How Christians Should Think About Economics
Dr. Brian Baugus joins Michael to discuss God’s view of our money and how Christians should approach politics in light of economics.
Kevin David Sorbo was born in Mound, Minnesota, on September 24, 1958. After leaving college, Kevin joined an actors theater group, and traveled to Europe, then to Sydney, Australia appearing in commercials. Kevin began to make guest appearances on such popular shows as Murder, She Wrote (1984). At the end of 1986, he settled in Los Angeles. Kevin spent 3 years traveling around the world, modeling for print ads and appearing in over 150 commercials, before landing in his breakout series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys (1995). Kevin became internationally famous, and he learned the craft of film-making well enough to direct and co-write some of the episodes. He went on to star in the Gene Roddenberry’s science fiction series Andromeda for five seasons.
In real life, Kevin’s heart is as big as Hercules’– he leads “A World Fit for Kids!” as the chair and spokesperson. Kevin devotes much of his time to “A World Fit For Kids!” which is a successful mentoring model that trains inner-city teens to use school, fitness, sports and positive role models for themselves, and then become the coaches and mentors for younger children. In 1998, Kevin married lovely actress Sam Jenkins, best known for her dual role on Hercules: The Legendary Journeys (1995) as Serena/the Golden Hind.
“I was only eleven when I wanted to be an actor. I went to the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, saw the Merchant of Venice, little Shakespeare. It mesmerized me the entire time and I told my mom on the way home, “I’m going to be an actor.” I got the loving pat on the thigh saying,” That’s nice dear.” But you know, I was a jock; I was a football, basketball, baseball guy.
I really didn’t dive into it until I went to college and beyond is when I sort of made the big move out to Los Angeles. The goal was always there; the drive was always there and I moved out here not knowing a soul, knowing it would be tough. You know, the friend of mine, the best advice he gave me was, “It’s called show business, not show show.” My double marketing and advertising major and used that for marketing and advertised myself.
“Hercules started in 1993. The movie started airing in ‘94. Then we shot. We did one season of Hercules, then we did six years of one hour episodes. That first year was awesome for me because I got to work all year with Anthony Quinn, which was amazing. So I got a year down there in New Zealand with Anthony. I heard all these wonderful stories. We then passed Bay Watch as the most watched TV show in the world, which was amazing to be in part of that. Then I got in drama there, so I got in five years on that. So in 1993-2005, I was out of the country. I was in New Zealand seven years and Canada for five. So you know Canada is close to us and I was still spending most of my time up in our Northern neighbor.
Initially it was supposed to be these five movies and that was it, but I had a feeling by the end of the second movie they were going to make it a series. I didn’t hear anything from anybody, but I could tell what was happening and said. It was pretty cool. People were really loving it and the action was great and fun. I said, “This is such a great family show.” Sure enough by 1996, Bay Watch was the most watched show in the world and it just took off from there. It was incredible.”
“Well, I was pretty regular and my parents were always pretty adamant about going to church, so it was just part of my life since birth. The church got so big that Sunday school was on Wednesday nights after school. It was kind of tough for me to make especially when I got into junior and high school levels because I had basketball practice or football practice or games and stuff like that. I just remember when I was in fifth or sixth grade, asking my parents because we had a pastor that was very fire and brimstone, very Old Testament in terms of the anger of God, and I just don’t think God is that angry with us.
I started questioning that. I’ve never wavered in my belief, that there was a God; that there was a supreme being that started everything and that was never a problem with me questioning my faith. I questioned the way we were being taught in our church and then we had a youth pastor come in and he was talking to us, as kids, as teenagers and it made a big difference for me. I went to a Billy Graham revival there in St Paul in Minnesota.”
“I was just mesmerized by what he had to say. I was blown away by the number of people there and it was a hot August night and I got to go up front and met him very quickly but I was talking with one of his helpers, for a long time. It was very instrumental in me and it’s a moment I remember very vividly in my life. I don’t call myself reborn, it just really cemented myself.
Reborn is someone who fell away from God and came back. I wasn’t reborn, like I said, I never really wavered in my faith. I’m not proud of things I’ve done in my life. I think all of us, you know all of us sin, and have done stupid things and I continue to do stupid things. I try not to, and like I said the faith has always been there, but the church we go to right now in California is pretty cool place. The pastor is quite an amazing speaker.”
“Well fast forward from the Hercules years, at the end of Season five, like I said I was living in New Zealand during that time, I was flying back to America to do promotional work on a movie that I had done a year earlier and I was about to do another action movie for Universal Studios. But I’d been having problems with my left shoulder for a long time and I couldn’t figure out what was going on.
I had blown it off because I was lifting heavy two hours a day on top of fourteen hours on the set. I was doing most of my own stunts; I loved doing it; it was fun; and the athlete in me still wanted to do all these fights with all these great stunt guys I had. When I came back and the shoulder had been bugging me so bad, I went to see my doctor here in Los Angeles.
He said, “You’ve got a lump here. You’ve got something going on here. I think I want to do a biopsy on that.” That freaked me out of course. I went to see my chiropractor and in the eight years I’ve seen this guy, he’s never cracked my neck. Because I told him, “Whatever you do, don’t crack my neck. You can crack anything in my body, leave my neck alone.” I’m laying on the table and I heard a voice inside my head say, “Don’t let him crack your neck.” I opened up my eyes and I looked up at my doctor and I said, “What did you say?” He said, “I didn’t say anything.” I closed my eyes again and again the voice said very loudly, “Do not let him crack your neck.”
I’m thinking to myself, “Ok, he’s never cracked my neck, why do I hear this voice telling me not to crack my neck?” And as I’m arguing with the voice in my head, he cracks my neck. And I sat up and I said, “Why did you do that?” He said, “I felt you needed it.” I said, “But why? You know I don’t like that.” Well within minutes that lump I had in my shoulder was actually an aneurysm, and it was so close to the artery in the brain when he cracked my neck, it forced three of the blood clots that was in that aneurism into my brain and I suffered three strokes, two of them went to my balance center, one went to my vision.”
“I realize I’m lucky; I had three bullets to the brain;I could have been killed instantly. I could be in a wheelchair for the rest of my life, and incapacitated, but I spent the next four months as a guy playing the strongest man in the world on a TV series; a guy in his thirties in better shape than most guys in their twenties; learning how to walk again and balance myself again; I still have a ten percent loss of vision in both eyes. When I went back to New Zealand after four months of rehab, I had to drop out of the movie I was in obviously.
I went from a fourteen hour work day to one hour a day the first month, then two hours the second month, three the third. I had to slowly work my way back up to a schedule where they could have me more on a show. They wanted me in every episode because I’m Hercules, and the show is called Hercules so, but they realized as sick as I was there wasn’t much I could do. I just kept going to the rehab and therapy I needed to to get better. It took me three full years to feel a hundred percent.”
“It was a long process. That voice in my head was God. I know it was God. He was trying to warn me and I didn’t pay attention. I went through all the stages people go through when horrible things happen to them. It doesn’t matter if they’re young or not. I had a career that was going pretty strong. They put everything on hold for a while in terms of my action and career movie because Hollywood didn’t want to take their chances with my anymore. It was a long run to come back, but like I said, “I was very fortunate to keep working.” The work gave me a light at the end of a very dark tunnel, but I just kept pushing myself and pushing myself and it did ten times more than what the doctors told me I should be doing to get myself better.”
“The script was great; the cast was wonderful, the crew; all the pieces were there and the director, Harold Cronk,is a friend and he came in and did such a great job with this wonderful script and all the actors came in prepared. We knew we had something interesting here, because it was a different sort of faith based movie. It was a movie that dealt with a scientific viewpoint of atheists and a scientific viewpoint of Christians and why we know God does exist. You have both sides of the argument going on there but you have five stories going on that movie, they all meet at the end; sort of like a faith based crash movie. You know, it’s a small budget movie, two million dollars.
Well the darn thing made sixty two million in the box office and it was all word of mouth. It was people out there letting the industry know that they want more movies like this. They love the movie; they love the characters; they had a story, they had characters you could identify with; characters that you could relate to and it’s just complete word of mouth. It’s now, in forty countries, I heard. This thing could reach one hundred million dollars worldwide; it’s already dollar for dollar, the most successful movie of the year by far.”
“Well look I’m a conservative and a Christian so I guess there’s a double whammy against me in Hollywood. Even if you say you’re a true independent in Hollywood, they look at you like you are just an idiot. It’s amazing to me, we can get into a political discussion but we don’t’ need to go down that road. I don’t get it. For an industry that’s screams for tolerance, they have no tolerance. They only want freedom of speech for want they want to say; if I have a different point of view, they don’t want to hear it. Their only argument is “You’re wrong.”
They don’t deal with facts; you can hit them with all the facts in the world that totally displaces everything they say, that they think is right, and all they say is, “You’re wrong.” “Well, tell me how I’m wrong?” They don’t have an answer for that. They deal with emotion, they deal with anger; they deal with hatred and they deal with these negative entities that are just so damaging. You can see it in the products that comes out of Hollywood; you can see it in the product that comes on television sets.
This country is going downhill. I’m not some whack job that goes around preaching on street corners that we’re all going to hell, but I’m telling you right now this country, our Founding Fathers, are turning over in their graves.”
“Well it’s all going back to my faith and my conservatism has definitely hurt me in my industry. It’s pretty blatant and fair to see. I’ve been very fortunate though to keep doing a lot of independent movies. A lot of people still want to work with me; I’m a professional; I show up; if I like a part, trust me, I will be there and I will give my heart and soul; I love the industry; I love to act; I love being on the set; I love the creative spirit of that and sounds corny, but I just have to be true to myself.
I mean, I’m not a perfect person,I’m far from that. I’m totally aware of that and I’m flawed as any man could possibly be, but I think the message is to keep doing movies like, God’s Not Dead. And as I said, “If people want more movies like this, they’ve got to support it.” They’ve got to get out there and do exactly what they did for God’s Not Dead and for Son of God and for Heaven is for Real.
They got to get out there and support these movies because more than what we make, Hollywood is all about making money and I don’t begrudge them that. Business is business, I get it! We all want to be able to have a home and feed our families and all that kind of stuff so I get it. But at the same time, if you want more movies like this than they have to go out and support it opening weekend and show that you believe in the movies and want to make them work.”
“Wonderful movie, Howie Claus wrote it and directed it; Howie did a great job. Howie is also known for a number of scripts he’s written. I think the one he’s up for Academy Awards was called Space Cowboys with Clint Eastwood, Tommy Lee Jones, and James Garner. It’s a great movie. I hope we get this thing out there soon. I know they’re loving what they’re seeing and I hope some distribution companies that they’re talking to will get this out there before the years out. It’s a family comedy.
We don’t call it a faith based, but it’s still lumped it in with faith based because it’s family friendly. It’s a good movie and it deals with life; it deals with being a family member and having kids; having a wife and all those kinds of things, so I’m hoping that we get it out there sooner than later. It was a wonderful experience.”
“You are going to be tested and it’s an industry that deals on negativity, it deals on elimination; everything is you’re too tall; you’re too young; you’re too short; you’re too something in Hollywood. Everyone is afraid to make a decision out here. It’s amazing anything gets done because if they make a decision in the wrong, they may lose their job so it’s an interesting dichotomy. You have to come out and be in this industry and you don’t have to come to Hollywood, you can do it anywhere and be an actor, but do it because you love it; because you love the craft.
Don’t do it because you want to be rich and famous, if that happens that’s just a bonus. Do it because you love the craft of acting. I got into it because I loved the idea that I can make people think; make people talk; cry; make them get angry, same reasons why I love going to movies myself; to see the different emotions that hopefully a good and well written story can do to me.”
Listen to other inContext interviews here.
Dr. Brian Baugus joins Michael to discuss God’s view of our money and how Christians should approach politics in light of economics.
Michael is joined by Dr. David Closson to discuss the importance of a Biblical worldview as we approach the coming election.
Dr. E Calvin Beisner joins Michael to discuss Biblical stewardship of creation and how climate change should impact Christian voters.