In this episode Trent reveals his New Year’s resolutions and how they can help other Christians truly live out the joy of the Gospel.
Welcome to The Counsel of Trent podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn:
It’s time for me to say goodbye. Not to you, not to the work that I’m doing, but to the things that are trying to kill me. And I bet they’re killing you, or they’re making you miserable, they’re making you unhappy. I hope, after watching this episode, you will seriously consider saying goodbye to them as well in your own life. So, welcome to The Counsel of Trent podcast. I’m your host, Catholic Answer’s Apologist and speaker, Trent Horn. Today I want to talk about something that I’ve embarked on since the beginning of the New Year. It’s still going strong, and I’m planning to stick with it because it’s making me happier, it’s making me holier, and that’s why I want to share it with you.
Trent Horn:
So much so, that I’m not even reserving this topic for Free For All Friday. Because sometimes on Free For All Friday, I’ll talk about health advice. My wife came on, and I think I should actually have her back. A lot of you have said in the comments, “We want more Laura Horn,” and that is how I feel as well. I always want more Laura Horn in my life. We need to have more Laura Horn here on the podcast. Maybe she’ll come back and we can talk about, because she’s really been my coach right now, helping me through this part of my life and the three things I’m giving up, or at least heavily, heavily restricting. And that would be sugar, flour, and social media.
Trent Horn:
Why am I considering this today? Because Monday through Thursday, we talk apologetics, theology, defending the Catholic faith. Well, isn’t this more of like a Free For All Friday kind of topic? I thought so. But at the same time, I think that this might be a key to helping Christians to be better witnesses and better evangelists. Well, anybody listening. If you’re an atheist who’s listening to this, I think this will make you a better person. And, as a result, it’ll make you better at sharing whatever truths you want to share with other people.
Trent Horn:
I’ve had a discussion with my friends at Real Atheology. They have a Twitter handle and a podcast, Real Atheology. I debated one of their members, Ben Watkins, back in August in Houston. Probably the best debate I’ve ever participated in, not just on the existence of God, but a debate in general. We had a great time engaging one another. I really enjoy the Real Atheology crew. They come up with a lot of insightful criticisms and thoughtful ways of looking at religion and Christianity.
Trent Horn:
One argument that some of their admins have brought up frequently, they’ll bring it up online, it’s called the argument from meager moral fruits. The idea here is that, well, if Christianity really is so life-changing, especially from the Catholic view, it talks about how sanctifying grace is infused into our souls, we should see the fruits of this. Why is it that there’s meager moral fruits? That it seems to people that Christians and non-Christians are morally on a par. Not that Christians are bad people, but that they don’t stand out from non-Christians. And they should, if grace is a real thing, if conversion is a real thing. So, that’s what makes them skeptical of Christian religious claims.
Trent Horn:
I could do a whole episode on meager moral fruits argument. Even those who defend this argument, Paul Draper is one person, a non-religious philosopher of religion who has defended this particular argument. His case is not so much like any single argument proves there is no God, but it’s more like you add them all up, it tilts the seesaw so it’s more likely than not God does not exist. This is a little jelly bean you put on there that tilts the seesaw towards atheism, but not in a huge way.
Trent Horn:
Even Draper himself has admitted we don’t have … The problem here is the claim that Christians are as moral as non-Christians or an equivalent. That’s a sociological claim that I think a lot of people make based on assumptions, based on their personal interactions with others, which may not be true. So, that may not be true. If you do a large rigorous sociological survey, which I don’t know how you would, it may not be the case. We also have to contend with the fact you have people who claim the name Christian, claim the name Catholic, but don’t believe in the core beliefs, or they haven’t darkened a church in years, so how much of a graceful life are they really living.
Trent Horn:
I’m not saying every bad Christian is a fake Christian. There are people who are genuine Christians who do really terrible things, and they need to repent of that or they’re going to go to the bad place. But there are problems. I don’t think it’s a decisive argument. And I think the Real Atheology crew … Oh, also, you go back in time, I think there’s good evidence that many pockets in history, Christians were outstanding. You have, in ancient Rome, the Christians, they were the ones rescuing, helping the widows, the orphans, rescuing infants who had been abandoned. So I think, even in those cases, when Christians were in the minority, they really did stick out.
Trent Horn:
The other meager moral fruit I might say is, well, what standard are you using? Because I would say practicing Christians are less likely to engage in foreign occasion, abortion, same-sex behavior. So the problem is our culture, like the Real Atheology crew and others may, they don’t see abortion as an immoral thing, as the lack of abortion as some kind of moral fruit to brag about. We might have a disconnect there as well.
Trent Horn:
So why am I going on and on about the meager moral fruit argument? Because the Real Atheology crew does say to me, “Hey, at the very least, even if it doesn’t really prove atheism, it’s something to remind Christians, ‘Get your act together.'” If you’re being mean, because I’ve seen, oh, it’s the worst. It’s just the worst. I’ll go online, I saw a Christian, I think this individual was a Christian apologist who was engaging the Real Atheology crew, saying something like, “Maybe you ding dongs should read something for a chance.” And I’m like, “No, no.” I even found a GIF. Is it a GIF? I want to say it’s a GIF. Jiff is a peanut butter. It’s a GIF. It’s a hard G. Whatever – of Fozzie bear doing a hand palm meme. The other one might have been, I would’ve would’ve gone with Captain Picard from New Hope, covering his brow.
Trent Horn:
I’m like, “Oh, of all the atheists you could make fun of. There are atheists who don’t do their homework. Real Atheology is not one of them. Don’t do that.” And I’m sure this individual, if they were talking to Ben Watkins or the other crew in person, this particular individual, I doubt they would’ve called them ding dongs. And, of course, in internet rhetoric, that is one of the least offensive. I’ve seen way more offensive things on the internet.
Trent Horn:
If anything, if somebody called me that, I think I would laugh. “Trent Horn to such a ding dong.” I don’t know. It just reminds me of either doorbell ditching or eating a Hostess snack cake. But it’s bad. And that’s what social media does. It’s their way to say, “If you really are Christians, get your act together.” They’re channeling Jesus. “By their fruits, you shall know them,” is what the Lord said Right? “By their fruits, you shall know them.”
Trent Horn:
That’s the problem I have is, oh, we should be showing that if you have your … and I’m guilty of this too. Why don’t we stand out more from the crowd? I might be fine here on my podcast, then I get in an argument with somebody out in public because they irritated me. Not anything crazy or anything like that. But I’m not as joyful. I’m not as living the fruits of the holy spirit. And why is that? But I will not jump to the conclusion, “Well it’s because God doesn’t exist, and grace isn’t real.” No, I reject that conclusion.
Trent Horn:
But I have thought maybe there’s another explanation. Maybe there are things in the modern world, because we believe grace builds on nature. It doesn’t replace on it. That’s a Catholic motto, philosophy, for a long time. Grace does not replace nature, it builds on it. When we are saved, when we become adopted children of God, it does not turn us into divine marionette and God makes us act all perfect. Grace builds on our nature. So, if we were already naturally a virtuous person, we get even more virtuous. But it doesn’t overpower it, that if we are not very virtuous, if we’re lazy in that regard, we’re still going to exhibit those tendencies. They’ll be improved, but it’s up to us to put in the natural work of building virtue for the holy spirit to work upon that. Grace builds upon nature.
Trent Horn:
The problem is if our natural selves are hobbled by things in the modern world that make our dispositions more likely to be dour, angry, selfish, despairing, then that hinders our ability to put forward one of the most important evangelistic arguments we have, which is the fruit of the holy spirit, a joyful Christian life. And grace builds on nature. Sometimes nature is really, really potent with these modern that things I think are killing us.
Trent Horn:
The three that I’m working on right now to give up, are sugar, flour, and social media. And let me explain why, and I would encourage you to do this. And it is hard. It is so hard, but it’s worth it. I’ve done it for about two weeks now, and I’m seeing the results. I like it. I really like it. These are three things in the modern world that I think, whoever you are, but let’s focus on Christians. It’s killing us. It’s making us bad people and harder to share the gospel.
Trent Horn:
So, what are the three things? And the first two are foods. I offer a disclaimer. Trent Horn is not a nutritionist. He cannot give you nutrition advice. Don’t sue him. I don’t know why my lawyer is Kermit the Frog. But I’m not a nutritionist. Someone will say, “You shouldn’t give diet advice. You’re not a nutritionist.” Well, I can know certain things are just bad for you. Sugar is bad for you. Okay? Maybe there was a time, if you lived centuries ago and you just ate cane sugar every now and then, or cocoa leaves, or whatever. Well, not cocoa leaves. That’s what they make cocaine out of. Well, I guess if you ate just the leaf it’ll give a delightful numbing sensation. Just like you chew bark of the willow tree it’s like it’s aspirin.
Trent Horn:
But processed refined sugar, and this is also true for flour. Think about it. It’s an unnatural white powder that we can’t get enough of that makes us act irrationally, or it harms our health. If it’s a white powder, it’s probably not good for you. And sugar is one of these things. Now this is one, that it’s interesting though, there are a lot of documentaries on Netflix, Amazon Prime. I know, because my wife and I, late at night, once the kids go to bed, our first ritual is, “What documentary are we going to watch?” And we flick through them. There’s a lot on big sugar. And big sugar, like big tobacco decades ago, lobbied and tried to say, “Oh, cigarettes aren’t bad for you.” You had the Flintstones smoking Lucky Strike cigarettes in cartoons.
Trent Horn:
And then, eventually, that [inaudible 00:11:18] with big tobacco. We’re like, “How could they have done that?” Well, we use sugar. We market sugary things to kids that are so bad for them. One urban legend that I have heard, I don’t know if this is true. I think it’s true. I’ve looked at the boxes. I think it’s true. On cereal boxes, the mascots, like the Lucky Charms leprechaun, Captain Crunch, they’re looking down. Why are they looking down? the idea is they’re looking down, they’re looking at the kid in the shopping cart who is looking up at them. Maybe that’s true. Maybe it’s not. I like to think it’s true.
Trent Horn:
But sugar, it is bad for you. Everybody will eventually admit that. It doesn’t take much. There’s an article here on WebMD that talks about why it’s bad for you. Now you got the traditional things. It gives you dopamine, so you get hooked on it. It alters your mood. Studies have shown that high sugar intake leads to a greater risk of depression in adults. It’s bad for your teeth. Other things you may not have thought of. It’s bad for your joints. Sugar increases your risk of rheumatoid arthritis, because sugar is inflammatory. It inflames your joints. It inflames your skin. It makes your skin age factor.
Trent Horn:
It says here, “Excess sugar attaches to proteins in your bloodstream and creates harmful molecules, advanced glycation, and products. Age.” It ages your skin, damages collagen and the elastin in your skin. Protein fibers keep your skin firm and youthful. Bad for your liver, bad for your heart, bad for your pancreas, bad for your kidneys, makes you weigh more. It’s just bad all around for you. We know it’s bad for, and I knew it was bad for a long time, but I couldn’t kick it. I just didn’t think it was the point. I thought sugar brought me so much joy I couldn’t live without it. But the more I’m seeing now is, actually, no, I can live just fine without it. And I have a lot of other joy in my life instead of it.
Trent Horn:
Of the three things, I think it’s number two hardest for me to give up is sugar. Now, here’s the thing. It’s not a total give up. Because, if you look in anything you read, sugar is … Some people use the rule that it can’t be one of the first three ingredients of a product. So, my kids are getting the peanut butter and Nutella sandwich the other day, and it’s fine for them because they need a lot of these sugars. They need this. I don’t give them just sugar cereal. But peanut butter, Nutella, something for them to eat to give protein and sugar. They burn through that stuff real fast. And I’m like, “Oh, I’d love to have some Nutella.” Maybe sugar’s not one of the first three ingredients? Hazelnut oil, sugar. I’m like, “Oh, it is.” Everything you look at.
Trent Horn:
But for me, I still have sugar a little bit. I’ll have a tiny little glass of almond milk that’s sweetened. It has refined cane sugar in it. When I would go to Aldi, I love Aldi chocolate. Aldi chocolate is the best. But not anymore. It’s not worth it to me. Because I would think, “Oh, I could just have a little square of chocolate at nighttime.” But then one square turns into two square turns into two bars. Then I have one after every meal during the day. And it starts to add up. Or I go out places, I go to the movies. Popcorn makes my stomach feel bad, but at the movies that serve you food, I get little French fries to nibble on. By the end of the movie I’m like, “Oh, a chocolate shake. The ones they make here are really good.” It’s like the chocolate shape from Pulp Fiction. $5 for a chocolate shake? Whatever it was. But in the end, that momentary pleasure, it’s like sin. Momentary pleasure and a lifetime of regret. It follows you around, and it’s just not worth it.
Trent Horn:
But you know what really helped me to turn myself around? It’s framing things. And the framing will come up again in getting rid of social media. But I was sitting in a restaurant. I was eating my food and I could hear the people in the booth behind me and a guy said, “Oh, I’m not going to get a soda. That’s just liquid candy.” I thought about it for a minute. And I was thinking, “Wow. If I told somebody, if I told my wife, she said, ‘What do you want to drink?’ And I said, ‘Oh, take some chocolate bars and peppermint patties, throw them in a blender, mix it up and pour it in a glass.'” That’s a sign of a serious eating disorder. What is wrong with me?
Trent Horn:
And even still, imagine if I was like, “You want some ice cream?” If you could take that ice cream, put it in a blender with milk and condense it, I would drink it instead of eat it. What’s wrong with you? But that’s a shake. But that’s what soda is. Soda, it’s like chopped up candy. It’s black. We should know it’s not good for us. It’s a black liquid. We’ve been conditioned by thousands of years of evolution to not drink stuff like that. And so, the framing, no, I don’t need to drink liquid candy, so I basically given up soda. That, itself, I think that’s where I’m probably getting the majority of my sugar content.
Trent Horn:
I’ve tried to find substitutes. I will say this. In saying no to sugar, I have said yes to cheese a lot more. But I feel like cheese is not like sugar. People will go out and they’ll do anything to get. There’s a real drive for sugar. Cheese is a really, people really love cheese, no doubt. But, I guess, here’s an example. If you gave someone who is compulsively eating a cheesecake, if you gave me a cheesecake and I was hungry or I was just in a sugar mood, I could just devour that cheesecake, and keep getting like, “Yes, yes. Oh, this is so good.” Even when it starts to turn bad, I’m like, “Oh, it still tastes good. I got to have more.”
Trent Horn:
But if you gave me a block of cheddar cheese, I might start eating, and I love me some sharp cheddar. But after just going through a little bit of a block of cheese, I’m like, “Oh, I think I’m good. I think I had enough sharp cheddar cheese.” I wouldn’t devour a block of cheddar cheese like you could just like a cheesecake. The calories are not as dense and not as bad for you. That was a framing there, sugar.
Trent Horn:
The other one is flour, especially refined flour, like white flour. Basically, for me, no bread, no flour tortillas. I still have some corn flour and things, but I try to cut back on that. But it’s bread. When people think, “Oh, it’s gluten. I got to get into gluten free.” It’s the bread. It’s something about the bread. When I eat it, it makes me tired later. It makes me feel bad. Why is it bad? Here’s the funny thing about white flour. When white flour was first invented, they didn’t have industrial process to do it at a high scale. So white flour, white bread, was considered something for nobility or royalty. Whole wheats were darker, harder. They were for the commoners, essentially commoners. I mean, this is the 19th century. Lower class people.
Trent Horn:
But it’s funny now that it has the production scale has scaled up, white bread, the thing about white bread, like Wonderbread. Well, who is Wonderbread for? It’s not for Richie Rich. They get their oat bread. They get their gluten-free bread. What’s wrong with it? It says, according to one article, “the consumption of refined flour raises your blood sugar and your insulin, causing metabolic dysfunction. Refined flour is depleted in nutrients.” And it has harmful additives. They try to add the vitamins back in, but it’s just not the same. And when you eat refined flour, it displaces the healthier foods from your diet.
Trent Horn:
So why am I talking about food so much? What does food have to do with evangelism? Well, you know the phrase, “You are what you eat,” right? Even St. Paul, in the New Testament, he talks about how there are people who won’t follow God. And he says their god is their belly. An interesting phrase. Where it is. You know what? I’m going to look it up right now. Their god is their belly, and that is Philippians 3:19. “Their end is destruction. Their bellies are their god. Their glory is in their shame. Their mind is devoted to earthly things.” Their bellies are their god.
Trent Horn:
The first commandment says thou shalt have no other gods before you. My belly was my God. I would, at 10:00, I could hear it whisper to me, “Just go to McDonald’s. You know you want that fake cheese. You want that fake cheese so bad. And those sugary buns.” It could tell me to do things, even if I didn’t know they were good for me. The more you say no to it, the less power it has over you. And if you are eating these bad things, I feel like it will give you a poor disposition, bad mood, bad health. That catches up with us and prevents us from living the joy of the gospel.
Trent Horn:
This was revolutionary me. I always thought, “Oh, I’m fine. I don’t need to worry about that. I can eat this stuff and I’m doing okay.” But I noticed the weight was catching up to me. I’m 36 years old. I mean, judging by statistics, I think I’m at the halfway point of my life, Lord willing. I could get hit by a bus tomorrow. But statistically I’m halfway through my life and I could play fast and loose with the first half of my life. But I can’t anymore, I feel like. My parents even told me. “What you do now in your 30s, 40s, they’ll sow fruit in your 50s, 60s, and your 70s.” Now I don’t want food. I don’t want these things to be a god over me. They’re something that served me when I want just a tiny little bit of sugar.
Trent Horn:
Oh, the substitutes. Let me tell you the substitutes that helped me get the through this, then I’m going to talk about social media, which is harder than the previous two. Things that I’ve substituted are carbonated water, sparkling water. That’s been nice. I don’t need soda. I just want the little bubbles, soda water. I don’t need the sugar in it. I just want a little carbonation. That’s all. Or putting little lemon or lime slices into water. Fun. It makes it a little bit more fun. Cheese. Instead of dessert. I had a terrible sweet tooth.
Trent Horn:
What I’ve tried to do now is, for a dessert, I’ll do maybe just a small bowl of strawberries with heavy whipped cream. Now, there’s calories in there. I could cut that out, but psychologically it makes me feel good at the end of the night. I feel like it’s not processed, so it doesn’t work over my system hard. A similar one I’ll do are blueberries and goat cheese. Just a little. One serving of goat cheese and some blueberries. I don’t know. That might be 120 calories. Goat cheese is pretty dense. But I feel like it doesn’t hurt my … I don’t feel as bad like I do eating sugar. That it’s natural.
Trent Horn:
When you go to the store, I’m not a diet expert, not a diet guru. If you go to the store, I would just recommend buy things in the outer aisle, not the inner aisles. So, if it’s in the fruit, vegetable, meat, seafood, dairy sections. Bakery, just stay away from there as well. The outside except for the bakery. All of that. If it’s not processed, if it’s not in a box, if it’s nuts, if it’s lentils in a can. Stay away from processed things. I think it’s good for, us good to improve our dispositions so we can really live out the joy of the gospel, and have energy, and have the energy to be holy. Right?
Trent Horn:
What’s the hardest thing about being holy sometimes? Sometimes I feel like I just don’t have the energy to be holy. And why? Why isn’t holy spirit give me a jump start? Well, grace builds on nature. I’ve sapped myself of energy by using my body to break down this junk food. And so I think it’s sugar, flour. You can get through it.
Trent Horn:
But honestly, the hardest one for me to get rid of, the hardest one, is social media. I mean, it’s amazing. And it’s hard, because I’m always sneaking down to the fridge to try to get something. But I’m on my computer working, or I have my phone next to me, so it can be hard. You’re so tempted to want to log onto social media. I’ve decided though, I wrote, actually, let me see if I can find it here. I realized, look, I only have so much time. And I really enjoyed my wife and I, several years ago, we learned budgeting skills for money, and it changed our life. It made things really, really great for us so that we could be, by budgeting our money, we had more money to give away to help people. It’s not like, “Where’d all my money go?” Kermit the frog here. Where’s my money? Instead of when you control the money, it’s like, “Oh. I know where my money is, and I have enough to give, to bless, and to help other people.”
Trent Horn:
I think the same thing is true of our energy. We need to budget our energy, so that I have enough to give to other people. Not just give people my treasure, but give them my time, my talents. So, if I’m spending energy digesting bad food or staying up too late at night. I don’t have enough energy. I got to budget money, budget energy, and budget time. Budgeting time. This is something, I actually haven’t tweeted a lot since the beginning of the new year. And what I have tweeted, or social media, Facebook, I’ve just shared, “Here’s an episode I did for my podcast.” What I’m going to end up doing now is, I’m going to save it for rare circumstances. Rare, rare, rare. But I just don’t want to spend all my time on social media. So, if I would write a tweet that’s controversial, it would be a time suck.
Trent Horn:
Here’s what I wrote on December 29th, before the new year. A haiku to express my recent hesitancy to post certain kinds of tweets. I wrote a haiku. 3, 5, 3 syllables, or 5, 7, 5 syllables. I wrote, “Must dunk on nonsense. Great. A time-sucking flame war. Was it worth it? Nah.”
Trent Horn:
And that’s the thing. I have 24 hours in a day. I spend eight of them sleeping. I want to be present with my Emily. Your time starts to get away from you. And social media sucks it away. And God blessed us with time to help others. If anything, time is one of the most valuable things that we have to give other people. Because you can always work to make more money, but you can’t make more time. And what’s funny is, unlike money, we all have the same amount of time to give others. So, no matter whether you’re rich or poor, you get the same amount of time. You might not have the same leisure time, I understand that, because you might have to work extra this or that. But we have time. We have 24 hours to give to God, or to give to ourselves, or to give to somebody else. What are we going to do with that?
Trent Horn:
I was seeing that, if I tweeted something like, “I’m going to dunk on this person.” And it was hard last few. I would see something just stupid on social media. Like, “this is stupid. I got to write about it.” What would end up happening? I’m going back and I’m checking. What did this person say? What did that person say? Well, I got to reply to them. Or what did they say? Who did this say? And it’s dopamine. It’s like sugar. It’s lighting up my brain, making me happy to see people are engaging with my post. And all time, it just going bye bye. Going bye, bye. It’s not helping anybody.
Trent Horn:
That’s just the time involved in monitoring my own social media, tweets or Facebook posts. Not to mention, I treat it like Netflix, I’ll scroll through and be like, “What did this person say? What did that person say”? And that’s the part I’m still struggling with right now. I’ve cut back on posting, so I’ve saved time there. But I’ll still go on social media when I’m bored just to see what people are saying about things. I’ll try to justify it. “Oh. I’m doing research.” Am I really?
Trent Horn:
So, this one is hard, but why would I give it up? I wrote down some reasons here. It sucks up your time. The valuable time God gave me and get sucked away. It becomes a digital snack. It’s like food. It’s digital snacking that’s bad for you. And remember when I talked about framing, how the reason I could give up soda was because someone told me it’s just liquid candy? I am an adult. I don’t need to drink liquid candy.
Trent Horn:
My wife and I are watching a documentary called The Social Dilemma. One of the people in there said that social media has become a digital pacifier. That when I’m bored or when I’m anxious, basically when I’m bored, I have to look at my phone or I’m going to have a tantrum. I’m going to be upset. That has stuck with me more than all the data saying why social media is bad. That social media has made me, and it’s made you, we’re like babies. And I have a little baby at home. He’s not little, he’s almost 18 months old. He’s so cute. He’s Mr. John Paul, and I love him. I’m going to do a special Free Fall Friday and just have John Paul on and ask him about stuff. And he’ll just say, “Yesh, yesh. Oh.”
Trent Horn:
But he gets upset and I give him his little pacie. And that’s okay, because he’s a baby. But if I get upset, the idea I have to look at my phone or a computer or I’m going to have a little tantrum, and I can’t handle being alone with myself. I don’t want to be a baby who needs Twitter or sugar or rich bread to feel good. I’m not a baby. There’s your quote for 2022. “I’m not a baby.” Trent Horn, Catholic apologist. Maybe you feel that way. I don’t want to be that way. I want to have a robust, natural life for the holy spirit to work upon, so I can have a robust, supernatural life to give and share to other people. And social media goes against that. It also makes, remember what I talked about earlier? Don’t be such a ding dong? It makes you a bad person. That’s the other reason. Right now, in not posting, I’m not being a bad person. And I have been a bad person on social media. I think all of us have at one point. I don’t want to do that. It’s just so tempting.
Trent Horn:
Now, I’m not going to get rid of social media, because I still see the benefit there. I want to share my videos, my episodes. I want to share things with people. I think that’s good. But I’m going to really, really dial back posting. I thought hosting jokes or just nice things. But it’ll be a time suck. I think to myself, what brought me to Christ? Was it Peter [Craift 00:28:54] and William Lane Craig’s tweets? No, it was their books. It was their debates. That’s what brought me to Christ. That’s what brought me to the Catholic faith in the case of Craift, and then Patrick Madrid and others. Not their tweets. Maybe there’s people whose online social media is a ministry that leads people to the Lord. If they’re doing it well, God bless them. That’s just not me.
Trent Horn:
But I could do books. I could write more books. I could do more podcast episodes. I thought, if I have an idea, I don’t want to communicate it in 280 characters. I’ll do a podcast asked episode where I can really flesh it out for people to think about. Or dialogue with someone who disagrees with me about it. I don’t want to snip at people on social media. That’s just the worst. It’s the worst. It’s not for real disagreement.
Trent Horn:
It’s actually the discussion I had, see, I record these out of order so I hope I do this right. I think at the beginning of the week, with Dr. Millies on Roe v. Wade, it started as a Twitter discussion. And when that happens, I say, “Come on my podcast.” Twitter’s not for dialogue. It’s for sniping. I don’t want to do that. And finally, it makes you complicit in a system of control. In the Social Dilemma it says, “There’s only two industries that describe their customers as users, and that would be software and drugs.” If you don’t pay for Twitter and Facebook, Twitter and Facebook aren’t the product. You are the product. Nothing is free. If you use Twitter and Facebook, you’re being sold. Your data is being sold. Your preferences. Advertises everywhere know what you’re doing, and target you in that regard, and change and shift your mind.
Trent Horn:
It’s a drug, and social media is harder to give up than sugar and flour. I feel like it’s harder to give up, probably, than nicotine. Honestly. It is so incredibly hard. But that’s why my next goal in social media, I’ve stopped posting as much, really barely at all. The next goal will be, I think I’m just going to only review social media, maybe 7 or 10 minutes at night. I’ll set a lock on my computer and then I can go on social media, look at it, just see what’s going on, 10 minutes, done. That’s it. No more.
Trent Horn:
Because there is good on social media. I’ll give you an example. If you follow me on social media, especially on Twitter, you’ll know that I give away my books a lot. Some people will tag me. I’ll see someone saying, “I’m thinking of becoming Catholic,” and someone tags me. “You should read Trent Horn’s Why We’re Catholic.” Then I’ll jump in and I’ll say, “Hey, I’ll send you Why We’re Catholic for free.” Then people will often say, “Yeah, that would be awesome.” That, to me, is so worth it. That’s the good of social media, right? Without social media I would’ve never known here’s this person, maybe on the other side of the world, who’s thinking of becoming Catholic, and I can give them a free resource to help them. And some people have emailed me back saying, “You sent me a book a year ago and now I’m Catholic. Thank you.” That’s worth it. That is absolutely worth it to me. So that’s why I’m not going to give it up.
Trent Horn:
To quote a famous poet, “I’m never going to give you up. Never going to make you cry. Never going to,” and it seems like the pledge of allegiance. I don’t know the lyrics unless I actually sing it. (singing) I’m not going to give it up, but I’m going to have to put strict limitations and restrictions so I control it, it does not control me.
Trent Horn:
I think that’ll be helpful. And I hope that it helps you. And especially if you’re a fellow believer, give this a try. Because I think that if we’re going to evangelize people, you can only give what you have. And if you don’t have inner peace, if these things take away your inner peace, you can’t give inner peace to others. So, sugar, flour, social media. You might have to just draw a bright line. That’s why my wife and I talked about bright line eating a while ago. Bright lines say, “No, I can’t do it.” Or strict limits in containment. But if you do it, I know it’ll be hard.
Trent Horn:
You know what’s a hard thing I’ve had right now? Never had before in my life. Food dreams. I dream about food. I dream about eating cake. That’s never happened to me before. Because my body, it’s addicted. Remember how good that sugar was? It gives food dreams. But, it’s worth it. Once again, caveat, not a nutritionist. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I don’t think you can go wrong severely cutting back your sugar, flour, and your social media, and putting something else in its place.
Trent Horn:
Starting this new year actually, I have an app on my phone, Divine Office. I can listen to the liturgy hours read aloud to me. That’s great. I don’t have to have to look at a screen, but I can have that read to me. I prefer that, as opposed to looking at screens. I rather have it just read aloud to me. To fill up our time, to get back our time, so we budget money. We should budget energy, budget time, so we have a surplus of energy and time to glorify God and give to others to benefit them.
Trent Horn:
Well, I hope that was helpful for y’all. I hope it made somewhat sense. But thank you guys for listening, and I’ll include some links in the description below. Yeah, I just hope that you all have a very blessed day.
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