Russell Brand is still celebrating Ash Wednesday like the lunatic that he is. In a minute, we re going to be talking to the founder of Halo, about spiritual principles and the compromises that come when you make money out of tech. But before that, let s talk about what s going on in Canada, as well as Europe rearming itself. Could we be on the brink of Armageddon? And how do we possibly respond to a situation like that?
00:02:32.000Thanks for joining me today for Stay Free with Russell Brand.
00:02:35.000As you can see, I'm still celebrating Ash Wednesday like the lunatic that I am.
00:02:39.000In a minute, we're going to be talking to the founder of the Halo app about spiritual principles, the compromises that come when you make money out of tech.
00:02:47.000But before that, let's talk about what's going on in Canada, as well as talking about Europe re-arming itself.
00:02:54.000Could we be on the brink of Armageddon?
00:02:57.000And how do you possibly respond to a situation like that?
00:03:00.000Whether you're watching us on X or YouTube, ultimately, please join us over on Rumble and consider getting Rumble Premium so that you can support me and Rumble's fantastic lineup directly, as well as getting a friction-free experience over there.
00:03:13.000Is it possible that Justin Trudeau could get anything?
00:03:16.000Anymore our step with the sentiments of the American people.
00:03:19.000He's threatening to not come to America.
00:03:21.000He's threatening to withdraw his finest Canadians.
00:03:24.000Now that includes some pretty interesting Canadians.
00:03:26.000Jim Carrey, are we going to lose that guy?
00:03:28.000And Chris Pavlovsky, CEO of Rumble, has responded.
00:06:40.000When you need to be safe online, you require a bunker.
00:06:43.000You must notice that billionaires everywhere have their own bunker.
00:06:46.000Why shouldn't you have bunker to protect your online life?
00:06:50.000Bunker has been a great sponsor for the show.
00:06:52.000They're having tremendous growth and I want to tell you about them today.
00:06:54.000High net worth families, law enforcement agents, professional athletes and tactical response trainers trust Bunker to protect their lives from surveillance, cyber criminals and other threats.
00:07:02.000Bunker is an uncompromised private messenger together with a password manager, secure vault and notes that work seamlessly together.
00:07:08.000It offers you private messaging and sharing.
00:07:10.000Send messages and leverage Bunker sharing capabilities for passwords, documents, notes, photos and videos.
00:07:21.000Keep your important documents at your fingertips such as identification, health records, travel documents, insurance cards and your most cherished photos and memories.
00:07:55.000Alongside our more than $200 billion plan to build infrastructure, US-based businesses will now lose out on tens of billions of dollars in revenues.
00:08:08.000You can forget about maple syrup and Mountie hats, too.
00:08:13.000I don't need you, as a matter of fact.
00:08:14.000Here's Chris Pawlowski, CEO of Rumble, a Canadian company, responding.
00:08:18.000Canada is going to be in a world of hurt.
00:08:20.000I would not hold Canadian dollars, and I wouldn't buy Canadian real estate.
00:08:24.000It's of my opinion that we're about to witness one of the largest declines in Canadian history, driven by incompetent leadership in Canada.
00:08:30.000Please explain to Governor Trudeau of Canada that when he puts on a retaliatory tariff on the US, our reciprocal tariff will immediately increase by a...
00:08:37.000So, in a sense, you can't rely on those somewhat impotent, former, woke-style WEF leaders to stand up against the belligerence and potency of a leader like Trump, who, in spite of what the view may think, has a significant mandate.
00:08:54.000Here's Justin Trudeau directly messaging Trump in a manner that can only be described as, I mean, in a way, if your fuel bills are high in Canada, you can just watch Trump doing this and warm yourself with pure cringe.
00:09:08.000Now I want to speak directly to one specific American.
00:09:39.000Is there anything as big, as memorable or significant as the evoking of the Emergency Act in the pandemic to control truckers, Canadian citizens protesting against their government, all the while telling them that they're the Nazis?
00:10:57.000Is exactly what our opponents around the world want to see.
00:11:03.000You can't actually adopt that perspective or that position against Donald Trump when you're Justin Trudeau, when you've behaved the way that he has behaved in government.
00:11:11.000And when we're beginning to experience the...
00:11:14.000Success of some of the audacity of Trump's public rhetoric.
00:11:18.000Zelensky now says he's ready for peace.
00:11:21.000Even with the extraordinary AI images of Gaza as a holiday destination, it appears that there's a likelihood that solutions that were previously inaccessible...
00:11:31.000Might become an option, even for someone who finds it somewhat distasteful to speak about a region so connected to and fraught with controversy, pain and suffering spoken of in such a glib way.
00:11:43.000You have to acknowledge that Trump is the political figure that Americans have voted for and appears in some extraordinary ways to be the political leader that the world needs.
00:12:29.000That's why I use Qualia Senolytic with science-backed ingredients that have helped me feel, I would say, 15 years younger in a matter of just months.
00:12:41.000Known as zombie cells, these senescent cells are old and worn out and not fulfilling a useful function for our health, but they take up space and nutrients for our healthy cells.
00:12:51.000Qualia Senolytic removes zombie cells and allow healthy cells to thrive.
00:14:16.000What is Europe's true position when it comes to that conflict?
00:14:20.000Can we rely on people like Ursula von der Leyen or should we rely on Jeffrey Sachs?
00:14:25.000An academic and expert who's helped us to understand the true origins of this conflict and therefore be forewarned and forearmed, ironically, against escalating conflict because who really benefits from this stuff?
00:14:37.000First of all, though, let's have a look at Scott Jennings revealing that Europe spent more money on Russian oil and gas last year than they sent to Ukraine.
00:15:31.000The role of the president is to put...
00:15:33.000YouTube and social media YouTube and social media phidias invited Jeffrey Sachs to the EU, where he's a member of the European Parliament, using his social media following to get himself elected into a position of political power, becoming friends with Elon Musk along the way, and exposing the machinations and machinery behind giant bureaucracies and exposing the machinations and machinery behind giant bureaucracies like the EU, who you can't trust and rely on.
00:15:54.000Now, it was the EU who, from a position of pomposity, claimed that they would never negotiate with Russia.
00:15:59.000It was NATO that said, oh, that Putin, he's got what's coming to him.
00:16:03.000In a sense, I'm saying it's these giant and unelected bureaucracies, although I recognise that on some level the EU has democratically elected members, although many of them are extremely unpopular, and as a conglomerate they don't seem to be working out that well, are far more out of touch than a populist nationalist leader like Donald Trump.
00:16:19.000And it's the failure of globalism, and along with it, the left that has led to the rise of populism.
00:17:34.000This is doing what the United States wants, but now you obviously can't just follow Trump.
00:17:41.000It's crazy to me a lot, like, out of 720 members of the European Parliament, which one of them, majority, they vote to continue this war, to keep sending weapons.
00:17:50.000Now, strangely, if you ask, of all the countries, who ignores the UN the most?
00:17:56.000I'm sure every member of Parliament would say, oh, Russia.
00:18:09.000The United States have been engaged in a hundred regime change operations since the end of World War II. A hundred.
00:18:17.000Russia just saw the U.S. pushing further, putting its missile systems, putting NATO enlargement, leaving the Intermediate Nuclear Force Agreement, leaving the ABM agreement.
00:18:27.000Europe wouldn't acknowledge any of those provocations because the only word you could use in Europe is unprovoked.
00:18:35.000Well, to my mind, frankly, you would say, okay, we understand you had reasons for all of this and many of them legitimate.
00:18:47.000Because whatever happens, we're sharing this continent together.
00:18:52.000That conversation between Phidias and Jeffrey Sachs shows you everything you need to know about an optimistic new politics that might yet emerge.
00:19:02.000Sure, Trump is of a particular hue, but he's forming alliances that are exciting and new.
00:19:08.000And with figures like Phidias, who are political and media operators facilitating experts like Sachs, informing us of the complex truths of the Ukraine-Russia conflict and Europe's dishonest and hypocritical position, It's possible that we could continue to develop more complex perspectives together.
00:19:26.000That what may yet grow out of MAGA might be something that even people that loathe Trump see as being relevant to them and their lives and born of values and virtues that are meaningful even for the kind of diverse minorities that they claim that Trump is a dreadful threat to.
00:19:43.000Do you see that something brilliant could emerge right now?
00:19:47.000It's possible that we could oppose the type of hypocrisy and corruption That the Occupy movement was opposed to.
00:19:53.000That anyone that cares about community sovereignty, national sovereignty, and individual sovereignty should be concerned with.
00:20:03.000And Lord alone, protect us from the likes of Ursula von der Leyen, who's suggesting that we should create a European army.
00:20:11.000They are still advocating for globalism, globalism, more globalism, all the time telling you that the megalomaniacal tyrant that you should...
00:20:23.000You can't loathe Elon Musk because he's got too much power and then say that the EU should be able to arm itself, particularly when Ursula von der Leyen, during the pandemic period, behaved like a plutocrat, was dishonest, and advanced the idea that we should get vaccinated without knowing what exactly was going into our arms, if you took it.
00:20:43.000She can't claim to be a friend of democracy.
00:20:46.000Here she is claiming that in order to be a friend of democracy, in order to bring about peace, we have to have war.
00:20:52.000That Europe will be stepping up its defence expenditure and rearming itself.
00:20:56.000We had a very good and frank discussion.
00:21:01.000Basically, we've discussed everything that is around peace and strength.
00:21:07.000And, of course, security guarantees are of utmost importance for Ukraine, but we need comprehensive security guarantees.
00:21:15.000This includes that we have to put Ukraine in a position of strength, that it has the means to fortify and protect itself from the economic survival to the military resilience.
00:21:29.000It's basically turning Ukraine into a steel porcupine.
00:21:34.000That is indigestible for potential invaders.
00:21:38.000And therefore, the focus is not only on the military supply, but also, for example, securing their energy system and making sure that over time this is a strong and resilient country.
00:21:50.000The second element I brought to the table is that we urgently have to rearm Europe.
00:21:57.000And for that, I will present a comprehensive plan how to rearm Europe on the 6th of March.
00:22:04.000When we have our European Council to deliver this.
00:22:07.000And what level of spending should individual countries make to defence?
00:22:16.000We really have to step up massively the defence expenditure.
00:22:21.000And for that we need a clear big plan.
00:22:26.000from the European Union for the member states and of course for common European domains like for example advanced air shields we need a common European approach but also the member states need more fiscal space.
00:22:45.000We all have understood that after a long time of underinvestment, it is now of utmost importance to step up the defence investment for a prolonged period of time.
00:22:56.000It's for the security of the European Union and we need in the strategic environment in which we live to prepare for the worst and therefore stepping up the defensive.
00:23:11.000What message would you like to take to America?
00:23:14.000What message would you like to give to America after today's meeting?
00:23:20.000We are ready together with you to defend democracy, to defend the principle that there is a rule of law that you cannot.
00:23:36.000Invade your neighbour and bully your neighbour or you cannot change borders with force.
00:23:44.000And it's in our common interest to prevent future wars that we make very clear that these rules count and that democracy, that the democracies are standing up for that.
00:23:55.000The possibility is of course that we have the wider Europe approach.
00:25:01.000We've got a fantastic lineup over here on Rumble.
00:25:04.000And by supporting us directly, you get ad-free content.
00:25:07.000In a minute, I'm going to be talking to the founder of Hello Alex Jones, no not that one, about Christianity, business, faith and tech, as well as telling my own lovely story from Mar-a-Lago.
00:25:20.000Let me know in the comments in the chat what you think about the stories of today, whether you're watching in Locals or Rumble Premium or wherever you're watching.
00:25:28.000But before that, here's a quick message from one of our partners.
00:25:31.000We are now in Lent, the 40-day period leading up to Good Friday and Easter, filled with prayer, fasting, almsgiving, sacrifice, and surrender.
00:25:37.000Historically, this is a very powerful season to grow closer to God, and we're walking with Christ as He walked in the wilderness.
00:25:42.000Hallow is bringing you a great way to do that with their Lent Pray 40 challenge that you can join right now.
00:26:10.000Jonathan Rumi and Sister Miriam James will lead you through powerful stories and prayer.
00:26:14.000Father Mike Schmitz will take us deep into the gospel with excellent Sunday homilies.
00:26:18.000And you'll get to hear some incredible true stories of faith.
00:26:21.000It's already shaping up to be their biggest Lent ever, with thousands of people praying together all over the world.
00:26:25.000You can get three months free when you sign up at hallo.com forward slash brand so that you can do the Time now for my conversation with Alex Jones.
00:27:12.000You must be one of those people that has to continually align your...
00:27:18.000Like I do, your faith with your business and continually live in the question of how do I do this ethically?
00:27:30.000How do I ensure that this is bringing about his kingdom?
00:27:35.000And how do I... Because if you are able to do this, please tell me how to do it, because it's the thing I struggle with most.
00:27:42.000Well, not the thing, but one of the things I struggle with most.
00:27:45.000How do you ensure that your work with Hallow, which must be personally enriching and empowering, remains within your...
00:27:55.000I mean, I can tell within five seconds, although I've seen you on other people's podcasts and stuff, that how serious you are about your faith and about how serious you are about your devotion to Christ.
00:28:07.000We don't get pulled into serving the very kingdom we're meant to be fighting against.
00:28:15.000Yeah, I mean, I think it's the battle of a lifetime.
00:28:18.000You know, it's trying to die to yourself and die to all your vanities and all the things of the world that you, at least I, before Christ, kept wanting to chase after.
00:28:28.000So, I mean, I think it's, you know, I'm very much just at the beginning, but...
00:28:32.000Of this journey and this battle, which I think is a lifetime one.
00:28:35.000I think, you know, working on something relating to your faith, you know, it has a lot of pros and cons.
00:28:43.000And God has given me a great gift in being able to do this.
00:28:46.000I think, you know, on the cons, it can certainly feel like...
00:28:50.000You know, it used to be easier to separate, which maybe isn't even a good thing, but it used to be easier to separate kind of your work from, like, what you're doing morally or your spiritual life, and now for me, obviously, there's no separation.
00:29:00.000It's also quite hard for me to, like...
00:29:07.000We built it initially just for me and my journey to try to grow deeper in a relationship with the Lord.
00:29:12.000But it's quite hard for me to listen to an audio session or something or a prayer with Father Mike or Jeff Kaven's Daily Reflection or something and not hear a little audio blip and be like, oh man, team, we need to make this higher quality.
00:29:25.000And so your work kind of conflating with faith can certainly be difficult.
00:29:28.000But for me, For me, the coolest part has been, and I've heard you talk about this before too, but has been learning to surrender.
00:29:38.000And really, that is the only thing I've learned through all of Hallow and all of my own spiritual life, is just learning in everything to surrender.
00:29:46.000And with Hallow, he just makes it so tactical and so obvious.
00:29:49.000Like, there was this first, our first real fundraise that we did, which is, you know, it was certainly the...
00:29:57.000I was building this off my credit card and we had drained our 401ks and we had this great team who was working really hard, but we were certainly running out of money.
00:30:05.000And we did this fundraise, and I remember I pitched a ton of people, like 80 people over the course of two weeks.
00:30:26.000It's all about kind of mindfulness and secular spirituality and all this stuff.
00:30:30.000And I remember I just came back to my...
00:30:34.000Little studio apartment and I was just like beset with this heaviness and this weight and this stress and I had like knots in my back I couldn't eat I couldn't sleep and I sat down and I prayed and I was like God look I don't know how to do this I think you chose the wrong guy for this I am clearly not the right guy all these people are saying that I'm the wrong guy and you know I don't know if this idea is gonna work all these things and the only thing I know what to do is to make a deal with you and I said you know God If you want this thing to work,
00:31:04.000you'll make it work, and I promise you, you will always get the credit.
00:31:07.000I'm never going to trick myself into thinking I'm some successful person who figured this out or entrepreneur or evangelist or whatever it is.
00:31:36.000That immediately came off of my shoulders.
00:31:38.000And the next day, we got an offer to fund the whole thing.
00:31:41.000And then we got like three or four more the following.
00:31:44.000But it was just this beautiful example.
00:31:45.000And I can tell maybe 10 stories of that.
00:31:47.000But every time at Hallow that something successful has happened, either from the world's perspective or from God's or the mission perspective, it has always been God.
00:31:55.000The same pattern of us trying to cling to something really tightly.
00:32:33.000Even Jonathan Rumi, who I know is my friend, who's on your app A Bunch, his story about just before getting cast in The Chosen is really similar to your story.
00:32:48.000I'm wondering about everything I'm doing at the moment because I'm at that very pivotal point, Alex, where I'm...
00:32:59.000I don't know how many transitions you've had across your life.
00:33:03.000I guess everyone's life must seem episodic from the inside.
00:33:06.000But I came to faith on the 28th of April there.
00:33:11.000And now, you know, not only do I have questions about entertainment, As an industry, and the function and purpose of entertainment, and of course I'm aware of the many analogies that exist that describe things as tools,
00:33:30.000and a tool can be used for good or bad, and it tends to be where these conversations sort of go, but in practice and in purpose, scalpels do tend to be used to conduct surgery, whereas daggers tend to get used to plunge into human bodies.
00:33:52.000What I feel like is that I've moved away from entertainment.
00:34:17.000And now, even in the world where you might call it alternative news or independent media, I similarly feel like such important work has been done in telling the truth in this kind of space by loads of people.
00:34:35.000I just think that whether it's the way the coronavirus was handled or whether the Ukraine-Russia conflict is playing out, two of the most obvious issues.
00:34:46.000Centralised systems of power that I do not think are separate from evil, Alex.
00:34:51.000I do not consider them to be separate from evil.
00:34:53.000I consider them to be a clear expression of evil.
00:35:24.000And then that just started to be the stuff that people were watching and asking me about.
00:35:28.000And there's a revival happening, isn't there?
00:35:31.000And, you know, I talked to Dallas Jenkins of The Chosen about it.
00:35:36.000I've spoken to a lot of people about it, and you seem like another person I should ask.
00:35:40.000Do you feel like there's a revival taking place?
00:35:44.000And if there is a revival taking place, ought those of us that believe in this thing be acting like the early Christians and, you know, devoting ourselves in a very, very sincere and absolute way?
00:35:59.000Yeah, I mean, I certainly think there's a revival happening.
00:36:04.000For a while, but it seems like, you know, there's at least more external signs now than there were.
00:36:10.000We started Hallow maybe five and a half, six years ago.
00:36:13.000And, you know, we have this incredible blessing of getting to journey with folks in their relationship with the Lord and watch what He does in their life.
00:36:24.000And so, you know, at a normal church, you might have, you know, maybe a couple thousand people.
00:36:30.000But we have this incredible privilege of getting to receive these notes from folks who have, really over the last five years, but it's increasingly so certainly over the last few years, but folks who are really lost, people in really tough times.
00:36:46.000It's people who take their faith seriously, people who have been going to church for a while, who are able to encounter the Lord in a new way, but especially for us.
00:36:54.000It's these stories of people who are really lost.
00:36:57.000I mean, you know, we certainly have many addicts who have been struggling with addiction for 10, 20, 30 years who are able to find some sense of, who are able to be sober.
00:37:09.000We have moms and dads who have lost children who are able to find some sense of hope and peace again.
00:37:14.000We have young people who are really struggling with depression and anxiety who are able to find love in the Lord.
00:37:20.000Like, we had this one young woman reach out to us and said she'd never heard anyone say she was beautiful, which is the father of a, like, four-year-old daughter, breaks my heart.
00:37:29.000And, you know, she's in college, and she prays some meditation on hallow and in the silence.
00:37:34.000It's not a, you know, most of hallow is just trying to structure how...
00:37:43.000And it's just like, and she then walks back to the Lord.
00:37:45.000We had this other young person who was struggling with this habitual sin, this state of deep sin, and was addicted to, you know, many things of the world, but certainly lost and had this prayer experience where she was talking to the Lord.
00:38:25.000And as soon as we start even coming back, while we are still a long way off, the Father runs out to us with open arms and hugs us and embraces us.
00:38:44.000You know, broadly in the culture, I think you start to see it, obviously with The Chosen, with Hallow, with any of these things that have started to take off.
00:38:51.000You've got these podcasts, like Father Mike's podcast that takes off.
00:38:55.000I think, so yeah, I certainly think there's a revival happening.
00:38:59.000You asked a lot of interesting things.
00:39:01.000You know, the surrender piece of it, I think like if you really boil down the spiritual life to one thing, it is this radical surrender.
00:39:10.000And we had this man who had just lost his wife.
00:39:14.000He was praying with us on the app, and he reached out, and his wife, they had like three or four kids.
00:39:19.000She was in her late 30s, and she was diagnosed with a terminal illness.
00:39:25.000And he says as soon as she was diagnosed, she had six months to live.
00:39:28.000As soon as she was diagnosed, he just was filled with this anxiety and this stress and this fear, and she just immediately was peaceful, like just this overwhelming sense of peace.
00:39:35.000And he asked her like three or four months into this journey of preparing for her death, like why?
00:40:29.000God can sanctify your phone, even though the vast majority of what technology is used for is evil.
00:40:35.000But at the same time, especially in the beginning of our journey, there is this radical detachment you have to have from the things that...
00:42:00.000And the relationship that I had with my wife was a fascinating one because I dated all these people, and I would always keep texting other people while I was dating someone else.
00:42:10.000When you break up with somebody, you go be with somebody else and whatever it is.
00:42:13.000And that was my college experience, which is following the ways of the world, which to your point on the large institutions and the ways of the world being destruction and evil, I think they certainly are.
00:42:21.000Like, the normal mode of operating is Satan's, not...
00:42:25.000You know, the normal thing that happens in the world is evil.
00:43:16.000It's like, you know, when you first come back to the faith, and St. Teresa of Avila, there's two really great mystics, and the thing that really brought me back to the faith was the mystical tradition of the Catholic Church, but Christianity broadly, and there's two really great Christian mystics.
00:43:30.000The one, obviously, St. Paul is a great Christian mystic, Mary and our Lord, of course, obviously, but the two great saints in more recent times are St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross, and they both describe this journey, and this journey to the Lord.
00:43:45.000It's called sometimes the purgative way.
00:43:47.000St. John of the Cross calls it the dark night of the soul.
00:43:50.000St. Teresa Avila has this image of the mansions of the heart and you're journeying closer to the Lord at the center of your heart.
00:43:57.000But what happens at the beginning is like this radical denial of everything in the world, like this radical cutting off from everything and living a life to try to live a life fully on fire for the Lord.
00:44:08.000And it's this combination of prayer and fasting, which, you know, during the season of Lent is the focus, along with like giving alms, which is, you know, an incredibly important part of, you know, fasting from the material goods that you have, but also trying to be generous and charitable.
00:44:22.000But it's this combination of prayer and fasting.
00:44:24.000And so with fasting, you try to disconnect radically from everything in the world.
00:44:27.000St. Teresa of Avila has this quote that says, no one who is connected to any of the visible things could enjoy the invisible things.
00:44:34.000And St. John of the Cross has this prayer where he says, you know, I seek in all things what.
00:44:40.000Not what is easiest, but what is most difficult.
00:44:43.000Not what is most delightful, but what is harshest.
00:44:45.000And so it's this radical, like, I want to disconnect from everything in the world.
00:44:48.000All my vanities, all my pride, all my lust, all my greed, everything that might even, like, tempt me to lead to something or an occasion of sin or an opportunity for me to connect to those.
00:44:58.000I have to disconnect to them totally so that I can give my heart fully to the Lord.
00:45:02.000And then what God does with that is He then takes it back and sanctifies it through everything.
00:45:06.000So I think, you know, like, when I hear you talk about, I feel...
00:45:09.000I feel like people are telling me it's okay to still kind of be involved in these things and I just kind of want to give myself totally to Jesus.
00:45:15.000It's like, yeah, I think that's, you know, when I read these folks and in my own journey, it's like that is, I think, the way to a deeper relationship with the Lord is totally radically cutting off from these things.
00:45:25.000Now, at the same time, God can use the things that you're doing to sanctify the world.
00:45:30.000And I think one of the things, you know, we've seen at Hallow and one of the things that I see is you have this The thing that gets us most excited about the work that we do is going after the lost sheep, going after the lost lamb, going after the one, not the 99. It's like, man, I do that.
00:45:46.000There's a young woman who wrote in who was about to commit suicide and ended up praying with the app the night before she ended her life, and she realized that God was present, that he was with her in the bathroom where she was trying to end her life, and he saved her life, and she dedicated the rest of her life to serving him and has been for the last three years.
00:46:01.000And it's like, man, I would do that for the rest of my life.
00:46:04.000If you told me, hey, you're going to work for 50 years, everyone's going to hate you, you're going to be thrown in jail, they're going to kill you, they're going to take all your money, your family, everything.
00:46:21.000And so for you, it's like you have this really unique way.
00:46:24.000And ability and gift that God has given you to reach out to folks, especially folks who don't take, you know, traditional faith or a traditional relationship with Jesus seriously.
00:46:33.000And, you know, you have this focus on the spiritual aspect of it, which for me is the thing that changed my own life.
00:46:38.000It's the only thing we're trying to focus on and how, and I think is the core of faith is this radical, beautiful mysticism and spirituality that changes the life.
00:46:46.000So I think for us, it's like you have this...
00:46:48.000gift of reaching out to folks in a really unique way and folks where, you know, like other people really struggle to reach out to them in a way that resonates with them.
00:46:59.000And so I think you have this tremendous gift to use whatever platform God has given you to glorify him.
00:47:03.000But yeah, you certainly, I think for me, at least it's, you know, cutting off many hands so that I don't sin and I try to give my heart fully to the Lord.
00:47:12.000The government's running on caffeine and corruption.
00:47:15.000Don't let your morning fuel be just as weak.
00:47:17.0001775 coffee is roasted for rebels, revolutionaries, and anyone who thinks their coffee should taste like freedom, not like the tears of an overpaid diversity consultant.
00:47:25.000Dark roast, it's harder than a tax audit.
00:47:27.000Medium roast, smoother than the excuses they give you when inflation spikes again.
00:47:32.000Vitality mushroom blend fuels your brain like you just figured out they're lying to you.
00:47:36.000Handpicked single-origin beans roasted fresh in Mayamski, because your coffee should be fresher than whatever nonsense they're selling on the news today.
00:48:07.000I can't endorse absolutely every slogan on it, but most of them I wholeheartedly agree with.
00:48:14.000So if you want a near-deadly cup of coffee and a lethal cyber-truck, make sure you're near a charging station when you use those things, then go to 1775coffee.com, use the code BRAND for 15% off, and start your day like a real patriot with coffee that stands for something and refuses to sell for weak beans or weak leaders.
00:48:32.000Alex, there's a lot you said, obviously, but when you talked about St. Teresa of Avalon and John of the Cross there, and that radical detachment and radical surrender, if Christ isn't at the centre of that, it becomes a kind of insanity.
00:48:56.000Isn't it peculiar how much ambiguity...
00:49:00.000This ambivalence and paradox is found in this world of the spirit, that if it isn't devoted to him, it becomes a kind of insanity.
00:49:12.000Someone sent me Chesterton, G.K. Chesterton's book on St. Francis.
00:49:18.000I just sort of like opened it, you know, like checking it out.
00:49:22.000It's not something I knew anything about.
00:49:25.000He says that Cheston's writing of St. Francis, and I think speculatively, because I don't know what kind of documentation St. Francis leaves.
00:49:37.000One of the things is, he goes, landscape painters sometimes would look at the landscape they were painting upside down to get a better perspective on it.
00:49:48.000St. Francis had experienced this radical inversion.
00:49:53.000All told as boys, says Chesterton, that if you burrowed down into the centre of the earth, there will be some pivotal moment where you didn't feel like you were going down anymore, but that you were coming up towards the surface on the other side.
00:50:08.000St. Francis was in a cave, he says, and like all of us, you know, Joseph in the pit, you know, Jonah in the belly, our Lord.
00:50:30.000It seems like it's sort of part of being me, a bit like when you were saying that thing, the knots in your neck and your back and all that, and the transformation of sending the text out after me in that sort of earthly moment of salvation through, not through transaction, but through relationship, for surely he is relational, essence, free person in one God.
00:50:49.000I had this moment of collapse, and And I went into the room and someone had sent me this St. Francis thing.
00:50:56.000And there was one moment where he says, the word dependency literally means hung upon.
00:51:42.000Between the populace and pullulating pool where YMCA gladly played.
00:51:49.000And his cordoned Mar-a-Lago quarters, I glimpsed the air-locked Donald Trump in repose as a member of security disclosed details or plausible logistics to the suspended president.
00:52:04.000It was only 30 seconds and he couldn't see me staring, so I paused.
00:52:10.000Once, through a telescope, I looked at Jupiter and in black and white breathed in his fragile moons.
00:52:19.000724 million miles away, but present and immediate in my eye.
00:52:23.000It is not the power of the King of Kings that strikes, but the precious vulnerability.
00:52:29.000Jupiter hung upon the tender thread of the moment to which we are all hostage.
00:52:38.000This description that Chesterton offers of St. Francis' vision of the world, the person that goes into the moment of despair, like we all must if we're to find God, to dedicate ourselves to God, absolutely.
00:52:50.000And this description of the world of sort of being hung upon God.
00:52:57.000And this necessity of despair, like you've described in this conversation, it's the suicidal, it's the drug addicted, it's the parent that loses a child, it's the heartbreak and the hopelessness that in the end shows you that the world will not work for you and that the world and its institutions, as you've said as well, have fallen into the hands of the evil one.
00:53:18.000And it's through this brokenness and despair, but that a new covenant is achieved by His grace.
00:53:26.000And, yeah, I know that, you know, it's not a question, is it?
00:54:10.000I actually had this question from somebody that said, recently, That somebody said, like, do you think that by being more devout, God will give you a more successful company or a more successful startup or app or whatever it is?
00:54:28.000And it's like, you know, no, it's exactly radically the opposite.
00:54:34.000You know, like he, the closer you get to Christ.
00:56:00.000I guess they're not contradictions, but what feel like contradictions for us.
00:56:04.000Like these two sides of things, and we so often use them to divide ourselves as Christians, but these two sides of things that God is both.
00:56:11.000Like, He is radical love and radical mercy.
00:56:24.000And what you said is like, yeah, in journeying deeper in a relationship with Him, and it's funny because it mostly happens for me and for the stuff that we do on Halloween in silence.
00:56:35.000Spending time with him in silence, or maybe at a rosary at Mar-a-Lago, which is awesome.
00:56:42.000I think it was St. John Paul II or something who said, of all the treasures of the Vatican, of all the art in the Vatican, there's billions and billions of dollars of treasures in Vatican, a lot of which is buried, a lot of which the public can't even see.
00:56:55.000He says, there is no greater treasure than the beads on my rosary.
00:57:08.000And as I become lower, Christ lifts me up.
00:57:11.000It's like what he says, like, take the last seat at the table so that I, as the master of the ceremony, can come and bring you to the better seat.
00:57:19.000Your job is to die to yourself completely.
00:57:21.000And, like, what you said is, yeah, the St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross stuff, you can run into the trap also there, where it's like, hey, it's my job to die to myself and to fast and to do all these really intense things.
00:57:31.000And what that does naturally, actually, is it builds up your ego.
00:59:36.000But it does not die, and his line is beautiful.
00:59:38.000It cannot die because we have a God who knows his way out of the grave.
00:59:41.000But you think about the history of the church.
00:59:43.000You've got, obviously, the death of Jesus.
00:59:44.000Everybody thinks Christianity is done then.
00:59:46.000Then you kill all the apostles except one and send the one to exile, and you think the church is done then.
00:59:50.000And then it's, okay, well, it becomes Rome's religion, which is awesome.
00:59:53.000But then Rome falls, and usually when a...
00:59:58.000And then you have the rise of Islam, which is this massive, like, it takes off like wildfire you think is going to overtake the world, and it doesn't, and it bounces, but Christianity fights back.
01:00:07.000And then you have this, you know, the enlightenment and the...
01:00:12.000Darwin and evolution, and you think Christianity is dead, and it bounces back, and then you have this new atheism.
01:00:18.000And St. Francis, again, like St. Francis' story is he looks around a thousand years ago and sees the church is destroyed, and he hears God say, rebuild my church.
01:00:26.000And so he goes and rebuilds his church.
01:00:28.000So it's like Christianity is this story of death and resurrection, which follows, you know, it follows Scripture, obviously.
01:00:43.000He said one more thing that really stuck out, too, because it's this beautiful mystical point, which is, like, it's funny for me, at least, like, the times that are the toughest, the times where I most despair, the times where I feel like, you know, I'm at the lowest, is also the times where I notice God's presence the most.
01:01:03.000Like, it's the time where I feel closest to Him, which is, it sucks, because it's like, man, I wish...
01:01:08.000I wish I didn't have to go through these terrible things, which in the grand scheme of things are certainly not terrible things, but I wish I didn't have to go through these to grow closer to them.
01:01:17.000And I was reflecting with my co-founder the other day of how frustrating it must be to be Satan, where he tries to use these things to pull you away from him.
01:01:28.000These things of the world or these things of despair or a bunch of people hating you, but if as a Christian you can...
01:01:35.000Give them to christ if you can if you can let christ into those moments It's the very things that god uses to bring you closest to him So it's like as a crit you have this superpower like satan attacks you and it's the very thing that god uses To to grow closest to him and at the the dark is always that the night is always darkest right before the dawn This is again st. John of the cross where he has this He's another great mystic,
01:01:58.000but he has this parable of the spiritual life or this story of the spiritual life is journeying through these dark nights and ascending the mountain.
01:02:06.000And what happens as you grow deeper in your faith is it's not like you feel great and happy and joyful all the time.
01:02:12.000Hopefully you try to grow in joy, but you don't feel happy.
01:02:15.000Your emotions certainly aren't elated and you don't feel positive all the time.
01:03:28.000For me to get healthy, you want me to hurt?
01:03:30.000It's supposed to be like I can't lift anything?
01:03:32.000I thought the point was that I do lift things.
01:03:34.000And the point is like, yeah, it's through this process that you're made stronger.
01:03:39.000And it's the same thing with the spiritual life.
01:03:41.000It's like, okay, well, how do I know that I'm advancing?
01:03:43.000And it's like, well, when you feel really humbled, when you feel like you're smaller than everybody else, when you feel like you're destroyed, when you feel like you're beat down, like that.
01:03:52.000That is you, your soul being purified, your soul being brought deeper into a relationship with the Lord so that it's no longer you who live but Christ who lives within you.
01:03:59.000And Christ is the perfect example of these contradictions because he's God.
01:04:05.000He is the most powerful human that ever lived ever.
01:04:08.000And yet he humbled himself becoming obedient even to the point of death on a cross.
01:04:12.000And because of this, God greatly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name that at the name of Jesus, every knee shall bend and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
01:04:20.000And it's to the glory of God, the Father.
01:04:24.000And he did not regard equality with God something to be grasped at.
01:04:27.000So the only person who could consider themselves equal with God did not require, did not view equality with God something to be grasped at.
01:04:34.000And yet what, like, that is the story of humanity.
01:04:36.000We are the ones who aren't worthy of that, and yet we grasp at it.
01:04:39.000And as soon as we, like, let go of that, then he makes us like himself.
01:04:42.000Like, he transforms us from one image of glory to the other.
01:04:45.000So it's this, not hilarious, but it's this radical contradiction, it seems to us, of...
01:04:51.000You know, to gain, to advance, we have to let go.
01:04:59.000We humble ourselves and we die to ourselves in every moment, which is this radical thing.
01:05:02.000But then God fills us with this glory and ultimately himself.
01:05:05.000Like, he is the one sitting at the center of your heart.
01:05:07.000Once you die to yourself, once you clear away all these clingings and vanities and whatever, he is the one, St. Teresa of Avila says, or even St. Paul says, St. Augustine says, Christ is closer to myself than I am to myself.
01:05:21.000And so if you can rid all these worldly things, all these attachments, die to yourself, you let Christ have you and live through you.
01:05:28.000The delicious irony is that I imagine you could describe that in binary, which is a language that I would like to see it rendered in, that there is some absolute code.
01:05:39.000Alex, thank you so much for joining us today on Stay Free with Russell Brand.
01:05:43.000In spite of his rather evocative name in this space, Alex Jones is the CEO and co-founder of Halo.
01:05:51.000This is a perfect time to sign up to Hallow, and if you use our code, you get a discount and can join many brilliant leaders in this space for the period of Lent.
01:06:01.000Use our code to get a discount on that.