0:00 Don't you cringe at the fact of watching thinking about your kid playing an acoustics guitar at Fespers and ████ I would kick his face, bro. Or carrying four chairs in each arm trying to impress the girls and ████ Dude, >> that's important for development. Okay, you can't. Nah, >> sometimes you got to discourage a kid so he doesn't turn out gay as hell, dude. [Music] Welcome back to another episode of Careful Boys. Today we have with us just regular Anthony Lee. >> A the regular one. I want a specialist. >> I wanted an expert. >> But then today we're going to have him focusing on raising children in religious households. >> Oh, okay. >> Oh. >> Which I'm an expert on. >> It sounds like priest expert. >> Yeah. Yeah. And it's something I wanted
0:50 to ask you about because uh this is something that I'm I'm pretty interested in. I don't know yet because I don't have kids, but maybe you could help me out. >> Um >> even though I don't have kids. >> You have cats. >> I have cats. >> So I trust you. >> You might have kids. So what I want to do is um >> You probably have kids out there. >> Relax. >> Hey, I'm just respecting your game, brother. >> Um I've been thinking about this a lot randomly and I'm like I I feel like it's a good idea. I don't know if it is. I I really enjoyed growing up, right? I I loved being part of the church community in the religion that we grew up in. >> That was fun. >> Very very healthy. I thought it was awesome development. Um it gave a lot of moral compass. Really great overall experience. Am I a believer in that same thing now? I'm not. But I think by the
1:40 time I have a kid, I would like that kid to grow up and have that. Is it wrong for me to want to raise a family underneath that even though we don't believe in it? >> Uh, number one, I think you're putting yourself in a complex situation because you put your let's say that's totally a religious thing, right? So, it is based on belief. So, if you indoctrinate or you put your kid in something that is like so discernably like this is the belief and then they come home and they want to like dive deeper and then you can't provide an authentic response to that. I think you just put yourself in a weird conundrum. >> Whereas like I personally feel like I got a similar experience of like loving a good childhood experience in community development and moral compass through things like being a boy scout >> and I can still believe that today. >> Oh, that's a good point. It's not
2:30 necessarily >> it has the same structure. >> Yeah, that's true. >> But but it's not questioning my faith of something and then like if I put my kid into it but I don't believe it then I'm like I don't uh Yes. Yes, Boy Scouts is the right God. Like I'm I'm not doing that, you know? >> I do think as much as I hated going to Catholic church, like I really am grateful that I did because I know now like that's that sort of stuff. Like when people talk about like going to church on Sundays and stuff, I know that >> so I can relate to those people. I'm grateful for that. And but I'm not grateful for all the guilt. >> I thought you like the guilt. >> Well, I just I just am used to it. Like I I don't love it. >> I thought the guilt has saved you on many. Oh, it has many times. No, for sure. But I don't love like being inherently guilty about literally everything. Like you could be telling a story right now about how you cheated on like an ex-girlfriend of yours and I'd
3:21 be like, I was probably the guy who's ████ her. In my brain, I'm like, I was probably ████ her. It was probably me. Cuz in my brain, I'm just I'm the guilty guy. Like I'm the I'm the problem. I'm guilty. I did I did the probably the other part of it. >> Or like even during Mafia, like >> that's where your mind goes, right? >> No. Immediately like we just did we just did Mafia the other day and Nick calls me out. was like, "That wasn't Steve's like, "Let's ████ go." And I was like, "God damn it, he knows me, dude." I was like, "That's not my let's ████ go. I'm such a guilty ████ boy. I don't know. I can't do it." >> Okay. >> But I'm grateful for it. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think Max's the same way. She grew up in uh religious schools as well. And um she she's not a believer in anything like that, but >> I think she also understands that it wasn't necessarily a bad upbringing. What did you get out of it though for you? Like you talk about the structure,
4:11 but what was it about it? >> Um, well the it's also different because the religion I grew up in was primarily all Filipinos too. So I got a really good sense of community through ethnicity as well. Um, I think it I think it's made me an overall better person than I was meant to turn out to be. As odd as that sounds, I think it kept me out of a ton of trouble. And I think it also like made me a softer person, like a more caring person. like I I just developed more uh feelings of like listening to people, understanding what they had to say just because uh it was so the environment was so good like it was so good naturatured and >> I think other than that I would have just been either scared all the time of my parents or uh or just like ████ off into who knows where. So looking back, does it have a a veneer feeling of it where like you look back on it, you go it was such a good feeling, but maybe
5:01 it was a little bit fake and that's why you kind of reject it now or or are you like no, I think it was actually just inherently good. >> I think it I think it was good. I really don't think it was a bad thing. I think I am now the outlier because of how maybe I've changed and that's why I feel the only the only discrepancy I have is I feel selfish because I want to partake in those things. things I want to like take from it now, which feels really like self-centered that I'm like, no, I want my kid to have those things that I took, but then I don't want to give in the authentic way, if that makes sense, >> you know? I don't want to like be one of them, but I I liked the perks of having and being a part of that. >> But you want the boundaries now. >> Yeah. I think I think in a way the reason I'm thinking this is because I have a strange feeling that that was my dad the whole time. What do you mean? >> I don't think my dad truly gave a ████
5:52 >> but I think he did it for the family system. >> Yeah. >> So, my dad was always he every week he it was tough to get him out of bed to go to church. Like sometimes he would just be like, "You guys go ahead." You know, like >> Saturday morning cartoons are so much more better. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. I I have a feeling that he wasn't fully in it, but he understood that. >> Uh it's like people who believe in nuclear families. It's like that that thing. He understood the structure and was like, "Oh, we need this to survive." >> Yeah. >> So, he kind of just provided the time and space and energy to facilitate it, but by the time I was old enough and out of there, that fool's just not gone back. >> And does that does that turn you off to it or does that support your >> No, it makes me It makes you want to do the same thing >> cuz I think if my dad could get away with it, then like I probably could. >> And you're sitting here as an adult think saying that it was inherently good for you. I think I I absolutely believe
6:42 that it was good for me. And I think like there's still ways that I could be a good community member of that as well without having to like deceive everybody, I guess, without having like my dad was a very wallflower character in church and in uh schools. So he wasn't like, you know, doing ████ speaking in tongues, praising the Lord and ████ Not at all. He was just very like part of the community but not overdoing it. See, that's why I like that's why I like the Boy Scout system. You could throw your kid into it, but it's not like the scout leaders are looking at the parents going like, "Well, you should join, too." >> You know what? >> It's just sometimes looking at the kids a little bit. >> Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. >> We do have something similar in the church. >> Aas, >> we have Pathfinders. Yeah. It's It's like our our Seventh Adventist Boy Scouts. I do wonder though like if it
7:33 would have been different if we stayed with the church and the community because when we were um younger, right, we're at the will of our parents and if they had a falling out or whatever with the community, which is what happened to me and then my old church, they even split up like so many members left and all that stuff. But I'm like, if I stayed till now, then the power would be shifting to our hands. >> Like we're around that age where it's like >> now we get to do what we want with the church and our peers are going to be pastors and things like that. >> Can you remind the audience what church you guys were? >> You were 7th Day Adventists. So it's like an it, you know, like I think it came around the same time as Mormonism, but it's like an offshoot of um so Adventism. I think it's an offshoot of something. >> The Millers, it's an offshoot of like
8:24 Millerites. >> Yeah. But it was it was during this like I would say would it would probably be like third wave Christianity. Like first wave would probably be like all the people that escaped England. Second wave would probably be like the new wave and then the third revival and then whatever. But basically, it's pretty odd. Like, it's not basic >> evangelicals, you know what I mean? Yeah. But anyways, in that community though, it's like the Mormon church where you have colleges, high schools, you have hospitals, you have you could basically live in the the same community, marry the same people within it, and just be in your own world. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> And that's what I miss is the familiarity. It feels like you're in a village. So you can be in a big city like LA, but you have so many like memories with friends that you literally grow up with and then you're kind of
9:16 connected worldwide with the same community. Even George from Tiger Belly, he's a seven. Yeah. So like we have these similar things of like oh you know so and so from this college and I think that thing I miss and I miss like we have these things called camp meetings where like every summer all the churches get together and some of my best memories were like you get together you meet other kids you make other friends you sometimes maybe even find a girlfriend you know and it's like yeah and so it's almost like Boy Scouts but it's co-ed scout >> you Yeah, that's actually >> and you run into the forest. >> Had Girl Scouts right next to us. >> Not the same. >> But you get to play like Yeah. So, I think the community aspect is cool. The moral aspect is cool, but what if we actually stayed with them and whenever
10:08 there's drama, we have a say in it and we're like, don't act like that. >> Yeah, maybe there's there's a way that we won't have as much like haze in front of our eyes and we'll be able to make better calls and good judgment. But I I miss it to the point where I went to a freaking 7th Avenue church here like a few miles away from here >> just to see what it was like. >> Did they have like kids running around like the way you remember? >> Absolutely. Yeah. And it's it's interesting too because within 10 miles any direction I mean there's like five seventh Avenue churches >> in 10 square miles like around here. There's so many and they're all >> Should we be concerned? Are they taking over? >> No. No. They're all like very wholesome and cute and small and just like exactly kind of what I remembered from, you know, that that culture. And uh >> does your churches smell funny? >> They all have a scent. Yeah. >> Right. Like dude, church smells funny >> because we share most, as odd as it
10:58 sounds, most Seventh Day Adventist churches don't have enough to be only Seventh Day Adventist. On other days, it's other religions sometimes. >> Whoa, dude. So they rent out the Sundays cuz we worship on Saturdays or like they rent it out to a different or sometimes we're the ones renting so it's like you can >> Dude, if you guys worship on Saturdays, you guys should open with that cuz I watch football on Sunday. >> Like you don't have to good ████ Yeah, that's good ████ >> But I don't know if religion is the right place to like I mean I I get the whole moral foundation thing, right? But then I don't even know like do you want other people teaching your child about morality? You know what I mean? Cuz >> it's going to happen eventually. >> It'll happen. And I think like out of all I I just don't think I know yet how
11:48 to create or replicate what we had and not be that. >> And I think the important thing is the conversations you have at home is more important than someone else teaching your kid about morality cuz then that becomes a conversation starter. And whether or not that idea sticks or gets challenged is the conversation you have with your kid at home. >> And as the expert, I think the conversations that you have at home are more important >> the teaching >> in conversation. >> No, cuz we've actually been thinking about it too. >> Really? Oh, no way. >> Like obviously I'm not really I didn't grow up Christian. >> But you tag how to pray and stuff. >> Yeah. So we pray um and then so what Gio the only thing that Gio knows is like the Catholic stuff. So every time he we pass by a church, he's always doing like this thing, you know, like tell my mom just church. And then so we go based off like a loose kind of like ten commandments type thing, but we realize
12:39 like I think the more reinforcements you can have in the kids' life, >> the more like morality gets ingrained, right? Cuz if you go to I think just regular school, you're getting challenged. All the kids, it's like Lord of the Flies. Then you have a little bit of the teacher going, "Oh, you should be a good person." and then they can still be a ████ during recess. But then if you go to like jiu-jitsu and then this is what a good person is and at home this is what a good person is. Then you go to church then you kind of like reinforced from like every angle and I think the kids like oh ████ I'm hearing the same kind of like gist of things >> everywhere. Maybe I should actually do it. And I think that's kind of the goal is having like that same lesson being taught all over. >> Especially if they're like kind of hard-headed like the way Tao is. Like he has to learn his own lessons, you know. >> True. Don't you cringe at the fact of
13:29 watching thinking about your kid playing an acoustics guitar at Fespers and ████ beating and ████ I would kick his face, bro. I'd be like that is so kick him till he's dead, >> dude. That is so gay, dude. Like, kumbaya, ████ Like, that is not my son. Like, or carrying four chairs in each arm, >> trying to impress the girls and ████ Dude, >> that's important for development. Okay, you can't. Nah, >> sometimes you got to discourage a kid so he doesn't turn out gay as hell, dude. >> Some people have to learn on their own. >> N >> I will say >> I will say my favorite thing I got out of church, I really did ten commandments style, right? Thou shalt not like all that stuff. >> Like don't covet thy neighbor's wife. >> And but then Nina started doing this thing with her hair like you ████ dumb. But then I was like thank thank god Anony's technically not my neighbor.
14:20 >> And thank God you got Catholic guilt, you ████ Oh, do you feel bad?
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