What Is DRIVING Men AWAY From Religion And Towards Atheism Today

What happens when a scientifically trained mind confronts the evidence for God's existence? Ganesh Venkataramanan, a chemical engineer and technology executive raised in a world of analytical thinking, shares his remarkable journey from atheism to faith—not through emotional experience, but through following scientific evidence to its logical conclusion.

Growing up surrounded by scientists and engineers (his father was a nuclear engineer), Ganesh naturally drifted toward atheism in college, assuming it was the proper stance for an analytical person. The irony? Ten years later, the same evidence-seeking mindset that led him away from faith ultimately brought him back when he confronted three areas where materialistic explanations fell short: the origin of the universe, the origin of life, and the origin of information.

Einstein's theories pointed toward a universe with a beginning—a moment when nothing, not even time itself, existed. This raised the profound question: what caused everything to begin? Similarly, the extraordinary complexity of even the simplest cell defies random formation, with degradation rates of biological components making time an enemy, not an ally, of chance-based origin theories. And the information-packed language of DNA—functioning like complex computer code—points unmistakably toward an intelligent author.

Ganesh walks us through how these scientific realities transformed his understanding of God from an abstract concept to a personal, intelligent Creator who designed with purpose. "It's not about what is my purpose that God can bless, but what is God's purpose that I can participate in."

For those wrestling with questions at the intersection of science and faith, this conversation offers fresh perspective without demanding blind belief. Whether you're a skeptic seeking evidence or a believer looking to strengthen your faith's intellectual foundations, Ganesh's story demonstrates that following evidence honestly can lead to unexpected—and life-altering—conclusions.

Key moments in this episode:

04:24 Ganesh's Journey: From Hinduism to Atheism to Christianity

24:12 Discussing Ganesh's Book: Let Me Into Heaven

30:21 The Journey of Faith and Struggles

34:46 The Adventure of Life and Faith

38:05 The Importance of God's Word

44:12 Call to Action: Engaging with God's Word

How to Reach Ganesh:

Website: https://www.letmeintoheaven.com/

Book:

Chapters

• 0:00 From Atheism to Evidence-Based Faith
• 8:30 Scientific Evidence for a Creator
• 16:45 The Origin of Morality and Standards
• 27:15 Understanding Heaven Through a Scientific Mind
• 31:15 Carrying Your Cross in Modern Times
• 40:10 Finding Purpose Through God's Word

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Do we continue the path towards turning away from that whole God thing, maybe even becoming atheists? As technology has increased, our lives appear to be improving by so much, and yet there's even less need for us to have this higher power. So we think this is especially true if you're an analytical thinker, and until we ask the question for the proof of God, only to be given such a profound answer, so it will shatter us. It shatters everything we believe in up until the moment that we've asked that question. And so today I have a gentleman who's going to explore this, his hero's journey from his position into faith.

Speaker 1: 0:41

Now, before we get into today's episode, let's come to grips about one thing, and that is inevitably. There will come a time in your life when you will hit a wall. You know whether it's a marriage that's not working, a career or business that's stagnated, or your personal life is completely flatlined. So if you're dealing with any of these, or a combination of them, and are finally fed up with where your life is at, I'm going to ask you to allow me to help you get clear on what needs to be done and how to do that, so you can get on to living the life you were meant to live. Just go to theawakenmannet and download a free setting the compass exercise to help you get started today. And with that, let's get on with today's episode.

Speaker 2: 1:23

The average man today is sleepwalking through life, many never reaching their true potential, let alone ever crossing the finish line to living a purposeful life. Yet the hunger still exists, albeit buried amidst his cluttered mind, misguided beliefs and values that no longer serve him. It's time to align yourself for greatness. It's time to become a revolutionary man. Stay strong, my brother.

Speaker 1: 1:53

Welcome everyone to the Revolutionary man podcast. I'm the founder of the Awakened man Movement and your host, alan DeMonso. Allow me to get started to ask you a couple of questions as you listen to today's episode. Reflect on your own journey with faith and science. How do you reconcile your scientific understanding with your beliefs and what questions still linger for you about that intersection between these two realms? I want you to consider your life after death and the existence of a higher power. How do these beliefs influence your daily decisions and your long-term goals? So what evidence or experiences have shaped your perspective for you to come up with these?

Speaker 1: 2:39

As I think about these questions in my life, I'm recognized that many times when I felt that I walked alone. This occurs most of the time when I falsely believe that life, that my life is only because of my efforts, that there is no longer a power guiding me, that it's all me. With this, as the analytical mind at work, it's natural for us to fall into these traps, and so when God places before me the most perfect situation that awakes me to this smallness that I truly am, then I know that there are things for me to work on. So, just as I believe it did for my guest today. So allow me to introduce my guest, ganesh. Let's see if I can get this last name. Ganesh, lets me see if I can get this last name.

Speaker 1: 3:24

Venkara Ramanan, whose pen name is Jeeves, is a vice president of pre-sales at a software technology company. His background is in chemical engineering and is the author of the book Let Me Into Heaven. Three computer scientists find their way to life. Ganesh loves us to present scientific evidence for God to analytical audiences, and so welcome to the show today, ganesh. How are things? My?

Speaker 3: 3:49

friend. Thank you, Alan. I was really happy to see you stumble over your own name, so I know usually people stumble over my name. It's great to see that I'm not the only one. Yeah absolutely.

Speaker 1: 4:00

As we were saying getting onto the conversation today, there's not too many folks that I interview. That last name has more letters than mine and it's always a challenge when folks have long names with lots of syllables. But, Ganesh, I was so impressed with reading your work and having you come on today's show because it's something that we've touched on faith before. But I don't think we've touched on this faith, the science piece and so my opening question for you is tell us about that time in your life when you knew things weren't great, and what did you do about that experience and how did it shape you, the man you are today?

Speaker 3: 4:34

Yeah, so growing up, I grew up in a Hindu family and I was surrounded by analytical people, lots of engineers, lots of people with PhD degrees. My dad is a nuclear engineer and there was a whole team of people doing research in the area of nuclear fusion and so on. So I grew up very analytical and then went to college, started getting a degree in chemical engineering and I was surrounded by people who were very smart and who were all atheists, and so I drifted out of religion into atheism in college, not because I found any evidence for atheism, but because everyone around me was an atheist. I assumed part of being an engineer and a scientist was to be an atheist and that there are no overlaps between religious belief and scientific belief. But it taught me to look for evidence, evidence for things.

Speaker 3: 5:32

And ironically, 10 years later, just looking for evidence got me out of atheism and into being a Christian, and so I didn't jump into Christianity or faith. From a saying that this is what I want to believe. I went in there saying there is so much evidence, I can no longer deny the evidence, and the next natural step of following the evidence was to take a step of faith. So I moved forward, actually very reluctantly towards it, not because of any great desire to do it, but I just couldn't deny the evidence.

Speaker 1: 6:09

That's interesting that you talk about the evidence coming through, and you had made a statement about wisdom was for the illiterate individual and you're taking higher education that then you started to find this evidence that there is that God does exist, and so I want to talk a little bit about that, because you mentioned there's three areas that a rational person is using to seek the understanding of truth about God, and tell us a little bit about what you mean by that.

Speaker 3: 6:41

yeah, so, you know, one of the first things which really struck me was CS Lewis's statement right, it says men became scientific because they expected law and nature. And they expected law and nature because they believed in a lawgiver. So the foundations of science, actually, it comes from a belief in a divine lawgiver. And as I started looking at it, there were three areas that I found that the best explanation was a divine lawgiver. The first one was the origin of the universe. Right, people had always thought that the universe had just been around forever. Certainly, growing up, as I did, I thought the universe was around forever. It looks like it's been around forever. Right, you look outside around forever. It looks like it's been around forever. Right, we look outside and say this looks like it's been there forever.

Speaker 3: 7:28

Who thinks that there was actually a beginning to this? Right, but it wasn't Einstein's general theory of relativity that he proposed, which actually rethought how gravity worked. And because, growing up, we think of gravity as there's two masses and this attraction between the two masses. This is all I remember and it's actually a good approximation, and this is how Newton thought of gravity. But Einstein thought of gravity as saying the big masses curve space and the small masses fall into the space caused by the curvature caused by the big masses. So mass tells space how to curve and space tells mass how to move. And the ironic thing out of all of this and Einstein didn't intend it, but it led to this conclusion that the universe is actually expanding, and he himself tried to fudge his way out of it and later called it his biggest mistake. But it actually talks to the scientific pressure, or the pressure within the scientific community that scientists face to follow a narrative, and that narrative is generally atheistic or at least agnostic. Right, einstein felt that too. The thing with scientific theory is it is not only the person proposing the theory who can dig into it, but all the people who read their papers can also ask questions and dig into it. And so it was the others who started asking questions and pointing out that this was really pointing to an expanding universe, and why that mattered is yesterday the universe was smaller than today. And then you go back and long enough in time you say the universe had to have been a single point, a singularity with no dimensions, which means it was. It had a beginning. Right, the name given to it was a Big Bang, and it was a joke. It was not that they thought it was a great discovery. They said so you're telling me there's a Big Bang, that's how everything started off. So it was mockery, it was the trolling. That's how the name Big Bang came along. But mockery, they were trolling. That's how the name Big Bang came along.

Speaker 3: 9:29

But as soon as you say there is a Big Bang, you have to ask the question why was there a Big Bang? There was no matter before it. There was no energy before it. In fact, einstein coined a term called space time. So there wasn't even time before it. There is no before. That was the whole problem.

Speaker 3: 9:44

So then you say then, since nothing existed, including time, what happened in that instant that things came into existence? Why did it happen? And I realized in this, during this analysis, that scientists and engineers are very good at answering the question how did things happen? And they can explain what happens in power minus 38 seconds after the Big Bang, but they're not very good at asking the question why did it happen? And they can explain what happens 10 power minus 38 seconds after the big bang, but they're not very good at asking the question why did it happen?

Speaker 3: 10:10

And it was such an organized process. It's not like the fireworks on july 4th where you just blow up stuff. It was a super organized process. And it says things don't happen in an organized fashion just by mistake. As an example, if I take a coil of rope and leave it in the corner of my garage and come back a year later, it somehow gets tangled. But if I leave a tangled piece of rope in my garage, it never gets untangled and becomes, goes back into the original packaging. Things only go one way, where there's greater chaos and greater disorder, unless an intelligent mind steps in and uncoils the rope. So then you get organization from minds and you get ideas from minds and you get starting things of the creation from minds.

Speaker 3: 10:55

And so that was the first thing that struck me was that if the universe was created, we had to ask the question who created the universe creator? We had to ask the question who created the universe? Right, we give the plot away on verse one of the Bible In the beginning, god created the heavens and the earth. Right and shocking statement. Right, until we came across the scientific proof. So that's the first thing that struck me. The second one was the origin of life. Right, one of the first rules of biology I remember learning in, maybe in junior high or high school, was all life comes from pre-existing life. Okay, great.

Speaker 3: 11:33

Now where does the first life come from then? It's a fairly obvious question, and somehow we've all hypnotized ourselves into not asking their very obvious question, which is where did the first life come from? And I've had the opportunity to talk to experts like Dr James Stewart of Rice University and others, and it's the evidence simply isn't there on where the first cell came from. The cell itself is so complex. If you take a city I don't know where you live, but I live in Houston and you take a city with highways, with waste departments, with electricity departments, with water departments, and let's say we have a well-functioning city you could argue most of our cities are not well-functioning. But let's say this is a well-functioning city, that things do work right. They don't happen without some planning and without a whole bunch of brains going into solving problems. And you take all of that and that doesn't hold a candle to the first cell. And so ask ourselves the question where did this first cell come from?

Speaker 3: 12:41

It could not have come from evolution, because evolution assumes that there was already a living cell and then somehow it replicates, and then maybe, with some random changes, you can get more complicated things, but it doesn't tell you where the first cell came from. That's the challenge, and so there seems to be no method by which it could have come. It's not even that we cannot prove things, we don't even have any ideas to prove right. We're so far away. So the thing which has generally been thought of as the strength of what Darwin said was if you had a whole bunch of chemicals and a bunch of salts and so on and lightning goes through this thing and boom, maybe something happened. Right, you give yourself billions of years. Virtually anything can happen, right, the problem is is and I have to thank dr james stewart for leading me in this direction is time is not your friend. When it comes to the formation of the first cell, time is their enemy.

Speaker 3: 13:38

Okay, because all of these, even the simplest stuff, whether you're talking about proteins or dna or rna or any of these things, they have half-life periods and they degrade very fast. In some cases they degrade in a few hours. In some cases they degrade in a few days. You don't have billion years, you have a few days at the most. So now you say I got to build this whole city, all of the size of a, like a nanotechnologist in this, the size of a, like a nanotechnologist in this, micron size cells, all of it working, all of it. We have a few days to do it. Well, we have scientists working, doing PhDs for years and years and they can make intermediates, but they can go from start to finish to create a living cell. So how did this happen? Randomly? It seems hard for me to believe this is possible. That was the second one.

Speaker 3: 14:26

Then you come to the third one, which is the origin of information. If you think of DNA, it's a. There's a whole library of books behind me here and it is this library, right, it has all this information. No matter what enzyme or protein or other things you want to create that information. To create it is within these books and this is coded in the dna. And in english we use a 26 letter alphabet, but in the dna code we use a four letter alphabet. But this four letter alphabet has meaning and has and is very specific, and so how did that information get in there?

Speaker 3: 15:10

So if you look at a book and say I see a book, I have not met the author. I don't know if there is an author, but every book I have seen there has been an author, right, so I can infer that there is an author, whether or not I can see the author. And just the fact that in today's world we have generative AI and chat GPT can write stuff doesn't mean you don't need an author, because somebody has got to train a chat GPT. It doesn't happen randomly, right. It is consuming every possible book written and then using that as a basis to write new things, right. But in the absence of all that information up front, it's not like chat GPT is going to do magic either.

Speaker 3: 15:57

So who's this author? And so the thing that struck me is whoever this author is, whether it's the origin of the universe, origin of life or origin of information. This author is very smart, and that's the first thing which struck me about god is he's pretty smart. And but it also leads to some obvious conclusion scientifically, besides the fact that he's smart, the other is his personal. Okay, because somebody chose to start off the universe. Somebody, billions of years later, chose to start off life, and so they could have chosen not to start off life, maybe just had a universe, but no life right. And so I said, oh, now I'm dealing with a personal god, somebody who's chosen at different points in time to say I'm going to start off different things at this point.

Speaker 3: 16:50

That was very different. First of all, I didn't have much of a concept of God, but I certainly didn't have a concept of a God who's personal. And so when you read biblically, he knows every hair on our head and it's becoming easier for him to know every hair on my head as the hair falls off right. But it's literally true. The dna information which goes to create the hair, that information came from him. He's encoded that information in human beings and in animals and in plants and so on right.

Speaker 3: 17:22

And his knit us in our mother's womb that they think of a DNA and a double helix. And he says when he knit us in our mother's womb, there is some symbology here between really how a DNA double helix looks like versus a knitting process to knit that together. So it's really remarkable when you start looking at it and say at first I wonder how I missed it the first time around. So I do think it takes. Perhaps the Holy Spirit, opening our hearts up to the evidence, is there. That's the good news. It is asking those questions and not settling for stock answers, but saying there's more than perhaps what I thought about the first time around.

Speaker 1: 18:04

Yeah, absolutely. What a great explanation, ganesh. Thank you so much for sharing that with us today. And what I was writing down here was lots of little notes, but really there was three or four questions that you were asking yourself and you're asking us to ask as well in our exploration and understanding of God or this greater being. And the first one was like who created the universe, who? And then you asked where did we come from? Where was the origin of life? And then you just, and then you also asked how does this, how did this come to be? Then you go back to you know the who question again, and then who is the author?

Speaker 1: 18:42

And I think all of those questions all point to the same answer that there is something, no matter how we call it, whether it's God, something larger, greater than I.

Speaker 1: 18:52

Am it, depending on where we come from a faith perspective, that it is true that there is something far greater than who we are, and the moment that we fall into ourselves and we feel that we are the creators, now we are take some action and help in moving the process, our life, a lot forward. But it's not us doing this work, it's something else in us that is driving this through, and so I want to talk a little bit now about how we've got the framework about these questions and we think about the different types of religions around the world and really how they've come to be, and I would almost see them as so cultural. So more so, in the West here we're very much from a Christian background. Out in the East there's're very much from a Christian background. Out in the East there's Hinduism and Buddhism and Taoism. What is your? And all of them point to this greater being, but in a slightly different way, and so let's talk a little bit about your understanding of the cultural effect that religion has had on our lives.

Speaker 3: 19:53

It's a great question If you see, culturally, virtually every society over the centuries or millennia that we have any documentation on, all have a tendency to worship something which begs the question why is that the case, right? So I think worship is embedded in our hearts in some way. Now we usually then define what we want to worship right, and this is where the differences start. But the fact is that everybody does worship, and if they don't worship other things, they end up worshiping themselves, which is probably the most dangerous of the lot. And actually, if you look at it, that was Adam's and Eve's original sin, right? They wanted to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, so they wanted to learn. This is a tree of knowledge, but specifically of good and evil, so they wanted to become the moral decision makers of saying what is right and what is wrong. And that continues today. Even now we say I think something is right, hence it must be right. So in a sense, I am the standard, and that's really what christianity flips around and says we are not the standards, right, we have the free will to choose to follow the standards or not, but we are not the standards right. In fact, we've all fallen short of the standard, and so the? If you look at all the religions, though, they come up with a lot of rules to say here are the rules to follow and here are the standards. But it does beg the question who came up with those standards? If it's simply my ancestors and other people who came up with the standards, then why don't I just make up my own right? If it's just another person who made it up, I'll just make up my own right. What is different between them and me? Right?

Speaker 3: 21:39

I think these standards have to be absolute for society to function. So, for example, if we decide stealing is wrong, right. And I say Alan, that's your standard. My standard is not that stealing is wrong. In fact, let me just steal your wallet. So then you can't argue with me, because we've agreed that the standards are relative. There's no absolute standards, unless somebody steals my wallet and now I say, oh, wait, a minute. Stealing is wrong for all people at all times. So we move to an absolute standard.

Speaker 3: 22:14

So if it is an absolute standard, it begs the question where did it come from? An absolute standard? So that, if it is an absolute standard, it begs the question where did it come from. It's just society and cultural that these standards are, then okay, we can change them as culture changes, right? Even people like richard dawkins now are starting to say I like the cultural side of christianity. I can see why because the beast that they've created is now threatening to consume them. So now they're like the cultural standards of christianity, but the cultural standard of christianity comes with the person of christ again, split the two up. They see one without the other. We see both. But we see both because obviously we were blind before as well and our eyes were open at some point to say you can't have one without the other.

Speaker 1: 23:03

Did I answer your question? Yeah, absolutely Love that. I wasn't sure if you're going to continue there. I liked how you talked about that. It is true that standards are absolute, and I think that's part of the challenge that we're facing today is that it seems like the standards are shaped by what's good for me, especially as we look at you're in the US, I'm up in Canada, but we aren't quite as much into identity politics, although we're very close.

Speaker 1: 23:30

Much like your challenge that you guys are living right now, especially with a pending election here, I think it's really a challenge for all of us to work through and understand that we need to have standards that are absolute right, and that means somebody is. That means someone isn't going to be happy about a standard. That could be me at some time, because I didn't, I don't care for the standard right, but if we need some set of guidelines to help us, some guideposts to help us move our lives forward, and so I think it's interesting that your journey from say you were atheist before and because of that, from a scientific background, but when you couldn't find, when science couldn't provide the answers, you needed to look elsewhere, and your book let me into heaven really touches on this, a whole idea, so let's talk. And your book, let Me Into Heaven really touches on this whole idea. So let's talk about your book and how that came to be and what your approach you're using and how you're using your engineering influence to really talk to people about spirituality.

Speaker 3: 24:32

If I created a video or wrote another book, I would probably call it how to create your own religion. Right, and four questions I think everybody has to answer if they're coming up with their own religion. Right, and we talked about the origin, right Origin of life, origin of the universe and so on. But it's not the only question to answer. There's also what gives life purpose, what is morality and who creates morality, which is what we were discussing earlier with the absolute standards and so on. And then there's the question of destiny what happens after we die. And so I was trying to understand the destiny side of things and say, as a Christian, there is a lot of data biblically about what heaven is like. Yet if you ask most Christians what is heaven, they cannot think past the church service and say we're going to have music. Okay, great, I like music, but for 10 minutes, right, not for an hour, not for 10 hours. And eternity of music to me is not heaven, it's hell, it's too much music, I want to do something else. But what is something else? What do we do? Do we even have bodies in heaven? Will they recognize alan in heaven? Does ganesh exist in heaven? So I was curious about that. And so the paths to heaven from our lives today at some point assuming we're alive at that point it goes through tribulation, the millennium and lots of things, the end times, which is referred to biblically.

Speaker 3: 26:02

And I struggled to understand what happened first, what happened second, what happened third and so on. And as an engineer, I want to say I want to understand how these things actually work, because I think there's a lot of symbology but there's lots of also literalism. When it says Jesus is coming back, it means Jesus is coming back. That's not a symbolic thing, that's a real thing, right? So what has to happen before he comes back? Every time I studied this topic, I would have to start from scratch, because I couldn't remember what happened first and what happens second. So I said I'm going to actually make a chart of timelines and okay, what happens in each timeline, and so on. So when I finished that up, I said I'm sure I'm not the only one who struggles through this.

Speaker 3: 26:42

So I will write a book about it. But most books are very like reference books and for theology students, most of us are not theology students and don't care to dive deep into it. So I wanted to make it a conversation and said if somebody is watching tribulation from heaven, what will it look like to them? And if somebody is on earth while tribulation is taking place, they're not a Christian, they're observing tribulation around them. How will they interpret what is happening? So I wanted to have that as a conversation between these two parties. So I came up with three people who are having these conversations. It was almost set up for either college student or somebody who just graduated. They're together asking questions.

Speaker 3: 27:30

I remember in college we would sit and discuss these things, usually over a lot of alcohol, sadly. But we would discuss these questions, deep questions of life. Right, because just doing thermodynamics wasn't enough and there's more meaning to life than this, right? So it's a conversation to say what is heaven, what is tribulation going to be like, what does the rapture look like, what does the millennium look like, and so on. Right? Do we have bodies? Do we eat food? We all love to eat food. Right, do we have bodies? Do we eat food. We all love to eat food, right. I hope it's tasty, whatever food we have in heaven, right? But actually you know what is it like and trying to visualize and picturize it, but not from my imagination, but from information we have biblically.

Speaker 3: 28:14

So Jesus talks about the feast of Abrahamraham, isaac and jacob. Okay, great, that means there is a feast, that means there's food, right, because otherwise it's not a feast. It talks about abraham, isaac and jacob. So in some way the original library, abraham, isaac and jacob exist. The bodies may be different, because we have a different kind of body which doesn't perish, the imperishable body, but they are recognizable as Abraham, isaac and Jacob, which means Alan and Ganesh will be recognizable in heaven as well. Hopefully the body doesn't ache as much because it's an imperishable body, but as people we exist.

Speaker 3: 28:58

The essence of who we are passes through. So it's not as though earth is one life, heaven is another life. It's just a continuum. I think that's the eternal hope, right, that it doesn't matter what ups and downs we go through. We'll all go through it, but we exist for eternity. We never die. So that's something I wanted to bring out We'll all go through it, but we exist for eternity. We never die. So that's something I wanted to bring out. But I wanted to bring it out conversationally and as you or I would observe it, not as some deep theological subject.

Speaker 1: 29:27

I like that you're using the idea of a conversation, because it does bring draw us into the book more. It gives us an opportunity to fit into one of those roles, or maybe just being the observer of that conversation. But and I like that you're talking about things like tribulation, because I it. I think for a long time I struggled with understanding what tribulation actually meant and how it was impacting my life. And once you start to grasp that these small decisions that we make today may not show an impact, but at some point they do, whether that's positive or not, it does show up in our lives. And so how we really base our challenges the challenges are there, I think, for us to grow and shape ourselves and really understand more deeply what it is that we're truly made of and that we can become better men and when I?

Speaker 1: 30:22

What I was really intrigued about with your story is that as you transition from when you started in university and then doing your work, and then really and in your professional life, and then really moving to a faith, having a strong faith now associated with it, it must have had some, there must have been some struggles for yourself and for some of your relationships, and that. So tell us a little bit about what that was like, because I think all of us have this fear about if I, if I believe something or if I change too much, then I'm going to lose something, and sometimes we're afraid of losing that, but it could be much better on the other side. So let's talk a little bit about that journey.

Speaker 3: 31:01

So I'll start with Luke 9, 23,. Right, jesus says if you want to be my follower, deny yourself, carry a cross daily and then follow me. And it led me to this understanding that the purpose and the calling is not mine, it's not what is my purpose that I can then ask god to bless, right, but what is his purpose that I can now play my part in. And it totally flipped everything that life meant at that point. Right, if I truly do it on that basis, right, then it totally changes everything because it's not no longer my purpose. But that's exactly what he's saying. He said deny yourself, saying it's not my purpose, carry your cross daily.

Speaker 3: 31:50

Lacrosse is something he's giving me, right, his purpose. And he's not saying it's a bed of roses. The very fact that it's a cross means it's hard. It's going to be trials and tribulations. That's the promise he makes. He doesn't promise, sadly. He doesn't promise money and wealth and health. He promises trials and tribulations. That's right, and but we're called to embrace that. Embrace it. Maybe that's where we find ourselves is in those trials and tribulations. Now, we as men are like adventures, we like conquering things, we like accomplishing things and so on. Right, and that's the cross. He's given us that cross and he promises persecution. And he's saying don't run away from the persecution, embr, embrace it.

Speaker 3: 32:39

And the things we complain about as persecution are so trivial, right? What are we complaining about? Somebody may make fun of me. Right, I struggled with that myself. That's why I wrote my book under another name. Right under another name. Right, if I come out and say I'm a Christian, what impact does it have with my from, where I came from, most of who are Hindus or atheists, and what impact does it have on my career, for example? Right, this is what people worry about. I worried about it.

Speaker 1: 33:12

Sure.

Speaker 3: 33:16

And then it was about a year or so after the book was out. I'm thinking to myself here. We are called to go preach the gospel to the whole world and we are trying our best to hide our faces. So in a sense, I had to come out of the closet and I realized there was nobody else in the closet. Everybody else had come out. The only ones in the closet are Christians hiding because they're worried that somebody may not like who we are and we may get persecuted.

Speaker 3: 33:44

But what if we think of ourselves as being chosen for this battle? We're called for this battle, we are chosen for this battle. It is going to have persecutions. That's actually exciting. For this battle, it is going to have persecutions. That's actually exciting, right? What is the worst thing they can do to me?

Speaker 3: 34:04

Right, today's world, we think of jobs, income loss, etc. Right, the early Christians, the Christians right after the apostles, the church fathers, as we call them, they had the saying saying you can kill me, but you can't hurt me. So I think it's how we look at it, how we embrace that, how we follow. We use our free will to say do I submit it to God's purpose and am I willing to go down that path and it's a process I think the Holy Spirit prepares us for it changes our heart. We don't have to jump from one end to the other and in one shot, but we grow in that and every step we take enables us to take one more step Today. So I thought of it as an adventure For most people, an adventure most men, especially today. An adventure is playing pickleball on Mondays and Wednesdays, but this is a much bigger adventure, adventure of life.

Speaker 3: 34:59

I think, if you look at it that way, it puts things in a different perspective. But more than that, I think that's what we're called to do. We're called to stand up, we're called to have this fight. We're not called to sit and watch, whether it's in the US or Canada or anywhere else. Just, things change in ways which we know are not godly. In fact, you can see this satanic fingerprints behind a lot of things. Right? What do we do except complain and come up with conspiracy theories? Right? I think we all understand for things, and so that's how people stand for it, what they should do. I think the Holy Spirit leads each person in their own adventure and in their own journey, as far as that goes, in the hero's journey there. Right, everybody doesn't have the same one, but I think there's certainly a call for that purpose.

Speaker 1: 35:50

Yeah, I completely agree and we talk a lot about all my work here at the Awakened man is really on helping men find and reclaim what their life's mission and purpose is, and I like how you framed it as that it's not about my purpose, but what am I being called to do? And it's really about that deeper understanding and, yes, and those of us that deeper understanding and yes, as though, and those of us that that are consider ourselves to be Christians, we know what the work is. That we need to do is and that is to stand up and, as you say, to come out of the closet and to stand up for what we believe in and the more that we do that. I think we help like the original Christians after they said, like the founding fathers, and you think about how they were persecuted in in the big coliseum and that's what really changed Rome was seeing Christians. As you said, you may be able to kill me, I you can't take away my faith, right, and what I believe.

Speaker 1: 36:48

And so when people would recognize that I think there's a story of a lion not just refusing to do to harm this individual who was praying and sitting there, and I think, when you read stories like that, whether you believe it to be a, to be literal, or it's an allegory, however you want to interpret it, it still has the same meaning to me is that somebody resolute in who they are and what they believe, and I think that's what we're lacking so much today, as men especially, is that we're seen to be lost about understanding about who we are and what we are meant to be on this world to do or in this world to do. And you've already mentioned a little bit about a bit of prophecy there and how in your exploration of christianity, how that has really influenced your beliefs and how we need to maybe pay more attention to that exactly and so I think you talked about life would be better if we took up these challenges.

Speaker 3: 37:47

Absolutely, I think we lack. If we don't, then we tend to lack meaning in our lives. We don't know what to do with ourselves. Our wives hope we will stand up and become men. Our families hope that we'll stand up and become men. All of society is looking for us to stand up, but we don't always know how.

Speaker 3: 38:05

And? But I think it starts with knowing God's word First of all. It's not what I feel and here's what I should go do. It may be, but I think it starts with knowing God's word first of all. It's not what I feel and here's what I should go do. It may be, but I think it starts with if it's his purpose, it's growing in his word. Right To me, that started off with saying I'm going to spend 15 minutes a day in his word. At one point I said I'm going to spend two hours a day in his word, and then I found out I didn't have two hours. After the third day I stopped spending time in his word. So it's better to do 15 minutes a day and be consistent with it than two hours a day and then quitting after two days. It's like going to the gym and I say I'm going to go to the gym and work out two hours and soar after two days and so that's the end of that adventure. But I think it's getting into his word on a daily basis because it's a remarkable word, even though the last book, the book of Revelation, was written somewhere in 1980. Right so, almost 2000 years ago.

Speaker 3: 38:58

It's a word relevant to today, for you and me, in our daily lives. Right so it is. It is going in there with some questions saying God, what is the purpose? Do you want me to go in this direction? Do you want me to go in this direction? Do you want me to wait till I hear more from you? He leads us through his word because that word is relevant today and multiple times I've had okay, should I go, start up this business? I have an opportunity here. Should I do this, should I do that? So, with the real questions of life where I've gone in and said I want to hear from you, lord, I don't want to make a decision and ask you to bless it. I want to hear yours. What direction are you taking me? And it's not that I just went to my favorite verse, jeremiah 29, 11,. I have plans to prosper you. That might have been true for Jeremiah at that point in time.

Speaker 3: 39:51

Whether it's true for me today is a different question. He may not want me to go down a certain path right. And what I found is, as I looked for that in his word, the Holy Spirit illuminated verses for me which I don't even remember having read before, but illuminated this like putting a flashlight onto words, because that's the job of the Holy Spirit. Jesus said I'll send the Holy Spirit and he'll remind you of the things that I taught you. And the Holy Spirit was leading me into saying here's how to look at things and here's how to do certain things. Was it in every bit of detail, to the nth degree? No, but it gave me the direction to go in right, and as I grew in that, I became better at making decisions based on that, as now a pillar in my life.

Speaker 3: 40:44

And so I think god leads us on a daily basis. He's a personal god. He's not just an impersonal god who created a bunch of stuff and that's the end of it, but he's a a personal God. So I think we hear from him daily. We are called to carry our cross. We should know what that cross is, but God will lead us through that process. It is important just that we begin that journey and follow his guidance.

Speaker 1: 41:05

Oh, I love that. I really appreciate that framework that you put forward, ganesh, because I think that sometimes we think and this is what I have to always remind myself of is I don't need to know the entire plan, I don't need to know every step of the process, I just need to know enough to take that first step and then something will come forward after that and then to trust and be guided. But it's that battle between I I use the word battle again speaking for myself it's that battle between ego, mind and allowing the holy spirit to guide and direct me into doing things. And I think, when we're in the messy part of our lives, if we can just calm down a minute and I like how I talked about, yes, five, ten, fifteen minutes a day in reading the word and getting closer to to it, you might not understand anything like.

Speaker 1: 41:56

I was raised Catholic and, truth be told, I didn't truly open a bible and read it until I was well into my 30s, because that's just not the way in my experience with it is. That's what father, the front of the, at the pulpit, would tell us everything, and so it wasn't something that was around, taught in our, in our home, in our home. But I find now that I have great comfort when I get an opportunity to open the book and to and just open it to wherever it lands and just to start reading, to gain some extra knowledge, some comfort in that things will be okay and it does seem to have just the right passage seems to show up, and so I think that's great advice for all of us.

Speaker 3: 42:41

And if someone's not used to reading or wants to know where should I start because I've never read it, I would say don't start with Revelation, right, Because it is a complex and you need a lot of context before you can start following it. But a great, depending on what you're looking for. I found Proverbs to be very good at just providing wisdom, right, it's like getting an MBA and not having to pay $100,000 to get it right, and so it's. And the good thing about proverbs is it's got 31 chapters. Today is the 16th and go read proverbs 16 and that way it's easy to know where one is right now in terms of knowing the person of god.

Speaker 3: 43:23

Because I there was a time where I didn't want to know just words of wisdom. I wanted to know who is god and I wanted to know him as a person. I didn't even. It was a major step for me to realize God as a person, and actually he's three persons, right, but at least he's one person right. So knowing that person, John, is a great starting point, and because he starts to reveal that what is the person of Jesus, and so you know the Gospels, the four Gospels are a great place to know Jesus, know about Jesus and also know Jesus. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 43:58

Completely agree. Completely agree with that. You know, Ganesh, of everything that we spoke about today, maybe there was something we didn't get a chance to touch on. What would be the one takeaway you'd want our listeners to have?

Speaker 3: 44:10

I think it's important. My background now is in sales, so there's always a call to action right, you heard all you heard. Right, you have an audience who's heard you frequently. Right, it's an audience who's hopefully heard this discussion, this talk we've had. What do you do with it? At some point it's a call to action to do something, and the good thing about we as men is we want to do something. Right, we may not know what to do, but we always want to do something.

Speaker 3: 44:41

I would say the first thing to do is to get into God's word. Okay, if you can do it with a group of men, I put together a group of men that I meet with on a weekly basis At least five men. We go between three to six men, but none of whom is impressed by me. If I'm off on the wrong path, they're so unimpressed that they're ready to challenge me. But that's what I need. I don't need people who say I'm awesome. I need people to say what are you thinking?

Speaker 3: 45:10

This is not how somebody who follows Christ behaves. That's the guy I want in my life. But it's not just a group of men. It's a group of men who are also walking with Christ, and so I think it's getting into that word and getting with a community of men who will have those hard talks if needed. It's not always going to be hard talks. There may be from time to time, but a lot of times it's us pushing each other sadly as men, sharpening each other as I and sharpens iron right. I think that's critical to continue to grow in christ love that.

Speaker 1: 45:41

What a great way to put us to wrap up our conversation today and bring us to a close. I just want to say, ganes, thank you so much for spending time with us today and no matter where or how we perceive this disconnection that we think we have with God, that we're always connected to him if we're just willing to look, to listen and to feel his presence. And so if men are interested in getting a hold of you, participating in your work and getting your book, what's the best way for them to do that?

Speaker 3: 46:08

So my website is called letmeintoheavencom and the book's available on Amazon. But they can come to the website and there's all the social media handles and so on. I'm on YouTube with my pen name, which is GVS, g-e-e-v-e-s. Gvs Official is the name of it. Same on Instagram, so people are welcome to do that. But if they can't remember all that, just go to the website letmeintoheavencom and you'll see all the social media handles over there.

Speaker 1: 46:38

Excellent. I'll make sure all of that information is in today's show notes so they have opportunity as well as a link to your book and they can get a chance to pick it up. I want to say once again, ganesh, thank you so much, really enjoyed our conversation today.

Speaker 3: 46:53

Yeah, thank you, alan. I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you as well as your audience, and again, I'm here as a resource really for anyone. To me it's not about the book, it's about if I can. We can both help someone grow and I can grow and they'll grow. Then I see that as the purpose God has for me.

Speaker 1: 47:07

You betcha Amen brother. Thank you so much.

Speaker 2: 47:09

Thank you for listening to the Revolutionary man podcast. Are you ready to own your destiny, to become more the man you are destined to be? Join the brotherhood that is the awakened man at theawakendmannet and start forging a new destiny today.