Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Hey friends, Asher Whitmer here with Unfeigned Christianity. Back again with a review of my book Live Free. We're gonna be taking 20 days to just go through each chapter and review it. It's been four years since I published it. If you have have a copy, I invite you to pull it out and, and go through it with me. Maybe you've read it already and you have some thoughts and you want to interact with me on it. Maybe you haven't read it and this is your chance to, to finally read it. If you don't have a copy, just hop on over to Amazon. There's a link below this video and you can get your own copy as well. Although I will let you know that over Black Friday, I'm gonna be running a really good deal on the book, the Kindle version, and we'll be releasing the audio book also.
Speaker 0 00:00:46 So last time we looked a little bit why I'm doing this, and if you didn't see that video, go ahead and watch that one. That's also linked below. But we, we reviewed the introduction and just kind of some general thoughts about the book this, in this video, I'm gonna review chapter one, which the title is The Day Every Man Wishes He Could Undo Kinda the, the whole goal that I wanted to capture in this first chapter, which it's interesting, there's 20 chapters in this book, and I wrote this first chapter very early on in the whole project. I think everything else in the book was written, I don't know, probably five to six times, like rewritten, edited, rewritten. And I'm pretty sure this first chapter is pretty much original. Like there's very little, some editing stuff, but it's not like I rewrote it. I was just kinda interesting how that turned out in the whole project.
Speaker 0 00:01:46 It, the, the chapter came to me at one time, I believe it was late, fairly late at night. It may have been in the morning, I kind of forget. But um, just, I just remember sitting and kind of pounding it out. And the whole goal, the whole aim that I was trying to, to show or depict is in my own journey growing up, I would go places that there would be small groups and so forth where we would talk about sexual purity. We would talk about morality and someone would share, maybe a guest speaker was brought in or something and he'd kind of share a story, share his journey. But, and it was a good testimony, people would talk about the things they've struggled with and how they've overcome. But I always had this nagging question. It was like, Yeah, but you haven't done what I did have you, And we're gonna get into it. Like, this is chapter one's, just kind of the beginning. There's gonna be some other things, even even some more current things to the time of my writing a as an adult, not just a teenager anymore. But in the first chapter, I wanted to kind of totally set the stage, like, we're not gonna talk in vague terminology.
Speaker 1 00:02:59 We're gonna get like, very real in the type of stuff I was in. And so that was my goal in writing in how I wrote this first chapter. Now interestingly, I had at least two, maybe three people, I think I had five or six guys kind of close around me, review the book before I publish it, like read the manuscript. And there were two people who, who expressed that maybe, well, actually I don't, I don't remember if they said specifically to my, my book. I, I sort of think they had some examples in my book, but I can't remember it right offhand. But I remember them talking about how there were other books on moral purity that were so descriptive and vivid that it actually caused them to struggle. For instance, uh, one of them talked about how one book introduced him to masturbation and he had never struggled with masturbation before.
Speaker 1 00:03:57 And so because of that advice, I toned it back a little bit. Now it's interesting, as I was reading through it, listening through it this time, I was like, Oh wow, like <laugh>, I forgot how blunt I was and just kind of how much I put it out there. And this is the tone back version of it, but one of the things that a lot of people have said after toning it back, still trying to get that feel of like, I'm not, I don't want anybody reading this thinking like, Yeah, but you haven't done what I did. Um, after the publishing, a lot of people have told me, and I haven't kept track how many people I know, at least a handful of people, five, six people have said they really appreciated how specific I was. And yet it wasn't overly done. It wasn't overly specific.
Speaker 1 00:04:50 So I don't know, I would love to hear how do you feel like that was handled? Does it, Cause I do not want anybody to struggle as a result of what they read in this book. Um, I know some guys, some guys I have mentored, I gave the book to them and, and they talked about how they got to certain parts and they were like, Man, I don't, I don't want to, like, it's weird to think of you, my mentor talk having these thoughts or, or thinking about some of these things or doing some of these things. And so then they stopped the book. And I don't know if that's a, if that's a unique thing to people I've mentored or if it's something you thought about, I keep telling them, I said, Hey, you should, you should read the whole thing. See how it turns out <laugh>, cuz it doesn't end there of the story is a progression. I very much wanted to kind of take the reader on a journey and not just like, have blocked sections where I'm dealing with certain aspects. Like there are some somewhat cliff hangers and that's on purpose. Like, I want you to kind of sit in the struggle or the
Speaker 2 00:05:56 Uncomfortability of even being so raw and we're gonna unpack like some of the things I talked about how, um, looking at pornography and even masturbating, like it felt good and we get into this stuff not because like nobody says, Hey, this is gonna cause all kinds of shame and years of bondage. We get into it because it, it feels good and we maybe we don't even really know why. Like, we're just instantly like we keep coming back and we're gonna get into that in later. Like chapters five through seven, we're gonna unpack a lot of this, but it's because it's feeding us something our psyche is looking for. It's giving us something. And so I wanted to, to kinda remind us of that, you know, and, and almost have like this conflict going on inside of us that like, wow, this is, Yeah, that's, that's how it was.
Speaker 2 00:06:55 It, it did feel kind of good. It was like this pleasurable experience, um, because if you knew how dark it was, you would've ran right away, right? <laugh>, like, no, any of you struggling with lust right now, if you knew the, the bondage and the shame that it would bring, you would've ran the other way. Um, and, but it didn't bring that right away. And that's why you're struggling. And we want to dive into that and unpack that and figure out like what's going on. And so that's why I start out that way. Obviously there's, my story is unique. I did grow up in a fairly sheltered Christian home, and so it was in the context of the internet filter being turned off. And I go and, and um, look up naked women because I had heard that's what pornography meant. And I was curious what that looked like.
Speaker 2 00:07:49 And some guys, you may be watching this now and, and your experience is far more graphic, like was actually interacting with someone physically. And, and so I know that, that there's gonna be these, these thoughts of shame and, and questions like, can I be forgiven? This is, I've done really bad things, but the whole goal of the stage I want to set is that we're not gonna disguise anything. We're not gonna, we're not gonna pretend like somehow it wasn't as bad as it really was. I'm not trying to be a hero here and promote like, oh, look at me as a good example. Rather, I'm just gonna be very real about the struggles I've dealt with in hopes that you will be fully convinced that you've not done anything too bad for the grace of God and that you feel safe to be real as well. That's, that was the whole goal of kind of setting up the chapter that way. I would love to hear, how does chapter one land on you? If you've read the book, if you haven't read the book, I, you know, I'd love
Speaker 3 00:08:54 Feedback based on what you see in this video and just the review, but, um, I would, I would love to hear, yeah, was that done well? Um, does it cause struggle? And yeah, how can, how can we create a place of safety for guys to open up and tear back those, those layers, those thoughts of like, Yeah, but you haven't done what I did and, and this distancing from even God, because we're not sure he can quite forgive what we've done. Nothing is beyond the reach of Jesus. And we're gonna look at that in the whole book. So till tomorrow, we're gonna look at chapter two. Thanks for watching.
