Video Transcript
Edmund Mitchell: Hi everyone, and welcome back to The Real and True Podcast. I’m one of your co-hosts, Edmund Mitchell, and today we have a fantastic conversation with the amazing Father Joe Krupp. I’m going to give you a little background on him, but first, we’re going to be talking this episode about the first three Commandments, about love of God, and how to make this practical in catechesis and evangelization. And I’m so excited. This was so fun. Right before we were getting started, my voice sounded like helium for some reason, and we were laughing a ton. And Father Joe, thank you so much for being here. You’re so joyful and just real. And thank you. I’m really excited for this conversation.
Fr. Joe Krupp: I’m geeked out too, brother. This will be a hoot, even without the helium voice.
Edmund Mitchell: So for people who aren’t familiar with you, I want to give them a little background on you. So Father Joe was ordained to the priesthood 26 years ago in the Diocese of Lansing. He has numerous assignments that include multiple parishes, as well as serving and teaching Lansing Catholic High School, and as the Director of Campus Ministry at Michigan State University, and chaplain for MSU Football and the East Lansing Police Department. Father Joe is currently a pastor at Holy Family Parish and School in Grand Blanc, at St. Mark’s Parish in Goodrich—as well as regional dean. But also, he’s a nationally syndicated monthly columnist for Faith Catholic and host of a weekly podcast, Joe in Black Ministries, and holds degrees from the University of Michigan and Sacred Heart Major Seminary. So Father Joe, it’s safe to say you have a lot of practical and pastoral experience across a lot of different things. Be it football players, police departments.
Fr. Joe Krupp: Yeah. You just hope those two groups never meet. That’s the key.
Edmund Mitchell: Awesome. So what we’re talking about today in the unit that we’re covering in Real and True currently is on the first three Commandments. And a lot of people know we talk about this a lot in the content, that you could kind of think of the Commandments as these two groups. There’s love of God and then love of neighbor. And so in evangelization and catechesis, when we’re introducing people to Jesus, we’re also kind of answering this question, “What is life with Jesus look like? What does that life entail?” And as you know—and our audience will know—the third Pillar of the Catechism, life in Christ, is on morality and the 10 Commandments and the Beatitudes. It’s defining what this life entails, the responsibilities, what sin is, and things to avoid.
And so we wanted to have a conversation about, just in general, the first three Commandments and presenting that to people, especially people in today’s day and age and all the different challenges and practical things that come up; presenting in a way that someone doesn’t see it as this legalistic demand. And just ways to do that. But I would love to just start a little bit with your background in evangelization catechesis. If you could just give people a little bit where you’re coming from; your story specifically related to evangelization, catechesis, and those things.
Fr. Joe Krupp: Okay. It’s funny. When I was in high school is when I really gave my heart to the Lord in a way that I think is consistent with an adult-ish experience; that I chose God probably for the first time in a conscious way, and almost immediately began training for evangelization. It was a group called Youth to Youth. And I joined and we were trained in evangelization. And what it looked like is literally every weekend of my life from 16 until 27 years old, we would get on a bus and travel somewhere in the continental US or Canada and do retreats for young people; confirmation retreats. And it involved personal testimonies, skits and comedy, and drama and music. And because of that, I really started early in learning the value of personal testimony and learning the value of clear presentations—helpful ones, as well as the importance of kind of an entertaining quality to it. And that if my teaching didn’t reflect the joy of Christianity, then I was just a salesman. It’s interesting. Seminary doesn’t really teach you about evangelization. And even if they did, I don’t know how good they’d be at it. Because people teaching weren’t necessarily evangelists. They were just great teachers, which is awesome. But then a lot of it’s trial and error; 26 years as a priest trying to make sure that at no point do I become convinced of anything except Christ. So that it’s not, “Well, this month the diocese is doing this program or whatever,” but that you’re looking at what bears fruit. And at this stage in my life, more and more I’ve become convinced over the last 10 years, so much of it hinges on confession. That between two parishes, we do about 10 hours of confessions a week.
I hear what people are worried about. I hear what people are struggling with. I hear what they’re thinking about. And that has a huge effect on how I evangelize. And then the other thing is looking at this kind of quantum shift in culture and in the church away from— I’m trying to remember the name of the book—but our culture is post-Christian. I don’t know if you read about this, but the idea of moving from a cultural Christianity to an apostolic Christianity. Have you seen any of this?
Edmund Mitchell: No.
Fr. Joe Krupp: The idea that Christianity is no longer the dominant way of thinking. We aren’t in a Christian culture, and that’s not the usual fear-mongering, freak-out thing. Christianity at its beginnings was apostolic: a small minority of people radically committed and all on the same page. And that page is different than everybody else. That’s a change. The culture my dad was raised in was cultural Christianity. So our evangelization has to change. I guess that’s my summary; my understanding of evangelization; my experience of it.
Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. It’s interesting you bring that up because it does kind of seem often—and I’d be interested to hear your perspective—but often in ministry, I would experience a lot of people who it’s this cultural Christianity or even just a cultural diversity that just understands “Well, I have some friends who are Jewish and I have some friends who are atheists. I have some friends who are Republican and some friends who are vegans and some friends who are Catholics. And all that means is that there’s certain things you do on certain days; there’s certain things you don’t talk about.” And that’s it. And when for example, if you’re teaching RCIA or youth ministry and the topic of the first three Commandments and loving God, it’s just “Oh, well this is just another intellectual pursuit.” It’s just, “Hey, here are just some things that mean I might do something a little different. And that’s all it requires of me.” And so I wonder what your answer would be if you had a catechist or a volunteer who didn’t understand this kind of evangelistic perspective or this idea of giving your entire life to Christ. If they told you, “Hey, I’m teaching on the first three Commandments. Jesus said “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul. So I’m just going to teach this.” And if you had a conversation with this person and said, “No, this needs to be evangelistic.” And they go, “Well, what do you mean by that? What would I do differently? What’s different about teaching loving God other than this is just a thing we should all nod our head to and say, “Yes, that’s something I agree with?”
Fr. Joe Krupp: To me, there’s two things immediately that spring to mind. And the first one has to do with who God is; who we are. Those two things right there—who God is; who we are—that humility is understanding our place in the universe. And the first Commandment tells us it ain’t number one; we’re not number one in the universe. So if you go back to that model of cultural Christianity, why did you go to church? There was positive peer pressure in the sense of “Why weren’t you at church?” And it wasn’t even a religious question, it was a habit question. Something must have gone horribly array or you weren’t at church. And when we started to fall away from that as a culture, the first thing we seemed to have tried was, “Well, let me convince you to go to Mass because it’ll do good things for you. If you go to Mass, you’ll get a good message. If you go to Mass, you’ll get this good thing and that good thing.” We were trying to sell Mass on the idea of “Well, here’s how it helps you.” Which on one level is okay, but we should worship God for no other reason than He said to. So how do I love the Lord my God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength? Well, it has nothing to do with emotions because I can’t control emotions. I can’t predict emotions. It has to do with asking ourself, “Do I believe God has the right to tell me how to live? Do I believe God is worthy of my worship?” And if so, then how I act needs to reflect that. So look at the complexity of creation, for example. You look at the insane interconnectedness of it all. And I say, “I can’t do that. I can’t do anything akin to that. The smartest human who ever lived couldn’t do anything remotely similar to designing the human body. So that which made those things didn’t have to. But it did, and I’m part of that. What’s my place in it?” Is this making sense, bro?
Edmund Mitchell: Yeah.
Fr. Joe Krupp: So what’s my place in it? Well, He tells me through the Commandments. “I’m God not you. And I say, as the guy who made you, here’s a list of things you should do; here’s a list of things you shouldn’t do.” And then we understand this. Those aren’t random. You just didn’t pick things and go, “Ah, that’s gonna be a sin.” What the one who made us did was say, “Here’s things that are good for you. Here’s things that are consistent with your design. Here’s things that are bad for you.” So the first thing He says is good for us is to know He’s God. And that we owe Him love, respect, obedience, our time. And His sales pitch, you could say, is “Can you do what I do? No. Okay. Did you make you? No. Okay. I did. Here’s the owner’s manual.” The Commandments are not burdens God puts on us to get us to jump hoops. It’s the instruction manual. This is what will work. This is how you can operate according to specs. And the first part of that is to recognize your place in the universe.
Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. Sure, there are negative consequences for using an iPhone incorrectly. If you’re gifted this iPhone, there are negative consequences for using it incorrectly. There’s two ways someone could get you to use it correctly. They could really admonish you, “Hey, you better use this correctly or these bad things are going to happen.” And then there’s the other way of “Oh, look at all these great things that we’ll give you and all these wonderful things.” But then there’s this third way, which is closer to the truth and where the analogy breaks down, where it’s like, “No, you are created for this. You’re created to worship God. Yes, there are negative consequences of not worshiping God, but also, this is the way your body and soul is oriented towards worshiping.” Does that make sense?
Fr. Joe Krupp: Like you look at your grandma and grandpa. So I’m the youngest of a big ol’ family. And my mom is the youngest. So she was number 14; I’m number 12. So by the time I’m cognizant of things, 5, 6, 7, years old, it was “We’re going to see Grandma and Grandpa.” It wasn’t “Well, how is this going to benefit me?” 7-year-old me didn’t say, “Well, why would I go to Grandma and Grandpa’s? How does this benefit me?” And the other thing is, my parents didn’t say, “We’re not going to our aunt and uncles. We’re not going to your friends.” They said, “We’re going to Grandma and Grandpa’s.” And why were we going there? Because it was right. I think our trouble is we try to convince people with everything except the way God tries to convince us. Namely, this is how you work according to specs. I can use the iPhone as a coaster for this cup. And honestly, it’d be a fine coaster. But what a waste.
Edmund Mitchell: Yeah.
Fr. Joe Krupp: And ultimately, it could cause damage to the phone for the reason that it’s made for. You can consider adultery a fun pastime if you want, and it’ll work. But the damage it’ll cause.
Edmund Mitchell: Yeah.
Fr. Joe Krupp: And not only that, but that’s not what sex is for. That’s not what marriage is for. Those kind of things that for me, when we teach those first three Commandments, the first step is of course to recognize this isn’t God being random. This is God going, “I’m goofy about you. I made you. Here’s how to be happy.”
Edmund Mitchell: Mhm.
Fr. Joe Krupp: In the teaching of it, we start with that, and then we make sure we’re not teaching via negativa. We’re teaching, “We’re going to Grandma’s.” We don’t go to our friend’s house. We don’t go to our aunt’s house. We say, “We’re going to Grandma and Grandpa’s.”
Edmund Mitchell: Yeah.
Fr. Joe Krupp: We can unintentionally reduce Christianity to a system of rule-following. And this is an important distinction, to me at least. The rule-following is the symptom. The beautiful virus is a love of God. I’m in love with God. I want to do what God wants me to do. You get me?
Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. That’s amazing. I’m wondering, especially with the first three Commandments, what’s coming to mind is that—we don’t want to break the seal of confession here—but I don’t have much experience of people saying “I’m really struggling to discern whether or not I’ve been breaking the first Commandment.” Even with honoring the Lord’s Day, I had so many teens or just young adults who were like, “Well, I go to church every Sunday, so obviously I’m good on that Commandment.” Whereas there’s so much more. So I’m wondering what ways do you try to make those Commandments, those first three, more practical? Taking the Lord’s name in vain seems pretty practical for people and straightforward, more so than the other two Commandments that we’re talking about here. But for those things like having no other gods besides God and honoring the Lord’s Day, what are some ways you kind of make that practical? Because I think people, if they’re doing an examination of conscience, they’re maybe looking at the other Commandments.
Fr. Joe Krupp: Okay. How’s this. Let’s start with the “no other Gods.” thing. And this is hard, but stick with me. How do I know what my God is? It’s not by my words, it’s by my decisions. So for example, I don’t have any other gods. Yeah. You don’t have any little statues. But, if there’s a hockey tournament and it’s at the same time as Mass, which one wins? If there is a soccer practice and it’s at the same time as Mass, which one wins? When you take an athlete, God made them to do that. They give glory to God by pushing hard at their particular sport. This is a dumb example. Baseball’s my favorite sport. It’s the one I’m worst at. I was very good at basketball. I was okay about basketball. But what I knew was for some reason, God made me naturally pretty good at it. So I practiced hard because that seemed to be what God gave me gifts for. No matter how hard I worked at baseball, I sucked at it. And basketball came easy. So Dad will tell you, I pushed myself on basketball because I was like, “For some reason, this is what I’m good at. I don’t like it as much.” And that feels like a dumb example, but it was a way I could glorify God. At the same time, knowing it got me through college. I also understood that when they said we have practice on Sunday, I had to say to Coach, “I go to Mass on Sunday.” That’s hard.
They don’t want you to go to Mass. I mean, theoretically they do. For most of us, money is our God. Financial security is our God. At least as I get older, that’s what I find. I fret about it all the time. And I should be fretting more about “Am I maintaining this relationship with God in the way he told me to?” Namely, I worship Him. One day a week belongs to Him. And what does he want me to do on that day? Chill out. Wow. He actually wants me to be a human being one day, whereas the other six, I’m a human doing. This is the day where God, in a sense, says the opposite thing everyone else does. “Don’t just do something. Stand there. Exist, be, have joy.” If I was dictator for a day, we would cancel everything on Sunday; everything would be closed. You’re staying home. You’re visiting your neighbors. Maybe you love mowing lawn. I enjoy folding clothes for some insane reason. So Sunday, I’ll fold some clothes because that makes me happy. I’ll put on baseball and I’ll fold clothes. I have people confess, “I folded clothes on Sunday.” “Do you like folding clothes?” “No.” “Yep, that was a sin.” That’s the Lord’s Day. Just be, man. Don’t accomplish, which is hard for a priest to say because we’re working our tails off on Sundays.
Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. But that’s fantastic.
Fr. Joe Krupp: Yeah. The other thing, if I may, just real quick,
Edmund Mitchell: Go for it. Yeah.
Fr. Joe Krupp: The Lord’s name in vain, one thing we often miss, is it’s not—forgive this phrase—just swearing. It’s using God and His name as an excuse to do what we want to do. God will not tell you to smash a plane into a civilian target, but we have a bunch of people who said, “Yeah, God told me to.” That’s using God’s name in vain.
Edmund Mitchell: That’s interesting.
Fr. Joe Krupp: Like, think about it in a possession; in an exorcism. They get the name of the evil spirit and they say, “In the name of Jesus, be gone.” And they bug out. The very name of Jesus; the very name of God the Father is so precious to us, that we don’t disrespect it in our usage and we don’t say “In God’s name” and do something awful.
Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. Yeah. That’s great. I love those practical examples. I know we’re wrapping up the conversation. Is there anything else; any other practical advice you’d have for ministers, pastors, catechists, in terms of presenting these first three Commandments in a way that really invites people into this radical giving of your entire life to Jesus? Is there any other things that you wish you had been told or things that you wish to tell?
Fr. Joe Krupp: I guess to me, when we take it back to the user manual for the thing that made us, that which made us said, “This is what you’re created for. This is how you operate according to specs.” That if then we take those Commandments, all of them, and think of it this way. Think of if you meet a person at work; a new person comes in and it seems clear you’d kind of like this cat; you should hang out; there’s something here. There’s a good energy. They like what I like, or whatever it may be, that when you then are trying to figure out how to be their friend, think about how you do that and how you would never do it. And that’s how you approach the Commandments. Namely, you wouldn’t say to a potential friend, “Hey, Edmund. I want to be your friend, but I need to know how many times I have to talk to you. How often do I have to call you? What is the baseline minimum in this relationship for me to say I’m your friend and for you to say I’m yours?” “How many times do I have to call you? How much time do I have to spend with you? What can’t I do?” And when we approach a relationship with a human that way, it’s comical. But when we approach our relationship with God that way, we call it practical. And it’s insane.
Edmund Mitchell: Mhm.
Fr. Joe Krupp: Yeah. When God says, “Don’t work on Sunday” and somebody says, “Well, I work in the ER.” What do you think your friend is going to say? This creator of the universe? “No, If people get sick on Sunday, they die.” Or is He going to say, “Use your head. Use your mind. I gave you a beautiful heart. I gave you skills.” And then we don’t use it negatively like “Well, Lord. I got my 45 minutes in. So now we’re friends and we’re done talking for the week.” A friend doesn’t look for a way around the rule, and a friend doesn’t chain themself to a formula. “Well, I called you three times last week. That means I don’t have to call you this week.” You get me? I think when we teach those Commandments, we want to do that. God gave you a heart to be in love with him. He gave you the user manual, but he also knows life is complex and we need to have the humble flexibility and recognize the reason that’s number one: If I’m in love with Him, and I love Him with all my heart, mind, soul, and strength, sometimes I’m going to use that mind in love with Him to do something different. But it’s not a formula, it’s a relationship.
Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. I love that. I love the emphasis on it’s not a formula and it’s a relationship. There’s a difference between just doing these things out of fear and presenting them in a way that’s based in fear and not in relationship. It’s like if I tell one of my kids, “Hey, I’m leaving to go to the store. Here’s the rule: don’t leave the house.” And then the house catches on fire. It’s like, “I love you guys. I want you to protect your life. I want you to use your head,” but also there’s this relationship. And I love what you were saying earlier about Jesus wants to be a friend. And so these are not, “Hey, here are all these things that I need you to be so focused on that you’re damaging this relationship. I need you to see these things as ways that encourage our relationship; that encourage you to thrive in this relationship.”
Fr. Joe Krupp: The only Commandment with a promise is the fourth one: “Honor your father and mother so that you can live long in the land I’ve given you.” But people kept trying to find ways around that. Or people kept asking questions where the answer is obvious. Until by the time you get to Jesus, one of the things that was in the law was that a son could say to his father and mother, “All that you have given me is corban,” meaning “dedicated to the Lord,” and then neglect them the rest of their life at a time when there’s no retirement; there’s no 401K. Mom and Dad counted on your kids to take care of you. But we had so twisted the law by then by asking, “Well, what if my father tries to kill me?” Well, what do you think? What do you think God wants there? Or “My daddy disagreed with me.” Relationship people don’t do that. The virus is love. Obedience is the symptoms. And when we get that mixed up, we doom ourselves every time.
Edmund Mitchell: I love that. Father, thank you so much for this conversation. Where can people go to find your ministries? Where should they go online?
Fr. Joe Krupp: If you just search “Joe in Black Ministries” on your favorite podcast provider or on YouTube, you’ll find us. We’ve got a huge podcast, tons of listeners. Most of them are completely insane. It’s great. And every Wednesday, I release a podcast with a topic like today. And on Fridays, people just submit questions and I do Question-and-Answer.
Edmund Mitchell: Awesome. That’s amazing. Well, thank you so much for being here and thank you everyone else who’s been listening and watching Real and True. We believe in unlocking the truth and beauty of the Catechism and help people around the world encounter its pulsating heart: Jesus Christ. You can find us at realtrue.org, where you can watch or listen, or on your favorite podcast platform. And we look forward to seeing you guys in the next episode.
