Become Who You Are
What’s the meaning and purpose of my life? What is my true identity? Why were we created male and female? How do I find happiness, joy and peace? How do I find love that lasts, forever? These are the timeless questions of the human heart. Join Jack Rigert and his guests for lively insights, reading the signs of our times through the lens of Catholic Teaching and the insights of Saint John Paul ll to guide us.
Saint Catherine of Siena said "Become who you are and you would set the world on fire".
Become Who You Are
#613 Finding Truth in a Culture of Chaos: Rediscovering Faith during Holy Week, with Tom Hampson
Love to hear from you; “Send us a Text Message”
The hollowness beneath our culture is beginning to collapse, and young people are noticing. During this Holy Week conversation, we explore the remarkable spiritual awakening happening among Gen Z as they reject the moral emptiness of our hypersexualized society.
When a culture "breathes out" God, it loses its moral compass—first objectifying women, then dehumanizing the unborn, and finally corrupting childhood itself.
Yet amid this darkness, something extraordinary is happening. Young men especially are returning to church, scripture, and prayer in surprising numbers. This isn't merely about politics—it's about recognizing that a life without divine purpose leaves one standing on hollow ground.
For those feeling the call to something deeper than our culture offers, we invite you to download Claymore (Miletus Christi) from our website—a battle plan for reclaiming authentic faith. (found under resources)
Follow Tom Hampson on Substack
The Quiet Revival’: Church Attendance Soars 50% as Faith Surges Among British Youth
Contact Jack: info@jp2renew.org
Follow us and watch on X: John Paul II Renewal @JP2Renewal
On Rumble: JohnPaulIIRC
I'm excited to be with my good friend, tom Hampson. Tom is a crime investigator, crime journalist, who's been investigating sex crimes, sexual predators and many, many other things for a long long time. Tom and I were just talking, before we came on, about young people and about what they're going through, and tom has seen it all and, and you know, to the amazing stories that, uh, he tells he wrote a new article today or just recently we're going to talk about today. Before we do, though, uh, tom, let me, let's, let's tell some easter stories. You know we didn't really until Easter stories. You know we didn't really until just a few moments ago. Really, we didn't really plan on talking about Holy Week, but this is Holy Week and we haven't done a Holy Week show, and this will be Wednesday, and so starting tomorrow would be Holy Thursday, going into Good Friday and to Easter. Tom, welcome Good to be with you. And you know, let's talk a little bit about the faith because, at the end of the day, all of this evil that we're seeing, there's a reason for it so good to have you with Good to be here. I'm thinking about let's unpack a little bit here and see what happens. So I'm thinking about in the very beginning.
Speaker 2:If you go to Genesis 2-7, tom, you know, god takes this clay and he's just got everything ready. And he finally takes this clay on the sixth day and he blows we call it the spirit into this clay and he forms the first man, different than all the rest of the animals, right Linked together with God. He gives us freedom. Ultimately, we go to the tree in Genesis 3. We turn away from God and we have the fall and sin, and this has been rolling down to us for a long, long time. When Jesus Christ comes into the story, he pops into the story to restore that again. Right, he conquers sin and death and then he does a really cool thing with this Ruach again and I just want to open this up a little bit, tom, and I'll throw it back at you but after the crucifixion on Good Friday and then the resurrection on Easter Sunday, he goes through the upper room. If you read the gospel, he doesn't open the door, he just appears in the upper room and the apostles are hiding because of fear of the Jews. They just saw what happened to Christ, they just saw what can happen and Peter denied him three times. The other apostles ran away. The only one that stayed there at the foot of the cross with the women that were there, that had the courage to stay, was John the Evangelist. All the other ones were scattered. Now they're hiding in the upper room for fear of the Jews. They think they might be next.
Speaker 2:And it was horrific, right, what they saw and what they experienced. I mean Jesus, the scourging at the pillar, the spitting the crown of thorns, the actual crucifixion itself. And then Jesus does a cool thing he walks through and he says peace be with you. He's calming them down twice Peace be with you. And then he breathes on them, received the spirit. He breathes on them for only the second time in scripture, breathing back what we had lost through sin.
Speaker 2:This changed everything. Those men that were hiding in the upper room would soon go out and evangelize the known world. They would be martyred for it. All except John again, who was at the foot of the cross. It's amazing how these things work. But all martyred for the faith. And you say, how could those men that were hiding ready to go back to their fishermen jobs and stuff? But they were too scared to even go out for a while. What gave them the courage that within just a day or two, you hear John and Peter go right back to the temple and start preaching this Something changed, right, they had seen the resurrected Christ who breathed.
Speaker 2:This back in Changes the world. You know, time starts right there, tom. You know the history is divided between BC and AD. History is divided between BC and AD. Huh, anno Domani, the year of the Lord, and it's. All of history counts this, and we forget about this. And what happened, tom? Our culture has breathed him back out, and this will be the last thing I say. We breathed him back out. We saw this moral corruption and this rot come into the Western civilization and even into the United States. And then what happens? These younger people, tom, the younger people are the ones waking up, growing up in the most toxic culture you can imagine sin all around them, decadence all around them, selfishness all around them, sexualized culture all around them. And they're waking up. Something happens, it's happening to their heart and I think they're just seeing, tom, this moral rot, and just saying you know what? There's got to be something better than this, right.
Speaker 1:Well, there is something a lot better than this, and that's one of the things that we're actually recording this on a Monday of Holy Week.
Speaker 1:It'll be put out on wednesday yes, but on a monday, though, yes, yeah, we're here on a monday, and this actually is the is the anniversary of when jesus threw the money changers out of the temple, and so he was. This is a time when he actually went in there and started throwing things around and telling them to get out, because the culture had become so corrupted. He had to do something about it. In fact, his whole ministry was about that. That God's message had been corrupted by the people supposedly in charge of it, and he had to set things right. Supposedly in charge of it, and he had to set things right. He had to set the people's perception of what God was doing in the world and what God wanted for them and what he you know, his idea of the way we should live straight, based on the truth rather than based on the false narratives that had been promoted by the Pharisees and the Sadducees and all these people that were supposedly the elders of the church, and that's happening today too.
Speaker 1:Our whole culture is being undermined by a false narrative that's captured everything in our country. Everything from every institution has been corrupted by it, and there's just almost nobody willing to stand up against it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let's define that a little bit, tom, when you say that, for people just tuning in, when you say that institutions have been corrupted and of course they obviously are, but let's bring a couple of specifics up for people to kind of dwell on. I think some people, tom, some, especially some of the older people have been sitting in that stew with the proverbial frog for so long. They forgot that, that you know, things like abortion, killing of a child is not normal and it and it wasn't around forever. It's just around, you know, since. You know, since I was in high school. That's when it started. I mean, you know the our, these poor kids are growing up today. They just think that killing children is, is part of who they are. But this, they're sensing something in their heart. They're sensing that that, you know, this gender ideology is something's wrong. Right that a boy can be a girl, a girl can be. I mean, it's just total nonsense and insanity. I'm sorry, tom.
Speaker 1:Well, from the very beginning, the abortion issue has been something that's been mentioned within the church documents from the beginning, the Didache, or however you pronounce it Didache, uh-huh, Didache, however it's pronounced. Yeah, there's a line in there that prohibits abortion. Yeah, and it did. It came from the first century yeah, amazing.
Speaker 1:So it's like from from the very beginning they prohibited abortion. And one of the early things which I wrote about in the article and it was brought up by the pastor at my church about how one of the early things that Christians did was that they would go out and gather up these babies that had been abandoned by their parents in the woods somewhere just to be left to be eaten by animals or to die of exposure, and they would go out and rescue them and raise them as their own, and that was one of the early methods of abortion. And that was one of the early methods of abortion. And yet today there are churches that have no issue with abortion at all, they don't speak out against it, and some churches actually think it's a good thing, think it's a good thing. I've heard a number of pastors talk about how abortion it's better for the baby to be aborted than raised in a family that doesn't love them, because it causes all kinds of problems. So they think this is really a good thing, which I just don't.
Speaker 2:I can't understand that. Well, tom, you know they don't see the child as a child, as a human being Well and see that's part of the undermining that goes on.
Speaker 1:From the beginning of time, people knew that this was a human being that was growing in them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, when you take God out and this is a point we want to make with these young people, because sometimes I think you just have to bring up these examples when you take God out at first, you know, pope Benedict said, at first everything seems to be going along like it did before, but then it doesn't right. Something starts to happen and what happens is we stop looking at each other as human beings. Tom, you know, when we over-sexualize, like we do in this culture, I don't even look at a woman as as a woman anymore, as a person. We see her as an object, someone to use in pornography. And and again, abortion.
Speaker 2:Where does most of the most of the abortions come from people? You know, look at it, there's a, there's a way not to have babies, right, you don't have sex, and it's not a genius to figure this stuff out. But we're, we're so sexualized in this culture it's just meaningless. And then when a baby comes, you go Ooh, you know, that was a. Did you forget to take a contraception? You're contraceptive. Did you do this, did you do that or that's not? You know that's your problem, honey. You know you should have been. You know, more careful, right, a man tells a woman or whatever, and then you stop seeing the baby, you stop seeing the baby as a person. And when you take God out, tom, you have a different lens, don't you? You see the world in a much different way.
Speaker 1:See, I don't, you know, you and I look at this. We're concerned about protecting childhood innocence, and one of the things I mentioned in the article was in 1995, this abortion issue began to focus on children. The Illinois legislature passed a law that allowed a child, any child that got pregnant, any woman, any girl that got pregnant, to get an abortion without parental consent. They still had to notify their parents. However, they had to give their parents at least a 48-hour notification. Well, that law was held up by the courts until 2013, when the courts allowed this to go on that the legislature could allow this to happen. Now to me, whether you agree with abortion or not, why would you allow a child 10 years old to make that decision without the permission of their parents? I just can't understand that. This makes no sense to me and how, during the intervening years between 1995 and 2013, the entire population didn't raise up and throw out the legislators that were responsible for voting this in, didn't raise up and throw out the legislators that were responsible for voting this in, and all of the people, all the governors, everybody that was responsible for allowing this legislation to go into place. I don't understand how that didn't happen, but one of the reasons why is because there was never any public outcry about it. There was never cry about it. You didn't hear this condemned week after week in local churches. You didn't hear it condemned by people who were typically concerned about the welfare of children.
Speaker 1:And then, just in 2021, december of 2021, the legislator passed a law that removed the notification of the parents, that children no longer had to get a notification of the parents. Now, one of the things I want people to understand about this is that adult predators who go after girls love this law because this allows them to. It protects their identity. A child goes in to get an abortion. They don't have to have anybody's permission, they don't have to submit any questions by Planned Parenthood at all, so that the adult predator or even could be a peer, that's a predator doesn't have to answer for what he did. And so this gives the ability. It really gives open season on children for all predators, because it's very unlikely that they're going to be caught, and even from kids from other states.
Speaker 2:Kids from other states can come here and get an abortion because this is a sanctuary state and and an abortion up to the the basically up to the birth of the child right here in illinois.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, it's. It's just, it's nefarious. You know what's happened. So, anyways, to young people and people that are concerned about young people, you grew up in this toxic thing. A child is a human being. All of us were these little human beings at some point. Marriage is not meaningless, meaning a child needs a mother and a father and a stable home. And if you're going to have sexual relations with someone look, we know what the culture said. But at the end of the day, there's a way to do that and it's called marriage. What's happening is there's a revolution going on right now and we're finding it in England, even where England. We've talked about it in the past that England is going down the tubes quickly, but it's really interesting that young men in England are also coming back into the church. Men are now more likely to attend the church than women in general, and the young men are really starting to come back into church. What are your thoughts about that, Tom?
Speaker 1:Well, I think people are beginning to realize that there's something more than what society is offering, because the foundation of our culture has just been eroded so badly that there is no foundation anymore. As I mentioned to you earlier, it's like if you've ever been climbing in the mountains, you'll go up to the snow line and as the summer gets further and further into the summer, there's a danger that you could wind up collapsing on top of the snow. I mean, you walk on the snow and it's hollowed out by all the melting that's going on underneath and you can actually hear it when you're walking up there. You can hear the water running down between the rocks up the top of the mountains and even though you're standing on a bed of snow, there's at some point that snow becomes unstable and you can fall down into that and sometimes it's a pretty big hole that's underneath there.
Speaker 1:I think that's what's happening to our culture now, that there's nothing underneath there's nothing holding us up anymore, because there's no institution that has remained strong on upholding the values, upholding the foundational principles that are taught in the Bible, not even churches. Churches just aren't forcefully promoting what's right and what's wrong.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that's what we're starting to see, though we're starting to see young people, especially young men. They voted for Trump. That's why I have the Trump hat back there. It's not that we think Trump is our Savior. We have a Savior. We just mentioned him, jesus Christ, but God has used men and women in all different walks of life throughout history to help his people, and here I really feel that Trump was ordained and I think he feels it too to come in and really try to clean up this nation, and I think that's what happened to young people really across the globe.
Speaker 2:Even in the UK, they looked to Trump, believe it or not, and again they're going back to church, tom, so they're not looking at him as a savior, but they saw something manly in him. He said fight, fight, fight. When he got up after being shot, they saw him standing up against corruption. They saw him attacked by this lawfare. They saw what happened in their own country putting people in jail for social media posts, for praying outside.
Speaker 2:Abortion is rampant. The sexual grooming is going on in our schools. We're teaching it to kids in our schools. Unhappiness is an anxiety, depression, all kinds of things, and they said you know, there's enough of this.
Speaker 2:There's got to be another way to live, and they saw Trump and they saw a chance here, and, at the same time, we're having a revival that had started previous to this last year, where we started to see these young men starting to stand up and then, to prove the point, they voted differently in this election, and so something's stirring in their hearts, and this is a great thing that happens. And with Holy Week coming, tom, you know, hopefully they find a good pastor or a good parish and something solid, because that's what they're looking for. They need a good biblical parish or church where they're really teaching biblical principles and to read Scripture themselves and to pray themselves, tom, because at the end of the day, this isn't just about more information, is it? Jesus didn't come to manage our sins. Jesus came with power, and the only way to know this is to get down on your own knees.
Speaker 1:And his whole ministry was one that he was fighting for what was right, and I think that's what that's in every man's heart to fight for what is right. You don't want to fight for the wrong cause. You don't want to be on the wrong side of a battle, and I think people have to be seeing that our culture has put us on the wrong side of the battle. To do what's right, yes, yes.
Speaker 1:There's just no. I don't want to say that the Republicans are good and the Democrats are evil, because I don't think that's true. I think our whole culture is infused with foolishness, and foolishness is people that can't recognize what's right and wrong.
Speaker 2:You're exactly right, and this is why these guys didn't vote. These young people didn't vote Republican. They voted for Trump and he is doing exactly what he said. He's standing up against this corruption and this evil. You know when, when you're being attacked personally. You know this is a Christian.
Speaker 2:You know rule of self-defense is, is-defense is part of this thing. Now you use self-defense and if the enemy attacks, you have to stand up against it. Now, the difference is we can't hate that person. And this is what you see in these mobs, tom. You see them standing up, going after Tesla and all these things. I mean, they're insane, these people standing up for these gender ideologies. The difference is not that they don't have a right to say, protest or do whatever. We have free speech in this country, but we're not allowed to hate and that's what you see there. It's hatred, it's violence. It always turns violent. When you take god out, two things you become irrational, right, and we see this with the trans movement, this, this you know again, this blowing up of, of tesla's because, because musk, it's totally insane. And then the last thing, tom, is violence.
Speaker 1:It always turns to violence, always, always yeah, and this whole thing with tesla that's. It's an organized effort by some group of people to promote, you know, to really direct these foolish people to go out and do foolish things. It's just contrary to everything that we're taught in the Bible. I just can't see how people view this as appealing to become involved in that.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So here's as we kind of wind this down a little bit. And again, it's Holy Week, you know, find a good church and walk in there. And a good church, at least in the daytime, is going to have doors that are open so you can go in there, Bring a Bible with you and read that. You don't have to go to church to read the Bible, obviously, you can read it at home. But how about making an effort.
Speaker 1:Community is important, though. You need community. You need the community to work together to combat these things that are going on, because you can't do it alone. I mean, yeah, you can go out and save a baby on your own out from being left out in the woods, but if you want to make a real difference, you have to get a community of people doing that the way they did in the early church and the same thing I will link.
Speaker 2:You're exactly right. I will link an article in the show notes here because I wanted to bring it up on the share screen but I'm just too bad at getting those things up there. But one of the you know. First of all, it showed the amount of young men especially some young women too, but young men especially coming back, starting to read the Bible, starting to read good literature, starting to pray and go to church, right Go to mass. And then the second thing is exactly what you said.
Speaker 2:It shows there's a reduction in anxiety and depression among these young people that are going to church and reading scripture and the amazing amount of socialization. Only 21% I think it was 21% of people that don't go to church, don't read scripture, don't pray said that they have a good social life. 80% of the young people that said they do go to church, do read scripture, do pray, are doing it and finding community. 80% of them say they have a great social life, a good or great social life. This is big. This is a big difference. You've been or great social life. So this is big.
Speaker 1:This is a big difference. You've been to Cursillo, haven't you? I haven't, I haven't, oh, you haven't. Okay, Well, one of the things that Cursillo talks about piety, study and action Now I guess it's prayer, study and action.
Speaker 1:Those are the three things that's really a hallmark of being a Christian. You need a community around you to be able to do things, to make an impact on the culture, and that isn't just by bringing people to Christ. It doesn't. Yes, I think that bringing people to Christ is certainly an important part of our ministry, the mission that we've been given, but we're also supposed to change things. We're supposed to capture the culture for Christ, not just bring people into a relationship with them. We're supposed to capture the culture and we have sacrificed the culture.
Speaker 1:And I think that's what young people are beginning to see now is that this culture it's a sick culture and somebody's got to save it. And you know, like John Eldredge talked about, every young man has a desire in their heart to live an adventure, for a battle to fight and for a beauty to save. Those three things drive every young man, and I think that's what we're seeing now. Is these young people beginning to realize that there's something they can do, and they need to do it together, as a group of people. They can't do it alone. If you try to do this alone, you're going to fail. If you try to do this alone, you're going to get you're going to.
Speaker 2:You're going to fail. Yeah, and Jesus. You know too many young people, men and women, don't have role models. You know too many young men have no men in their life to really be a role model. Of this, the ultimate role model is Jesus Christ. Right, because? Because he is always going to be showing you how to how to be a man and how to get on the right track. Think about the women.
Speaker 1:Think about, you know, he could operate alone. He could go into the temple and turn over those tables alone. But you know, if either one of us tried to do that, we'd be shut down very quickly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but not only that. Don't forget that he was only around for three years in active ministry and then he turned to those 12 and he said now you go out. And he sent them out and then he took a back seat. This is what you're describing, is exactly what we need to do, but we need role models. Just remember, guys, that Jesus is the role model of role models that will keep us all on track. But then you need to find some other men in your life, maybe some men that have been on this journey if you're new to it a little longer than you, that are followers of Christ for a while. That's a good way to go.
Speaker 2:And then the women out there, tom. Look how many of them have mothers that are feminists. How many of them have mothers that are pro-abortion? How many of them have mothers that are pro-abortion? How many of them have been sexualized, allowing their daughters to be sexualized, wearing anything they want out in public without telling their daughters anything about sexuality, making them privy to contraception when they're 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 years old? You know, they haven't had good role models either, tom.
Speaker 1:So I mean, it's a standard thing. There's no, people don't have to wear clothes anymore. You have them. You go out, even to the store. You think, man, what's happened here?
Speaker 2:and you know that's. You know, when people hear that in this culture, they think you're a prude. But the reality is this a man is more image driven than a woman. Women don't understand this. When a man sees a woman with with basically no clothes on, he starts to look at her as body parts. What if a woman would only understand that if she dresses a little bit more conservatively, she invites that man to see her as attractive, but not as as body parts. See her as a person. It's very hard for a young man in this pornographic culture to see someone with basically no clothes as a woman, as a whole woman. That's inviting you into her heart. You know it's not going to happen. And then they throw themselves at these guys and they're sexualized. And then you wonder why abortion has to be there, why contraception has to be there, why using and abusing each other.
Speaker 1:And these young guys are saying, no, I'm looking for a woman they have now, where even you carry this into the culture itself and it says well, what's the big deal if you got a guy in a women's locker room who thinks he's a woman, or a girl in a men's locker room that thinks she's a? She's a man? I mean, so what's the big deal? Yeah, so if you, if you make nudity the norm, then it isn't a big deal. But it isn't we, it isn't the norm. Yeah, no matter how much you try to force it into into the culture, it's not the norm and it never will be the norm.
Speaker 2:No, no, and again, we're not body parts. See, exactly what you said. When I'm looking at a woman, and I see her as body parts in this pornographic culture, I can look at a baby and seeing them as just body parts too, and that's exactly what we do.
Speaker 1:Well, they're selling babies. They're selling the aborted baby parts to medical experimentation. It's just ridiculous.
Speaker 2:That's why they want to allow late-term abortion because you get more money for those parts. Tom, it's disgusting and we realize that those body parts taken from those kids are done without anesthesia. You know they actually. I mean, I'm not going to get graphic here now, this is a Holy Week thing, but it's inhumane what we do and the child sex trafficking that you and I talked about. But the point is, these young people are waking up to something new. Don't stop, young people. Don't stop. Keep moving ahead. And the only way you're going to find that narrow gate is to again walk into scripture, to get down and pray yourself. Look at Matthew 7, 7, right, ask, seek and knock, and it'll be open to you, and then you'll encounter Christ himself. People's hearts are changed all around you. And go ask people. You know how are they different, you know, since they've accepted Jesus Christ. You know it's not just a slogan, is it, tom? You know there's power there, you know, and it's a beauty, it's really a love story.
Speaker 1:And you know. But everybody has to put on the full armor of God and to start going out after that stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, read Ephesians 6, huh, Verse 10, and put the armor of God on it, because you're going to need it out there.
Speaker 2:But then, walk out into the culture, walk out there, just like Donald Trump did, and this is that model right, fight, fight, fight. Right after you got shot, so in the air, you know. So, hey, god bless you, tom. Thanks for being with us, and I'll also remind everybody, especially young people, to download Claymore Claymore, miletus Christi, soldiers for Christ. It's on our website. I'll put a link to our website in the show notes. Go there, go under resources, click on Claymore and you're going to see the outline for this battle plan to walk back in. So we're not leaving you alone, we're giving you the battle plan that'll walk you back in. But, to Tom's point, find a brother or two to walk with and share the story, and then every Friday we're putting out a podcast just for those Claymore, miletus Christi, just for them. And then Tom and I will do podcasts in between and along with some other people, and always really fortifying the story, tom, and bringing it back, bringing hope back, because there is hope, but the hope is in us. You know, like GK Chesterton said, you know what's wrong with Christianity? I am. I think he'd say what's the solution to this culture. He would say I am that you know, your heart has to be changed first. Then you find someone like Tom and other friends and then you walk out into the story and we get enough people doing that, tom. That's the only thing that'll turn this thing around. But it's a win-win situation because at the end of the day, there's that six-foot hole with a whitewashed tomb and a chiseled poise waiting for all of us. And when you walk into this story, you also walk into eternal life. So it's a win-win situation, tom. You get your manhood back, you become a hero in your own life, you find love and you become love to other people and you gain eternal life.
Speaker 2:I mean, how do you lose, right? How do you lose? You don't, you don't? Hey, god bless you, tom. It's simple, not easy, but it's simple. All right, brother. Thanks Tom. Thanks's simple, not easy, but it's simple. All right, brother. Thanks Tom. Thanks everyone. Thanks for joining us.