September 12, 2025 • 20 mins
In this special episode of the Infinitely Precious Podcast, James reflects on the many faces of violence that wound our world—not only physical violence seen in wars, shootings, and political assassinations, but also the quieter yet equally destructive forms of emotional, mental, spiritual, and rhetorical violence. Drawing on biblical wisdom and his own lived reflections, he explores how fear, anger, and dehumanizing language perpetuate cycles of harm, and invites listeners to embrace practices of deep listening, affirmation, and courageous love. This episode is a call to resist the temptation to other, demean, or retaliate, and instead to choose the hard but life-giving path toward peace, wholeness, and healing.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Intro (00:00):
Welcome to the Infinitely Precious Podcast produced by
(00:03):
Infinitely Precious LLC. Yourhost is James Henry. Remember,
you are infinitely precious andunconditionally loved for the
gift you already are.
James (00:12):
Hello, beloved. It's me, James, and, today, this is
formatted to go out both on myFacebook, personal Facebook
page, as well as as my podcast.It's a special edition of the
podcast since I'm onlypodcasting once a week now. The
(00:34):
last several days have had mereflecting deeply about
violence, about violence that isrampant in our world. You'd have
to be sleeping not to know aboutthe political assassination of
conservative commentator CharlieKirk, or three months ago, the
(01:02):
political assassination of ademocratic leader in her home.
Not to mention all the otherforms of violence that seem to
be happening in our society,wars, in Europe and, The Middle
(01:22):
East and Africa, places whereviolence seems to be real, and
we spent a lot of time thinkingabout how could I talk about
this? How can I let this go bywithout speaking something into
it? Not to speak some form ofjudgment on who's right and
(01:46):
who's wrong. I think there is agreat danger in any kind of
violence. In our society today,we've come to mostly think of
violence as what happens in inwars or gun violence in our
streets, in our classrooms,assassination attempts of
(02:11):
various political persons onboth sides of the aisle and
those attempts on people'slives, we tend to think of
violence as physical violence,domestic abuse included.
But there's other kinds ofviolence. Things like emotional
violence, bullying, shaming,tearing down people's dignity,
(02:37):
robbing them of their identity,by, demeaning their race or
sexual identity or sexualorientation. When we rob people
of their identity, it's a formof emotional and psychological
violence against folks. Mentalviolence, when we manipulate or
(03:00):
put out false information withregularity, when we gaslight
other people, those are forms ofmental violence, spiritual
violence. When we use our faith,whatever that faith may be,
exclude anyone or condemn anyoneor dominate anyone for who they
(03:25):
are as a person.
I see a lot of spiritualviolence, and it saddens me
deeply. Then there's rhetoricalviolence, which unfortunately is
part of what sets the scene forother violences to happen, when
(03:46):
we take away someone'shumanness, when we other them,
when we inflame people who arelike us to hate someone who is
not like us, those those piecesof language, can be used, in a
(04:07):
way that dehumanizes and thatinvites violence because if a
person isn't human, then perhapsit's okay to do whatever we want
to to them. You know, there arecountless. I come from the
Christian tradition, and I speakfrom a Christian lens. I am
(04:31):
thankful for my, for my mother,the church, for following the
path of Jesus who himself taughtnonviolence.
I think of biblical stories likethe story of Cain and Abel. Cain
(04:51):
and Abel, and we're talkingearly in the biblical narrative.
We're talking Genesis chapterfour, near the beginning, where
two brothers can't see eye toeye in the sacrifice they make,
and, one kills the other. Cainkills Abel. And we asked and the
(05:15):
question that arises out of thatso often is, am I my brother, my
sisters, my siblings' keeper?
You know, what is my response?What is my place in that? And so
(05:36):
when I think about all thisviolence and what it's doing to
the way we see each other, tothe deterioration of our
society, where the violence ofwords as well as the violence of
weapons is used to other so manyother so many folks around us
(06:00):
to, and almost allows for thejustification of the violence
when violence is neverjustifiable. We could speak
about the inner dimensions outof which this violence grows
(06:20):
unresolved anger, a personalsense of impotence, of being out
of control, and the desire tograb control again and out of
fear and that unresolved anger,using words in a violent fashion
(06:42):
to belittle and rob another oftheir dignity, using our
physical force to put others inthe place we imagine they
belong, that kind of acting onthat inner fear and anger in
(07:07):
unhealthy ways rather than todeal with what's making us
angry, to figure out what's up.What is it we're really afraid
of?
What is it we're really angryabout? Instead of merely lashing
out. And even to discover if theanger and fear is of the other,
(07:27):
that it's not okay for us to beviolent towards others just
because we're afraid, justbecause we're angry. I think
about the emotional words, thewounds that we carry, and the
words that have cut deeper thanany kind of physical blows
might, and how that leads us tosee ourselves as lowly,
(07:53):
sometimes even leading people tocarry out violence against
themselves. And because we feelnegative about ourselves
sometimes without being selfaware enough to recognize it, we
transfer.
(08:13):
The temptation is to transferthat sense of insecurity of our
own onto others. Wanting to feelbetter about ourselves means
putting those others down as ifthat could make us feel any
better about ourselves. Ratherthan dealing with our own stuff,
(08:36):
we live in a world that invitesus to be just a little bit more
kind to one another, kind toourselves. And yet even this
morning at before at breakfast,just before breakfast, as, my
son was headed out the door, hesaid to me, dad, I think you've
(09:00):
got, rose colored glasses onstill, and I just can't wear
those anymore about the world inwhich we live. And I don want to
have rose colored glasses.
I don t don t idyllically seethe world in which we live as if
it could magically be fixed.It's gonna take hard work, but
(09:22):
violence is not the answer. Nomatter how vehemently I may have
disagreed with any person, doingviolence to them does not solve
anything. And while it maytemporarily give me a rush of,
adrenaline to do emotional,mental, or physical violence,
(09:47):
it's gone. And all that remainsis the need to do it again to
feel better about myself.
Violence doesn't solve anything,and I'm talking about physical
violence, verbal violence. It itis a way that seems to offer a
(10:08):
permission to to hurt others,you know, and it just
perpetuates a cycle of violenceafter violence. You do something
to me. I do something back toyou. You do something back to
me, and it just goes round andround until someone is
(10:29):
courageous enough to stop.
To stop. I don't know what kindof courage it's gonna take in
our world. It's certainly gonnatake political leadership that
doesn't demonize each other. Weare all human beings. You don't
(10:50):
have to agree with me.
Don't have to agree with mereligiously or spiritually,
politically, or any other way,but you certainly can respect
me, and there is no reason todehumanize me, and there is no
reason and no justification atany point to refer in
(11:11):
denigrating ways to anotherhuman being no matter who you
are. In fact, the more voice youhave, the more you're heard, the
less you should ever use violentrhetoric in the way that you
speak. There is no excuse for itexcept the very brokenness of
(11:35):
our humanity. I wish I wishthere were an easy an easy
answer to this. I would like aneasy answer.
But as my son was quick toremind me this morning when he
said I he couldn't wear rosecolored glasses anymore, there
(11:58):
is no easy way out. We feel theanger rising. We feel the
frustration. We feel theuncertainty. We hope it's not
gonna happen again, and yet itdoes.
And then when it does, wepromise action that we don't
take. It's most prevalent amonggun violence where people blame
(12:20):
guns. Some people blame guns,and some people say guns don't
kill people, people kill people.Well, guns make it a lot easier.
But I'm not here to argue gun,you know, gun control or not,
because I'm not going toconvince you no matter which
(12:40):
side you're on, no matter how Ifeel about it.
Once again, I don't want to doviolence to you. But realize
that, violence is what you dowith those items. Violence is
what you do with your words. Youcan do with your words. You can
(13:01):
do it in the way that youdenigrate other human beings.
Violence is perpetuated allaround you. You need to be the
solution. I need to be thesolution. Stop it. Stop it.
You hear somebody talking aboutsomebody else, someone who's
your friend, tell them you'renot interested in hearing it.
(13:24):
You're not interested indemeaning anybody else. You
know, not because their faithtells them it's okay, I question
faith like that, but it's not.It's not. So what are some
practices that might be somebeginning places?
Because I gotta try. I'm notcan't offer anything simple, but
(13:48):
begin by deep listening beforeyou react. I'll tell you that
the last two days ofoccasionally looking on Facebook
has made me angry. It's made meangry about people on both sides
of the aisle. The rhetoric hasbeen ugly, ugly, ugly, ugly, And
(14:17):
so when I feel that kind ofvisceral thing rising inside me,
I need to take a step back.
I know myself well enough toknow that feeling. I know how I
can can heat it up some more,how I can add fuel to the fire,
but I also know that the ways Ican step back. You know, anger
(14:41):
is rarely a good reason to doanything. I m not saying, you
know, people like to argue aboutrighteous anger and that kind of
thing. It s a good motivator andit doesn t leave us with a clear
mind to act in ways that areloving and wise.
So first begin by deep listeningbefore reacting. Find ways that
(15:10):
speak affirmation rather thandiminution. You know, affirm
people, affirm your ownposition. You can say, I can
say, I don't see it the same wayyou do. From my perspective,
(15:34):
this is wrong.
From my perspective, when thishappens, it makes me fearful. It
makes me angry. I can speakfrom, I can speak from my
personal place, but I don't needto diminish anybody else to
(15:54):
speak my own feelings, my ownposition, my own frustration, my
own anger. I don't need to blamesomebody else. No one can make
me angry.
Anger rises up from within me inreaction because of my own
programming, because of my owninternal way of seeing things.
(16:17):
My perspective is where thatanger rises, where that
frustration rises. It's myperspective. I can't blame
somebody else for that. That'smine.
And so I need to deal with it.If I need to stand up about
something, if I need to protest,if I need to confront, I want to
(16:40):
do so without diminishing theperson I'm confronting. I don't
have to say ugly rhetoricalthings about other people to
tear them down in order to havea conversation with someone I
disagree. And I hope they don'tneed to do that for me.
(17:01):
Articulate what you feel.
Articulate what you what youthink, where you're coming from.
Use I statements, not youstatements that are always so
often blaming of the other.Speak from your own perspective.
Refuse, last of all, toperpetuate harmful jokes or
(17:22):
labels. If you're not fond ofthe LGBTQIA plus community, I'm
I'm sorry you are, not fond, butthere's no reason to say
diminish, you know, demeaning ordehumanizing things about the
community.
There's no reason to do that atall. At all. I've heard people
(17:47):
use spirituality to justify itand religion to justify it and
their own mental conditioning tojustify it. There is no
justification. If you don'tagree with something, just don't
say anything.
Don't say anything. Don't demeanany other person. Our call, and
(18:14):
this is speaking from a personwho follows the path of Jesus,
is to love. That's my whole gig.The rest of it I can leave to
God to sort out, but for me mywhole thing is to love.
To love everyone and everythingthat God loves, which is
everything. Period. And thatmeans people I agree with and
(18:36):
people I don't. So I wanna wishyou the best. Look for ways to
reconcile.
Look for community approachesthat help make things better.
Cultivate inner practice in yourdaily lives through prayer and
mindfulness, through letting goand forgiveness, and each small
(18:59):
act matters. Please engage inrandom acts of kindness, as
stupid as it sounds, because itmakes a difference in the world
and don't give in to temptationto join in with whoever it is,
your peers, your friends, yourfamily who demean anyone else.
(19:21):
Stop And if you're courageousenough, say, I don't wanna hear
that. I can't hear that.
It's not okay with me. We'retalking about people here. We're
talking about people thatmatter. They're made in the
image of God as much as you andme, whoever they are, and that
includes you. Remember myfriends, this has been a long
one.
(19:42):
Remember my friends, you areinfinitely precious and
unconditionally loved for thegift you already are. Remember
that, and I hope for you thatyou can find true peace. Peace
is not just the absence ofviolence. It's a sense of
wholeness and healing and andcompleteness. That's what Jesus
(20:03):
teaches us away too.
So until the next time, you areinfinitely precious. You are
unconditionally loved for thegift you already are, and I wish
you all the best. Until the nexttime.
Welcome to the Infinitely Precious Podcast produced by
(00:03):
Infinitely Precious LLC. Yourhost is James Henry. Remember,
you are infinitely precious andunconditionally loved for the
gift you already are.
James (00:12):
Hello, beloved. It's me, James, and, today, this is
formatted to go out both on myFacebook, personal Facebook
page, as well as as my podcast.It's a special edition of the
podcast since I'm onlypodcasting once a week now. The
(00:34):
last several days have had mereflecting deeply about
violence, about violence that isrampant in our world. You'd have
to be sleeping not to know aboutthe political assassination of
conservative commentator CharlieKirk, or three months ago, the
(01:02):
political assassination of ademocratic leader in her home.
Not to mention all the otherforms of violence that seem to
be happening in our society,wars, in Europe and, The Middle
(01:22):
East and Africa, places whereviolence seems to be real, and
we spent a lot of time thinkingabout how could I talk about
this? How can I let this go bywithout speaking something into
it? Not to speak some form ofjudgment on who's right and
(01:46):
who's wrong. I think there is agreat danger in any kind of
violence. In our society today,we've come to mostly think of
violence as what happens in inwars or gun violence in our
streets, in our classrooms,assassination attempts of
(02:11):
various political persons onboth sides of the aisle and
those attempts on people'slives, we tend to think of
violence as physical violence,domestic abuse included.
But there's other kinds ofviolence. Things like emotional
violence, bullying, shaming,tearing down people's dignity,
(02:37):
robbing them of their identity,by, demeaning their race or
sexual identity or sexualorientation. When we rob people
of their identity, it's a formof emotional and psychological
violence against folks. Mentalviolence, when we manipulate or
(03:00):
put out false information withregularity, when we gaslight
other people, those are forms ofmental violence, spiritual
violence. When we use our faith,whatever that faith may be,
exclude anyone or condemn anyoneor dominate anyone for who they
(03:25):
are as a person.
I see a lot of spiritualviolence, and it saddens me
deeply. Then there's rhetoricalviolence, which unfortunately is
part of what sets the scene forother violences to happen, when
(03:46):
we take away someone'shumanness, when we other them,
when we inflame people who arelike us to hate someone who is
not like us, those those piecesof language, can be used, in a
(04:07):
way that dehumanizes and thatinvites violence because if a
person isn't human, then perhapsit's okay to do whatever we want
to to them. You know, there arecountless. I come from the
Christian tradition, and I speakfrom a Christian lens. I am
(04:31):
thankful for my, for my mother,the church, for following the
path of Jesus who himself taughtnonviolence.
I think of biblical stories likethe story of Cain and Abel. Cain
(04:51):
and Abel, and we're talkingearly in the biblical narrative.
We're talking Genesis chapterfour, near the beginning, where
two brothers can't see eye toeye in the sacrifice they make,
and, one kills the other. Cainkills Abel. And we asked and the
(05:15):
question that arises out of thatso often is, am I my brother, my
sisters, my siblings' keeper?
You know, what is my response?What is my place in that? And so
(05:36):
when I think about all thisviolence and what it's doing to
the way we see each other, tothe deterioration of our
society, where the violence ofwords as well as the violence of
weapons is used to other so manyother so many folks around us
(06:00):
to, and almost allows for thejustification of the violence
when violence is neverjustifiable. We could speak
about the inner dimensions outof which this violence grows
(06:20):
unresolved anger, a personalsense of impotence, of being out
of control, and the desire tograb control again and out of
fear and that unresolved anger,using words in a violent fashion
(06:42):
to belittle and rob another oftheir dignity, using our
physical force to put others inthe place we imagine they
belong, that kind of acting onthat inner fear and anger in
(07:07):
unhealthy ways rather than todeal with what's making us
angry, to figure out what's up.What is it we're really afraid
of?
What is it we're really angryabout? Instead of merely lashing
out. And even to discover if theanger and fear is of the other,
(07:27):
that it's not okay for us to beviolent towards others just
because we're afraid, justbecause we're angry. I think
about the emotional words, thewounds that we carry, and the
words that have cut deeper thanany kind of physical blows
might, and how that leads us tosee ourselves as lowly,
(07:53):
sometimes even leading people tocarry out violence against
themselves. And because we feelnegative about ourselves
sometimes without being selfaware enough to recognize it, we
transfer.
(08:13):
The temptation is to transferthat sense of insecurity of our
own onto others. Wanting to feelbetter about ourselves means
putting those others down as ifthat could make us feel any
better about ourselves. Ratherthan dealing with our own stuff,
(08:36):
we live in a world that invitesus to be just a little bit more
kind to one another, kind toourselves. And yet even this
morning at before at breakfast,just before breakfast, as, my
son was headed out the door, hesaid to me, dad, I think you've
(09:00):
got, rose colored glasses onstill, and I just can't wear
those anymore about the world inwhich we live. And I don want to
have rose colored glasses.
I don t don t idyllically seethe world in which we live as if
it could magically be fixed.It's gonna take hard work, but
(09:22):
violence is not the answer. Nomatter how vehemently I may have
disagreed with any person, doingviolence to them does not solve
anything. And while it maytemporarily give me a rush of,
adrenaline to do emotional,mental, or physical violence,
(09:47):
it's gone. And all that remainsis the need to do it again to
feel better about myself.
Violence doesn't solve anything,and I'm talking about physical
violence, verbal violence. It itis a way that seems to offer a
(10:08):
permission to to hurt others,you know, and it just
perpetuates a cycle of violenceafter violence. You do something
to me. I do something back toyou. You do something back to
me, and it just goes round andround until someone is
(10:29):
courageous enough to stop.
To stop. I don't know what kindof courage it's gonna take in
our world. It's certainly gonnatake political leadership that
doesn't demonize each other. Weare all human beings. You don't
(10:50):
have to agree with me.
Don't have to agree with mereligiously or spiritually,
politically, or any other way,but you certainly can respect
me, and there is no reason todehumanize me, and there is no
reason and no justification atany point to refer in
(11:11):
denigrating ways to anotherhuman being no matter who you
are. In fact, the more voice youhave, the more you're heard, the
less you should ever use violentrhetoric in the way that you
speak. There is no excuse for itexcept the very brokenness of
(11:35):
our humanity. I wish I wishthere were an easy an easy
answer to this. I would like aneasy answer.
But as my son was quick toremind me this morning when he
said I he couldn't wear rosecolored glasses anymore, there
(11:58):
is no easy way out. We feel theanger rising. We feel the
frustration. We feel theuncertainty. We hope it's not
gonna happen again, and yet itdoes.
And then when it does, wepromise action that we don't
take. It's most prevalent amonggun violence where people blame
(12:20):
guns. Some people blame guns,and some people say guns don't
kill people, people kill people.Well, guns make it a lot easier.
But I'm not here to argue gun,you know, gun control or not,
because I'm not going toconvince you no matter which
(12:40):
side you're on, no matter how Ifeel about it.
Once again, I don't want to doviolence to you. But realize
that, violence is what you dowith those items. Violence is
what you do with your words. Youcan do with your words. You can
(13:01):
do it in the way that youdenigrate other human beings.
Violence is perpetuated allaround you. You need to be the
solution. I need to be thesolution. Stop it. Stop it.
You hear somebody talking aboutsomebody else, someone who's
your friend, tell them you'renot interested in hearing it.
(13:24):
You're not interested indemeaning anybody else. You
know, not because their faithtells them it's okay, I question
faith like that, but it's not.It's not. So what are some
practices that might be somebeginning places?
Because I gotta try. I'm notcan't offer anything simple, but
(13:48):
begin by deep listening beforeyou react. I'll tell you that
the last two days ofoccasionally looking on Facebook
has made me angry. It's made meangry about people on both sides
of the aisle. The rhetoric hasbeen ugly, ugly, ugly, ugly, And
(14:17):
so when I feel that kind ofvisceral thing rising inside me,
I need to take a step back.
I know myself well enough toknow that feeling. I know how I
can can heat it up some more,how I can add fuel to the fire,
but I also know that the ways Ican step back. You know, anger
(14:41):
is rarely a good reason to doanything. I m not saying, you
know, people like to argue aboutrighteous anger and that kind of
thing. It s a good motivator andit doesn t leave us with a clear
mind to act in ways that areloving and wise.
So first begin by deep listeningbefore reacting. Find ways that
(15:10):
speak affirmation rather thandiminution. You know, affirm
people, affirm your ownposition. You can say, I can
say, I don't see it the same wayyou do. From my perspective,
(15:34):
this is wrong.
From my perspective, when thishappens, it makes me fearful. It
makes me angry. I can speakfrom, I can speak from my
personal place, but I don't needto diminish anybody else to
(15:54):
speak my own feelings, my ownposition, my own frustration, my
own anger. I don't need to blamesomebody else. No one can make
me angry.
Anger rises up from within me inreaction because of my own
programming, because of my owninternal way of seeing things.
(16:17):
My perspective is where thatanger rises, where that
frustration rises. It's myperspective. I can't blame
somebody else for that. That'smine.
And so I need to deal with it.If I need to stand up about
something, if I need to protest,if I need to confront, I want to
(16:40):
do so without diminishing theperson I'm confronting. I don't
have to say ugly rhetoricalthings about other people to
tear them down in order to havea conversation with someone I
disagree. And I hope they don'tneed to do that for me.
(17:01):
Articulate what you feel.
Articulate what you what youthink, where you're coming from.
Use I statements, not youstatements that are always so
often blaming of the other.Speak from your own perspective.
Refuse, last of all, toperpetuate harmful jokes or
(17:22):
labels. If you're not fond ofthe LGBTQIA plus community, I'm
I'm sorry you are, not fond, butthere's no reason to say
diminish, you know, demeaning ordehumanizing things about the
community.
There's no reason to do that atall. At all. I've heard people
(17:47):
use spirituality to justify itand religion to justify it and
their own mental conditioning tojustify it. There is no
justification. If you don'tagree with something, just don't
say anything.
Don't say anything. Don't demeanany other person. Our call, and
(18:14):
this is speaking from a personwho follows the path of Jesus,
is to love. That's my whole gig.The rest of it I can leave to
God to sort out, but for me mywhole thing is to love.
To love everyone and everythingthat God loves, which is
everything. Period. And thatmeans people I agree with and
(18:36):
people I don't. So I wanna wishyou the best. Look for ways to
reconcile.
Look for community approachesthat help make things better.
Cultivate inner practice in yourdaily lives through prayer and
mindfulness, through letting goand forgiveness, and each small
(18:59):
act matters. Please engage inrandom acts of kindness, as
stupid as it sounds, because itmakes a difference in the world
and don't give in to temptationto join in with whoever it is,
your peers, your friends, yourfamily who demean anyone else.
(19:21):
Stop And if you're courageousenough, say, I don't wanna hear
that. I can't hear that.
It's not okay with me. We'retalking about people here. We're
talking about people thatmatter. They're made in the
image of God as much as you andme, whoever they are, and that
includes you. Remember myfriends, this has been a long
one.
(19:42):
Remember my friends, you areinfinitely precious and
unconditionally loved for thegift you already are. Remember
that, and I hope for you thatyou can find true peace. Peace
is not just the absence ofviolence. It's a sense of
wholeness and healing and andcompleteness. That's what Jesus
(20:03):
teaches us away too.
So until the next time, you areinfinitely precious. You are
unconditionally loved for thegift you already are, and I wish
you all the best. Until the nexttime.
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My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.