Nine months ago, J.P. Sears posted a video on his YouTube channel about his Christian faith simply titled, “I Changed My Mind About God - Here’s Why.” It was a far cry from the satirical comedy that the popular comedian was known for on his channel but has since become one of his most viral videos to date, racking up more than 1.6 million views on YouTube and inspiring countless people of faith.
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Mr. Sears recently sat down with the Washington Times’ Higher Ground to discuss how he “accidentally got more Christian” at a time when American culture continues to become more secular.
“My hypothesis of why are people accidentally getting more Christian I think at least in our lifetimes I’ve never seen the presence of evil so obvious,” he said. “And I think something happens when you’re experiencing the presence of evil… If you don’t resonate with the evil, if you’re not willing to sell the space where your soul should be in order to do the bidding of the evil, you’ll naturally go in that opposite direction of evil — you’ll polarize in the other direction. And what’s in the other direction? It’s God.”
And it turns out that Mr. Sears, who has been posting videos on YouTube since 2014, wasn’t the only one who was “leaning away from evil.” He revealed that the overwhelmingly positive response to his video included many people who admitted that they were experiencing a faith awakening in their own lives.
“Changing my mind about God and sharing my present-day beliefs about God — a non-comedy video going on a comedy YouTube channel and that became the best-performing video in months — that really inspired me because it helped make me aware that this is something on a lot of people’s minds,” he explained. “It’s changed my perspectives about life because I think what’s going on in my opinion, we’re living in a time of spiritual warfare. It’s good versus evil. God versus the devil. And I just see so much of what’s going on seems to be a symptom of that… People are having the opportunity to sort of lean into God or not.”
The experience has also been incredibly eye-opening for Mr. Sears in terms of his role as a parent. It’s a big part of why he wrote his new children’s book “Chomp, Chomp, Chomp: The Snapfast Challenge,” which teaches about the consequences of giving in to peer pressure.
“My biggest passion, my biggest concern is children… nothing emotionally moves me more than seeing children predatorialized,” he noted. “We know children need to be protected from those degenerate ways of thinking and we also need to provide positive solutions to children to instill good morals, good values, pro-freedom, pro-America, pro-God, so that ultimately children can have a good life.”
“So I see this problem and the book is one small contribution to a positive solution for children,” he said. “It contains the message that I want to teach my son where if I could only instill one message in my son for him to carry now throughout the rest of his life it would be, ‘Dear son, do your own thinking, be in touch with your heart and have the courage to follow your heart and follow your own thinking.’”
“Chomp, Chomp, Chomp” is published by Brave Books and available for purchase at BraveBooks.com.
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Marissa Mayer is a writer and editor with more than 10 years of professional experience. Her work has been featured in Christian Post, The Daily Signal, and Intellectual Takeout. Mayer has a B.A. in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing from Arizona State University.
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