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The Locusteer Podcast is a new podcast that aims to address topics that are often avoided or ignored. The hosts, Levi, John, and Stephen, introduce themselves and explain why they chose the name "Locust Eater" for their podcast. They want to reach out to men who may feel like they don't fit the mold of what society or the church expects of them. Their goal is to create a community where men can freely express their emotions and interests without feeling shame or judgment. They believe that by supporting each other, men can have a positive impact on their families and communities. Hello, hello everyone. Welcome to the Locusteer Podcast. My name is Levi Luddy. Today we have with us John Finnell. Glad to be here. We have Stephen Leach. Hello, hello. And we're just going to talk through what is the Locusteer Podcast because this is our very first episode. We hope to kind of outline why we're doing what we're doing and the hope of the value that we're going to bring to the listeners. So I just want to do some quick intros, I guess. So I'm Levi Luddy. Like I said, I am a husband and father of two. I have about twelve and a half years of military experience between the active side and the guard side. Avid music player. This is my first podcast, if you can't tell. And I think that this is going to be a really passionate project for all of us. I'm really excited to see where this goes. John, you want to do a quick intro? Yeah. So I'm John Finnell. I'm also a husband and father of three, two little girls and a boy. Absolutely love them. Mechanic by trade and always had a heart to do a podcast, talk about the things that nobody wants to talk about. Natural, everyday things that men struggle with. So really super excited about this. And yeah, just looking forward to getting into some of the topics that you all struggle with as well as us. Good deal. Steven Leach here and former pastor, father of seven, married to, love my life, for 21 years now. And pastimes, I think I hunt sacred cows and like poking things that shouldn't be poked into a little bit. Passionate about a lot. And yeah, yeah. So just excited about where we're going to go from here. Yes. And if you thought you missed it, you don't have to rewind. He does have seven children. So when it comes to the topics that we're discussing about fatherhood and raising children, we all have some experience, but one of us has more. Just a little. All right. So I think first let's just jump into what are we doing here? What is the Locust Eater Podcast? And I guess we can dig into maybe a little bit first, why are we called the Locust Eater Podcast? And I'll let the guy who bestowed that name to the group on accident tell us how that came up. Right. So completely, you can either say accidental or a God moment. Levi and I were just having a conversation pretty passionately about things that mean so much. Things that we see that maybe are off topic for some people, things that aren't discussed, things that are skirted around and we wanted to press into those issues. And out of the blue he says, but what would we call it? And the word locust eaters just flew out of my mouth. No thought ever about that. But it's a reference to John the Baptist being in the wilderness and outside of the church, outside of the camp, 100% heart served God. And the dude was known for eating locusts and wild honey. Levi, you go into that a little more about the symbology of locusts biblically, maybe. Yeah. So, I mean, we did a little research after that moment to see if it's even an appropriate name. There was a lot of references to the pestilence to challenge in the Bible, to purging of sin, to all these things. And then obviously the specific references to John the Baptist using it as nourishment. I felt like that was pretty telling of how God works, right? He takes the things that are the most painful, the things that are the most difficult, and he can turn it into something that you never expect it to be good for you, right? And something that the world considers to be completely useless maybe. God can flip it on its head and make it something really powerful. Right, absolutely. So then, now that we have an idea, right, what is locusts here? Why do we even call ourselves that? The group here has a drive to reach to the men out there specifically, not to discount the women in the audience, but your men in your life need to hear the things I think that we're going to talk about as well and give you perspective on maybe how they view some of these topics to help with some of that relationship development, but potentially. We are looking for those men out there that maybe have been told by the church that you don't necessarily fit the mold. You're those guys that have been masculine because you're a freaking dude. That's what you are. That's what we are. Kind of designed that way. Weirdly, right? You have certain traits of masculinity that our world now says is not to be celebrated, and the church has a tendency. Every time we say the church, just to be clear, we're never talking about our church that we go to individually, or we're never talking about necessarily the churches that we grew up in, but the grand church, right? Nor every church. Nor every church. Perfect. Right. So I think, just to kind of talk a little bit about that for just a second, I think there's a huge disconnect in why the country is kind of what the way it went, and men are the way they are today because there's a giant disconnect between who we feel like we should be and who we're taught that we ought to be, right? And that's what the Locust Eaters meant to me when you guys brought it up and said the name. For me, it was instantly a voice calling out in the wilderness, preparing the way of the Lord. The guy that was out there saying the things that nobody else wanted to say, nobody else wanted to talk about, but everybody was feeling. Right? So John had this huge following because men and people were coming out and going, this feels right. This is what I long to hear, even though it's hard to hear, and hard to deal with at times. For me, being around you guys, being able to talk about real world, real life application stuff, and knowing that I'm not alone in the weird feelings that I have or the hard crap that I go through, and knowing that y'all were there in the same place, it's brought this sense of freedom of like, yeah, there is a voice out in the wilderness calling out. And that's my heart behind the whole thing, is just helping you and us understand that you're not weird. Yeah, and in a world where, more than ever, you can't trust your feelings. Right? Our hearts are wicked. The world will tell you, just, you know, follow your heart. Do what you feel is right. And then whenever you're told by the church, no, your feelings are bad, don't listen to that. Then, as a man who's got these emotions of, I actually just really like hunting. I really like, you know, doing these masculine things that they say. I like loud music. I don't like, you know, wimpy phrase music, or whatever it might be. And it turns into like, and now I don't belong, and I'm not allowed to feel. So then, typically, in research space, I would say, I think the number was like, starting in your 30s, moving up to as far as you want to stay in that groove. We don't make friends. We end up not going to church, not leaving the family in that direction. Stephen, you actually brought up in a previous conversation, what's the one most visited day of the year at church? Mother's Day. Yeah, you'd think it'd be Christmas, right, or Easter. And why is it Mother's Day? Because Mama wants you there, and you're going to do what Mama says. Because they desire it. They long for it. And we feel like we don't belong, so we don't lead in that direction, but it's totally what they need. Right. So, since you're already on it, Stephen, can you go into the next, like, what is the point of this? So why are we doing what we're doing? What's our hope? What value do we want to bring out of this, right? And for me, personally, one of the things, it sort of piggybacks off everything that we just said. In my estimation, the church has given one channel, one vein. And if you're going to be a man in the church, you need to drop into that, leave off who you are, leave off things like anger, because that's somehow taboo, become a nice guy and fit into the mold. And if you don't do that, you get sent to the wilderness, or you feel like there is no place for you. So I see an army out there that is ready to be called on. And honestly, I think it's something the church needs, is for these men to come back. So my heart in this is to reach those guys and say, A, you're not alone. There's way more of us than you would think. B, you're not ungodly or off the mark in wanting to see things like righteousness and masculinity, heroism within the church. And so personally, that is a big thing that I'm doing, is to reach out and say, we're an army. And not in a militant way to take over anything, just in pure numbers, back to the locus. Little guys, but they can do massive amounts when they come in unison. And so I'll let you guys pick up off of that. Sure. Yeah. I mean, the amount of impact that one father can have in their home, whenever they're equally yoked and driven in community with other men towards God, is completely unfathomable. And you put all those people into a larger community and make them not feel ostracized, make them not feel broken, make them not feel like they've been doing it wrong all along, just because they have these tendencies of, I don't want to sit still. I don't want to be quiet all the time. Sometimes you just want to freaking beat your chest in rage and dance around a campfire and shoot some freaking guns in the air, and that is totally normal. Sometimes you want to sit with your daughters and do a tea party. There's this whole spectrum of things that a man's heart belongs for. Absolutely. And to fill that void with something that is even close to the enemy's arrows of shame or guilt or regret or whatever that might be that's keeping you away from that community is literally, I would say, our generation's greatest tragedy. Agree. And too, man, the heart longs to be free. But there's so many times in my experience, my heart longs to be free. I want to do the beat my chest thing. I want to do this. But the church or the people tell you to sit down and be quiet and calm down. But then on the flip side of that coin, they're like, we know you've got wounds and hurts and stuff that's causing you to calm down, but we don't really want to deal with that. So what do we do with it? Nobody wants to deal with the wounds. Nobody wants to deal with the hurts. They definitely don't want you to beat your chest and be loud. Like you said a little ago, they want you to fall in line and be quiet. But what does that do to your heart? What does that do to you as a man? How do you deal with that? For me, I think most of my life I've felt stuck in this vortex of, holy cow, I have all this passion, but everybody's telling me to shut up. I don't know how to deal with this passion because of the people telling me to shut up. It makes me feel like I'm weird on the wounds and the thing. You know what I mean? Does that make sense? A hundred percent. My biggest struggle and why this is so powerful to me is, and you know, you too and I have had these conversations, being a military guy, literally being called to be in the army since I can ever remember. I mean, I remember being five or six years old and my parents caught me in my dog house with my dog next to me, eating the dog food like it was rations and I was in a survival situation, right? Really prepared me for seer school, by the way. But whenever you fast forward that through a whole career of, like, cool, you're going to deploy, you're going to do these things, and you come back to a civilian environment and the civilian culture that isn't even influenced at all by the warrior heart, I find myself, had historically found myself, shutting down all of the tendency and actually being ashamed of some of the tendency for the action. And then you're like, man, I am messed up. Why do I feel like I need to be the aggressor towards what I claim is evil, right? And when I say what I claim, I don't mean, like, you know, people. I don't mean other armies. I mean, like, I see evil and it pisses me off. I see, you know, the sex trafficking situation or the, you know, whatever it might be, not to take anything political, but, like, cartels and whatever else doing what they do, and it drives me insane, and I can't do anything about it in a public form of, like, can't communicate with other people in the church about that thing because they say, and this is probably another podcast episode, but, you know, oh no, you fight a battle of spiritual warfare. This is not of flesh and blood. Don't you read your Bible? Yeah. And you're like, wait, I'm pretty sure we just went over David and Goliath talking about David killing a man that was evil, right? Oh, no, that was a different context. And then they don't want to say the other things are different contexts that they don't want to apply, right? So some of those things are hurts of my own that we have definitely come to speak through, and I know I'm not alone in that. So rectifying the warrior heart with the peacemaker, recognizing the value of both outside of a military environment, outside of anything kinetic at any way, you're not wrong for feeling those things. 100%. 100%. So the next thing that we wanted to talk about is what value do we hope to provide? And I want to, this is all connected together. So right off the bat, I just want to state that you do not need permission from the church at large to be a godly man. Amen. And there are a lot of these contradictions in there. So you just brought up, Levi, the things of dealing with something like sex trafficking and coming with actual action, not just we need to pray about that, but actual action put into place. And the church is very understanding if there's a hungry person, the church doesn't say, well, we'll just pray. They actually create a bowl of soup and they feed the hungry person. But when it gets to issues of domestic violence, when it gets to issues of child abuse, when it gets to issues of things that would take some form of action that would cause an actual confrontation, the church says, stand down, be nice, be kind, be the poster of Jesus, cuddling the little lamb that we saw in our Sunday school rooms if you grew up in the church like I did. And so we want to say no. We want to voice this, not that you need our permission either, but we want to voice this permission that says you are allowed to love God and walk in everything that is masculine and manly that he created for us to be, going all the way back to the Garden of Eden. In a pre-sin world, Adam's position is to keep, which is to defend, that's old English right there. So defend and to tend. So make it better. So from the beginning, the man's role is defend it and make it better. And that's what we need in our society today. Yes. And that's the heart that's been almost pushed. And I don't know if it was a malicious thing or if somebody was even consciously doing it. It was just passed down through, you know, over time, that piece just kind of went away through comfortability of our own life and what we're doing. You know, can't see it from my house mentality, out of sight, out of mind. Affluence added into that. Yeah. And so the passion and desire for confronting evil or wrongdoing has almost all but gone away. Yeah. And it's been replaced with, I'll pray for you, Stephen. That's right. I'll pray for you, Levi. Well, not that I don't want your prayers, but what is that going to do for me, like right now? Especially when they don't pray for you right then. Yeah. Lay your hands on me. I want you to bring the Holy Spirit that has been poured upon you and give it to me if I need it. Don't tell me that you might later. Might be a side note, but. No, it's the Christian handoff. It's the thing that we say, but do you really? Like if that person, sometimes, you know, you've just been brushed off because it's an uncomfortable issue. It's programming. Right. We've been trained to do it that way, right? And so we've been tamed. We've been declawed. We've had our teeth pulled out, but we're really, really nice and cute and cuddly and soft and kind. So again, I'm going to go back to Genesis. Let's take this all the way back there. What was Adam's sin? God gave him a very basic command. What was his sin? We know that Eve plucks the fruit and gives it to him. But what did he do while that was happening? Nothing. Abdication. He stepped down from his throne and did nothing. Yeah. And how many times in our life do we do that? Right. I mean, it's easy. And I've said this with you guys, and I'm going to say it because I want it to be on the podcast. But I would have loved to have the story go when God came back in the cool of the evening and he said, Hey, Adam, where are you? And his response was, um, this thing was trying to mess with my woman. So I killed it and threw it out of the garden. I hope that's okay. Right. Right. None of us would exist, but it would have been great. Well, maybe we wouldn't. I mean, we'd all be running around naked. Maybe. I don't have any idea. Who knows what the storybook would have been. But you know, all the way back to Genesis, man lost a piece of his heart. For fear of whatever, I don't have any idea what it was. Then I know what it is now, at least in my life, fear of confrontation, the what is the could of the should is, what are they going to think all this stuff. And, and, and I let it too often in my life that I care to admit, be the determining factor of how I approach a situation, whether it be in business with my kids, with my wife and the church, you know, fear what people are going to think. Sure. So our boldness and action gets sidelined and not to take. We love the Bible and we want to go there, but we want this to be real and relevant. But that was also Saul's sin. Saul was the king before David, right? But what was his problem? He cared too much for the opinions of other people and that let him alter the actions that God would have him take to do what would please the people. And I think that's an epidemic today. I do want to bring this up really quick. The, we often talk about, um, if the power of one thing, it's multiplied. So if one man were to do a bold thing, that's something. But if a million men, 16 million men, 50 million men did that thing, then it's absolutely incredible. Like simply love your family. Well, yeah. Crazy, right? Right. But now think about this from the other side. If the enemy can get those same 10, 16, 50 million men to do nothing, that's an assault from the other side. Yeah. Yeah. If you can get 50 million men to not cut the head off the snake that's in their home, you're winning the game. He won't win ultimately. And we know that, but there is no reason in this day, in this hour that we take part in that equation and say, I'll stand down rather than do the difficult thing. And that ties into another significant point. That's again, probably going to be a whole nother podcast episode, but that I struggled with is the thought that when things get difficult in the world around us, I say thought, the influence from others in church, when things get difficult in the world around us, that you shouldn't fight back because the Bible says that you're a Christian and you're going to be persecuted. So you should just find joy in that. Let it come. Yeah. It's just going to happen. Okay. First of all, way out of context. Second of all, life is precious and that's what we're here to defend. Yes. That's what Adam was supposed to defend and chose not, not chose, didn't, right? It was a choice, but maybe it wasn't like an intentional fail. When you hear this episode and something rings in your head and you're thinking about that thing, if you still go and choose not to resolve or cut the head off that snake, maybe it's your kids having a cell phone and you know that they're accessing porn on their phone. Maybe it's some other thing that's going on in your home that you're not calling out into the light. Now you're intentionally sending. Yeah. Well, and I love the fact that you said kids on the phone and knowing porn, but so many times it's so much simpler than that. Oh yeah. It's the dad that comes home from work and the kids are pulling that in and they want to have the time. He's fried. So he just unplugs and watch TV. Yeah. That could be the snake. Abdication. Yeah. You know, just pack off. Let me have a beer. Let me do my thing. Kids are dying. Wife is completely wore out and the whole family is dying, but you got to sit down on the couch, you know? Yes. And that because you've earned it. Yeah. You deserve it. Of course you did. There's a, there's a little voice in your head that says, let's find the easiest path. Yes. To what it is you want, which is the same voice that said, look, let's go up to the top of this temple. You see all these nations. Your thing is to have all these nations under you. I can make that happen. Yeah. Doesn't have to be so difficult. And this is back to the root of what the world says is masculine versus what is really masculine. You didn't earn the right as a father to come home from work and ignore your family because you want a beer. That is toxic masculinity to its core. Right. You did earn the right to come home to your family and surge with every last ounce of your energy to make your children know that you love them. Yes. That is what you have earned by you being a man and doing that makes you the most godly character in your home because it's self-sacrificing and it's uncomfortable. That, in my opinion, is a correct interpretation of trials will come. Let's find joy in it. Right. And maybe you make the sacrifice of planning that day so that you don't come home with nothing left. Yeah. Come home with something in the tank. In the tank to give them. Right. Yeah. Instead of what we've been taught that a real man goes and works himself until he's absolutely exhausted and then we come home into that lazy boy recliner because that's your spot. Yeah. Sit down and shut up and pass out. Don't worry about your family. And I think one of the things that we need to cover is being able to recognize snakes. And that probably, like you keep saying, is probably a whole other episode. Right. One of the things that I've noticed statistically, if your wife, if her circle of friends are all divorced, is that a healthy thing? And we're not trying to put down anybody who's divorced, right? Anybody who's gone through that horror. Thank you. But if, a hundred percent, and grace there, but if her entire circle of friends is either recently or in the process of divorcing, do you know what the likelihood of her mindset about marriage is? Yeah. And then flip that to the man. If the guy listening to this podcast's entire group of friends, their only thing that they enjoy doing is going out and getting smammered on the weekends, right? Because that's how they, quote, unwind. Then you're going to find that you will reap the fruit of the seeds that you sow. Right. So that's a snake. That's the same thing as back to the garden. This is something pitching an idea that will dethrone you, whether you're the king or the queen. It's coming against the home. And so we do need to recognize the snakes. They don't look like snakes. Satan's crafty. He has a way of repackaging and remarketing something that's toxic to you, your family, your legacy, into a way that seems very logical and very appealing because of the world that we're in. And so we've got to learn to recognize those snakes. And I think that that is literally the best outcome that we could ask for, for us putting our energy into this podcast, is to just shine the light into the lives of the men that might be hearing this and allow them to, one, come to trust other men, because that's tough, right? Big time. Come to a point. When it's real important stuff. Right. Like we could talk about the football game all day long. Right. But sharing my struggle with you, being vulnerable. Yes. Intimate with another man about real issues. That is queer. In the perfect example of that word, right? It's very, very difficult and uncommon. So I think that if we could sum it all up, that is probably the best way that we could say, man, we hope that if you're listening right now, you're able to see the hearts of the people that are in this room and how we plan to just put on display the hard topics and just hopefully inspire some people to take that next step into being intentional with the things that you're taking action on and maybe learn something that could help you in your family life. But if nothing else from this episode, just know that you're not alone. Yeah. And obviously we got a lot to unpack. Yes. So join us next time on The Locust Eater Podcast.
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