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Everyone's Proud of Me. I'm at 70%.

Modern Man

Two campus missionaries, two conversions, and one question under the whole hour: what is this actually costing you. Noah Gilchrist and BradPierson sit down for Modern Man — College Edition, recorded in the St. Thomas More Student Center at Ohio State with Blake Madsen ofFOCUS and Gavin Gunkel of St. Paul's Outreach.Life is not about the return. It is about the cost. That is the sentence the hour turns on, and it is said plainly: we keep asking what a decisiongives back, and the only ones ever worth anything are the ones that took something. You can feel it when you are giving seventy percent.Everyone around you says you are doing a good job. You know you are half in. That is the worst feeling a man can carry, and most men live insideit without saying so.Before that, two conversion stories told without any polish. One of them was a high school quarterback whose father left in a scandal when hewas seventeen, who decided in that moment to be the villain because owning the identity hurt less than carrying the hurt. His principal told himthat if he stopped choosing to be a bad person he could do great things, and he wore it as a badge instead. A Protestant missionary invited him toa Bible study. He came alive, spent a year in evangelical churches learning to read scripture and pray, went on a Catholic mission trip intendingto show those Catholics what real faith looked like, and watched a girl named Teresa worship in a way that made him think she loved her versionof Jesus more than he loved his. He went home and attended daily Mass for six months in a tiny rural parish, standing when they stood, kneelingwhen they knelt, until one morning at the elevation he knew. He is now a husband and a father, seven years on staff, fundraising his entire salary.The other grew up a lukewarm Catholic in Dallas, led a youth group while privately unsure whether being Catholic counted as being Christian,decided it was not working out for him, and spent two years as a self-described atheist. He went to a school nobody from his city goes to, joined afraternity, led a pledge class of thirty, and set out to be the alpha of the alphas. Then he bought a twenty dollar puppy to impress a girl, the dognearly died of parvo, and in the middle of a four day treatment at nineteen he prayed the first real prayer of his life. The dog lived. The girl didnot work out. He kept the promise anyway, met missionaries, and heard a talk that reframed his life in one line: a boy asks what he can get; aman asks what he can give.Then the part of the conversation that applies to every man listening, whatever he believes. Real discernment is between two goods, which meansevery choice costs you a good thing. Fall in love with all the options, so that choosing breaks your heart, because you deserve to feel that. God putus in time and space, and time and space means tradeoffs. You do not get to avoid the bill. You only choose which one you pay. Take the moneyand you pay in time, because when your earning capacity goes up your hours stop being yours. Take the mission and you pay in stability. There isno version where nothing is spent.