Courage Under Fire: Everett Piper on Truth, Politics, and Faith

In the latest episode of the Courageous Crossroads podcast, host Jeff Johnson engages in a thought-provoking conversation with Everett Piper, former president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, focusing on the themes of truth, politics, and faith amid today’s cultural landscape. They explore the concept of courage in light of recent political events, referencing Donald Trump’s instinctive responses and discussing the distinction between courage and narcissism. The dialogue critiques the disconnect between academia and the working class, emphasizes the importance of speaking truth despite societal pressures, and challenges listeners to confront cultural capitulation. Piper also delves into biblical perspectives on immigration, using scriptural references to argue against unrestricted policies, while advocating for practical courage in political engagement. The conversation ultimately calls for a more assertive Christian stance in a polarized world, urging individuals to stand firm in their beliefs.

Everett Piper is a nationally recognized author, speaker, and thought leader on cultural and political issues, known for his unwavering stance on truth, courage, and conservative principles. He served as the president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University for over a decade and gained national attention for his viral op-ed, This Is Not a Daycare, It’s a University, which later became a best-selling book. A frequent contributor to national media outlets, including The Washington Times 
and Fox News, Piper is a staunch advocate for academic freedom, biblical values, and intellectual honesty in an era of cultural capitulation. His books, speaking engagements, and commentaries challenge audiences to stand firm in their convictions while engaging in meaningful discourse.

In his second appearance on Courageous Crossroads, Everett Piper joins host Jeffrey L. Johnson for a deep dive into the nature of courage in today’s political and cultural climate. The conversation covers the recent presidential election, the intersection of courage and narcissism, and how political figures, including Donald Trump, demonstrate—or lack—true bravery. Piper also unpacks the dangers of capitulation in modern society, highlighting how groupthink erodes individual responsibility and moral clarity. The discussion extends to biblical convictions being reframed as political statements, with Piper providing a powerful critique of how scripture is often misused to push ideological agendas. This episode is a 
compelling call to action, urging listeners to get in the game, engage in tough conversations, and stand firm in truth—even when it costs them everything.

Thank you for listening! We hope you feel inspired and encouraged by our conversation today. If you did, be sure to share this episode with others.

Let’s stay in touch:

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• Email us at info@crossroadsapologetics.org
• Visit our website www.crossroadsapologetics.org

See you in the next episode! Be blessed!

Full Transcript

Intro:
Welcome to Courageous by Crossroads Apologetics, a look into what motivates us to step out in courage and the everyday bravery of men and women like you. In each episode, we hear a personal story of bravery centered around this question. What’s the most courageous thing you’ve ever done? And now your host, founder of Crossroads Apologetics, Jeff Johnson. 

Jeff Johnson:
Hey, everybody, this is Jeff. Welcome back to another edition of the Courageous Crossroads podcast, where we ask the question, what’s the most courageous thing you’ve ever done? Except today we’re not asking that question because this is Everett Piper. He’s a return guest, and the first time he was on, I got an opportunity to ask him that, and he answered it wonderfully, of course. But Everett is dear friend of mine from Oklahoma. He’s the past president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University. I was able to share a little bit of coursework with him back at Oxford University in 2016, and he is a man of great intellect and a big heart and strong opinions. 

Jeff Johnson:
So, anyway, I got the opportunity to circle back with Everett because of the stuff that’s going on in local politics here in the United States, but also the state of the church and a whole bunch of other topics. But I think you’re really going to enjoy this episode with Everett Piper, Part 2. So, without further ado, here’s my dear friend Everett. Everett, thanks for being on the program again. Your return visitor. I’ve only had one other return visitor, so you’re in. You’re in Rare Air right now. So appreciated having you the first time around, but thanks for joining us today. 

Everett Piper:
Oh, I’m delighted to join you. And you’re one of my heroes. I appreciate what you do, and I’m with you every step of the way. 

Jeff Johnson:
Wow. Thank you, Everett. I, you know, so the courageous crossroads. So our main focus is to ask the question, what’s the most courageous thing you’ve ever done? And I, and I love that question because I feel like I could ask people that question in the course of a day, in the course of a week, in the course of a month or a year, you know, what’s the most courageous thing you’ve done since noon, you know, or something like that, and people would have answer for it. And I think there’s a lot of value in what that answer is because you’re a returned guest. I’m not going to get to the main question, what’s the most courageous thing you’ve ever done? You’ve answered that already. 

Jeff Johnson:
But I do want tap your mind on the topic of courage with our the current cultural scene, political scene, that sort of thing. So I want to jump off with a question, looking at the recent presidential election, where do you see examples of true courage or a lack of it among our national leaders? How’s that for a first question? 

Everett Piper:
Wow. Wow. I’m trying to think how to answer that question without being too partisan. But the first thing that comes to mind is whether you despise Donald Trump or love Donald Trump. When a man takes a bullet and rather than cowering, steps to the podium when there is no way he could have known whether more shots were coming, and stands there and shakes his fist in the air and says, fight, that is instinctive. You can’t plan for that. You can’t prepare for that. So that is a true indication of who a man is. If you can stand literally in the line of fire and rather than cowering in a foxhole, stick your head up out of the foxhole, stand up out of the foxhole and stand in the face of fire and say, I’m going to fight. Shoot me if you will. 

Everett Piper:
I’m going to fight. Like I say, love Donald Trump, hate Donald Trump. That’s an indication of what’s in a man, because you can’t prepare for it. There’s no way. So that is courageous, I think. I think a lot of people who may have been in doubt of, you know, is. Is his hyperbole contrived, is he manipulative? And he is prone to hyperbole. He does exaggerate. I would not deny that a lot of what he says on a daily basis is hyperbolic. The greatest ever. We’ve never done this before. This is outstanding. It’s better than anything else that’s ever been done in history. I mean, on and on Donald Trump goes. And you can claim that those are all lies, or you can understand that the man communicates, and in hyperbole, you can disagree with. Disagree with his political agenda. But the man has guts. 

Everett Piper:
The man has courage. He’s willing to literally run into the face of the storm, run into the line of fire and say fight, because he believes in what he’s doing. 

Jeff Johnson:
So I would have people, I would have friends, I can imagine that would relate that running into the fire or that hyperbole or whatever with narcissism. How do you. How do you find a demarcation point between courage and narcissism? I mean, you just have to wait until 10 years down the road and see how it shakes out. Or do the two things go hand in hand? 

Everett Piper:
Or I Don’t think they necessarily are synonymous. There are a lot of. I mean, Joshua tells us to be bold and courageous. Is that a call to narcissism? No. The apostle Paul calls the church of Corinth to be steadfast and immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord. Is that a call to narcissism? No. I don’t think courage and narcissism are synonymous at all. Now, is Donald Trump a narcissist? Perhaps he is. Again, I’m not going to apologize. 

Jeff Johnson:
Yeah. 

Everett Piper:
Excuse me. I’m not going to. I’m not going to apologize for supporting him when he’s right, but I’m not going to hesitate in criticizing him when he’s wrong. I think that’s our obligation as conservatives in the political arena. We don’t, we don’t vote for a king, we vote for a constitution. And if our leader is narcissistic, then we say, yeah, that was an arrogant thing to do. Is Donald Trump arrogant at times? Is he self congratulatory? Sure he is. Sure he is. Is he a narcissist? Perhaps so. But does that negate his courage? Not at all, in my view. I don’t think they’re synonymous. 

Jeff Johnson:
I. Well, we might be going down a road here, but it’s the same topic. I think we can see courage in a strong personality like Donald Trump, whatever your opinion of that is. I was in an Oxford cohort in 2023 that I very much enjoyed. It was a class on organizational leadership. I went over there four times and studied. And we had, I think it was 56 international students in the cohort. The youngest were in their 20s. The oldest was 72 or 4 or something like that. I’m 57, so I was kind of in the older demographic there. But the richness of that experience was that there were a lot of different ethnic backgrounds, religious belief systems. I mean, it was a real melting pot of that. And it was fun to study leadership in that group. 

Jeff Johnson:
And I walked out of there loving these people. You know, I absolutely trusted them. And there’s a handful of them that I’ve been blessed to have on the program. I sent out a. I sent out a questionnaire to them just yesterday that said, here was the question, how do you perceive the international impact of the new Trump administration on your personal and business life? And the answers were either positive overall with a little explanation, mixed impact. You know, some aspects may beneficial, but others could be. Could pose challenges, negative overall. I anticipate difficulties or disruptions in my personal or professional life and neutral or uncertain, I don’t expect significant changes or it’s too early to tell. You know, I’ve got a small sample set right now. Let me see, I’ve got 15 or 16 that have responded. The majority are negative. 

Everett Piper:
Yeah. Are you surprised? 

Jeff Johnson:
I’m not surprised, yeah. But I’m not surprised. But I’m fishing to find another answer for that. Why do you think that is, Everett? 

Everett Piper:
The results of your survey? Yeah, well, I think it’s the clientele. I mean, my career is in the academy. I’m a product of the ivory tower. I worked in the ivory tower. I supported and championed and push led and administered the ivory tower. Higher education, Liberal arts. The liberal arts academy. And I can tell you right now that 85 to 90% of those faculty and professors, even within Christian education, Christian higher education, would agree with the results of your survey. So I, I think it’s the clientele. And I’m not criticizing the clientele. I, well, in a sense I, I would say, hey, I’m part of you, Jeff and I are part of this clientele. We’re all interested in education, we’re all interested in learning. We’re part of this club. 

Everett Piper:
And I think we need to be self aware that the club by definition is probably going to be critical of the political right. By definition? I mean, you and I were in Oxford when Brexit took place. I remember walking to class that morning. Okay, I lived, my apartment was about five blocks away from our class. I can’t remember where yours was, but I’m walking that five blocks at 7:00, 7:30 in the morning to get there and hopefully have a cup of coffee with Os Guinness before our class starts. 

Jeff Johnson:
Right. 

Everett Piper:
And I’m walking by people that are almost in tears. The Oxford constituency was almost in tears. I heard people talking on their cell phones. They were, it was as if war had come to Great Britain again. Yeah, they were beside themselves in depression. Now these weren’t blue collar folks. These were white collar people. These were educated people. This wasn’t the working class. This was, without sounding pejorative, this was the elite. This was the 5%, the 10% of the population that is been blessed by having such an education and having socioeconomic opportunities that the Oxford population had. They were, they were just. I would argue, Jeff, that our club is disconnected from that working population. And I say that because I came out of it. I was a blue collar kid. My dad didn’t have a high school Education. Neither did my mom. 

Everett Piper:
My dad was a truck driver. I worked in a tool and dye shop after I graduated from high school, and I worked a second job with migrant workers picking apples. That was my trajectory in life had I not gone to college. So I appreciate the farmer, the rancher, the factory worker, the migrant worker. I appreciate their values and their thought processes. They are not stupid. We can’t be elitist and look down our nose at these people and say, well, they just don’t understand. Well, perhaps we don’t understand some of their concerns, some of their values, some of their priorities. Maybe we need to take a spoonful of humility, eat a little humble pie, and listen to those that are outside our club and ask a good question. Why do they support this agenda? 

Everett Piper:
Is it, Is it the result of the standard narrative of, well, they’re xenophobes in American terms. I know some of your clientele is probably listening from Europe and whatnot. In American terms, are they just products of the flyover states, the rural rubes who, in the words of Michael Bloomberg, lack gray matter? I mean, this is what the elites in America say about my dad and my mom, my brothers and my sisters, that they lack gray matter, that their rubes, that they don’t know how to think, they lack education. In the words of Hillary Clinton, they’re deplorables. In the words of Barack Obama, we cling to our God and our guns. Well, that’s insulting to my father and my mother, who were not stupid, but just didn’t have the education that I have. 

Everett Piper:
And to assume that my education trumps their wisdom is a little arrogant on my part. And I refuse to do that. I want to listen to my mother and my father, my aunt and my uncles, my brothers. I want to listen to my cousins who have concerns. And I’m not going to ignore them just because they don’t have a PhD. I’m not going to. I refuse to. So you ask me about courage. I think they have courage. Forget Donald Trump. I probably answered in a way that’s going to set some of your listeners off in the wrong direction. I am not a Trumper. I’ve criticized Donald Trump robust. I know you task for doing so. 

Jeff Johnson:
Yeah. 

Everett Piper:
But I respect people who will run against the narrative, who will take a risk, to the point of, in Donald Trump’s case, even taking Ebola. I, I do not agree with Tulsi Gabbard on a lot of stuff. But here’s what I respect about Tulsi Gabbard. She is a lifelong Democrat. And she’s had the courage and the guts to. To stand against her own and say, wait a second, we’re possibly wrong here, and we need to, again, eat some humble pie and listen to those who’ve disagreed with us for decades. I do not agree with Robert F. With RFK Jr. At all on a lot of things. I think he’s a liberal to the extreme. I don’t agree with his position on abortion. I don’t agree with his position on lgbtq. 

Everett Piper:
I don’t agree with his position on Christian morale, essentially, and his definition of what a human being is. Those are big issues. Those are big issues. But I respect his courage to stand against and. And. And lose everything he’s lost. Jeff, I don’t even know if you know this. A few years ago, I was so blessed to get the Gene Kirkpatrick Award for Academic Freedom. I got called up one day back in my Not. Not a Daycare days. And while when I hit the national news a little bit for calling out the Snowflake Rebellion and Not a Daycare is your. 

Jeff Johnson:
Not a Daycare for that Might Not Know is your book. Yeah, you’ve got a couple of them out there. 

Everett Piper:
And for your listeners in the United States, obviously, we’ve had this camp, this nationwide campus rebellion, where students are saying, hey, you offended me with your ideas, and therefore you should be canceled. You should be removed from the faculty. You should be expelled from campus. I should not have to listen to your unpopular, challenging ideas. And I think that’s antithetical to what the liberal arts education is supposed to be about. And I don’t care whether you’re secular. I don’t care whether you’re Christian. I don’t care who you are. If you believe in good education, liberal education that liberates the mind and liberates the soul. If you believe in the cause of the academy that for a thousand years, literally for a thousand years, has put the words of Christ above the library door as you enter. 

Everett Piper:
And those words are, you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free. If you believe in that, as an educated human being, then you should be open to controversy. You should be open to cognitive dissonance. You should be open to being challenged. You should be open to the possibility that you’re wrong and that somebody has. Who has greater wisdom than you might have something to teach you. To me, that’s what education is for. And in the midst of that kind of commentary here in the United States, when I was on Fox and Friends and Fox News and Even in liberal progressive media outlets like NBC Today and CNN and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, etc. I got nominated for the Gene Kirkpatrick Award for Academic Freedom. And I received that award, went to Washington, D.C. 

Everett Piper:
To, to get my, get my 30 seconds of time in the limelight out there. Yes. And here’s why I brought it up. In answer to your question, Jean Kirkpatrick was a lifelong Democrat. She was a staunch intellectual, lifelong Democrat. Ronald Reagan selected her to be ambassador to the United nations because Jean Kirkpatrick admitted that she might have been wrong in some of her worldview for the majority of her life. Ronald Reagan was a lifelong Democrat and he decided maybe I’ve been wrong. I respect, you know, I Respect Tulsa Gabbard, RFK Jr. Gene Kirkpatrick, Thomas Sowell. I respect these figures because of their courage. It takes a lot of guts. Yeah, because you’re going to get beat up. You’re going to get beat up huge if you contradict your own club, if you stand against your own family. That takes guts. Now. 

Everett Piper:
So I probably should have said that rather than bringing up Donald Trump. If I wouldn’t have brought Donald Trump up, I could have said all of that and probably got further. 

Jeff Johnson:
No, but I would have brought him up. You know, one of the things that I notice, I’m, I, I don’t want to preface it, but I’m going to. And then I’ll ask the question because I’m kind of, it’s leading with what I’m going to preface this with. But I remember four years ago thinking, knowing that there’s two genders. 

Everett Piper:
Common sense. 

Jeff Johnson:
And I almost, there were almost. Everett, I mean, I’m almost ashamed to say it, but there were almost situations where I felt a little bit like I had to check myself if I would say that in a public setting because I didn’t want to offend anybody. I didn’t want anybody’s feathers to get ruffled and I wanted to be, you know, respectful and that sort of thing. Crazy. And there’s just two genders, you know, so we normalized insanity for the last however many years and said there’s what, 27? I mean, the funny thing is, you know, you go onto the Etsy website and they sell a T shirt that says there’s how many different genders? And then you go to check out and it says, what are you, male or female? You know, to check out T shirts. It’s just insanity. 

Jeff Johnson:
But I can say when Donald Trump in his inaugural address said there’s two genders I felt something physical, like oxygen come back into my body or something, and that felt like it was license for me to come out of the shadows and be able to say, yes, there are two genders. And so that courage, and I’m going to label it as courage, with Donald Trump, that courage helped me become courageous, too. So the question I was going to ask that. I’ve just leaded you down the road, but I’m curious what your mind is on it. Do you think Americans are more afraid of speaking the truth today than four years ago? Why or why not? 

Everett Piper:
No, I think people. I think people have been emboldened to enter the market square and say what they think, both on the left and the right. I, I really, I agree. 

Jeff Johnson:
I don’t know. 

Everett Piper:
I don’t know anybody on the progressive side that disagrees with me that is somehow in fear of expressing their views. I, I don’t know anybody there. They may be angry. They vehemently disagree with conservative ideas, but they say so there’s no threat. They’ve been empowered, emboldened, and encouraged. They’ve got a little fire under their feet right now to fight what they believe is wrong. And that’s okay. I think that’s the nature of a free society. Bring it on. Let’s have a good argument, a good debate. Now, the irony is you can’t have a good argument or a good debate if there isn’t some measuring rod of truth outside of yourself. We probably talked about it before in your podcast. You’ve got to have a measuring rod outside of those things being measured, or you can do no measuring. That’s C.S. Lewis, O.S. 

Everett Piper:
Guinness, our teacher, your teacher and mine has said truth is true. Excuse me? Yes, truth is true even if no one believes it. And falsehood is false even if everyone believes that truth is true. And that’s just the end of it. So you have to have truth with a capital T, or you can’t have an argument, you can’t have a debate. You can’t have an educational process where you end up coming to a conclusion that is valid and right and real. Right. And I think because Donald Trump, in spite of all of his faults, and he has many. And the irony is, he’s not a traditional conservative on sexual morality. We all know that about him, right? He boasts about his infidelities in his books. He does. That’s indisputable. He’s been married. How many times is it? Four? I don’t know. 

Everett Piper:
I can’t remember how many times he’s been married, it seems to always go out and try to find a trophy wife throughout the course of his entire life. Now he’s probably too old, don’t care anymore. I don’t know. I’ve met with him, We’ve talked about it on your show. I had the opportunity to meet with him in his 2016 campaign and I confronted him. I was asked to speak on behalf of education in a private meeting with Donald Trump. And I looked him in the eye And I said, Mr. Trump, should you become President of the United States of America? Leave me alone. Just leave me alone. I’m the president of a private Christian college in Northeast Oklahoma. I don’t want you monkeying with me. I don’t want you telling me what to do and what I can’t do. 

Everett Piper:
The all I expect out of you, Mr. Trump, if you’re president, is just leave me alone, get out of my hair, let me be Christian. I didn’t know at the time when I told him that if he got it, I do know what he did as president, he left me alone. Does he agree with my Christian values on everything? Absolutely not. But does he leave me alone? To live a biblical life without threat of penalty? Yeah. And that’s why I, I can vote for that. So are people more courageous as the result of him saying, hey, common sense says there’s a male and a female, a man and a woman. Now, I’ll elaborate further. He didn’t say this, but common sense also says you can’t be a feminist if you deny the female. 

Everett Piper:
So those who are claiming to be left of sin or feminists, if you deny that a female is real, then how can you be a feminist? Because you just denied the very premise of your worldview. 

Jeff Johnson:
Right. 

Everett Piper:
If you’re pretending that women are nothing but leprechauns and unicorns, make believe. And that somebody can just put a dress on and high heels and makeup and. And all of a sudden declare themselves to be a woman and appropriate unto themselves the culture of a female and expect to be celebrated for doing so. You just flushed all of your feminism down the toilet because you just allowed a male to commit the ultimate in cultural appropriation. He’s stealing everything that a woman has the right to right. Her bathroom, her shower, her sport, her scholarship. You’re even allowing a male to appropriate a female identity. You’re not even willing to defend feminism. And you see some non Christian feminists like Camille Paglia and what’s the woman that wrote Harry Potter? What’s her name. 

Jeff Johnson:
Oh, J.K. Rowling. 

Everett Piper:
Yeah. These people don’t agree with your Christian worldview or mine, but they recognize the common sense of saying there’s a man and a woman. So does that give people courage? Absolutely. Absolutely. You can finally. Everybody who’s been afraid offending somebody for saying, wait a second, you cutting off functioning organs of a 10 or 12 year old in the name of transitioning them is not moral. It’s not just. It’s not science. It’s not right. It’s butchery. And you should be in jail for doing it. 

Jeff Johnson:
Yeah. 

Everett Piper:
No. Now we can say that because we know that the powers that be in Washington D.C. Are saying, well, you know, that makes sense to me. That’s common sense. 

Jeff Johnson:
Right, Right. 

Everett Piper:
So, yes, I think people have been emboldened to some extent to speak the truth and to speak the truth boldly. 

Jeff Johnson:
So courage is. So we can say that courage is contagious. And we’ve heard that from a lot of other guests that I’ve been lucky to have on the program. And I, and I completely believe that. You made another comment about capitulation. You previously talked about how capitulation is a cultural problem. And I want to ask how has that manifested in this past election cycle? I mean, I guess I don’t want to talk only about politics, but this is the environment that we’re in. So I guess this is what we’re going to talk about and it’s a good backdrop for us to hold up courage, take a look at it. But you talk about that kind of, about capitulation being an issue. So how has that manifested in this past election cycle and what are the consequences of it? Well, first define capitulation for. 

Jeff Johnson:
So we know your mind on capitulation. 

Everett Piper:
Well, I don’t remember what we talked about in the past, so if it’s a repeat, forgive me. So you’ll just have to give me some latitude on that. 

Jeff Johnson:
Sure. 

Everett Piper:
When you complete, when you’re capitulating in the Piper paraphrase of that definition is you’re giving into the group. Think of culture in your community and you’re just going along to get along. You’ve stopped being a critical thinker and you’ve started being a capitulator. You’re accommodating the popular narrative just because to speak otherwise is either uncomfortable or you don’t want to put in the hard work to read, to research, and to think differently. To me, that’s capitulation. So if you accept that as the Definition, I would say yes, we are. All throughout human history, we’ve been prone to capitulation. Isn’t the original sin capitulating to the lies of Satan? And you know, God said, don’t eat the fruit of the knowledge of the tree of good and evil. But why in the world would it be bad to eat of the fruit of that tree? 

Everett Piper:
Wouldn’t God want you to know what’s good and what’s evil? Why in the world would he tell you to not eat that fruit? You know what the reason God told you that is because he knows that when you do, you’ll become as God. You’ll be just like God. You can define what’s good and evil. You don’t need God to define it for you any longer. Didn’t Adam and Eve capitulate to that lie? Sounded good. We’ll capitulate, we’ll go along with that lie because it’ll be easier than try to live within the boundaries that God has given us and let him define good and evil, right and wrong, truth and falsehood, what’s ugly and what’s beautiful, what’s male and what’s female. So we’ve been capitulating since the dawn of creation. Groupthink. There’s endless amount of material out there on groupthink. 

Everett Piper:
All of us are prone to listen to the discussion of the group and to say, well, okay, if all of a sudden the group has decided that Jews are responsible for the collapse of the economy in Europe during the 1930s. Well, if all of the group has decided, if all of the Germans have decided, one of the most educated cultures in the history of the modern world has decided that the Jews are the ones responsible, then maybe that’s right. You know, maybe we need to round those Jews up and put them in camps to keep them from screwing up our economy. Oh, and we hear that there are atrocities going on in Poland and whatnot, but that can’t be true. That’s probably, that’s probably just the hyperbole of the right. 

Everett Piper:
So we’re just going to go along to get along because it’s good for us. And then, you know, if, if everybody’s decided that, you know, these kids that are saying that as 12 year olds, they’ve always known, they’ve always known since the first moment of their memory when they were five or six years old, they’ve always known that they were actually the opposite sex. So at 10 or 12 years old, before they enter into puberty, let’s give them puberty. Blockers to screw up their bodies for life. And. And then a couple years later, if they still think they’re the opposite sex, let’s chop off functioning organs. And it’s a moral good now to help them transition. Well, I guess if everybody’s saying that, I’ll capitulate. I’ll go along with that. I’ll go along with the lie. 

Everett Piper:
So to me, those are all examples of the terrible evil of capitulating to the popular narrative rather than thinking for yourselves, because I don’t care who you are that’s listening right now, whether you agree with my conservative Christianity, my orthodoxy, or if you differ with it, here’s a. Here’s a point. In fact, the truth of God is written on every human heart. Everybody knows what’s right or what’s wrong. Everybody has the truth of God written on their heart. Like C.S. Lewis says, when you. When. When children stand in line at the cafeteria at the school and somebody steps in front of them unfairly, C.S. Lewis tells us, that child knows that’s wrong. And they say, get in line. It’s unfair to cut in if somebody steals their orange. They say, no, you can’t steal my orange. 

Everett Piper:
If you watch a bully intimidate a child that’s weaker than him, you know it’s wrong. Whether you’re a Christian or not, you know these things are wrong. Everybody knows that rape is wrong, that the Holocaust was evil and that slavery should be reviled. You know these things. And if you want to argue different with me and argue that the rape is okay, that the Holocaust was justified and that slavery is. Oh, that’s just a cultural thing. And there are many cases where slavery is a moral good. If you want to go down that path and bring it on, let’s debate. Guess what, you’re going to lose. You’re going to lose. And why are you going to lose? Not because you can test any of those truths in a laboratory. 

Everett Piper:
You can’t put anything that I just said in a test tube and prove empirically that those things are true. Why can you prove they’re true? Because the truth of God is written on every human heart. We are morally aware creatures. We are the imago dei. God has put his thumbprint on our soul so that we understand truth matters. Truth matters. And our ultimate goal as human beings, as the imago dei, the image of God, is to pursue that truth and try to understand it and not capitulate to the lies. 

Jeff Johnson:
Am I well said, Everett? I. Is there. Is this a true statement? There’s no courage in capitulation. But there is capitulation in courage. That’s terrible. 

Everett Piper:
Let me say it again. 

Jeff Johnson:
Let me rephrase that. Well, because I’m thinking about, you know, going along and going with the group, and that doesn’t take a lot of courage. You know, if I just assimilate with the mob. I mean, I’m not. That doesn’t feel like a courageous act to me. So I’m wondering how capitulation relates to courage. Is it the antithesis? If I find myself for my listeners, if I find myself just going along with somebody, should that be a red flag for me, that maybe I need to check myself? Maybe I’m not aligned with the truth. Maybe I’m not being open to new ideas. 

Everett Piper:
Go ahead. I would say yes, and I’ll even criticize those that are on the political right now. I’m a little anxious, and I should be. And you should be. I’m anxious that people are so excited that the conservatives are so excited about now having power in Washington, D.C. That they’ll stop asking good questions of the power base. So if you’re a conservative listening right now, if you’re a Republican, if you, if you like Donald Trump rather than despise Donald Trump, tap the brakes a little bit. Tap the brakes a little bit. You still have to have the courage to call out Donald Trump and his administration and the Trumpers when they’re wrong. And I can tell you from personal experience, you will have hell to pay, because I’ve done it. I’ve done it. 

Everett Piper:
You know, the Trump Derangement Syndrome is just as real for those on the right as it is for those on the left here in the United States. And what do I mean by the Trump Derangement syndrome? You’ve probably talked about it before, but just to define it’s being. It’s, it’s the whataboutism fallacy. It’s, it’s. It’s the fallacy of dismissing an idea just because it comes from a given source. So what about Trump? It doesn’t matter what Trump says or doesn’t say. He doesn’t define truth. So our objective should be to pursue the truth of a given political policy, economic policy, social policy, educational policy, rather than just saying, what about Trump? He’s a boar. He’s a misogynist, he’s a liar, he’s a cheat. He’s a terrible, terrible man. That’s Trump Derangement syndrome. Those things don’t matter per se. 

Everett Piper:
In figuring out what’s true and what’s not true. And likewise on the right, those people that are so loyal to a political agenda that they won’t allow any questioning of your leader. You’re crazy. You’ve lost your mind. That’s what conservatives do. Conservatives should always be questioning their leader because we don’t conserve the power of the leadership. We conserve the ongoing, immutable, revealed truths of God. That’s what we conserve. 

Jeff Johnson:
That’s right. 

Everett Piper:
And if our leader is compromising those immutable truths, then we should be the first to step to the forefront and say, you’re wrong. Okay? You’re wrong. And I think conservatives, Trumpers, maga, we need to recognize that we could be at the front end of capitulation. Just because our guy’s leading the parade right now, okay, that doesn’t mean you should fall in line and goose step in the parade. Just because our guy’s leading. 

Jeff Johnson:
Right. 

Everett Piper:
Does that make any sense? 

Jeff Johnson:
It makes perfect sense. And I, and I’d be foolish to think that 100% of Donald Trump or his administration’s moves are going to be absolutely perfect and spot on, you know, but I’ve got to stay humble enough to remain teachable. I’ve got to stay exactly what you said. My responsibility is to God’s truth because of my Christian worldview. I mean, that’s it. So I’m foolish to think that he’s going to, as a human, that he’s going to get it 100% right. So I’ve got to be ready to say, no, that’s wrong. And I’ve got to be, have the courage to stand up for that. Let me, let me, Can I say. 

Everett Piper:
One, can I say one thing on this before you shift? I’m going to recommend a book to everybody. It’s called Stockholm Syndrome Christianity. It’s by John G. West. The subtitle is why Christian Leaders Are Failing and what We Can Do About It. His entire premise in this book, and I have read it, in fact, spoiler alert here, I’m one of the endorsers of this book. Very good, John. John west was professor at Seattle Pacific University here in the United States. He has a PhD in government from the Claremont Graduate University. And he has. Anyway, that’s enough. On his bio, he says this. What if American culture isn’t collapsing because of a crusading, because of crusading secularists? What if it is failing because many leading Christians identify more with secular elites than with their fellow believers? 

Everett Piper:
What he’s saying is, and I found this to be true in The Christian Academy. So true. As Christian thinkers, we want to be part of the. Of the big boys club. We want to be respected by Harvard and Dartmouth and Princeton and Yale. And if we find that the scholars at those elite institutions, Ivy League institutions, or even some of the prestigious or powerful state universities. My alma mater is Michigan State. I don’t like it if my peers at Michigan State think I’m inferior in my scholarship. I want to be part of their club, even though they may be my persecutors. Okay, Stockholm syndrome. 

Everett Piper:
So even though they may be my intellectual and spiritual persecutors, because I want to be part of the club, my temptation is to fall in line and to say what’s popular and to actually start aligning with my persecutor rather than challenging him. And what John West’s premise here is that this is happening all over our culture right now. Rather than having the courage, the guts, the spine, the intestinal fortitude, to actually challenge the elites in your profession, challenge those who are actually persecuting you intellectually, spiritually, and maybe even politically, rather than challenging them, you actually start agreeing with them and you start parroting their same party line. We need to be very careful to not be Stockholm syndrome Christians and start parroting the very nonsense of those people that are persecuting us. 

Jeff Johnson:
Right? Right. A friend of mine is on a local school board, and he’s all the time talking about how people just fold like a suit. I mean, a little bit of pressure, like it is a rare thing for somebody to stand up for some, Some real principle, because people just want to go along, to get along. I look Forward to reading Mr. West’s book. The thing I wanted to shift to Everett is I want you to do a little coaching here for myself and our listeners. January 21st, day after Trump was put in office, he attended a worship service at the National Cathedral. Bishop Miriam Edgar Buddy gave a presentation, and I’ve got an opinion about it. I think her presentation was political as opposed to being biblical, but under the auspice of Leviticus 19:33, 34, which. Let me just give it to you. 

Jeff Johnson:
When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God. Which was a call for Trump not to deport illegal immigrants and to have a softer heart about all of that kind of stuff. And anyway, it was all in the news. But my question for you, the coaching that I’d like you to weigh in on Painted against the patina of courage is how should Christians respond when biblical convictions are labeled political statements rather than moral truths? Let me ask it the other way. How should Christians respond when biblical convictions are labeled moral truths as opposed to political statements? I think she was making a political statement as opposed to stating a moral truth. 

Everett Piper:
Well, first of all, at the end of. I hope we have time to get into a critique or an overview of this passage out of Leviticus that was used to justify this homily, but I’m not going to get into that now. I’m going to try to answer your question more directly. How do we respond? To repeat what I’ve said earlier, I think in the first time I was on your show, Jesus’s style of apologetics, of responding was almost always a big surprise. At least it would be for me. Stop and think who Jesus is here. If you’re a believer, if you’re a Christian, you believe that Jesus is the second person of the Triune God. You believe that he’s the inspiration of the Old Testament just as much as the New. 

Everett Piper:
You believe that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. You believe that nothing was created that wasn’t created by Jesus. So you believe that Jesus is the Creator, and you believe that Jesus is the judge at the end of days. He’s the Alpha and the Omega. He’s the beginning and the end. He’s the King of Kings, he’s the Lord of Lord, he’s the lion of Judah, he’s the Lamb of God. Jesus is God. So if we believe this, and as Christians, by definition we do, isn’t it rather surprising than when he had a Pharisee or a government official, you know, pilot or whoever, ask him a question or challenge him, engage him in debate, that he almost never took the bait? He almost always just asked a rhetorical question. 

Everett Piper:
So maybe what we should do in the face of these homilies, such as the bishop from the Washington Cathedral, maybe we should just ask a series of questions rather than take the bait. Jesus said stuff like, well, whose face is on this coin? And why do you call me Lord? And do you want to pick up the first stone and throw it? And then God, creator of the universe, shuts his mouth and waits for the worldview of his opponents to implode. Okay, Right. So maybe we ought to shut our mouths, ask a good rhetorical question, shut our mouths, and wait for the worldview of our opponents to implode. So I’ve got a series of questions. Okay. In fact, I I my article that’s coming out tomorrow in the Washington Times asks these questions. So I’m hot on this one. 

Jeff Johnson:
Okay, let’s hear it. This is great. 

Everett Piper:
All right, so I had a person respond to this is a Facebook, a social media exchange. I had a person named Alan respond to conservatives who are criticizing Marianne. Is it boudet or booed? I don’t even know how to, I don’t know. 

Jeff Johnson:
I haven’t heard a good pronunciation. 

Everett Piper:
It’s B U, D D E. So Bishop Marianne’s scolding of Donald Trump and J.D. Vance at the Washington National Cathedral. One person said this in response to the conservative reaction to the scolding, quote, unquote maga Christians were exposed to the actual words of and teachings of Jesus of compassion, love and mercy, and find the only way they can respond is with vitri and spite. Okay, now this is a straw man. It’s a logical fallacy. It’s a straw man that’s very easy for you could construct, but it’s also very easy to tear down. Okay? So here are the rhetorical questions I would ask of these people and perhaps even of the bishop herself. Is it vitriol and spite? Ask what about compassion for the 300,000 children who’ve been trafficked and are now missing in the heartland of America? 

Everett Piper:
Is it vitriol and spite to ask what about love for the quarter of a million people who have been killed by fentanyl? Is it vitriol and spite to ask what about mercy for the hundreds of thousands of women who have been forced into prostitution? Is it vitriol and spite to ask, well, what about the blue collar folks in Springfield, Ohio, who’ve lost their neighbors, excuse me, lost their neighborhoods, their public parks and local schools and their security and their basic property rights to the thousands of vagrants now overwhelming their town? Is it vitriol inspired to ask, what about the people of Aurora, Colorado, who have lost their safety at the hands of violent gangs taking over their community in their local hotels? 

Everett Piper:
Is it vitriol and spike to ask, what about the ranchers and farmers in southern Texas who have lost cattle and other livestock and now fear for their lives on a daily basis? Is it vitriol and spike to ask what about Lake and Riley and the multiple other women who are now afraid that they will suffer the same of being raped and murdered simply for going for a jog on campus or in a local park? Is it vitriol and spite to ask what about compassion and love and mercy for the surrounding communities of Colony Ridge, Texas, who have seen their villages, their schools, their infrastructure overrun and collapse by 75,000 undocumented illegal immigrants and multiple drug cartels now living in this quote unquote town? I don’t know if people know this, but this is a town that has sprung up. 

Everett Piper:
It’s called Colony Ridge and it’s a hundred percent. It wasn’t there a handful of years ago, and now you have 75,000 to 100,000 people living there and it’s totally lawless. All these other rural communities around this new burgeoning town. Is it vitriol and sprite to say, well, wait a second, shouldn’t we care about that rancher, that farmer, those people that lived in that small little village of 3,000 people, you know, two miles away from Colony Ridge? What about their schools? What about their children? What about their safety? What about their security? What about their infrastructure that can’t handle all of this? 

Everett Piper:
Is it vitriol and spite to ask, if you are so concerned about love and compassion, what are you doing for these people who have suffered untold loss of dignity, property, freedom and security, even to the point of losing their lives because of the bad and foolish policies of the last four years? And then I would have this to ask of you, if you still disagree with me. What have you done? What have you done? Have you torn down the fence around your backyard? Have you removed the locks from your house? Have you posted a sign saying all people are welcome in my home, Everybody come. Come into my kitchen, eat my food, sleep on my couch, have a snack, take my guest rooms, live in them for no charge as long as you want. I don’t care who you are. 

Everett Piper:
I’m not even going to ask who you are. Have you done that? Have you taken down all the locks of your house? And have you posted such a sign? And have you stopped locking your car doors? Is it vitriol in spite to ask if I can’t? If you can’t answer all of the above in the affirmative, then is it likely that you’re really being a little sanctimonious and perhaps hypocritical and basically saying, do as I say, not as I do. So I don’t. Bottom line is I’m asking rhetorical questions. Stop the virtue signaling. 

Everett Piper:
And if you’re not willing to, if you’re still locking your car doors and locking your front door of your house, if you’re not taking people in at will, if you’re Pope Francis and you’re calling the United States policies on enforcing its borders and perhaps even building a wall that you have to enter through legally rather than climb over illegally. If you’re Pope Francis and calling that a quote, unquote disgrace, which is what he has done, then tear down the walls of the Vatican. Tear down the walls of the Vatican and get rid of the Swiss Guard and open up all the papal apartments to undocumented illegal immigrants. If you’re willing to do that, then you have a leg to stand on. But until you’re willing to do that, shut up. Stop. Stop. 

Everett Piper:
Because you’re virtue signaling and you’re hypocritical in your scolding of those people who, who simply want to be left alone. I mean, I, I was outraged with the sanctimonious, smug attitude toward those who were bringing up the situation in Springfield, Ohio. Now forget Donald Trump’s hyperbole of saying that they were eating dogs and eating cats. Forget it. Forget it. That is irrelevant. That is a non sequitur fallacy in what I’m saying right now. Forget that. The fact of the matter is there were at least 5,000 vagrants living in that small town of Springfield, Ohio, and that’s a blue collar, working class community. People that have high school degrees and not college degrees primarily. And they’ve lived there for a generation, two or three, in very modest homes, very modest neighborhoods. 

Everett Piper:
And now we elites are going to drop five to 7,000 vagrants on that community. And now we’re going to scold these blue collar people like my mom and dad for saying, wait a second here, wait a second, I can’t go to the park. I can’t, I can’t. They’re camping on my front lawn. They’re, they’re, they’re threatening me. And you people in New York and Washington, D.C. Are going to scold me for bringing up the fact that my privacy, my dignity, my property, my school, the infrastructure of my community has been totally compromised by your policies and I’m the bad guy here. Now, I think Christians have just as much an obligation to support that blue collar person in Springfield, Ohio, and those Hispanic citizens in Aurora, Colorado, who have had their communities overrun by violent gangs and vagrants. 

Everett Piper:
I think we have the obligation to support those neighbors, those least among us, as much as anybody else, don’t we? And if you want to say no, then you tell me why. So that’s what I would say. Well, I have strong feelings on this, Jeff. 

Jeff Johnson:
I’m sorry. Well, that’s Good. This is why you’re a guest on the Courageous Crossroads, Everett, because that’s exactly it. And I love the, and I love the coaching advice, too, in a situation like that, to ask more questions because we might end up learning something as well. You know, with my encouragement to everybody to stay humble enough to remain teachable, we might learn something as well. But that would expose the hypocrisy and get you to the truth. 

Everett Piper:
Now, do you want to get into Leviticus Night? 

Jeff Johnson:
I do, I do. I was just going to ask you if you’d delve a little bit deeper into that, because I do think that’s important. 

Everett Piper:
Okay. I wrote an article. It’s. Oh, I think it’s probably five years old or so. I sent you a copy of it. It’s. I wrote it for the Washington Times and I, I titled it. All of a sudden, the left loves Leviticus. Okay, now before we get into the definition of a foreigner or a sojourner in that passage of Leviticus, let’s just acknowledge a blatant fact here. For years, if not decades, a Bible believing Christian has been excoriated, mocked and ridiculed for believing in the Old Testament book of Leviticus. Why? Because it’s Leviticus that condemns homosexuality. And we’ve been to all those, your clobber verses. You don’t live by all of the Levitical law. You eat lobster, you eat shellfish, you wear clothing that’s mixed fibers. 

Everett Piper:
You, you don’t follow the, the dozens of Levitical laws you’ve discarded as being in or unimportant in your Christian life. 

Jeff Johnson:
It’s not the only book, but it’s the one book where you can cherry pick scripture and absolutely. And mock a Christian really quick. 

Everett Piper:
Yeah, well, and they also refer to the passages of where Paul condemns it. So they, they say that conservative Christians, orthodox Christians are using clobber verses out of Leviticus and out of Corinthians. They ignore the fact that Peter also condemns the con. Condemns homosexual practice and as does Jude and as does Jesus in Revelation. Okay, that aside, that’s not the issue other than to say we’ve been mocked and ridiculed for believing in Leviticus. It’s a ridiculous book. It’s Old Testament law and nobody lives by Old Testament law any longer. Well, really, now all of a sudden, the left loves Leviticus. You criticized it five minutes ago and now you’re using it as the primary text to support your view of immigration. Leviticus 19. 

Everett Piper:
Because Leviticus says that we are to welcome the sojourner among us and treat them as if they are part of our. I’m paraphrasing. Part of our culture because you once were sojourners, foreigners in Egypt. Well, guess what. Leviticus was written in Hebrew. And guess what? There are multiple words in Hebrew that we translate as foreigner in English. So wouldn’t it be interesting to go back to that levitical passage, Leviticus 19, 33 and 34, and see what the Hebrew language was in that passage? Well, there’s an Old Testament scholar out of Wheaton College. His name is James Hoffmeier, Dr. James Hoffmeyer. He was actually a missionary kid in Egypt during the 1967 war, and he and his parents had to flee Egypt because of that war. So he was a refugee and had to stay in a refugee camp in Cyprus as a child. 

Everett Piper:
So he knows what it’s like to be in the situation. So he has personal experience with being a sojourner, a foreigner, a refugee, but he’s also not Old Testament scholar. And he says this. And this is, again, my paraphrase of a Old Testament scholar’s work. I’m not one. I’m gonna. I’m gonna go to those who know more about this topic than I do. Hoffmeyer is one of them. There are three different words in the Hebrew language that we translate as foreigner or sojourner, and those words are ger g e r, zar, and nakar. N e, k h r. Three different words. Now, what Hoffmeyer tells us is that ger g e r means legal immigrant. 

Everett Piper:
It would be akin to the person who’s entering the country of Israel, complying with the laws that will gain him entry, agreeing to live by the laws of that country once he’s in there because he has a desire to follow all the laws that will lead to his ultimate citizenship as a member of that community and be an Israelite. That’s gare pretty clear right now. What does tsar in the car mean? They don’t mean that tsar in the car would essentially be a temporary visitor, a traveler, a tourist, somebody who has a green card, a temporary work permit. That’s czar in nakar. Now, even in the tsar in Nakar, they’re complying with the laws of having a visa, a green card, a tourist traveling the country for commerce or business. They’re not violating the laws, but they’re not. They’re not a legal immigrant. 

Everett Piper:
They’re not in the process of pursuing naturalized citizenship. That’s the ger so for people to grab a hold of this passage out of Leviticus and say, oh, well, there it says it. There it says it. You’re supposed to tear down your wall, stop locking your doors, stop locking your car. The Pope, the Vatican should tear down its walls, get rid of the Swiss Guard, we should all just have a great big group hug and Kumbaya because Leviticus tells us we’ve got to do that as good Christians garbage. It does not. It does not. The Hebrew language does not say that. There’s nothing in Leviticus that says you’ve. You are obligated to welcome violent gangs that are trafficking children for sex, forcing women into prostitution, and selling fentanyl into your community. You’ve got to do that because Leviticus demands it. It does not. 

Everett Piper:
It does not do that. In fact, if anything, it emphasizes the fact that there are definitions to these words and that, yes, you are to treat all people with respect and you’re. You’re to show them dignity within the category that they themselves have chosen as their definition, whether it’s ger, tsar or nakar. But. And if you disagree with me and think, oh, Everett, you’re cherry picking your definition of Leviticus, okay, fine, go read the Book of Nehemiah then. Read the entire Book of Nehemiah and then tell me what it’s about. 

Jeff Johnson:
Right. 

Everett Piper:
Building a wall. It’s about building a wall. Come on, look it up. 

Jeff Johnson:
Look it up. Leviticus 19 is not talking about the illegal immigrant. It’s talking about the protected citizen and. 

Everett Piper:
Even the protectant tourist. 

Jeff Johnson:
And the protected tourists. 

Everett Piper:
Yes, and recognizing there’s a difference between the two. 

Jeff Johnson:
Well put. People got to do their research, Everett. They got to roll up their sleeves and dig in. And back to your point about the bishop as well. You know, when you’re confronted with anything, ask some more questions about it. You know, with your own personal study, too. Is this really what. Is this really what Leviticus is saying? I got a couple more questions for you. We’re going to end this interview with some more meat on the bone, Everett. So I’m foreshadowing that you’re going to be one of the guests that returns for a third and a fourth time, whether you like it or not. I’m just going to bug you until you do it. But. 

Everett Piper:
Well, before you ask your question, I just say this. I. You’re obviously much nicer than I am. You have. The body of Christ, has many members. You’re. You’re the welcoming hug, and I guess I’m the sharp elbow so I’m sorry. 

Jeff Johnson:
So that’s wonderful. Okay. You’ve often encouraged people to get in the game and engage rather than sit on the sidelines. What’s a. What’s a practical first step ever for somebody hesitant to speak out? 

Everett Piper:
Well, I think it’s get over yourself. 

Jeff Johnson:
And just speak out. 

Everett Piper:
Yeah, the old axiom. You know, I’m a bit of a farm boy. I remember getting bucked off my. My Shetland pony when I was little. What did my dad say? Get back on. Okay. I don’t care whether you’re afraid or scared or whatnot. In fact, if you don’t get back on, you’ll always be scared and afraid. So you’re being tested right now. I mean, this is more than he said. All he said was get back on. But what’s implicit in the get back on the horse, you’re afraid, you’re scared, you’re bruised, you’re bumped fine. But if you don’t overcome that and get back on the horse, then you’ll always be scared and afraid. You’ll never ride again. If you’ve had a. If you, if you’re an athlete, I’m sure you’ve had a coach who have said. Who has said, no pain, no gain. 

Everett Piper:
So if you don’t put in the work, if you don’t do the workouts, if you don’t listen to the coach, if you don’t experience the pain of practice disciplining your body and your mind to do what you need to do, then you’re never going to get off the bench and you’re never going to. The coach isn’t going to tap you on the shoulder and say, hey, you’re in because you’re lazy. Your body isn’t ready, neither is your mind. If you’re a musician, you remember your piano lessons or your guitar lessons when you were beginning, you probably didn’t enjoy it, you weren’t any good. But you had a music teacher that demanded that when you came for your lesson once a week, you’d done your. You had done your work and you were ready. And you got scolded if you weren’t. 

Everett Piper:
Some music teachers were harsh and said, you’re wasting my time. So don’t come next week if you haven’t done your lessons, if you’re not ready. The point here is none of us can perform in any area of life, whether it be music, whether it be athletics, whether it be apologetics, none of us can. Whether it be politics, whether it be teaching, whether it be community leadership, as you’re running for mayor or city council or county commissioner or whatever. None of us are going to be able to perform in those arenas of life if we haven’t done the necessary work that justifies us being there in the first place. 

Everett Piper:
Because if you haven’t listened to the coach, if you haven’t gone to practice, if you haven’t disciplined your body, if you haven’t done the running and the exercising and lifting the weights, then you’re really not an athlete. You’re an armchair quarterback who fancies himself being one. But you’re lazy. You’re sitting around Sunday afternoon watching the game with your remote control in your hand, but you’re not in the game yourself. Why? Because you didn’t do the front end work. You didn’t get back on the horse. You didn’t recognize no pain, no gain. Likewise, if. If you, if you think you’re a musician but you haven’t done the necessary work, then what you’re performing is chaos. It’s not a concerto. And I would just apply those principles to any area of life. 

Everett Piper:
When you, when you start as a basketball player or soccer player or a musician, are you really all that good at the front end of your career? No, you’re not that good. But you’re a player because you’ve put in the necessary work. You got back on the horse. You’re actually paying attention to the coach. You’re trying to live within the rules. You’re doing what you’re supposed to do to be an athlete, a musician or whatnot. And I think if we do that as leaders in our community and recognize, put the necessary work in, to learn to understand, put the necessary. If you want to run for office, then I see so many people that run for office and they don’t want to do the work. As you know, Jeff, I did run for office for, to be a county commissioner. Sidebar. 

Everett Piper:
I didn’t want the job. I was only doing it because people wanted me to do it, to unseat a very bad, dishonest, vindictive county commissioner that we had. And they said, everett, you’re retired. You’re an ex college president. You’re the guy to run against him and beat him. And I said, I don’t want to be a county commissioner. I have no interest in being a county commissioner. And they said, well, we want you to do it anyway. So I did. And even though I didn’t want to do it, and jokingly, I said privately to my wife many a time when I would come back from going door to door in these local communities in Osage County. I would say to my wife, I’ve got to figure out a way to lose this election. I do not want to do this. 

Everett Piper:
But that sarcasm or that aside, I busted my butt. I raised the money. I busted my butt. I put up a thousand signs. My opponent probably only had 200. I raised. I raised, according to records, probably three to four times more money than he raised. I had the radio commercials. I put up a thousand signs myself. I went door to door in small little oil patch towns like Scheidler, Oklahoma, and Barnsdale, Oklahoma, and Okeesa, Oklahoma. I drove thousands of miles. The Osage County, Oklahoma, is larger than the state of Rhode Island. The land mass of my county is larger than the state of Oklahoma. So I am busting my butt driving from corner to corner across this county for a stupid job I don’t want. Why? Because I’ve got the words of my dad, no pain, no gain. Get back on the horse. 

Everett Piper:
You’re the one who decided he wanted to be. You wanted to get in politics. Now do it whether you like it or not. Do it if it’s distasteful or not. Do it if going to practice is exhausting and you don’t like doing bear crawls and you don’t like doing wind sprints, it does not matter. You’re the one who decided you wanted to get in this game. So do it to win. End of story. 

Jeff Johnson:
Well put. Well put. Well put. Looking back at your career now, I told you I wasn’t going to ask you the question. What’s the most courageous thing you’ve ever done? Because we did that the first time that you were on. But I will ask you this question. Looking back at your career, including your presidency at Oklahoma Wesleyan, what’s a moment that you wish you had been more courageous? 

Everett Piper:
Well, okay, you’re surprising me, so you’re gonna have to give me a little latitude to take a breath and try to think here when I lacked courage as the context here. All of us have a different temperament and skill set. I do think that God has given me. It’s a. It’s, it’s. It’s. Our greatest asset is always our greatest curse, too. So I think I have a natural fighter instinct. I have a. I have a sense of enjoyment in conflict. And I do realize that’s not, that’s not necessarily what everybody has. There are people that are conflict averse. I’m not. Now, for those that have Been listening to me for the last hour. They probably realize that can be a real curse at times too, because you can do stupid things. 

Everett Piper:
You can open your mouth, you can get involved in fights that weren’t necessary and you can act on Christ like. And I realized that asset of mine of being a fighter can also be a curse. But that’s true for everybody. If you’re conflict adverse, that’s perhaps an asset. You’re an appeaser. Your gift is reconciliation, figuring out a way for people to get along. And that’s not a bad thing. But your greatest curse could be that you’re a capitulator, that you give in too quickly. So what have I done that was not courageous? I think my mistakes that lacked courage were being unethical because I let my competitive instinct get the best of me and doing things that just weren’t right because I wanted to win. And that desire to win is not necessarily courageous. 

Everett Piper:
Convincing myself that it was, well, you know, I’m right and the people I’m fighting against are just bad people, bad decisions, terrible leaders, gutless, spineless. And then I justify doing something that was just wrong. I think of. I’ll give you an example. People probably wonder, what did he do? I remember when I was in the younger in my career, I was the dean of students at Greenville College and I had a great run there. I was, you know, moving up the ladder and I was probably a little too cocky for my own good. And I didn’t like the president and I made it. Well, let me sit. Let me tell you why I didn’t like the president. I, because I was the need of students. 

Everett Piper:
I enforced the rules of the college and our all star running back, and he was really a good running back, broke some rules before the homecoming football game. And were a national contender at the time in NAI football. And our all star running back broke some rules. And the handbook said that the rules he broke required a suspension that weekend so he couldn’t play football. So because I’m competitive, I’m ornery, I’m. I called in the all star running back and I said, you’re not playing football this weekend. And all hell broke loose. So he goes and he petitions the head football coach. He petitions and the president gets involved and overrules me. And I remember standing on the sidelines of that homecoming football game, watching that kid play football, and I’m thinking, this is wrong, this is terrible. I’ve been dealt a bad hand. 

Everett Piper:
This is unjust so. A week or two later, I found out there. There was a kid applying to go to Greenville College from my hometown up in Michigan. And I thought Greenville College is a terrible place because of what this president just did. So I called that applicant and I said, well, why don’t you think of going to this sister school in Michigan rather than Greenville? Now, people listening to the story right now, was I right in doing that? Absolutely not. Was that courageous in doing that? Absolutely not. Guess what? I got caught. The vice president over me came into my office one day and said, did you do this? And I said, yeah, I didn’t get fired, but maybe I should have. I mean, it was just wrong. I was so embarrassed. Obviously, it stuck with me for 35 years. 

Jeff Johnson:
Wow. 

Everett Piper:
I can’t believe I did that. I can’t believe I did that. And if I were working for you, Jeff, and your company, you’d probably fire me for calling the competition and giving the competition a leg up one of your clients. And I. I would have deserved to be fired. So I guess my com. My competitive, courageous. Oh, I’m a courageous guy. I’m always willing to run, pick a fight. That wasn’t courageous. That was cowardly. That was unethical. That was just doggone wrong. 

Jeff Johnson:
See, now I have even more respect for you, Everett, because I live in a world that says that we don’t regret the things of the past, nor do we wish to repeat them. We comprehend the word serenity, and we’ve come to know peace. There’s a return on investment from that. Let me just label it a bad decision that you made that you have very much learned, and that denotes a certain amount of humility. And that answers the question just perfectly. 

Everett Piper:
I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. Like I said, you’re catching me off guard. So it’s free association. So I don’t know whether it was. 

Jeff Johnson:
A value or not of much value. Okay, the last question I’m going to ask you previously said, if you’re not willing to lose it all, you’ll never win. How can Christians today apply that mindset to their personal and professional lives? And again, this is all painted on the backdrop of courage. So. 

Everett Piper:
Well, I just think we live in. Jeff. We live in a time of very clear things aren’t fuzzy anymore. I think the time of being culturally Christian and finding it relatively easy within the United States to be a cultural Christian, those. Those days are over. Cultural Christianity, being patted on the head and getting a favor in your job at your university and your in the community because you’re a Christian. I don’t think there’s much of that left. I mean, my son lives out in, excuse me, California. He works for Prageru as one of their producers. And he’s told me time and time again, if you’re a conservative, forget Christianity. If you’re a conservative in California today, you’re courageous, you’re bold, you’re clear because you have to be. You have to be. 

Everett Piper:
Well, if you’re a Christian anywhere today, you got to be clear and courageous and bold. You have to because the battle lines are so clear. So I think we. It’s a wonderful opportunity. I have a friend in California, Jim Garlow. He was on my board. Jim Garlow was the successor to John Maxwell of leadership fame. Maxwell started, or didn’t start it, but he was pastor of Skyline Wesleyan Church in Escondido, California. And when John Maxwell took off to become John Maxwell, the leadership guru, Jim Garlow took over that church and led it for 20 or 30 years. And Jim was on my board at Oklahoma Wesleyan. Jim is a, he’s a golden tongue orator. I respect him highly. He’s a prolific writer. He’s. He’s brilliant. He’s a wonderful speaker and he had my back every step of the way. He’s conservative and orthodox. 

Everett Piper:
And boy, when I wanted somebody to fight my battles, I could call up Jim and I could say, jim, I’m getting challenged for this or that. Would you help me? And all I was like turning the pit bull loose. I really respected Jim. Jim, this is the answer to your question. Jim, because he’s a fighter and because he has conviction, he’s biblical. During proposition, was it 18, I can’t remember proposition 8 or 18, the marriage bill in California. See, people forget that prior to Obama and Obergefeld, there was a proposition in California on marriage and that the majority of the voters, the electorate in California voted for traditional marriage. Even crazy California, they voted for the Democratic vote was for traditional marriage, period. Well, Jim Garlo was one of the leaders of that movement. 

Everett Piper:
And the day after the vote came in and they won, I called Jim because I knew he had led and I knew that it had been a tough slogan. I knew he was beat up a little bit for it, but he didn’t care. He was energized by it. But I called him and I said, good for you, Jim. Good for you. You wouldn’t have won it had it not been for this. He said, thanks ever, but you don’t know the half of it. I had to hire armed guards at my church. I hired, I had to also have armed guards at my home. He said, the vitriol, the hate, the venom spewed from the anti traditional marriage people, it was terrible. And then he paused and he said, but what a wonderful time to be alive. And I thought, that’ll preach. That’ll preach. 

Everett Piper:
So I guess the answer to your question, Jeff, is what a wonderful time to be alive. The battle lines are clear. The battle lines are clear. If you want to be conservative in California, you better be conservative. If you want to be Christian in America, you better be Christian. The battle lines are clear. The time of being fuzzy and milk toast is over. 

Jeff Johnson:
And there’s the call to courage. 

Everett Piper:
Yeah. 

Jeff Johnson:
Everett, thank you so much. I always learn so much from our interactions and I’m grateful to the Lord that he brought us together so many years ago and that we’ve been able to stay in touch. Thank you so much for sharing with us today. 

Everett Piper:
You’re welcome. And if people heard that doorbell in the background, that’s my dog. He knows how to ring the doorbell. He’s trying to get in. 

Jeff Johnson:
Wonderful. Till next time. Thank you, sir. 

Everett Piper:
Blessings. 

Outro:
Thank you for joining us today on Courageous. If you’d like to hear more about the work and ministry being done at Crossroads Apologetics, please visit our home on the web@crossroadsapologetics.org Would you or someone you know like to be featured on Courageous? Send us an email at infoorossroadsapologetics.com or infoossroadsapologist apologetics.org telling us about the most courageous thing you’ve ever done.