2min chapter

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Doctor Does the Carnivore Diet for 6 Years | Dr. Shawn Baker 167

The Mikhaila Peterson Podcast

CHAPTER

Intro

This chapter explores changing attitudes towards nutrition, focusing on the benefits of carnivore diets as experienced by the hosts. It also features a discussion on Better Fed Beef, a sponsor offering quality cattle products that enhance dietary choices.

00:00
Speaker 2
If there's like a move on the horizon or some sort of a decision that needs to be made for the ministry, everybody's like, well, have you called Jim and you're the guy we call. And now I feel like you've put so much of that wisdom into this book for everybody to glean from. So why did you write it and what was the inspiration there?
Speaker 1
Well, I don't know that you're people call me because I have wisdom. I just kind of the oldest maybe getting toward the oldest guy in the room. That's what usually happens. I always tell officers that, you know, if you're working as a police officer, by the time you're 40, you kind of sense that you cannot run as fast as your partner who's younger. And your ability in the field seems more limited because you're just the older guy. So if you can't get into your 50s as a police officer and have some wisdom, I don't know what you really can offer. Because all the physical skills have started to deteriorate. And so I think that's probably part of it. But this is a book that I've been wanting to write all along. See, I got into this weird kind of backed into being an author. I was serving as a youth pastor when my kids were young. I was their youth pastor. I was their children's minister when they were younger than that. And then I became a lead pastor once my kids were like in the high school, at a high school age, a college age. And right at the end of my time as a youth pastor, I happened to be working with Sean McDowell and we were taking students to Berkeley because Maven's ministries with Brett Conkel, we were doing those kinds of trips. So I was with Sean and Sean said, Hey, you should write a book about the stuff you're teaching youth, your youth group, which was all of the apologetic stuff that I went through to become a Christian. So that's how I wrote Cold Case Christianity, the first book. But to be honest, even by that time, I was really more involved on a daily basis as a pastor connecting the dots on how do we live this thing we now know is true. And so I really wanted to write this book for years and I ended up writing Cold Case first because Sean encouraged me to do that. And then of course that publisher saw me in that niche. So I was writing books like God's Crime, Seeing Her Forensic Faith that really stay in that tight lane of apologetics. But when I went to the next publisher, I said, Hey, here's the book I want to write. And I pitched this book, I had a different name for it. And they said, Well, you know, we want you to do like a Cold Case Christianity for us. Well, I've already done Cold Case Christianity. They said, Well, can you do something that's in that Jesus space, some aspect of your investigation, maybe that you didn't write about in cold. But there was a few of those things I could have written about that I didn't write about. So I wrote a book called Person of Interest for them. And finally, they said, Okay, now you have permission to write this book. This is the book, honestly, that I would want to write for a long, long time because when it push comes to shove, I do think that in a Brenna culture right now that that's an old guy. Yeah, back when I was looking at Christianity for the first time, that was in the 90s. And and I was important to me. Is it true? I had what I thought was a pretty squared away life. And I wasn't asking the second question, which I think that people in my son's generation are asking, which is it good? Is it beautiful? Is it necessary? And so that was really, but as I became a pastor years later, I realized that that was what most people wanted to know is, yeah, it could be true yet being ugly truth. That's the source of all kinds of ugly. And I think you see this even in our culture now that Christianity is seen as well, even if you thought it was true, that if it was, it's ugly, it's the source of misogyny and racism and bigotry and homophobia and all these other things that people think are negatives, which of course, those things are. But is that what Christianity is? So that's why it looked like this, which is really more practical, I think. Does it also serve, I think, as an evidence for Christianity? Yes, because if Christianity is true, it ought to describe the world the way it is. It ought to describe us the way we really are. And I think it does. So there's another layer of evidence for Christianity that this book presents. But still in that family, but I think it's more practical in the sense that it's really like, how could we take the truth of Christianity and leverage it to flourish in the way that our creator always intended us to flourish?
Speaker 2
Well, I think that's so important because you mentioned back when you were an atheist and you were asking the question, is Christianity true? And I do think that our job is to try to get people back to that question because a lot of times I quote you all the time, I was looking for the quote, but I couldn't pull it up. But I quote you all the time on this when you said Christianity, I'm a Christian because it's true. It doesn't always even feel like it's working, but it's true. So I want to live my life in a way that reflects truth. But I've been thinking about this, and I'd love your thoughts on this too. But people went from asking, is it true to, is it good? But I almost wonder if we're in a face now where people have already decided what they think about that question. And now they're asking, does it work? Because I think that's as I've investigated deconstruction and all of these things, people have, they don't think it's good, but they also don't think it works. They think that it makes this untenable life that you have to, the idea of laying your own desires down and seeing yourself as a sinner is so oppressive and so abusive and you just have to break free from the chains of that sort of mentality and find something that actually does work. And I feel like your book kind of shows how it does work. But what are your thoughts on that? Because I don't even know if they're asking, is it good? I think they already think it's not good. Now they're wanting to know if it could even work at all.
Speaker 1
Yeah, I think you're right about that. I think first of all, when you say, okay, is it true that that word true is becoming a moving target, right? So if truth is simply your lived experience, something you discover in the context of your own life, it's your own perspective on reality. Well, then you could, I could say it's true, people will hear it as, well, it's true for you. It's true to you, but it doesn't work for me. So it's not true to me. And so the question, that's what I wanted to take an approach that was not, it starts doesn't start with scripture. It starts with true crime. It starts with the stuff that you discover. If you work murders, if you work just criminals. And I think that's part of the problem is that most of us don't get a chance to see the textures of society the way the police officers see them, right? Because most of us don't get called, don't spend an entire shift every single day dealing with the dirty stuff that humans do. We just don't, we might watch it on TV. And even then it's really, it's limited. I've watched a lot of, I was on Dateline in so many years that I still watch a lot of Dateline. And I'll tell you that there's those things, you don't get to see all of it as messy as it is. I protected my viewers on Dateline episodes from some of the ugliest stuff that we were seeing. Because I was actually uncomfortable talking about some of the ugly stuff because it's really too ugly to describe. But you learn certain things about human behavior. Now, it would be interesting to find that these behaviors that you learn by investigating crimes actually contribute, you discover what contributes to flourishing. How do people thrive? Because you're always working cases where just the opposite is occurring. And then if you look at the studies, just so if you just leave scripture out of it, I'm just going to look at how people mess up. And then what studies say about the opposite attributes that cause people to flourish and look at secular studies, and you're going to discover what quote unquote works from a secular perspective. Well, it turns out that you will dumb across by accident all of the core principles of the New Testament teaching on how we can thrive as humans because it, those things are still. So yes, I used to always say that, that I had a life that I thought was working. I had a good marriage, great job, great kids. I just bought this home that I'm limited to house and 30 years later. And I really felt like everything was great. I didn't, I wasn't trying to fix something that was broken. That's for sure. But I discovered this was true. Well, it turns out that all of those things that I had adopted as ways to live in order to flourish were all entirely biblical principles that I had adopted through the culture or just through the fact that if you're created in the image of your creator, you are going to dumb into some of these things even without knowing it. And so that's why I wanted to write a book that just kind of focuses. And here's what I would say too about this idea. The one chapter in this book that I thought was the most interesting was when I discovered this one attribute of human flourishing that leads really to the broadest sense of flourishing, flourishing in terms of your performance at school, your grades, your understanding of how to discover what's true and what's not true will be improved if you adopt this, your relationships will be deeper, you'll be a better employer, a better employee. You'll actually make more money, you'll live longer, you'll have better mental health, you'll have better physical health, pretty much every metric that you can measure of whether humans are doing well will improve. You simply adopt this one thing and this one thing happens to be humility. Now, it's been studied for about 35 years and I've collected all those studies. But it turns out this idea that I should surrender, that I should recognize humbly who I really am, that that is oppressive. Well, the truth comes down to that is how you really are. We got a chapter in the book that just talks about that. Are you really a good person that's been corrupted by bad system? Or are you really the kind of fallen person the scripture describes that will corrupt any system you happen to be placed in? Which of those two things is true? Because if the second thing is true, then the sooner you can come to that conclusion in humility, the more you will thrive. And it turns out there's only one worldview that leverages this core attribute. Because think about it, every other worldview is meritorious. Yeah. Right? I'm going to come closer to God or I'm going to, or in a secular perspective, I'm going to earn something. Every meritorious worldview develops pride. This is why scripture says the only view of God in which we are given something we are told we cannot earn why it's a free gift so that no one can boast. Oh, it's a pride issue. It's a humility issue. So it turns out that one core attribute that causes humans to thrive at the highest level happens to be represented most fully by a worldview that says, hey, stop first and figure out who you really are. And once you come to the conclusion that you're not all you think you are, you will begin to have the best life you ever imagined. Well, that's something to me that speaks. I don't know where else you find that. Do you remember Mike Adams and I were working together doing conferences? He would always laugh about this book that he was writing. How to become humble and 10 easy steps and how I needed eight, right? He's always, and Frank Turic always mentions that book title too. I thought that was Frank's joke. So that was my job. No, that's my job. And I thought that was just so funny, right? And because we know it nately, you cannot chase humility. You cannot pursue it because it just leads to pride. Instead, as Spurgeon says, humility is simply the proper assessment of who we are. And that means you'd have to start by embracing this notion that you're not as great as you think you are. And I know that might sound oppressive, but this idea of are we by our nature sinful is super important. And so we try to describe these with like, you know, 15 true crime stories that illustrate the point, then I'm going to back those up with all of the secular studies that make that point. And then I'm going to reveal to you how scripture has been making that point for 2000 years. So it turns out the truth in true crime is really ancient truth. Yeah. But you just discovered it in a different way when you're working. And I said, what I was seeing, like people would always ask me, well, why is this our guy? Why do you think this is the guy? Well, I don't want to ever ask like, what did you learn about humans work in this case? It's always to me. But the most fascinating part of it though, is what do you learn working in
Speaker 3
the
Speaker 2
case?

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