Bonus Talk: "My Journey from the Navy to a Kingdom Warrior" by Luke Tiroly

The one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him, and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.

This is Strength to Strength, and we welcome you here to our call this afternoon. We're looking forward to hearing a testimony by Luke Toroli. Luke, welcome to the call. Thank you for joining us the whole way from San Diego, California.

It's a blessing to— Thank you, Brian. Glad to be here. It's a blessing to have you on, along with many others. And today we're going to hear a story of a brother and a community in Southern California that's striving to be faithful to the Kingdom of Jesus there.

So Luke, before we jump in, why don't we just pause for prayer? Let's pray. Father, thank you for this opportunity to be together here this afternoon. Father, our internet connection has been having some struggles here. Father, pray that you would just guide this call, Lord, this conversation, and may you be glorified, Father.

Father, we know that we are in a spiritual warfare, that we don't wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in heavenly places. And Father, we want to be faithful to you. We want to fight the good fight. We want to fight in the way that you would have us to fight, Lord. And so Father, this afternoon is Brother Luke shares of his journey from desiring to be faithful to the country, the call of this country to be a warrior, to the call of his Savior, of his Lord, the call of Jesus, his King, to be a worker, a warrior in his kingdom, and how that has affected his journey.

And so Father, pray that a special blessing on Luke, that you'll give him clarity of mind, Lord. So go with us today. And Father, most of all, may you be glorified. And we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Amen. Amen. Well, Luke, I'm going to read your bio here that we have. Luke Toroli is 23 years old. He is currently active duty Navy stationed in San Diego, California. He is married with one child. He converted to King of Christianity in early 2024 and seeks to radically love and obey Jesus Christ.

He has submitted a conscientious objector request to be discharged from the Navy due to Jesus' clear teaching on enemy love. He and his family attend Fallbrook Fellowship near San Diego, California. And in this talk today, Luke is going to share his testimony on how he went from desiring to kill for the government to wanting to serve Jesus and advance God's kingdom.

And Luke, you and I don't know each other that well. We maybe had our first conversation a week and a half ago, two weeks ago. I'm not sure. We got introduced through Patrick Matthews, which that's one of his gifts is connecting people. And I believe he was in your community and met you and told me, "Hey, we need to get Luke on Strength to Strength and have him share his testimony of his journey from being loyal to this government to that change of allegiance to God's government, to God's Jesus nation." So yeah, so Luke and I connected a couple of times. I really enjoyed talking with you, Luke.

Your zeal for the Lord challenged and inspired me. And so God bless you for that commitment to truth that you've been on. But this journey didn't start just in the last year or two. As I understand, you were raised in a home where your parents were not Christian.

And so maybe begin kind of back at the beginning a little bit. Give us a little bit of an understanding of what your life was like growing up and kind of maybe then into how you when you became a Christian, what that looked like. And we'll just have a conversation here.

And also at the end, I'll open it up for any of the ones here to ask you any questions. So does that sound like a plan, Luke? Sounds great. All right. Go ahead. All right. So first, I just want to say again, it's a tremendous honor and privilege to be on here and to be able to share my testimony.

So I'll just start with my upbringing. So I was born into a family in Yardley, Pennsylvania. I was born in New Jersey. My family moved to Yardley. I was baptized as a baby, Catholic. My parents sent me to a Presbyterian youth camp when I was very, very young. I remember that there were some seeds planted there. And I grew up in a not a religious home. I may have attended Mass with my grandfather once or twice when I was very young. I can remember being there once.

And yeah, what we were really committed to, my family was like politics and sports. That's kind of like the big thing in our house. And I have very amazing parents, very loving, supportive parents. And they did an absolute great job with the knowledge they had not being Christian. And I'm very thankful for them. So I want to honor them and not throw them under the bus at all. I'm very thankful for my parents.

So yeah, I just went through life. I played sports, played baseball, played a little bit of football. Didn't really think much about God. But my parents did plant some seeds. Like one time I was talking to my dad and we were talking about earth and creation. And he said, "Well, if there's a creation, there must be a creator." And I was like, "Wow, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. You know, maybe God is real. You know, he has to be real, right? If there's a creation, there's a creator." So there were things like that in my upbringing that were said. Another thing that was said was one time I was on a walk with my dad during COVID.

And I was talking about, we're talking about, you know, all the stuff that was going on with COVID. And I was like, "The problem with the world is people are just so horrible. They're so evil." And he said, "No, the problem with the world is sin."

Oh, wow. Yeah, I think you're right. I don't even know what sin is, but that sounds right. So there were just some seeds planted there. And then I ended up coming to Christ around June 19th, 2020. That was during COVID. And before that, like seven, eight months before that, I started attending Catholic Mass again.

You know, I don't know why. I guess I believe the Father was drawing me. You know, Jesus said, "No man cometh unto me unless the Father who sent me draws him." I believe God was drawing me. So I would just go to Catholic Mass randomly. But I had this Christian friend in high school, and we would work out together in gym class. And he told me about this youth group. And then eventually, during COVID, he kept inviting me. And I blew him off a number of times. But eventually, I came on June 19th, 2020. And the pastor preached a sermon out of Philippians 3 about how all these things I once counted as gain, I count as loss in comparison to knowing Jesus Christ.

And when he said that, I didn't really understand what that meant and all. But at the end of the message, he gave an altar call, right, where he asked people, "Is there anyone here who's never received Jesus Christ? Do you want to receive him?" And I raised my hand, and he led us in a prayer. And then someone gave me a Bible, a New King James Bible. And I read the full Gospel of John, like the whole book that night, I remember. And I brought my brother to church, and he did the same thing a couple of days later. And there were a lot of ups and downs since then that my life has not been the same.

Jesus, he absolutely entered my life in a powerful way. And yeah, my life was not the same since that day. So that's kind of my upbringing.

Yeah. Very interesting. So I did not know that you had any history in Pennsylvania.

Yeah, I was born in New Jersey, and I grew up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. So really, really east, really close to New Jersey. We live a couple of minutes away from New Jersey. But yeah, I'm from PA pretty much.

Okay. That's very interesting. So your friend that convinced you to come to church, it sounded like he was pretty tenacious. But maybe what were some characteristics about him that drew that you listened to him? Or as I think about us interacting with non-Christians around us, I'm always thinking about, you know, what is it that gets people to come to church and come to Christ? Like, was there any, yeah, maybe characteristics about him that stood out to you? You said you worked out with him.

Yeah. Sorry, Brian. Sorry to cut you off. Yeah. He and I, we were very, very similar in that we both really liked working out, you know, before I was a Christian. I definitely idolized physical fitness and sports and stuff like that. So I'd be in the gym lifting weights, and he would be in there and we'd talk. And we were both also very conservative, like politically conservative. So we connected on politics. We connected on weightlifting. We connected on patriotism. He and I were very patriotic and whatnot. So yeah. And then he would just mention, "Hey, you know, you got this youth group on Friday night. You know, you should come by." And again, I blew him off for a while.

And then one day, I remember I was having a really good day. I was just in a good mood. And he texted me that Friday, or maybe it was Thursday. And I was like, "Hey, I'm not coming this week, but next week, like I will come. Like I will make sure that I come next week because I do want to go." And again, I think God was really drawing me there. It just happened to work out, right? And so yeah, to answer your question, we had common interests politically and fitness and both patriotic. So those were kind of the three things that we connected on. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Very well. And that's very fascinating about your parents too and just some of the seeds that were planted there.

So the whole COVID, you know, thing, I know of different people who over that time, there was, you know, social isolation. People were, you know, God was, it felt like the world, a lot of things were shifting. And so people were looking and seeking.

Was that part of your journey as well?

Yeah. You know, I wouldn't say I was definitely seeking God in some sense because, again, I was like going to Catholic Mass and whatnot. But I think during COVID, there was a lot of conspiracy stuff going on. And, you know, I used to listen to like a lot of right-wing conspiracy stuff. And I believe I was like, "Man, this is crazy. Like liberals are so evil. Like this is like all they're just trying to control us." And I was just kind of, I was kind of going crazy just looking at all the evil in the world and not having a solution for it. You know? So maybe that was another thing with the way that God drew me.

But I wouldn't say I wasn't consciously seeking God at that time. I was more just super plugged into politics and all the crazy stuff that was going on with masks and lockdowns. And then God definitely sought after me during that time where I was, you know, kind of needed an answer to the evil in the world because without Jesus, there's no answer. You just see all of this evil and it's just there and there's nothing you can really do about it or there's very little you can do about it and it's just depressing. Sure. That's kind of where I was at. Very interesting. And so how did a right-wing East Coast person end up in California?

Oh, yeah. So I joined the Navy. And this is another really interesting story. I was kind of a coward growing up. I was very afraid of dying and of fighting and all this stuff. And I kind of had this paradigm shift when a Marine recruiter called me one time I was working out. And this Marine recruiter, she was a girl, she's a very tough masculine girl. And she called me and she showed me this. I came to the recruiting office. She showed me this video of Marines like shooting and blowing stuff up and fighting in combat. And she was like, "Do you want to do that?" And I was like, I just kind of froze.

And I was like, she goes, "You're going to be a Marine." I was like, "Sure." He was just very aggressive. And I kept, like for like weeks, I was going back and forth with this recruiter and my dad. I was like, "Well, if I join the Marines, am I going to go to war and die?" And it's not how it works, right? It's peacetime. Like Marines don't really, like it's not like that anymore. Only two Marines had died in 2019.

So eventually, she said this thing to me that kind of flipped my flipped the way I thought. She was like, "Well, you could die just driving to work. You could have an office job and just die driving to work." And I was like, "Oh, yeah, you're right. Like if I could just die driving to work, I might as well die in like an epic warrior way."

And so then I started reading, I started reading like warrior books from like military people. And it just kind of shifted my thinking. And I wanted to be like this tough warrior guy. And I wanted to be the best too. That was a big thing for me. I wanted to be the best, most toughest warrior that there could be. You know, and toughness was another thing that attracted me because I felt like the world around me was so soft and weak and effeminate and snowflake. And everyone was so overly sensitive. I was attracted to toughness, right? So I was in the Marine recruiting office at 17 years old. And my parents were there. And you can't sign yourself up to your 18.

So my parents did not sign me up for the Marines. They would not do it, right? And at this point, I had gone from being a coward and being afraid to join. So now I wanted to be an infantryman, which is like you're in the trenches, you're the tip of the spear. You're shooting, you know, you're kicking indoors, you're shooting. That's what I wanted to do because I wanted to be like a bad dude. I wanted to be a hard dude.

But even when I was trying to say I wanted to be an infantry, she was like, "Oh, maybe you should be a mechanic." Like even she was like, "Don't do that." So then after that, my parents were not signing me up. They said, "Wait till you're 18 and you can sign yourself up." My mom had me meet with the Marine with PTSD.

And after I met with this guy, he was infantry. He had PTSD, or I think he was infantry. But he had PTSD. And I met with him and talked to him for a couple of hours. And it made me not want to join the Marines anymore. Wow. Just this conversation, yeah.

And then I also started reading about Navy SEAL stuff because a friend told me, "Hey, you should be a Navy SEAL." And then I said, "Yeah, you should be a Navy SEAL." Because I would do like tough landscaping in the summers. And I was the only one that could last in these guys' business. Everyone else quit. So they thought, "Oh, you're tough. You should go do that, right?" And they told me about Navy SEALs. Like they're the best, right? They're the best of the best. And another funny thing is when I went to church and prayed the sinner's prayer, the pastor said the poll was the Navy SEAL of Pharisees. Like he was the best Pharisee.

I was like, "Oh, that's God's confirmation. I'm supposed to be a Navy SEAL." So all this stuff kind of like kind of happened. And I read all these books and about Navy SEAL stuff. So then I was like, "You know what? I want to be the best. I'm not going to join the Marines. I'm going to join the Navy SEALs." But another funny thing is before I even did that, I was looking at the Army Rangers, right? Because I just wanted to be whatever the best warrior was. And I was looking into the training for Army Rangers. And I was like, "This is really, this is how prideful I was." But I was like looking in the Marine Infantry, I was like, "Have any women done Marine Infantry?"

It's like, "Yes. Have any women completed Ranger School?" "Yes." And I was like, "Earth, not Ranger School, but have they become Army Rangers?" "Yes." And they have passed Ranger School too. So I was like, "Oh, if a girl can do it, it's too easy for me." No girl has ever completed BUDS, which is Basic Underwater Demolition SEAL training. No girl has ever made it through SEAL training. So obviously that's the hardest. So I was so prideful. I was like, "Well, if a girl can do it, it's too easy for me. I need to do the absolute hardest, most baddest, most warrior thing. So I'm going to go be a Navy SEAL." So that was like how I ended up in California is I joined the Navy.

And another thing I need to point out is I'm not a Navy SEAL. I never was a Navy SEAL. I never even went to Navy SEAL training. I couldn't go because my eyesight had to be 20/70 in my worst eye. And my eyesight was 20/100 and 20/200. So I could not become a Navy SEAL. My eyesight was not good enough to be a Navy SEAL. So I never got to go. However, I still joined the Navy thinking I'll go in, they'll pay for my surgery, and then I can switch and do it. So that's how I ended up in the Navy. That's how I went from the PA to the West Coast is I joined the Navy as a sonar technician.

As a sonar technician. It's just a technician job. And I've been that for the past four years. I still am that. And that's how I ended up in California. So that's a long story. I'll answer your question. Absolutely. No, that's very interesting. Thank you for sharing all that. So yeah, you were driven to be the best and ended up, yep, in California. Very interesting. So, all right, so we're in California now. And how long have you lived there? What year was it, Luke, that you moved to California?

Yeah, so August 18th of 2020, I went to Chicago to go to boot camp. And I was in boot camp for six to eight weeks, something like that. And then I finished boot camp and I flew out here to San Diego in October of 2020. So I've been here in San Diego, California, in this county since October of 2020. Gotcha.

Sure. Yep. And then so you're somewhere in here, you meet your wife. I haven't heard about that, but yeah. So obviously now you've been, you know, we're here at 2025, so five years in San Diego. You have a child and you're part of the Anabaptist fellowship there. So kind of pull together how this happened, some of those early parts there of 2020 and what finally brought you then to considering a different path.

Excellent. I'll go through this quickly. So my wife, I met her the same day I went to that church. I met her at that church the same day that I went to pray the Lord's Prayer. I had had crossed past through in the past, but we met there and we hit it off a few weeks later and we did the whole long distance thing for three years. So I met her at church and she was in PA while I was in California. We didn't get married until three years later, so that was hard. But yeah, that's how I met her. In terms of how did I come to the Anabaptist path? So I was stationed in Point Lomo for 10 months in training for my rate.

And then I got stationed on a ship for eight months. I refused the COVID vaccine. They took me off the ship and sent me to this place called Swarmic. And I was at Swarmic for six months, temporarily assigned there. And I was at Swarmic. I worked there for six months. I worked a second job. And then after that six months, I got sent to the Command and Mat Now here in California called CommServe DevRon. It's now called CommServe DevGroup. And it's at this time that I really left. I was working a part-time restaurant job. I left that. And after that, my Saturdays opened up and I started doing street ministry every Saturday. So I was doing street ministry every single Saturday, right?

And I was going to Planned Parenthood, which is a place where they murder children in the womb. It's an abortion now. And I was ministering there. And I was doing that like every Saturday, almost every Saturday for a while. And it was Mother's Day one year. I think it was 2021 or 2020. I think it was 2022, I think. Or maybe even 2023. I can't exactly remember. But it was Mother's Day. And I met a brother there who was also there doing ministry. So I saw him. I didn't really talk to him. But then I saw him again a little while later. I think it was 2023 at another event. We're outside of a library doing ministry because they were having some homosexual do some stuff with children in the library, reading bookstores.

And so we're out there doing ministry there, kind of protesting, you know, just kind of standing up for the children. And I saw him there again. And then we connected. He got his phone number. And then we met again at a Muslim outreach. We did another outreach at a children's museum where they're having a drag queen story hour. And I met this brother out there doing ministry. His name is Adelmo.

And he is the one who invited me to his home church, which is the first Anabaptist church I ever had any contact with. And he invited me up. It was an hour north of where we lived. So we didn't really consider it at first. But we figured we would just visit.

So we did. We visited in August of 2023, which is only like a couple of weeks after my wife and I got married. That's my son. Only a couple of weeks after my wife and I got married. And so we went up there in August of 2023. And basically that is how I had first contact with the Anabaptist or Kingdom kind of version of Christianity. So me and my wife went and we drove up an hour. You know, we were looking for a church. And you know, it's a house church, right? So we walk in and we're just like, "What is happening here?" I mean, you know, the women, they're wearing dresses. They're wearing head coverings.

You know, we're kind of like, "Is this Amish? Like, what is this?" You know, I go up to Jonathan Hirst, who's on the Zoom today. I'm like, "Hey, man, I'm thinking of starting a Christian gym."

I want to start a Christian gym. I said, "I think one of the things really missing in the fitness realm was like a Christian fitness influencer. Maybe I'll fill that gap." So I told him I wanted to write a book about it, about fitness and faith and whatnot. So yeah, that was our first thing. We walked in and we were just kind of like, "What?" And I said that to Jonathan and we sat down for the service. And one of the things I remember about this congregation, which was a home church at the time, is the hymns were very, it was very beautiful. It felt like the Holy Spirit was there when we sung hymns.

Because we had sung hymns before, me and my wife, with certain groups. And it always kind of felt dead and lifeless. But the hymn, like the worship, felt so, the singing was so life-giving and powerful. So that was one thing that stood out to me a lot. And then after the service, one of the Russian brothers came up to me and said, "Is it okay for a Christian to kill?" I was like, "Well, of course it's okay for a Christian to kill. Number one, you know, self-defense. Number two, in war. And number three, capital punishment. A Christian can kill, you know, in those three situations." He was like, "I only hear this garbage in America."

I was like, "What?" And then the brothers like Adelmo and the other brothers there started talking to me about Jesus' teachings. So they challenged me on that. And I just kind of like, "Well, what if this? What if that? You know, what if this? I don't know about that. How about the Roman Centurion's faith, right? Jesus marveled his faith. How about Cornelius?" And you know, John the Baptist, after all, John the Baptist, when the soldiers came to him, he didn't say not to do any, he didn't have to say get out of the military or don't do violence. He just said, "Don't extort. We can't with your wages." And then Adelmo was like, "It says do violence to no man."

I was like, "It doesn't say that. It says like don't extort." And then the King James Bible says, "Do violence to no man." I was like, "Oh, it does say that. Oh, that's interesting." So they gave me two books. They gave me the Dictionary of Christian Beliefs. I thought I had it over here. I have it here somewhere. It's the dictionary. Here it is. I'm using it to hold my flashlight. They gave me this book, which I still have, A Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs. And then they also gave me A Change of Allegiance by Dean Taylor.

So yeah, I. That congregation was well armed. Yes, very well armed. They were ready for me. Adelmo was like, "Hey, we got a military guy coming and get Change of Allegiance ready."

So I took those books home. And I was really looking into this one, the Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs, because I was really interested in the issue of Calvinism. Calvinism was the big debate point. I've never been a Calvinist. I'm very emotionally, passionately anti-Calvinist. And I wanted to see what the early church said. You know, I wanted to see if this was true historic faith. And I found out that it wasn't, that all of these guys believed in free will. And they believe that Jesus had a good choose. And God didn't predestine people to hell. So that was really good for me to see that. But then Adelmo made a good point where he said, you know, the first person to teach determinism or Calvinism was Augustine.

He's the first person that taught just war, right? So it's very inconsistent for you to hold on to, to use this and say, "Oh yeah, well, Calvinism is wrong, but just war is right." Like, how can you hold on to just war but refuse Calvinism when they have the same origin, the same source? And another thought that I share with my wife, who's sitting here on the couch with my son, is that it's very interesting that the first person who ever taught that it's okay to kill people was the same person who first taught that God predestined people to hell. It's a lot easier to kill people if you believe God predestined the hell already, right?

Because that way, well, they're going to go to hell anyway. So if I kill them or not, it doesn't matter. So I can kill them because God predestined me. But if, if, if like the early church taught and how real Christianity is like, God wants everyone saved. Everyone actually can be saved. Then I shouldn't kill anyone because Jesus died for that person. And he wants them saved. And they could have, they will or won't be saved, you know, possibly based on how I ministered to them. So that was a really big thing for me that really shook me up. And it was a few weeks after I really dove into this book that I read Change of Allegiance.

And it's really funny. Like when I picked up Change of Allegiance, I was just ready to bash Dean. I was like, this guy, you know, he's just going to be some, some limp wristed, you know, weak, anti-American guy who is just, you know, I just, how could you not serve in the military? The military is the most honorable thing you could do. It's like, we in the military, you know, we do our job so that all these other people in America can enjoy the liberties we provide. You know, we, we suffer, we go and we fight so that people can, kids can play on playgrounds without having to worry about, you know, terrorists and, and, and businesses can exist.

Like, it's an honorable thing, right? That was my, I was so against it. But I couldn't help as I read the book, you know, I was just totally blown away. And I was like, wow, like this, this sounds like this is true. Like everything, all the arguments, I can't argue with them. You know, everything he's saying was just, you know, how he, he read the clear teaching of Jesus. And he said, is there anyone else who's ever believed this? Oh, the whole early church believed it. And at the end, I hate to spoil it if any of you haven't read Dean's book, but the officer who was presiding over Dean's separation, his conscious objector, ended up converting and separating for the same reason.

And I was like, wow, this has to be from God. Like this, and I told my wife that and she was like, wow. So it really seemed like, like Dean was speaking the truth. And although I went in about predisposed against it, as, as, as against it as you could be as a Christian, I couldn't help but think that the Holy Spirit was ministering and saying, this is how I want my people to live. Yeah. Yeah. So there's a really fun little detail here, Luke, though, about you forgetting your Bible at the house church, that first visit. Oh yeah. Yeah, right. So great. I already told that story at our church. Yeah, I already told that story.

I told two stories of two different Bibles, and one was about the brother who forgot his Bible, who became a Kingdom Christian. So, and that was you. Anyhow, so tell us about that little fun little detail there. This is a really fun detail. So basically, when I went out to Adelmo's church, Jonathan Hirst's church, he was meeting in his house. I had brought this Bible. Now this is a Bible, a King James Bible that my grandfather gave to me, right? It's a very old Bible. It's worn up. It smells like an old Bible. You just love it. The font's great. Nice, bright red letter print, red letter print. And I, and I, and I brought it up there and I left it at Jonathan Hirst's house, which is where the church met.

So when I left the church, I never had any intention of going back. Like I really didn't. And my wife can probably verify. She's in the room now, but I didn't have any intention of going back to that church. I was like, okay, that was fun. That was an adventure. Let's never do that again.

So, but I left my Bible there. So Jonathan Hirst, he would see it and he would text me. So we were going back and forth and texting. And he was really kind to me. He was like, hey brother, like what are you thinking about? I'm like, well, what are your thoughts? Any, any scriptures or things you're meditating on? You know, and I would text him back and we had a great conversation. I respected everyone, you know, at, um, at Fallbrook, right? Um, like to a degree. Um, like I respected their, their convictions and they really were following Jesus strong. But I just didn't agree at the time. But I left my Bible there. So eventually I, I went back up to get my Bible.

And then we talked more and talked more and talked more and those books. And yeah, eventually I came all the way around. Now I attend that church. And I'm a member. I just became a member of that church now that I once thought was, was crazy.

Now people think I'm crazy. Yeah, that's, that's, that's very interesting. So some of your most, some of these engagements, like around, um, Calvinism, predestination, Augustine, did that all happen like in, in, in further visits then? Or was that like on your first visit you were, you went that deep?

So with, with Calvinism and whatnot, I can't remember how much I talked about it with, um, with Jonathan and that church. I know Adelmo and I would talk about it a lot because, um, basically the people I was going with to Planned Parenthoods, like every week we're all Calvinists, right? So I was really kind of engaging more there and I would debate them. I would like talk to them. So that, that dictionary really helped. But it was more when Adelmo pointed out that the origin of Calvinism or determinism and the origin of just war came from the same source and how it was inconsistent for me to reject one and embrace the other. And I couldn't argue with that.

Like I, I, I love truth, right? I want to follow the truth. Jesus Christ said, "I am the truth." He says, "God's word is truth." And truth is consistent. God doesn't deny himself. So whatever the truth is, I'm going to bend my will to conform it to the truth. I'm not going to try to deny the truth or try to miss, you know, misrepresent it so it can just fit what I want. So, you know, the history is history. History is never going to change, right? Like it's never going to be that the early church didn't teach, you know, enemy love, uh, you know, free will, like or permanent marriage. Like all of these things the early church believed and taught.

So like those are truths I'm going to hold on to. Um, they're not going to change. So yeah. Mm-hmm. Sure. Was there any other, other resources, Luke, that impacted you in this time? Great question. No, the two biggest ones were those two books, uh, that I can think of. Oh, you know, there was something, uh, later along, uh, Followers of the Way Boston put out some great stuff. Um, specifically, they have a a YouTube video called, uh, "It's Just War," which is a debate between Dean Taylor and David Brousseau and then Peter Kraft, and, uh, another man, I can't remember his name. But that, that video also really, and, and that's also, I think, I don't know if you posted my, my testimony on the website, but that's also was one of the big things that helped pull me over to, um, to embracing Jesus's teachings as he, as he stated them.

So that video was great. Yeah. Yeah. We do have your conscientious objector letter, um, there on the website that tells some of your, your, your testimony, uh, as well as we have the Just War link there as well. So, um, I, I could imagine how that would have been a good, a good resource for you, Luke, uh, in, in this time. So, all right. Um, so you're really grappling with this. Um, what does it look like then as you, as this kind of settles into your heart, into your soul, and then some of the consequences of, of accepting non-resistance, um, or like what I'm, what I like to call the ideal resistance? Yes. Amen. How, how, how does that begin to affect you?

I think of your wife, your family, um, and then even where you are, you, you are stationed at the Navy. So yeah, tell us about some of that journey. So there are a lot of consequences. The first one was like, you know, one of the things I noticed at the church, um, Jonathan Hirst's church and now my church was that, um, the, the men were very, um, like, like, like gentle and, and kind, and they had such wonderful marriages. Like, like there's one brother in my church, his wife and him have never argued. It's like incredible. So one of the things about non-resistance is it made me want to be more gentle with my wife.

It made me want to be more gentle with my wife, more kind, uh, more long-suffering. So that was the big, like, immediate consequence. I really wanted to focus on that. Number two, I, I stopped lifting, uh, the same, at the same rate that I was. I still keep in shape. I still work out, you know, the, the first Timothy 4:8 says that, you know, physical discipline has some value, right? So it has some value, but I used to work out, lift heavy weights six days a week. And the reason behind that, and I have this in my testimony too, was that I wanted to be bigger and stronger than every other man so that I could defeat any possible threat.

So I used to carry a multitool that had a pocket knife on it. And my thought process prior to non-resistance was, well, because I have this knife and because I'm so big, I'm so strong, I'm so young, I'm so fast, the only way someone can beat me is if they have a gun. Because if someone does, if they try to mug me with no knife, I have my knife, I can win. If they try to mug me with a knife, I'm bigger, I'm stronger, I'm faster, I can win. But if they have a gun, I'll lose. So I just walked around with this mentality of like looking at every man, can I beat that guy up?

Could I take that guy out? If this guy tried to mug me or rob me, I could, I could take him out. Or that guy's too big, I couldn't. That's how I thought. Like this was like my mindset, even as a Christian, right? Like walking around, you know, with this pocket knife, thinking about threats and how to fight. So I, that kind of evaporated and melted away, uh, once I became non-resistant. And I, I just stopped like, you know, I'm just going to trust God. You know, if someone takes, wants to take my tunic, I'll give them my cloak also. Just like Jesus said, if someone wants to beat me up, okay, you can beat me up, but I'm still going to love you.

You know, um, that, that, that, that was a really, another big mindset shift. So I do work out. I still lift weights, um, but it's not nearly at the same rate that I, that I used to. Um, I used to be much more into it. And the mindset was more of like a fighter, a warrior mentality. And another thing is I wanted to be a policeman, right? Like I, I gave up on the whole SEAL dream because I was married and SEALs are gone for about 300 days a year. But I, I went to a job fair of just, you know, dozen, over a dozen police departments. And I was pretty set like, okay, I'm never going to be a SEAL because I want to have a marriage.

But I'll be a SWAT team guy, right? I'll be a SWAT guy. You know, those guys are, they're kicking doors and they, they bust drug rates. I'll do that. So that, that was also like, no, it's time to, I'm going to have to learn a trade now. You know, I'm, I'm giving up on that. Um, so those, those were three immediate effects. Um, and then obviously the biggest one was the Navy, right? I'm in the Navy. I'm active duty military.

Now, as active duty military, um, in peacetime, there wasn't really much going on. The command and mat, we work on computers. Um, we do IT stuff. Um, we, we support in that, but you know, I'm not doing any kind of combat role. So at first, the thought process was, well, I'll just finish my time because I'm in a non-combative role. And I, um, had read from the early church. I think it's Hippolytus writes that, uh, they would not baptize a Roman soldier unless you agreed to, uh, not kill and to not sprinkle incense to Caesar. And I think not swear oaths. I think it was, uh, two or three of those. So I was like, well, I'm not going to get into this thing.

It's like, I'm not going to, I don't want to, I'm not going to have to re-enlist. If it was, when you re-enlist, that's when you say the oath. So I'm not going to re-enlist. I'm not doing any violence to anyone. I've never, uh, really done violence to anyone, uh, in, in the military career. I've never seen combat. I've never fought. I've never really had that problem. Although I am, um, qualified to shoot torpedoes, but again, it's peacetime. And then, um, yeah, I mean, we don't, we don't worship Caesar. We don't sprinkle incense in modern U.S. military. So I'm good. So at first I was like, well, I can just, I can just, you know, get out, um, at the end of my contract.

Then I had this, uh, lingering thought that, you know, uh, I don't believe in fighting. And if I deployed, you know, I, I wouldn't, I wouldn't want to go. Like I remember I was with Adelmo once and I had said, he said like something about how, uh, Lord William, you know, uh, I won't deploy and I'll be okay. I'll just be able to get out. He goes, no, even if they deploy you, you really shouldn't go because you're going to be part of a warship. It could possibly be, be shooting the canopy.

And I was like, you know what? He's right. Like I, you know, my, my thought process was this, and I shared this with Jonathan Hirst, is that if I was going to deploy, right, I was, I'm not scheduled to deploy the rest of my contract, but if I was scheduled to deploy, I would do a conscientious objector because I don't want to deploy. I don't want to go out to sea, and I don't want to possibly shoot a torpedo at someone, right? I don't even want to be a part of that or be a part of a ship that's shooting people. Um, so if, if, if I would submit the CO, if I was going to deploy, you know, why would I not submit it, uh, and just soak up the benefits of living in California?

You know, I only work a couple hours a day. You know, we don't even have a full work day most of the time. Um, why would I just sit on here, absorb the benefits? But then if they try to deploy me, say, oh, no, no, no, all of a sudden I'm a CO. You know, to be, to have integrity, to have a clear conscience before God, I, I, I felt that it was, it was wise to, um, submit a conscience objector of knowing where I stand and how I feel and that I don't want to go out to, to fight. So that was obviously a huge deal was, um, submitting a conscience objector for me to say, look, I can't, I can't be in the Navy anymore.

Mm-hmm. Sure. And then how, how did those, uh, the, the ones within the Navy who you answer to, um, how did they respond to the, this engagement? So this is really interesting. So again, on my command, we just work on computers, right? So basically the response was, what are you objecting to? Like, we're not doing any combat. We're not doing any violence. You know, we're not running on a hill with a rifle. We're not, we're not doing that. Like, why even object? We're probably not going to go to war. You're getting out in a little bit. But even more than that, all of a sudden they were like, yeah, you know what? I totally agree.

I don't want to kill people anyway. That's why I do computer work. And by the way, I'm a Christian too. It was like crazy. Like, like all these people who had never talked about Christianity or non-resistance or anything like that, or had even said they were Christian in any capacity, all of a sudden they were non-resistant Christians who just were just in the Navy because, because it just had good benefits. It's like, that's really where we're from. Yeah, like a 30-year master chief I talked to. And then, you know, he's a very, very, um, he's been very good to me. He's, he's been, um, I don't want to disparage him at all. But it was interesting how he was like, you know, just so in agreement with me overall with, with how I, with my convictions and, and everyone else too.