures also say that the one who seeks is the shepherd who goes after the lost sheep the sheep that's lost that was me or you we're wandering out there the sheep is is the one in desperate need of the shepherd to seek after it and so he brings us back home and i think wow i'm not sure if I was seeking God or I know God was seeking me, but somehow it works together and I'm home. It reminds me of something that really impacted me positively when I was in college. And it was, I feel like there was this thing I kept hearing at church was, love God, love God, love God, love God. And so it was like me trying to love God. And I think maybe a step before that is, and this helped me was, I heard the sermon about, you know, first focus on how much God loves you and just absorb that, reflect on that, let that penetrate you. And then it's just when you realize somebody loves you that much, you can't help but love them back in a way. And so I think there's this element of us understanding rather than trying, we should try and love God, right? But I think there's this element of first knowing how much God loves us and then that kind of leading us towards loving him in return. And that's so smart. And that's exactly what I read when I'm reading the scriptures that say, we love God because he first loved us. And so if I didn't hear about the love of God, I don't think I ever would have loved God because the descriptions of God that come from a culture that mocks God are, he's this megalomaniacal tyrant hiding in the clouds, waiting to throw lightning bolts down on people who don't go to church. Why would you love a God like that? But if I hear about a God who himself is the personification of love, who willingly went to sacrifice his life so that I could be rescued from death and the punishment of my sin, well, that's a hero to me. That's somebody I could never repay. And so I want to devote my life to them. One of the biggest health problems I see isn't diet or supplements. It's disconnection. People are overstimulated and running on empty, and that's why simple daily rituals matter. Small habits can either drain you or bring you back into balance. One of the simplest grounding habits I use every day is using Manucora Manuka honey. This is the real deal. It's raw. It's never over processed and the jar I use has an MGO rating of 850, which is about as potent as it gets. That means real support for gut health, immunity, and for steady natural energy without the crash. What I love is the transparency. Every batch is third-party tested. It's certified glyphosate-free and fully traceable. And you can even scan the jar and see exactly which beekeeper in New Zealand it came from. My kids eat it straight off the spoon. I stir it in a tea or take a spoon before I record a podcast episode. It's not just honey. It's a daily health habit. Go to manucor.com slash axe to get 31% off plus $25 in free gifts with their starter kit. What's your advice for people in order to using their talents for the greatest good? And what I What I mean by this is that, you know, for a lot of people, I think they've kind of separated their Christian lives over here and their maybe business lives over here, even parenting. I mean kind of you know their faith is completely separate from their life versus for you It been like this Why have you decided or what made you think no it needs to be like this It needs to be intertwined together And how do people use those talents for the greatest good and what God's called them to? That question really makes me think. And to the degree that I am actually integrating my parenting and faith and work and chicken farming, i i uh i'm really really thankful i want to be a person of integrity and i think that's what integrity actually means if you look up in the dictionary is that all the parts are touching um it's that's what integrity is as opposed to if you don't have integrity things are separate broken apart they're disconnected and it's not it's not integral to the to the whole and i think Sometimes we do that, myself included, in my weaker moments. I want to say, you know, I'm good at this over here, but I'm not so good at this over here. For example, I'm really good at math and analyzing problems and solving them. I'm a guy. I like to solve problems. But I'm not so good at being patient and listening to my life. when she just wants me to walk through something with her. I'm just wanting to solve it. Or maybe I'm not so good at this element of parenting because it frustrates me or it calls my worth into question. But I'm really good at doing a podcast. And so I'll just camp out over here in the places that I get lots of attaboys and high fives and I feel good. And I'll kind of neglect these areas over here. It's easy to do that because we want to feel successful. I want to be winning, not losing. If I feel like I'm failing at home, I'll just stay at work where everybody does what I say and says you're awesome. It's so easy to fall into that. But my wife and I talk about this all the time. I think that God sees us as a whole person. And that's why true faith doesn't just make me a better actor or podcaster. It doesn't just make me a better parent. It actually transforms my heart, which is then supposed to pump its life into all of these areas so that now I have a Christian way of parenting and being a husband and being a podcaster and being an actor. So I think that little reminders like I'm never a better person than I am a listener. I'm never a better person than I am a smiler. I'm never a better person than I am a servant. I'm never a better person than I am whatever it is that God's called me to do. I have to focus on all of those things because I think we've got to have integrity. yeah and um you know as for the other half of your question which was about talents and how do you use those for the greatest good um i've had to ask other people what my talents are what my gifts are i'm not sure if talents and gifts are the same thing maybe they are maybe different yeah but sort of like special abilities that you have um it doesn't really matter what i want to do, if that's not what God has equipped me and called me to do, I could say, Josh, I really want to be in the NBA, but look at me. It ain't going to happen. I don't have the equipment for it. But there are things that I can do uniquely that I think God's equipped and called me to do. And so I think having other people in your life who are honest with you to say that, like, Josh, You're really good at articulating things and relating to people. You can take the intellectual horsepower that you have on all these subjects, health and nutrition and all of these things, and then you can communicate it because that's part of your talents and your gifts. And you can do a show and be on camera and all that kind of stuff. I think sometimes we need others to help us recognize some of those things. You know, I was just reading through Proverbs, and one of my favorite sort of phrases from Proverbs is this idea around, you know, wisdom is seeking wise counsel. And I thought it was one time in Proverbs, and this last time I read it, it was in there four times. I mean, he just is, you know, there are certain things he's just really repetitive on, Solomon. And it was in there four times, like, hey, if you want to be successful, he was like, you know, these are the things to do to be successful. Seek wise counsel. You know, setting the counsel of the wise constantly. And that's, you know, that's what you're saying there. I mean, we have to have those people around us who, and, you know, I think we're living in a society today where, and I don't think COVID helped us either, but it's just there's, it's so isolated. I even know, you know, when you read old hymns, most of the hymns were a congregation, a whole group of people praising and speaking to God together holistically. And today all of the Christian music is I, I, it's all separate, you know? So I think there's maybe something there too. Yeah. Man, I love the old hymns. Be thou my vision. Come thou fount of every blessing to my heart to sing thy praise. Like these, this is melodic theology. That's what these hymns are. They formed their theology from the word of God and then they turned it into a song. That's right. And then everybody would sing it and they'd been singing them for thousands of years. Yeah. Right. Like, I mean, we all love some Hillsong here and there, but I'm not sure we're going to be singing a Hillsong song in a thousand years. Maybe we will. But these hymns have stood the test of time when we didn't even have recording abilities. Right. I mean, we're still singing the same songs because we've been passing them on verbally. generation after generation and you've just got deep rich thick dense theology of confession of sin of praise of judgment of victory and glory yeah in these four verse hymns and uh many of them we only know one verse of the whole hymn you know yeah joy to the world joy to the world the lord is come and we only sing that at christmas time but there's four verses that get into such great theology. I love the hymns. It's so good. You know, I listened to, Eric Metaxas has this great biography on Martin Luther, and I was blown away at how many hymns Martin Luther wrote. Like, I had no idea. No idea a lot of these ancient saints, and they were a lot of the people that actually wrote the hymns. Yeah. So, yeah. You know, the old dead guys are ones to pay attention to. There's a reason we keep going back to them. Some church traditions recite the Apostles' Creed, recite the Nicene Creed, or the Athanasian Creed. And the reason that we have these old, old, old, I mean, these are over a thousand years old. These are very, very old, is so that we don't forget who we are and whose we are. And we don't forget who runs the universe and what reality is framed by because right now reality is being reframed by chat gpt siri alexa the drag queens and people making up belief systems that completely twist and distort reality for a young generation of kids it's like going to the fun house and you go into the mirror room and everything's all wonky and twisted and you're too, you're not proportional anymore. And the hymns and the creeds and the scriptures reframe everything for us so that we can get back to reality. I remember listening to a sermon by Tim Keller and he said something like, you know, we are being programmed constantly. He said the biggest things that are programming us today are stories, songs, and slogans. Those are three things. these things that are kind of repetitively training us. And, you know, and of course, one of those things is songs. My wife, Chelsea, and I were having this conversation recently. We're saying, you know, when do we feel like we're the most spiritually fit and healthy and growing? And we said that there are certain things going on in our lives when those are happening. One, we're part of growth groups. We're like really iron sharpens iron with other Christian couples and that type of thing and engaging in church. Another big one was, what's the music we're listening to and just feeding ourselves day after day after day? And so I think these habits are big. I agree. What are some of your spiritual habits, the things you're like, this is non-negotiable or just whether it's non-negotiable. Here are some things that you're really trying to apply. You've tried to apply over maybe in the past 20 years for forming your faith. Yeah. Yeah. I want to be a man of routine and habit and have schedules and strategies that are going to accomplish my goals. And I love when people can stick to those things and really accomplish them. I struggle, though, throughout the days because things come up that I want to do or things come up that people that need my help and I want to be available to be spontaneous and do those things. So I'm trying to find what is the balance there so that I'm not just distracted and dominated by the urgency of the moment and yet not so rigid that I can't have some margin to say, hey, son, let's go have a burger, sit down and talk about what's going on with your girlfriend. I want to be able to do that. So for me, I have recognized that if I don't have some spiritual disciplines set in place at the beginning of the day, I'm just already – my rifle is pointed in the wrong direction, right? And I'm going to – even if I've got a good attitude, I'm focused on the wrong target. And so I want the first voice inside of my head to be the voice of the Lord, and so that means I need to go to scripture. So what I like to do is wake up, kind of have a built-in biological alarm clock that gets me up at about 6 o'clock every morning, and I turn on the pot of coffee, and I sit down with my Bible and a devotional that I've come to love. I've got to get you a copy of it. It's called Be Thou My Vision by Jonathan Gibson. He's a professor at Oxford. Okay, I love it. He's also a professor of the Old Testament at the Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia. And it's this liturgy of daily worship. And so it's a daily devotional that takes you through essentially an ancient Christian church service structure every morning. Love it. So it's the call to worship. Hear God's will for your life as heard through his law. Then it's a confession of faith, and it takes you through the creeds and the catechisms along with scripture. And so by the time you're finished with this 45-minute structure of liturgy, you've read through the ancient church fathers of Ignatius and Justin Martyr, and you've gone through Arrhenius and then the reformers, Knox and Luther and Calvin and the others, and then even some more modern scholars. and you just see the depth and the breadth of historic Christianity, and it's just put in your lap every morning. I've come to love it because it's so different than Jesus Calling, for example, or something that you'd be familiar with that sounds a lot like today's modern worship music. It is the devotional equivalent of the ancient hymns in their writings. You'd love it. I've got to get you a copy. Cool. That's powerful. And that roots me deeply and it gets me to just to just to be thoughtful about the day and recalibrate my priorities and remind me that. God doesn't need me. I'm so very grateful to be alive and that he has chosen to use me for good things. and I want more than anything to learn how to be a better listener and to learn how to serve and care for people. That's so good. You know, I noticed the same pattern. I'm sure everybody who has done this notices the same pattern. There's something about doing it first thing in the morning. I mean, right when you wake up, it's the first thing you do, spending time with the Lord, because if not, it's that, you know, it's that parable of the sower. It's like, you know, the weeds, things start to choke out, you know, the busyness of just, you know, so I know it's the same thing. Like my demeanor and my character is much, much greater and improved if I'm spending time with God in the morning versus if I don't. Yeah, I think so too. And you mentioned the importance of songs. What did you say that Keller said it was? It was songs, slogans, and stories. Yeah, that's right. I was reading this morning that uh that that jesus didn't speak to the crowds without using parables and illustrations jesus used stories perhaps because he was was uh he he was behaving based off the same truth that timothy killer understood and that is stories shape people and he told stories and in Matthew chapter 13, there's like four or five different parables in there. And it was the parables about farming, about food, parables about retail merchant sales, and a couple of other ones. And these stories got me thinking about when's the last time I spoke to someone who had no knowledge of the kingdom of God in the form of a story or a riddle that would require some questions in order for them to understand it. I thought this could be a good evangelism method. That is good. You know, like, do you like riddles? Do you like mind benders and mind twisters? Do you like, do you like? You know, I guess I haven't done a lot of riddles for, well, I haven't done a whole lot of riddles. So maybe. Yeah. So I like to ask people a little, you know, the riddle of the Sphinx and all kinds of other fun, interesting ones. And I thought, you know, I should follow up a good riddle with somebody who's into puzzles and mind teasers with – let me tell you a story. Once upon a time, there was a farmer who had a field, and he sowed some good seed into this field. But then in the middle of the night, someone came in and put a bunch of weed seeds in that field. And when they grew up, the servants came and said, Master, Master, there's weeds all infested in your field. And he says, the enemy has done this. He said, do you want us to take the weeds out? He's like, no, don't take them out because if you do, you might pull out some of the wheat. Wait till it grows up, and in time of harvest, I'll send the harvesters, And I'll tell them, gather up all the wheat, tie them in a bundle, throw them in the furnace, and then take my wheat and put it in the barn. Do you know what this means? What a great setup for sharing of the gospel. It's so good. You know? Yeah. And Jesus told stories because everybody loves a good story. Yeah. Have you ever felt like you're doing everything right? Eating clean, working out, taking all the right supplements, but your body just won't cooperate. Maybe you're tired, you're foggy, you're gaining weight, you can't sleep, and your doctor says your labs are normal. Here's the truth. Normal blood work does not mean your body is operating normally. It just means the levels in your blood work look okay. Not that your cells are actually using them the way they should. It's like using the wrong map and wondering why you're lost or putting gas in the tank but the engine still won't turn over. Because if your cells are inflamed, stressed, or in survival mode, nothing you do will work the way it should. Your body's been whispering for years. Now maybe it's screaming and you deserve someone who's actually listening. Go to mybloodwork.com and see what your blood work missed. What's really going on beneath the surface. Because you're not crazy. You're not lazy. You're just stuck in a system that was never built to find the problem. It was built to diagnose disease, not restore your health. At MyBloodWork.com, we'll show you how to finally get your body and your life back. Unfortunately, Hollywood's not as good as telling stories anymore. Yeah, I was actually, I brought this up on my podcast. This is probably, I don't know, a few months or maybe even a year ago. One of the things that I loved about, I grew up in the 90s, is I loved when I was watching, again, Growing Pains, Full House, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Saved by the Bell. Come on, come on. That's it. That was real TV. It was so good. Family Matters, all of these shows had a moral of the story. They weren't even Christian shows. No. But they had a moral of the story. Today, it's the anti-moral story for the most part. And so I tried to figure out. It was literally right when the 90s ended, something happened. It's because growing pains went off the air. Once growing pains went off the air, the whole thing just went off the cliff. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. No, I think you're right. Actually I tried to think about this and type back to you know you had in the 60s you know when God was taken out of school and maybe there a certain age group or whatever But something happened. No more Ten Commandments, no more prayer. Yeah, you know, I also watched this thing where Jordan Peterson said this. He said when he started his career teaching at Harvard and the University of Toronto, probably 80% of people, whether they were Christian or not, knew the biblical stories. Yeah. He said by the time he left, this is 30 years later, only 10 to 20 percent of kids going to public college knew stories of the Bible. He said they didn't even know what Jonah was. They had never even heard the story before. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I heard some people. Some people were even saying that on a multiple choice question, when high school students were asked recently, who was Noah's wife? Some of them actually selected Joan of Arc. Joan of Arc. Right? They had no clue. They had no idea. I mean, that's funny and scary. And like you said, the moral compass pointed toward the scriptures as true north. The fruit of the spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control. These are the kinds of values that you saw on Growing Pains. These are the kind of values that Mr. Rogers was teaching the kids. Davy and Goliath, Gumby and Pokey. All of these shows from way back up and through the 80s a little bit still were pointing toward the scriptures because America, which is where these shows are coming from, Hollywood, California, Disney and all that, they're rooted in ideas that have come from the Bible, from the form of our government to the moral and ethical fabric of our society. the Bible built America. And as we've pushed the Bible away, we then start to ask questions. Well, what is it to be good? What is it to be evil? Does evil even exist? And now it's not that we don't have a morality in TV. It's that, like you said, an anti-morality. It's the new morality, which is calling good evil and it calls evil good and we're paying the consequence for it just look around our society children have a huge identity problem children are filled with anxiety and depression oh yeah they're being isolated parents are acting like children men are acting like women women are acting like men adults are acting like children and nobody knows what in the world's going on and They're desperately looking for answers. You know, the number one thing that I, the number one reason why I think people have chronic illness today, the number one reason is not their diet. I think for a lot of people, they have emotional trauma from their past. They're dealing with, they don't know how to deal with their emotions healthily, and they don't have a purpose. And so I think all of these things sort of pile up and create anxiety, depression. and worry, illness, fear. And this is the number one thing more than diet making people sick today, especially with autoimmune disease, with cancer, with a lot of these conditions. And like we talked about before, I think they're all connected, don't you? Yeah, absolutely. If I'm filled with anxiety, I don't care what you say, Dr. Josh, I'm getting a Krispy Kreme because it makes me feel better. Eventually, those emotions will overwhelm you to the point where you will break. A hundred percent. If I can't sleep at night because of my panic attacks and trauma that I've experienced and things that are happening to me because of choices I'm making, well, I'm just going to load up on sleeping pills and other types of things that are going to help me to sleep. I mean the amount of girls in their – in high school, in college on antidepressants and anxiety drugs, of course birth control. It's common, normal. It's crazy, yeah. Yeah. Somebody asked me once. This was a young man. He said, well, what kind of medications do you – I eat in a kind of unique way. I try to eat things that are not inflammatory and a very low-carb diet and all this. And he's like, well, yeah, I can tell you, you're not heavy and overweight. You don't look like you're the kind of guy who's going to be obese and all that. And he said, well, what kind of medications are you on? And I was like, I don't take any medications. He's like, well, what do you mean? Nothing? And this is a young man in his 20s who's on medications. And they're the kinds of medications that I – I'm not a doctor, so I don't know if he needs to be taking these medications. But sometimes I just wonder how much of this is spiritually, emotionally and just stinking thinking rooted, resulting in anxiety and fear and sleeplessness and restlessness. And that if you address some of these spiritual, emotional, mental issues, these things would go away naturally and you wouldn't be a guy addicted to drugs. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So one of the questions I just have to ask you is, you know, I was on YouTube. You came up because you were having a conversation with your son sharing some of your views on hell. And I was blown away at the amount of people that just had to say something and the amount of criticism that you got on this view of hell. And it seemed to me like it wasn't even – you can clarify and I'm wrong. It didn't seem like you were saying, this is my 100% belief, but hey, I might lean this way after reading some of these saints and theologians who have shared their view on hell. Would you mind clarifying that a little bit and sharing a little bit your thoughts on what happened there? Sure. So first of all, I didn't go on my show to talk about my views of hell. my son had some views of hell that he was questioning and asking me about. And I always told him, we can talk about whatever you want. I promise I'll be honest with you. Just remember that millions of people are watching. So, you know, let's just use wisdom in our discussions. And he said, you know, I've learned that there's some differing views of the nature of God's punishment in hell. And really stemmed from questions that he had in discussing with his friends what kind of God preserves unbelievers for all of eternity in torment and suffering. Is that consistent with a God of love and mercy? And I think this is at the bottom of the deep end of the theological swimming pool. And to try to lift that rock off the bottom of the pool and examine it is like, wow, Jesus had really strong words to say about this. And so did Paul in the book of Revelation and others. And the wrath of God is so severe. And yet his mercy and his love has swallowed up wrath and judgment in the gospel for those who believe. And so where do we go with this? And he said there's a view called conditional immortality, which most people have never heard of. What is that? What do you mean conditional immortality? And then there's the traditional view that is also known as eternal conscious torment, which is just – it's on the face of it. It's just a very, very impactful title of the view. And so we discussed both of these views and the fact that this has been a debate that has been going on for 2,000 years. Church fathers believed in annihilationism or conditionalism. conditionalism and then others like augustine really popularized and made the mainstream view be the the traditional view today and i told him that once i heard about this other view i began to look into it and i found the arguments very compelling very persuasive in fact the more i've looked at it on this you know in terms of like scriptures that that weigh in the favor of one or the other. I thought it was going to be a no-brainer for the traditional view, and I found it slowly going like this to where I think this conditionalism view is just a better position scripturally, not just an emotional thing. However, I could be totally wrong. Who am I to talk to Jonathan Edwards about the nature of hell or Martin Luther? Luther actually leaned toward conditionalism, interestingly, as did many of the church fathers. But I wanted to just be honest with my son and say, let's look into it. And do you know what I love about that conversation, Joss, is just this. It's not about who's right or wrong. The truth is not in jeopardy. God knows. He'll tell me when I'm wrong. He'll tell you when you're wrong. There's no threat here to the truth. But the beauty of this was a father and a son were engaging over scriptural truth. Don't you want that with your kids? Whether he's right or I'm right, I don't care. I care for the honor of God and the sake of the lost because I want to speak truthfully. But if I get it wrong or I'm on my way to getting it right and I need other people to help me, that's wonderful. I think there's something beautiful in the wrestling. There's something beautiful in the not knowing and the hiddenness of certain elements of the truth that we've got to dig to discover. And we do that when we engage with one another. That's what I see so many people missed about this. I absolutely agree. I think this is how you grow. This is this quote that Solomon talks about, iron sharpens iron. You have difficult conversations. And this is why, you know, the Bible uses the word like wrestling, wrestling with God. I mean, you wrestle with some of these difficult things. And so- Don't you want your kids to ask those questions? Of course. I would love having these deep conversations with my kids. Do you know what happened to me? I had some people that came out and it was just the full fury of their wrath. They just went full scorched earth. Take out the napalm and just blast Kirk Cameron in the face with it. You are a heretic. This is cult rhetoric. You have left the faith. You're done. And I even. Linacy. Yeah. Well, yeah. Or heresy, according to them, because I wasn't just lining up with the traditional position. But remember, I'm a Protestant. Yeah. We schism. We protest. We question church tradition. We go back to a guy named Martin Luther and others. And so it's not to tear apart tradition because there's a very important role that tradition has. That's why we have the Nicene Creed and the Apostles' Creed and catechisms. But we should, I think, always be looking to scripture and saying, do we understand it correctly? Or do we need to simply bow to tradition just because we've always believed this? We've always thought this. And I even had a church, an institutional church leader who I looked up to. And I still look up to him. He's a hero of heroes today in the church world. who had a public video and article written about this, and he characterized my discussion with my son, questioning the traditional view as sad, as dangerous, and a fatal error, and that this is characteristic of those going down the road of liberal theology. And so my son's response was always um gracious but it was also indignant and it goes like this you don't want me to ask questions but i really am wrestling with this yeah and if someone's struggling with understanding the character of god based on your view of scripture and you want to tell me to just shut up, be quiet. This is what the church believes. You're going to lose my generation. We want people who will engage with us and give us the respect of a conversation. And if you can't do that, we're not interested in hearing from you anymore. You're the old guard and you're leaving. If you want this to perpetuate, you've got to invest in the young generation and answer their questions because a lot of their questions are going to be nuanced to their generation and their struggles based on the stories and the songs and the slogans they're hearing. And what you're saying doesn't feel like it fits. So help me. One of the things I appreciated, I appreciated Wes Huff, you know, weighing in and sharing some things there too. And I want to read this too, because I, because you know what, I appreciate it. It made me go and start reading and looking. And so here are some of the people that hold the view of uh of annihilationism justin martyr arrhenius uh william tyndale john stott edward fudge i mean there's a lot of others possibly you know lutherly in that way i mean a lot of people a lot of christian scholars so these are christian positions traditionalism conditionalism yeah this is not heresy outside orthodoxy this is all a christian position and there's even a third position that some will talk about. I will tell you, I went to a church that was Presbyterian. They were very, very, very Calvinistic for a period of time. And I really liked John Calvin. In fact, I own the institutes. I read a lot of them back in my 20s and thought those were great and listened to a lot of Reformed pastors. But one of the pastors there was like, oh, if you're Arminianism or a Methodist, you're going to have – I mean, there are some people out there that really aren't uh more calvinistic than calvin that's right yeah that's right that happens yeah yeah i found that with a lot of um brilliant thinkers whether they're in politics or in religion or even in the health space maybe maybe you could even cite some of these people who who they themselves had strong but balanced ideas but some of their followers take their ideas to an exaggerated extreme and become wackadoodle. To where if their heroes were alive today, they'd go back and go, bro, bro, bro, rein it in. I never said that. You're taking this so far. I'm not with you. So imagine if Calvin were to go to all the Reformed churches today. What would he say about the Calvinism that they're preaching? Well, one, I don't even think he'd like the term. I mean, if you have any form of humility. No, it's a derogatory term. Because it reminds me of when Paul is going to – I'm trying to remember which church it is. But he's going and he's saying, listen, don't follow Paul or Apollos or this person. Follow Jesus. But just so you know, I'm excited to hear. I know you're having a conversation with this whole group of theologians and pastors. Yeah, so my response to the outrage – I mean, I really caught hell talking about the afterlife with my son. I'm like, hey, hey, hey, this is a private conversation. I'm just giving you a window into father and son stuff here. And so I wanted to answer those who said, can you go deeper into this topic for us? Because I had a lot of people who actually agreed with what I was saying and say, Kirk, you're on the right track. Keep going. I know pastors who have held a different position on the subject of hell for decades but said they've never had the courage to speak about it publicly. Now, this isn't about denying the existence of hell. I believe hell is real. I believe sin is serious. The wrath of God should be avoided at all costs. Jesus said it would be better for your hand to be cut off and have one hand and get to heaven than have both your hands and be cast into hell where the flame is never quenched and the worm never dies. Hell, I believe, is real. and it is an eternal punishment. But there have been different understandings of that and so I promise to hold a roundtable discussion with four of the brightest and most trusted minds in the Christian world who have specific knowledge on this topic including two guys who are writing a brand new book on the two Christian views of hell with a foreword being written by Wes Huff. That book is going to be coming out and they're both in my roundtable along with two other guys. And we just recorded it. I believe by the time this is airing, it has come out and you can see the full three-hour discussion or you can see some of the highlights that my son and I talk about. That's great. And I want to be clear about something, and I'll just let you answer this as well, is that, again, I think my position is very much not on, you know, is hell or people living in hell eternally, whether it's actually an actual fire which some people believe whether it sort of this sort of mental spiritual state or whether it you know they there for a time and it ends I think that having the conversation and digging in and having talks about this it reminds me to a degree about, well, of course, a lot of theological topics, eschatology. Are you pre-mill or post-mill? Well, I'm, you know. Or amill or preterist. There's a billion more. Yeah, there are so many. And so, but, you know, like when I read, I read through, you know, Wayne Grimm's Systematic Theology book. And I remember when I was reading through that. It's not a light read. No, no, this is bad. You know, I try anyways. But I like that sort of thing. But I remember reading through it and thinking, you know what? I don't know. But I'm glad I read it because there's a level of I'm understanding now more consequences and understanding more about some other things about the heart of God and to be looking out for certain things more. I feel like I'm growing in wisdom because I know some of these things. See, that's healthy. That's so wise. And every year that God gives us to live, shouldn't we do that more and more? Shouldn't we gain wisdom and knowledge? Shouldn't we look to improve so that we can be better servants? I'm wanting to just change the way that I look at how many years I have left on this earth. I'm 55 years old now, and I'm thinking, man, I've probably got most of my years behind me unless I live to be over 110, which I probably won't. But I think – I mean you've got your own chickens at home. Yeah, so I know. I've got a head start on most people because I've got my own chickens. um by the way if you've never tried backyard chickens and their eggs they're so delicious they're so good especially if you let them like forage around bugs worms and grass those yolks are orange they're not yellow yellow yolks i want orange yolks they're delicious exactly um i start to think about i want to be i want to look forward to death i want to live a long time because i love life. I don't love death. I love life, but I have eternal life in Christ. And so I also got to keep framing my thinking with, it's not that the sand is running out of the hourglass. It's that I'm one step closer to entering into full glory. And what's better than crossing the finish line at the end of a race and winning or being part of the winning team? And I want to be able to look forward to those kinds of things. So I want to be healthy. I want to live a long time or however long the Lord wants me to, but I don't want to be sad that this life is coming to a close. I want to be excited that I'm approaching life that is truly life in heaven. That's so good. It's so good. Are you interested in functional nutrition tips to burn fat, reduce inflammation, improve your brain and energy levels, and heal naturally? Then I want to encourage you to listen to my friend, Dr. Dave Jockers' podcast, The Functional Nutrition Podcast. This podcast is designed to help you with easy, actual steps to improve your nutrition and lifestyle, understand your lab work, and address the root cause factors that may be driving up inflammation in your body. Now, I've been friends with Dr. David Jockers for 20 years, and he's truly a world expert in functional nutrition, cellular healing, and so much more. If you want to learn the best nutrition and natural healing tips, tune in to the Dr. Jockers Functional Nutrition Podcast on Apple iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, and wherever you can listen to podcasts worldwide. And this is part of the question I had earlier. It's like, how do you, you know, how do we go about living our best life, taking those talents and using them for good? And that's something, again, I think about this impact you've had on Hollywood. And I'm encouraged because, you know, there's more now than when you were, I feel like, maybe in Hollywood. You know, So people are coming to mind like Chris Pratt and his example and other people now being more outspoken about their faith. And so I think – I mean there's – sometimes it just takes one person speaking out on their faith and it's like this domino effect of what starts to happen. One other – just a couple more questions I had for you. I've started to see more and more I feel like revival happening in colleges. And even I've been so encouraged about some of the celebrities, somebody who's kind of semi in the health space, Russell Brand. His conversion has been so incredible seeing what happens there. And I was having this conversation with somebody else saying, Russell Brand going from where he was to where he is now, nothing else could do that but Christ. There's no other thing, stoicism, whatever. Nothing could do that except for faith in Jesus Christ. I get excited just like you do when we see people evidently coming to faith in Christ. Now, sometimes it turns out to be a shallow ground hearer or a thorny ground hearer where they end up falling away not too long ago, right? Like sometimes we get excited about Kanye, and they're like, oh, hey, what's going on? We've got this big worship album, and then like now we're not so sure, and what's happening? We've got people like Ravi Zacharias who were just like, oh, my gosh, a pillar of the faith. I mean an oak tree of the faith. And then we're like, what? And so I feel like I don't really know who's the real deal and who's not the real deal. Jesus said you'll know them by their fruit. And I think that sometimes people just hang fruit on their own tree. You know, they're out there in the night just hanging apples and peaches on the tree to try to look like a good Christian. But inside, they're ravenous wolves. They're dressed in sheep's clothing. So I really don't know, but I don't think I have to with certainty because the Lord knows and he's working all things together for good. But I do get excited and I do believe that the kingdom is growing. It's not shrinking. I believe that the gospel is advancing and it's converting people's hearts. And so I hope that Russell Brand and Kanye and other – I hope this is all the work of the Holy Spirit. And I think one of the reasons that people come to the Lord that is happening concurrently with the Spirit just straight up drawing them, because I think at the end of the day, God finds us. uh we're lost he's not he finds us and he draws us to himself uh is that people recognize the lie of false gospels and the emptiness of false political systems that make all of these big swelling promises and never deliver they're like clouds with no rain yeah oh follow us you Follow this religion or follow this political party or just do this and you're going to be happy, healthy and wealthy and wise. And they realize I've got no morals. I've lost my identity. I have no purpose. My kids are screwed up. I'm on my eighth marriage and I don't really believe in any absolute rights or wrongs. And so if we're just going to make this whole thing up, well, then who the hell cares? I just might as well go kill myself. I mean you're having more and more people think like this. And then some people are waking up. It's like they just got red-pilled. They've snapped out of it and they realize this whole thing is a stupid made-up matrix. This isn't even reality. And they're saying, what is reality? And they're searching for the source of truth and of goodness and of beauty. And as they follow those things upstream, they find this has to come from God. And so you see a lot of young people coming back to church now, coming back to faith now. Many of them back to the old traditions of Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, because there's some historical integrity there, not just the religious circus show that we see in a lot of wackadoodle churches. And this is all indicative, I think, of young people going, we've been sold a load of horse manure. That's right, yeah. And we want something that's actually nutritious for our souls and has mental intellectual integrity. And so they're going back to C.S. Lewis. They're going back to Thomas Aquinas. Yeah. They're going back to the thinkers who rooted their thinking in the scriptures and in God. Yeah, that's so powerful. Yeah, I think people want to know the truth. Well, some people want to know the truth. But I think if you're truly going to be happy, you need to know the truth. Because if not, it's like, you know, I think about this with health. It's like if you think, okay, this is the diet. I've got cancer. Eating a diet of processed foods, that will be healthy. or eating a lot of soy or canola oil, well, that's not going to help you. You think it is versus if you know the truth, more fruits, more vegetables, more, you know, omega-3s, whatever it is, this is going to, and then, you know, it's that old saying, you know, the truth will set you free. And so I think, and that's a big part of our conversation today is this is why the Bible is so powerful. Whether you need help with your marriage, you need to help with parenting, you need help with building wealth and success, and you need help with your health, the Bible has answers to all of those. That's one thing I love about the Bible, too. You were talking about the parables, and so many of them are food-related, diet-related. I wrote a book on what the Bible has to say about health. What was that book I wrote? Yeah, the Biblio Diet. And in the book, I had so much fun writing that with Jordan because it was like taking, you know, even though I'd read the Bible quite a few times going through and just saying, what does the Bible say about health? The same thing would happen if you said, what does the Bible say about marriage? Wow. You know, it's just transformational and it's so countercultural. Yeah, that's right. And discovering the truth about anything today is so much more difficult than it used to be. And the reason I say that is because I could pull up a video right now on my phone and show you an Instagram video and you'd say, oh, my gosh, I need to run home and be with my family. because Trump just started a war with Russia or with China. And then I can show you, nah, just kidding. It's an AI generated video. He didn't even say that. Even though you saw it with your own eyes, you heard it with your own. Discovering the truth today is like, it's like trying to, to me, walking into a candy store and trying to find nutrition. It's like, you can't find it. I don't know what's true anymore. Where is it? because people are making up their own truth. They're literally creating their own reality. Literally. I've seen brides having wedding ceremonies and marrying their AI chatbot groom. Literally, this isn't a joke. I hadn't heard of that. There is Tesla robots now that are walking around the house doing your chores for you and have full personalities programmed just the way you want them to. So if you want a wife that doesn't talk back to you and just cleans the floor and cooks your food, you can have one. If you want a husband who will honor you and respect you and listen to you and all of the things that you want, you can have one. Because reality is now what you want it to be. And truth is very hard to find. So the Bible is more crucial and critical now than ever before. And it's crucial and critical for kids to understand these principles earlier and earlier and earlier on too. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Where the Bible was always seen as the obvious place where you could find the truth. Now, you could reject the truth if you didn't like it, you didn't want it. But you knew what was true, and it was the good book. Yeah. There's a book that God wrote. This is the golden rule, we call it. It doesn't get better than the golden rule. Yeah. But if we don't teach these things to our kids when they're young, no doubt, ChatGPT and Grok and Google will teach them other things when they are young. And they are. And the Bible will be this mysterious thing that's been buried or hidden away somewhere. And only by the grace of God will they ever find it. We don't want that to happen. I'm going to ask you this and you're going to laugh because I don't even know how to say this. so well you you're doing kids books right and then i think i saw something online and this is quick with you with uh i mean i thought it was a frog but maybe it's not a frog AI i don't hang out with frogs oh you're talking about like a mump but it's like uh you're talking about the iguana named okay it's an iguana yeah sorry yeah tell me about that what do you what are you doing there so i've been writing children's books of christian virtue with a book publishing company called brave books. They're awesome. And I've been reading them in public libraries contra the drag queen story hours. And that's been going on for a couple of years. And we started out being banned from public libraries from the American Library Association and others who didn't want us there in these very woke cities to now being invited by the Library of Congress to read these stories publicly in the nation's capital, which is a wonderful turn of the day. So cool. Well, we realized that kids are spending more time on their screens than they are reading paper books. And so we decided to make a children's television show. And we're calling it this generation's Mr. Rogers neighborhood. We had Mr. Rogers back in the day. That was so good. And he taught us all the good things because many people don't know this. He was a Presbyterian minister. and while he didn't talk about god on the show he taught the values that really led to kids blessing and their protection and the building of families so we have this little show called iggy and mr kirk and it's kind of like mr rogers meets sesame street so we don't have kermit the frog we have iggy the iguana and i'm raising him as a little five-year-old in my backyard tree house and he's got to learn all the lessons that today's five-year-olds have to learn and he's got a computer and he's got to deal with friends. Some tell the truth, some don't. Like there's one character who is a vulture named Culture who's always lying to Iggy. And he's got to ask his mom and dad for biblical wisdom, learn how to trust God and pray. And he also has access to a non-woke supercomputer named Maple who will also tell him the truth. So he's learning about the sanctity of life. He's learning about the priority of family, about overcoming your fears and telling the truth. and it's great. You can watch it on Angel, which is the network that gives us The Chosen. You can also watch it on Brave Plus, which is a new streaming platform that has old classics like Davy and Goliath and has Bob the Builder and Strawberry Shortcake, biblical values, parents approved, and new originals like Iggy and Mr. Kirk. I'm so excited to watch it. Yeah, kids love it. Little kids absolutely love it. That's great. Yeah, we had Dallas Jenkins on the show here too. Those were great conversations. I love that Christian TV now is – there's an excellence undertone to it. I think that there's – and I'm excited to watch the show with my girls. They're going to love it. Yeah, I think you can watch the first three episodes for free. If you just go to Brave Plus, you can watch a few to see if you like it, and then you can sign up for the whole thing. The best deal, I think, is if you've got Angel, you can just watch it for free. If you don't, if you sign up for the Brave Book of the Month Club, you get a new Brave book delivered to your house every single month. Plus, you get full access to all three seasons of Iggy and Mr. Kirk, and you get all of this other stuff. And it comes with maps and stickers and games and family puzzles and challenges and conversation starters so that you can turn your book or your TV show episode into a core family memory and conversations with your kids about important stuff. That's so incredible. Awesome. Well, thanks so much for coming on, Kirk. This was great. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Again, I just appreciated ever since you were growing pains and just standing up for your faith post that, you know, left behind. I mean, you know, so is that where you did you meet your wife on Left Behind or did you know you met her with Growing Pains? I met my wife on Growing Pains. But you did Left Behind, right? She was in the movie. She played the Antichrist's girlfriend. That's right. What was I thinking? Marrying her. That's so great. She turned out to be an angel. Yeah, she's just acting. That's so great. Awesome. Well, thanks so much for coming on today. And I just want to say, hey, everybody, thanks for watching here. The Dr. Josh Jack Show. Remember, each and every week we are diving deep into the science and principles of how you can heal. physically, mentally, spiritually, and take your health and your life to the next level. If you're watching on YouTube, let me know what is one of the biggest things that Kirk shared today that you're going to walk away with. We would love to hear your thoughts. I also want to encourage you to go over, watch his podcast, watch his show on YouTube, and the discussion on hell there as well. I want to say, hey, thanks so much for sharing. Thanks so much for subscribing. And we'll see you on the next episode. you