Live from the Pathway Studios in Johnston proper, you are live from the Path. Merry Christmas. You're listening to Live from the Path here in the Live from the Path. Pathway Studios, Johnston, Iowa. I am Bedford. I'm going to wear your robe. I'm going to wear your righteous mane everywhere I go. You're going to light my candle, son. You're going to make it shine. You're going to lead me to the throne. It's not really festive in here. It's not really festive in here. It's a downer. Yeah, I was thinking about this the other day. When I was thinking about the show, I thought, well, you know, we really didn't do anything to spice up the place for the holiday season, you know. So, we should have gone with something, I don't know, trees, light, something. I don't know that anybody is too, I don't think anybody cares about that. Pat, how do you feel about it? You're a man that watches the show. What do you think? Actually, now that you say that, I'm a little disappointed. I knew he would be. Just a couple days ago. Are you disappointed now that he's brought it up, or were you disappointed before? Yeah, now that he brought it up. I was trying to ignore it and think, no, no, it's fine. It's just stupid. That doesn't care. But no. You know, people that come in here consistently say that the place looks bigger over the airwaves than it does when you actually get in here. I wonder how much of that is true.

Like, if you were to go visit the Cosby Show set, if it would look like some kind of mini dollhouse if you saw it in life. I bet that is true. I bet the Cosby Show is underwhelming. I would submit that you have too many sweatshirts on. Why? You look to have at least two. I do look a little homeless. I just catch a glimpse of myself. Anyway, hey, I'm Ben Foost. You're listening to Live from the Path. Tons going on on this week's show. Dan is out. Yeah. He's caught the sickness. He didn't sound good at the Christmas service. No, he didn't sound good. He looked good, though. He was wearing a suit. I don't know what. I didn't recognize him. I don't like him when he's in a suit. It generally means someone has died.

You know what my wife said about the Christmas service that actually didn't even occur to me is that it felt very relaxed because we rented a different place. We normally have service at a school. We got people doing set-up and tear-down, working on donuts, making coffee, kids running everywhere, trying to get them to the places they need to go. Since we had our Christmas service at a hotel conference center, we didn't do coffee or donuts and there was no child care. And so, like, it just felt very relaxed because there wasn't, like, 60 people running around trying to make something happen and said it would just seem like a very relaxed service. And I guess it didn't even occur to me that that was probably the case, right? Like, everybody was sitting with their family. You know, they weren't trying to shuttle kids off everywhere. There weren't people trying to fix things. It was just pretty laid back. Yeah. Yeah, that's probably true. Although, you couldn't find any coffee. No, that was a disaster. We had to go on a hunt. And what are you going to do? I thought it was a little lonely just because I hang out with all the people by the coffee. That's where you make your buddies? Yeah.

And there was nothing. There was nothing. Well, so here's what we've got coming up tonight. We've got some holiday stories. Mike's run into some. Mike's got some. I had a couple. Mike's got a couple good ones. I ran into some midnight Jesus fun on Christmas Eve, and I'll tell you a little bit about that. We're also going to talk about last week when the folks from the dive were in the studio. We got to talk about that Goofy Pink Bible. Yeah. And then one of the things that Bart had said was, is it a hill to die on? Meaning, is it something that's worth arguing about? Is there a distinction about it? Is there a truth about it that we really should be concerned about, or is it something that you kind of let go? And I've been thinking about that this week, not necessarily about that Bible, but things in general as to where is the line? Where do you draw lines on making distinctions like that? At what point are you pharisaical? Are you the guy that's tacking on a bunch of extra crapola? And at what time are you giving in to untruth simply because it doesn't seem like it's the big argument? And we've talked about this before where you're talking about God. The ends don't justify the means.

Like the means of which you get there are important. They're the whole thing. Yeah. And so I don't know. I want to talk about that a little bit because I've been trying to think through that as to – I'm going to submit that I was really disappointed in that discussion, and I think that I had the right perspective on it, and I think I gave up on it too easy. I'm really disappointed. Oh, you're disappointed because you think you sailed down the river too quickly? Yeah, I think in an attempt to extend an olive branch and not cause more of an argument that I backed down before I should have. Okay. And I was very disappointed in the way that I behaved. Well, I'm disappointed in the way you behaved. Yeah, I should be. Okay. That's fair. All right. So we're going to talk a little bit about that. Also, just to see if there's anything sticking out with you guys on where you're at in your Bible reading. I was trying to think through that. I've got a couple things that I've been reading a lot of Paul's letters. And Paul's an interesting cat. There was a particular verse that stood out for me. We'll talk a little bit about that.

He doesn't act like that. I don't know why – why do you think he's got a high-pitched voice? To the church's interface. Hapses. Hapses. Oh, yeah. He's mean. He's mean, little man. You envision him being 5'2 with a high-pitched voice? He's short and balding, and he's bruised up because he gets whooped on all the time, and he is fiery. He's a fiery preacher man because he doesn't have any schooling. You know what I'm saying? They don't teach him the ways to be smooth in the seminary. You know what I'm saying? He loves Jesus by life and by interaction, and so he's straight to the point. He has schooling, though. I mean, he's a very smart man. He's not a Jesus schooler. I think that's the difference. A Paulist Jesus man. Well, what they say is, like, you know, some of the things they try to teach is, like, how to run a church or how to do this, you know, how to gain people, how to set up programs, how to have a thriving youth ministry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, a bunch of stuff.

Paul doesn't get into that. He's just like, love Jesus. Here's why. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's him. He doesn't do that. I love his style. There's no biblical record of him going, meh, meh, meh. There's no biblical record of him not doing that. It doesn't say that he eats all the time either, but we're all assuming that he does. Okay. Pants, he's got me on that point. Yeah, see? Pants believes me. Yeah, yeah. I thought I had an argument with you, but that's true. Pants, how was your Christmas? It wasn't that bad. Luckily, it just sounds horrible, but luckily, the family's leaving tomorrow, so that's good. It's time for them to go, huh? It was time for them to go the 26th. The day after it went down. Early in the morning.

It took all of my ability to say, no, no, it's still Christmas. I'm just going to go to bed. That was your solution instead of any type of family interaction? Well, I'm going to hit the old shower, son. Time for sleep, Dad. We're playing cards, and it's getting late. I've been up early. I have to go. Do you have Christmas traditions at your house that you always do? I used to. The last few years, we haven't really done much of anything. We used to go to my grandparents Christmas Eve, and then Christmas morning, Santa showed up. Then we go to church, and then we come back, do our presents, and that's it. Then if there's a football game on or whatever movie's on, we do that. Now, not really much. It's a free-range chicken. Everybody does what they want. By the way, incidentally, over this holiday season, my wife had volunteered us. I should say us. It was her mostly. To take care of these chickens for one of our neighbors. We just freshly moved out to the country, and our neighbors. You've got a gig chicken sitting?

Yeah. Yeah. So, what you've got to do is, and I went out this morning with the gals to check out how this operation is done. So, I don't know. I'm kind of half freaking out. I'd like to think that I could be a potential chicken owner, but they creep me out a little bit. And so, you've got to collect these eggs like twice a day. You get like 10 eggs one time, two eggs the other. It's about a dozen a day this thing puts out. And they're big eggs, like big creepy style eggs. And so, I go with the wife out there with the two girls, and I'm holding the little one. And so, she lets these chickens out. It's like a little shed where the chickens stay encapsulated by some chicken wire. She lets the chickens out to let them roam for a little bit while she goes and feeds like a cat and a dog or whatever. And I'm over here supposed to be watching these chickens. And one of them sneaky little devils gets out, sneaks underneath the chicken wire. I'm like, oh, Jenna, the chicken got out. Chicken got out. What do we do? She's like, hold on. Everything will be fine. You know, I'm like, but it's out. The wire was meant to keep it in.

It's escaping, you know. And so, now I'm afraid that it was my responsibility to watch this stupid chicken. And now he's escaping from the farm. So, I put the little girl down, and I kind of, I don't know, kind of MacGyver my way around it. You know, just kind of try to keep it fenced into an area. And just as Jared had thought, you know, when you throw the food, the chicken is going to come running after it anyway. But she picks it up and holds it and pets it and stuff. And, you know, tried to get me to pet it. And I said, no, thank you. You know, I took a little swipe at it. But it kind of creeped me out a little bit. Chickens creep me out in general. I'm telling you. Here's the thing. We collected the eggs, and Jared went home and cooked them. Made them up, you know. And I'm like, so I'm really weary of farm fresh stuff. Right. Well, because I like process and regulation. I like government oversight. Like, something freaks me out about eating something right off the, I don't know, right out of the bum day. You know, that just doesn't seem quite right. But apparently it's totally cool.

And the eggs were really good. But, like, the whole time I'm like, I'm cutting it up in small pieces thinking, please don't let me get sick on the salmonella. I don't want to die from these eggs, you know. I've just tried to do the right. They're cooked eggs, Mike. I don't know what that means. I don't know. It's something about, I'm like, do they test these animals? She goes, test them for what? I mean, seriously, there's no way to tell whether this animal has disease or not, whether the eggs are bad. No, no. They don't test them. I'm like, well, how do you know you're not eating a bum egg? Because it just doesn't happen like that. This egg's full of rabies. Oh, I knew it. I'm telling you. I was certain I was going to get the diarrhea after eating this egg, and I was going to blame the chickens because I was certain it was going to happen. You like your corporate, like, imprisoned, medicated up chickens. Yeah. Jared said if I saw how the food was actually made, you know, I would not feel the same way, and I'd feel better about the farm fresh stuff. But, I don't know, eating stuff right off the farm. Like, any type of, like, people who drink the milk right out of the cow, that creeps me right out.

That's really gross. That creeps me right out. I don't know that I can do it. Wait, are you talking about a guy that transfers it into the container, or he just goes right up to the cow and has a drink? Okay, option B is not right at all. That's a man that you should just cut ties with to not have any relationship. But, even the guy that takes it and then refrigerates it, I don't know, like, I like the printed on expiration date to know when it's bad, and, you know, all that kind of jazz. Like, I feel more comfortable with government regulation like someone has looked at it. I don't feel comfortable eating it. The chicken's going to spit it out and go, that's good until Tuesday. I just don't know what to make of these chickens, you know. They creep me out. But, other than that, I think it's a pretty cool experience. We might get some chickens, I think. But, I don't know, I don't want to keep them during the winter, so I think we'll probably get them in the spring, you know, run them ragged with eggs. But, then, eat them in the fall, so I don't have to try to heat somewhere to keep them warm, you know. I don't like being threatened on Facebook. I don't like people posting stuff and saying, I bet you won't do this. That happened to you guys? Oh. You get this people with that. I've defriended people for that. You know what irritates me?

If people do this with Jesus, and this is the absolute worst. There was one going around a couple weeks ago that I saw, and it super irritated me. They're like, Jesus has something special, something planned for you. You know, if you don't repost this, he won't do it. He has great things. That's ridiculous. He has great things for you coming, but you have to show that you believe in him, and show that you believe in him by reposting this to your friends. I'm like, if you deny me in front of others, you know, I'll, you know, I will recognize you in the kingdom of heaven. That's exactly right. And I'm like, boy, man, I would not have wanted to have been the guy to start this. You know what I'm saying? Like, you don't know what Jesus is doing. You better stay out of that business. You're in some big trouble. I don't know. I thought that was a huge. Jesus is going to be upset with you if you don't update your Facebook status. You know what they said? And they said the big thing that he has planned for you is going to happen tonight. So now they set a timeline on how it's going to happen. It's going down tonight. Repost, whiz bang. Jesus is going to fix us something.

He's got something that he's wanted to help you with. And I'm like, come on, man. I don't know. This is light. Actually, that's pretty bad. That's pretty bad that you would propose. Because, I mean, I've seen that. And I've come from people who I know to be believers, right? Like, that might be something you can laugh at if you treat God like a mystical being who's not real. It's like, ha, ha, Jesus will help you tonight. Right. It's like, you're putting words in the Lord's mouth when he is intentionally not sent it out. You know, I actually have some other people on Facebook who, you know, they love Jesus, but they're super confrontational about it. They're like, don't take the Christ out of Christmas. Take that. Like, I'm a Christian and I love Jesus and screw you if you don't like it. I'm like, well, that's a bit much, isn't it? Like, you know, you could have just said, look, Jesus died for all of our sins. I hope you realize the reason for the season. You know, like, that's one thing. But, like, screw you guys who are trying to take Christ out of Christmas. You know, it's like, come on. Is this how you want to paint the brush?

Is it a hill to die on? You know, I don't know. Even those folks, those sinners who don't update their Facebook status. Seriously. Like, evangelism through Facebook just does not seem like a good medium. Like, there's a couple times, like, you know, I subscribe to a couple people where, you know, who will put up biblical content. And I'll check it out and read it. And, you know, sometimes it's pretty helpful. But, like, mostly, like, person-to-person evangelism just does not seem to go very well. It either comes off as being judgmental or very faction-based. Like, I'm in. You're out. You know, here's the rub. You know, because you don't see very many people that just post, like, God has really blessed me. You know, that's it. I think that's a pretty strong statement. You know, if you were to get off, you know, Facebook or whatever, and you're willing to tell everybody, look, God has blessed me. And, you know, my belief in Christ is what drives me every day. Whatever. That's okay. You know, but people put up a Bible verse, and then they're like, whatever, you trying to post that to me? Jim, why don't you like the way I live? You know, you're trying to preach to me like I'm some kind of jerk?

Well, it's as effective as a billboard, right? I mean, that's all it is. It's not a conversation. It's not a relational Christ. It's a guy that puts up a sign that says, burn in hell or love Christ, those are your options. As if that is effective. Right. Right? And that's about as effective as this. You know, there are times when burn in hell or love Christ is, like, the right thing to say when it's you and another guy. Yeah. You know, I mean, seriously, you've got to break it down. You have to get to the brass tacks at some point. At some point, right? Like, you can only drag out your hope-based, you know, I wish I could see you at church or how things are going. Well, you know, you should pray about that or whatever. You know, and then after about 10 years, if it ain't sinking in, it ain't sinking in. Now it's time, like, listen, I've been waiting for you to get this right and read it for yourself. But the truth is, if you come to know Jesus, you're going to be in the straits. You're going to be very sorry because the man that decides where you go is the guy that you need to talk to. So, yeah, I don't know. The Facebook Christian postings just, I don't know. They tend to rub me the wrong way.

Yeah. All right. I needed to get to. Bigger Street on the chat says, I needed to get tuned into the Jesus part about Christmas because that was all I had to get through Christmas this year. It's, I was thinking this year about how much I take for granted having grown up in a home where Christmas was celebrated as the, you know, for what it is. For the birth of Christ. Yeah. And how I might mistake the season. Not because I mistake it for something else and I look at the presents or I get caught up in the other stuff. Like, I know what the focus is. But, you know, failing to recognize, you know, exactly what it is we're celebrating. Because, I mean, I celebrate that all the time, right? It's something I'm all constantly, you're thinking about, praying about. If you're reading your Bible and you're in all that stuff. But, it doesn't, it doesn't stand out as much as it did. And I think, and I think there is a danger of looking at Christmas as if it's another day. I mean, it is another day, I guess. But recognizing, like, what that message means to other people that aren't me. And I think that's what, that's one of the risks we have as we get closer in our relationship with Christ is forgetting where other folks are at. And what that season might, might mean to them. Because, like, there's shadows, there's shadows of God even in the most, you know, non-God stuff about the holiday, right? I mean, family stuff, giving stuff, like, all that stuff is, you know, are things where we can see God in it. The question is, do you?

And do you recognize what other people are looking for and what they're missing? Because, like, that's why Christmas tends to be such a great holiday. It's because the people are filling voids of things that they're missing of time, you know, with other people. Of being able to give to others habits that perhaps we're not as good at outside of this time of year. But I don't know, it was weird. I was just thinking about that over the weekend as something that I should be careful of and just be mindful of is what that, what the season means to somebody else who doesn't come from the same situation that I came from. And, you know, didn't have the benefit of that perspective as long as I did or, you know, as a little child like I did. So, you know, actually, I was thinking about that a little bit yesterday is that I think I think, you know, along with that, I think I tend to forget the fact that God truly is a relational God, you know, and not everybody's relationship with Christ is going to look the same. Like, because, I mean, we run a lot of, we run by a lot of people who love Jesus at this show. You know, a lot of people that it just, I mean, it just pours out of them. You talk to them even for two minutes and you're like, man, they just, they love, they love Jesus. They love the Lord. They, you know, they got the Holy Spirit working and they're doing things for God, you know. And sometimes I'll meet some of these people that just, they really strike me. I'm like, I just want to be more like those people. You know, like I want to have more of a heart like they have or I want to have, I want to have more like the words that I have or be missional driven or be, you know, foundational driven or giving driven, you know, like these people, you know. And I think sometimes I start, I start to miss the step where God truly is a relational person and God has made you who you are to do something. You know, he's made you for a work and he's designed you specifically for a work. You know, like sometimes I'll, I'll, I'll, you know, I'll listen to past shows, you know, and I'll, and I'll listen to something that I've said. I'm like, you know, you don't have to be, you don't have to run your mouth all the time. You don't have to be so assertive with your speech. You know what I'm saying? But the truth is, is like, I have, I have always been that way and I have the capability to use that for sin or for Jesus.

My, my, I don't know, my inclination to tend to be assertive with my speech. It's something that God has given me. Like, like, I mean, and you'll notice this, especially if you have children, like small children, like under the age of five, you know, between, between like three and four years old, you start to notice, notice like distinct personalities. Especially if you have two children, you're like, I've raised both these kids exactly the same. And there's two different, like they, they get hugged the same. They get loved the same. They get played with the same. They get Bible the same. They get all the same things pretty much, you know, and then, and, and one of them turns out just different, you know, just, just their personalities just start to, to, to move apart. And, and I think it, I, you know, I just saw that with my kids this weekend and, and I think it was God just showing me like, look, I, I, I make people for things that I want done. You know what I'm saying? Like one of my daughters tends to be very other, other people driven, you know, very, very willing to share and to help and to, and to find out what everyone else is doing and see how she can get involved, you know? And, and, and, and it's not like my other daughter doesn't do that, but she doesn't do it quite to the extent that, that, that my littlest one does. And, and I just, I started looking at her, I'm like, why, why this difference? What have I, where have I failed as a parent, you know? And then I, it just started to occur to me that, that God makes these, makes you exactly who you are. And then what you choose to do with the person that God has, has made you, that's, that's, that's where the, the, the rubber meets the road. That's where the black meets the white, right? Like, so, so, you know, when I tend to run my mouth too much, when I tend to be embarrassed about it is when I've used it, not to God's glory, when I've used it for sin or for, you know, pride or personal, whatever. And I do that, you know, but there's, you know, it's not like I would ever be ashamed that. You know, I'm a little assertive when it comes to talking about Jesus. I don't generally shy away from it or, you know, or, you know, try to sidestep the conversation. I just tend to have it right on.

Yep. And that is not a, a shameful thing, you know? So, so, you know, one of the things that I was thinking about is, is, you know, think about the things that, think about the person that you are and think about where your biggest proclivity is to sin. And that generally is the area where God has, has entrusted you to work for him. Like, like I tend to sin most with my speech and my, my pride when I speak. And God has given me that ability and I've taken it and I use it for sin a lot of the time where really what it's done is God has given me the ability to do it for his use. You know, so, so, you know, look at the things that tend to get you in the most trouble and then find out why that you're using them for sin and not for Jesus. Because God has empowered you to do these things and has created you, I mean, really has created you exactly who you are. The things that you look at as false are the things that God intended you to use for him that you're just, they're false because you're not using them for him like you're supposed to. But, I mean, unless you're like a, you know, I don't know, a thief or a, you know, an overeater or something. You could be a dirty thief for Jesus. I don't know that you can. I mean, you could love, certainly love Jesus, but I don't know if you could claim that the thievery was for Jesus. Is there any, well, think about that, though. I mean, is there, is there anything that you could, no, theft is theft. There's no, is there any way you could turn such a set of skills? You could be a locksmith for Jesus. Well, you certainly could be a locksmith for Jesus. I don't know. I think it's something really deep to do. It's really not even that deep, right? Like, it's pretty obvious. If you're looking for, if you're looking for a way that you feel like you're not as close to Jesus as you could be, look at your proclivity to sin.

Look where your sins are and find out, you know, where that, where you're choosing to go right when God wants you to go left because he's empowered you to do things and given you personality traits, inclinations, you know, just that, that, that, that Holy Spirit in you to, to do things. And you're choosing to take your loud mouth or your boisterous ability or you're, you know, you're loving people to a fault or you're a huge, let's say you're just an emotional person. I love people to a fault. Some people do that. Not guilty. Some people won't do a tough love thing, but like, you know, I mean, take a people that you, that you can think of right now. You probably think of five people that you know that you're like, they're just emotional, you know, that's not your personality. Yeah. But, but that emotion isn't necessarily a fault. You know what I'm saying? It's, it's a fault that you're using to sin because you're using it for self-loathing or depression or whatever. Like you should be using that, that inclination that God's given you to really love on people, to take that and, and add that to some action and then get some things done. Yeah, that's true. I was, I was trying to think when you were talking, like, what is the thing that tends to get me in the most trouble, uh, that when it's rocking for God, it's awesome. And, uh, otherwise it, if I'm not using it correctly, it tends to give me trouble and it's confidence. It's, you know, taking, taking a position on something without, without thinking it through, um, you know, just, or, uh, sometimes storytelling. Like storytelling could be engaging or not true at all. Yeah. Yeah. This guy, you don't do that. Uh, yeah, yeah, no, I think that, I think that's right on it. Look, look at the, in fact, that's kind of a cool way to look at it, right? Like look at the, look at the spot in my life where that I would look and say, boy, that's the darkest part of me and say, wouldn't that really rock if that was, if that was doing it for Jesus, right?

Not that you just wanted to stop what you're doing that you wanted to, you know, that's, that's the repent, right? Not only stop what you're doing, but turn around and use it for Jesus, head the other way with it, you know? And I, I, I don't know. I think that, I think that's a pretty simple, straightforward way to start. Like take an honest audit of your life. And, and, you know, cause people, people do this a lot, you know, like they look at their, their life and they're like, you know, I want to take, I want, there's some sins that I want to get rid of. And then you try to tackle these sins one at a time. And that's a mistake. Live for Jesus. The sin will go away, you know? And it's, it's healthy to look at your sin and go, how did I get in this situation? Where did I go wrong? Where did I ignore God when, when, when he was speaking to me to not do this? Yeah. And, and that's a pretty simple evaluation. But, um, when you try to tackle each individual sin that you have one at a time and call it a moral victory, that's exactly what you have. You have morality. You don't have, right, of the love of Christ. You have you trying to make a checklist of you being a good guy. Right. Right. That's going down the path that you just went on trying to fix everything. Right.

And you obviously, why don't you, why don't you just turn around, go the opposite way onto the right path. I'm the pastor's a pass. Correct it now and go towards Jesus. Yeah. I mean, the distinction is, is do you, you know, do you cause a problem and you have a sin? And, and, and as opposed to, uh, you know, moving forward towards relationship with Christ, you keep going at trying to get victory over that sin as if you could. Right. But the victory over sin is God's victory is Jesus's victory over sin, not yours. Right. And so as often as you go back and you say, look, uh, you know, I want to stop, uh, I want to stop swearing so often. So then you spend all your time focused on swearing. I want to stop looking at porn. So you start, you know, spend all your time saying, look, I'm not going to look at porn. I'm not going to be angry. I'm not going to, you know, uh, steal from people. And all these things that you want to throw a thumbs up, if you're not able to do for a certain amount of time, when it's a waste of energy, right? Because like those things will eventually conquer you. That is the sin that is within you and will continue to be that way. The question is, is, is can I spend my time following and pursuing Christ? Because if I do that, if I'm pursuing God, those, those sins will fall away on their own. Right. Like it's, it's Jesus's victory to have. It's Jesus's victory that he's already put in place.

All I have to do is kind of watch it go. As opposed to like trying to arm bless them as to which one of us is going to take care of this deal. Am I going to take care of it? Or is God going to take care of it? And if I try to take care of it, I'm obviously going to fail and God will laugh at me. Yeah. It's a, it's a, if you envision a guy like, like the, after they lost the Gettys, the battle at Gettysburg, like he come back like four years later, armed to the teeth, like, okay, I'm ready. You know, let's do this thing again. Like it's done for, you know, like you, you missed it. It's already happened. You either lost or won. You're done. You know, call it a day and get moving the other way. How ridiculous does that sound to go back and keep revisiting a battle that already happened? Well, and that's a, that's a big barrier in a lot of folks live is, is, is the one thing. There's a, there's a single thing that continues to drag you down that follows you around and it haunts you. And the thing is, is, is our, our gut reaction is to say, you know, uh, here's the thing that's really haunting me. I'm going to dig in and I'm going to conquer it. I'm going to take care of it. This is the last time it happened. I've had enough. Yeah. This, the guy that I've become is just awful and I will not let this happen to me again.

Lord strengthen me. Yeah. I will never, uh, you know, I will stop making false proclamations. Right. Right. But, but that's what you're going to do. You're going to do it every time. And you're going to set up because you're saying, I will do the following and you will fail. And that like, that's what will happen because it is not your victory to conquer. When you, when you give up and you say, Lord, this thing is yours. I can't handle it. And you, and you spend your time pursuing Christ instead of pursuing the sin. We, we, we think it's not sin pursuit because we're trying to conquer the sin, but ultimately where have you put your guidepost? The guidepost is here's the sin. I'm gunning for it to keep an eye on it all the time. I'm always going to think about it. I'm always going to think about what it would look like if I do it, how upset I would be. Right. You know, as opposed to like, don't put it as your guidepost, put Jesus as the guidepost and you're automatically walking the other way from sin. If you're, if you're walking towards Christ. Right.

Right. So that's the deal. We can, you can spend all your time trying to run away from sin and try to tackle it and conquer it. But, but whenever you put the sin up as the guidepost, you're going to go the wrong direction. You're going to be putting up on a pedestal instead of Christ up on a pedestal and you're going to be end up going in the wrong spot. Right. There's the big verse, right? I am the way, the truth, and the light. That's, that's the absolute truth, right? Like it is the way, it is the truth, and it is the light. And then you don't have to worry about the darkness anymore because you got it. Yeah. You always have the lantern. That's the lantern. You know, that's the way to roll it. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, you're listening to Life from the Path. Hey, Troy. What's up, guys?

Nothing. How you doing? Doing pretty good. How was your, any interesting Christmas stories at the Spankenhauser Castle? Interesting Christmas stories at the Spankenhauser Castle. Not, it was actually really mellow Christmas. I was actually pretty excited about that. Last couple years have been run around Christmas. Last year was a month and a half after my mom passed away. And the year after that, before that was two months after my dad passed away. And it's just like, man, these Christmases really suck. These Christmases are not going well. The whole Christmas is spent on, oh man, I wish mom was here. And oh man, I wish dad was here. But this Christmas was, not even thinking about it, just completely mellow. It was refreshing. Yeah, that's not, that don't sound like a bad gig at all. I was pretty excited about the stuff I got. I got some people, saw the gifts they got and they were really loving them. So that was a good thing. Not a, not a shaver, obviously. Nah. Nah, I didn't ask for one.

Don't need one. Nah, I'm fine. Nah, I'm not going to lie. I just, all weekend I was kind of a bum. Sure. I was pretty excited about it. It was fun. I was, you know, I was going to shave before I came to the show. And then the woman said, oh, you're going to shave for the show, huh? Oh, mister, you got to look good for the show. The six people watching. You know, and I had obviously shaved. That ruined it. Three or four days, you know. So I'm obviously, it's not enough for me to get up and shave for my wife and kids. And then I got to spruce myself up to hang around with you hobos. And so then it looks me like. Every one of us looks kind of un- Yeah, then I look like a real jerk face, you know. So I said, fine, I don't even care about those guys. I'm going to shave then. And so here I am. Here I sit.

You know, I didn't even go through any of that thought process. I just didn't even think about it. Oh, no. Because I don't care. I was going to shave. I was. It wasn't really necessary for the show. It's because I have to go to work early in the morning, and I won't be able to do it in the morning. And I don't like to look like a totals curveball when representing a company that pays me money. But there's no way I could explain that away. So I gave up on it. Yeah. There was an article. I'm disappointed in you. You should be. There was an article on Slate.com earlier in the year called, Why Does God Love Beards? Why does God love beards? That's awesome. It was. The basic thought was, is that, you know, there's a respectability about a beard. And that, my wife said that. I can't take you seriously with those two sweatshirts on. I mean, honestly.

I look a little. Two sweatshirts on. No, no, I feel good. It's not even close to cold outside. I feel good. All right, go ahead. Beards. We saw a guy outside of the Target or whatever, and he looked pretty cool in a beard. But I also realized that if he didn't have a beard on, he would look really, really frail. So I think old men wear beards because it makes them look not younger but more robust. What about the frail-looking beard? I don't know. I've seen those. Like a scraggly beard. Yeah, the scraggly, all white, gray beards. I still think that's better. Because if you, my wife's grandpa did that. He was working at Adventureland, and he had to shave. And he looked like one of those Galapagos Island turtles. Like his face looked really, really funny. But what he used to wear. I don't know if that's a legitimate comparison. I don't think that is at all.

I don't even know what a Galapagos Island turtle looks like. Does it look any different than a regular turtle? An old turtle? One of the really old ones. Aren't those tortoises? I get what you're saying. They don't change their name from turtle to tortoise just because they get older. He's saying giant tortoises. He's saying that tortoises are the only ones that get that old. You have a lack of biological information. Thank you, Darwin. Fine. Keep going, though. I have a flying fish on my car. All right, so speaking of dudes with beards. So here's what happened. So I was upstairs playing with the gals. And then I look out. I happen to just look out one of the bedroom windows. And I see a man with a beard. An old man with a beard leaving my porch. I'm like, creepy old man with a beard. That's weird.

So I go rolling downstairs, you know. Open the front door. And he's getting in a white cargo van. It's got like a greyhound dog, maybe, in the passenger seat or whatever. And I look to the – I just wave at him, you know, and he points at the door. And I look at the door. And there's a thermal tote, like, to keep food warm or whatever. It's a pretty big bag. And I look at him. I'm like – and he gave a thumbs up. So I gave a thumbs up. And then I waved. And he was gone. You know, that was the end of the conversation. I'm like, well, this is weird. So I take this tote up. And I load it in the house. And I smell it. I'm like, it smells like wet basement. I'm like, that's weird. That's a weird deal. So I open up the tote. And it's a white plastic bag, garbage bag, tied.

I untie the bag. I look inside. It's another white plastic bag, tied. I untie the bag. I open it up. Inside, another white garbage bag with a tie on it. So now – by now, I think it's a dead animal. I'm pretty sure he hit my cat and then put it in these bags and then dropped it back off to me. So I untie the third bag. And it's a ham. A Christmas ham. Ooh, buddy. And it's got a tag on the Christmas ham. You're right about a dead animal. Yeah. It's a tag with a Christmas – but it's unreadable. I can't make out what it says. He wrote on the foil part of the tag. So the ink is not showable. Only the indent from the pen that he had used. So the only thing I could get from the note was it said, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, something, something, old man, something, something, Southridge Mall, something, something to get a new battery. So now I'm aghast.

I don't know what to make of this thing. So here's the evidence we have at large. Creepy old man. Thermal tote. Smells like. Basement. White man. Greyhound. Greyhound puppy. Wrapped three times in garbage bags. Unreadable tag. I say we call criminal minds. Have you had any battery problems near Southridge Mall? Well, that's the thing. If I had battery problems, why would you bring me a half? Have you helped anybody that had battery problems? Besides me. I don't know. I tried to think about it, and I could not come with anybody that – Now hold on. Troy. Pants is investigating, Mike. Do you have a greyhound-looking dog?

No, I know I'm not an old man with a beard. I do not have a big white van. Pants, I'd say the evidence is not pointing to Troy, if I had to say so. Yeah. Like, there's a lot of factors here. In all honesty, Mike and I have known each other for quite a while now. I mean, a couple years at least, but I think he would know if it was me walking away from his porch. I mean, I could – Troy, it's late at night. I can make disguises, but you can't really disguise that I'm gigantic. I'm a very large man, probably. I'm a very tiny man. Troy. Kong, kong. If Mike saw my outline, he'd probably know it was me. Even if it was completely dark, it was a shimmering – it just made a silhouette of me. He'd probably know it was me. Well, you know, here's what took me aback, right? Is I looked at – so I still don't know what happened. I don't know. I called the woman and said, hey, there's this ham. An old creepy old man dropped it off, you know? And she's like, I wonder who's blessing us.

I'm like, I wonder who's poisoning us. The creepy old man, the ham. You know, this is weird. And she's like, oh, I hope we didn't steal someone else's blessing. I said, we probably saved them from having a creepy old man on their porch. You know, and I thought, see, and this is a perfect example of where I looked at somebody else and I thought, Lord, why can't I think more like my wife? Why can't I think someone is blessing us? Instead, I'm like, why is there a creepy man leaving wet basement thermal totes on my porch? I'm outraged. I couldn't imagine why someone would do this. You're the Jacob. I'm terrible. I'm a terrible man. Somewhere there's an Esau, very upset. Where's my ham, he says. He stole the blessing. I don't know. I didn't know. So, I mean, we cooked it. Seriously, I don't know what else to do. You know what I mean? Seriously. I was going to say it's going to go bad.

Well, yeah, you can't let it spoil just because, I mean, I don't know how you'd ever find a guy. Did you do a good deed to a man at Salmage? Would you like this ham in a cooler? Well, what the concern was is how would he have got the information, right? Like, it's not like I drive super distinct vehicles. My work truck, you can probably pick out. Well, it doesn't seem like he had very good information on you in the first place. No, no. Well, if he was one of the vehicles, he would have had to run the plates, which is probably unlikely. And if it was a random stranger that I helped at the Southridge Mall. You probably would have known with batter drums. I probably would have remembered it. So, I don't know. Run the plates, I'm sure. He's calling downtown. Hey, I got a guy who helped me out with a battery. I really wanted to give him a ham for Christmas. He probably doesn't spill the whole beans. He probably just tells half the story. Well, in all honesty, I would spill the beans because if I'm calling the police department saying, Hey, man, can you run these plates for me? I don't know who this is. They're probably going to be like, no.

They don't care about your motive. It's not like the thief calls up and says, I'm looking to rob the bank. Can you get me the plates on the guy who works there? He probably just says, hey, I want to help the bank manager out. Can I have his address? I would probably give him the whole story of, I'm trying to drop off someone a Christmas ham. Can I get the… Yeah, I would hope that the police are actually being a little bit judicious about what type of information they're giving out. Like, oh, you want this person's address? Although, I would be a bit concerned if that's all it took would be just to tell him I was trying to give a ham. Yeah, really. Oh, let me get that information. Maybe the guy was good in with one of the police officers. This is the worst part, too, is I don't even like ham. You know, like, he didn't even ask if I liked the ham. He just dropped it off. Have you ever heard the phrase, look at a gift horse in the mouth? Well, see, but that's not fair, right? It's not really a gift because I don't like the ham. It'd be like someone dropping off a… I guarantee you this person wasn't dropping off this ham at your front porch thinking, man, he's going to hate this. Right, but it'd be like dropping off a sack full of dog poop or something. I don't think people normally give a sack of dog poop.

But that's how I feel about ham. It's a pair of dirty undies, whatever it is. Like, if they give it to you and you don't like it, it's not looking a gift horse in the mouth. It would be, now, in your example, it would have to be someone who gave you generic peanut butter and you wanted Jif. Right, right. That's a gift horse in the mouth. But, like, if they give you a pile and you don't want a pile at your door, that's not wrong. That's a good point. Yeah. Please don't drop your dirty undies off at my place. Anyway, it was an odd situation. It was odd. Like I said, we never did decipher it. We took it around. We had some places to go. We went out on a date that night, so we stopped off at some places and tried to have some people decipher it for us. Like, friends and family or whatever. And, you know, we didn't come up with anything. You were driving around town with a ham in your car? No, no, we just took the tag. Or you just took the tag. Yeah, yeah. We froze the ham.

Just in case. Are you sure it wasn't a chicken? Hey, man. That's a good question. It'd be a huge chicken. We're being honest here. I like ham. Yeah, we already cooked it up. But you just said you froze it. We cooked it. You arrogant jerk. You got a free ham and you ate it all on your little some? No, no. I mean, if you don't like ham. No, there's leftovers. You want to stop by for something? Sure. You're more than welcome to come by for dinner. Well, thank you. Thank you. Thanks for coming, too. We're going. I just saw a look at the stain just like, oh, man, I shouldn't have said that.

I'll tell you when you can come over. Okay, sounds good. I didn't say today was the day. Well, I wouldn't hope we'd have dinner at 1230 at night. Yeah, we might. Hey, Troy, I don't know how to get into this house. I don't. I have no clue where he goes. The door's probably open. By the way, gentlemen. I wasn't going to say that. Throwing a little side topic here. I apologize if this completely ruined the show. But if you'll notice, I am fitting into one of the regular chairs now. I did notice. You know, I saw you trade one of those out, and I thought, well, what? Seriously? That's pretty awesome, Troy. Yeah. Like, we usually leave you the armless chair, you know? Right. And you traded in for the comfy armchair. I fit into the comfy armchair.

I'm pretty happy. That's exciting. That's a pretty big milestone. So let me ask you this. How'd you do it, Troy? I've been just completely, I mean, for the most part, just completely watching what I eat lately. Not eating fast food. Not drinking pop. Regardless of if I have a pop every once in a while, I'll admit it. Troy's drinking pop. I'm drinking pop. I was very judgmental when I saw you bring that pop in. Yeah. Most people are. He's off the way. And I appreciate that. A lot of people are trying to keep me. I don't care. I was just kidding. I didn't feel that way. But go ahead. A lot of people do.

Okay. So no, some people are a little overbearing when they try to keep me on track, but it's always a good thing. Do they call names? No. I mean, some people literally will see what I'm eating and they'd be like, no more of that. And I'm just like, hey. You're like, shut up, grandma. Oh, we won't even go into that one. But Pants knows what's going on there. But no, some people will like it work if they see me eating something that's not a protein shake or a salad with nothing but lettuce. They'll kind of call me out on it. And it's like, hey, you know, I really appreciate the intention. I really do. Because I know you're trying to help me out. And I know this is something I really am caring about. But first off, you're not my parent. Second off, if I want to cheat on my diet every once in a while, that's my own prerogative. No one else has any control over that. And do not, for any reason, judge me for it. Because I have changed so much since even a year and a half ago to where I was, to what

I was eating, to now. And I mean, if I stop McDonald's because I'm really rushed for time every once in a while, it's not the biggest deal on the planet. Yeah. You know, actually, that's not cool. Because there's very few other life situations where people could get away with that. Like where someone's trying to watch their weight. But I would think of the other situations someone might be in like, hey there, Wendy. All those zits on your face probably should stay away from that greasy food. Or, you know, like, Susan, if you're trying not to attract those crappy men, maybe you should wear longer sleeves and a higher top. You know what I'm saying? Like there's not a lot of life choices where people would feel comfortable kind of stepping in and saying, you know, if you're trying to change this, you should really not something something. Food is definitely one of the biggest ones because I think people take it way too lightly. I think they really do. But that's okay. I've been doing good and I've been proud of myself this Christmas. I didn't completely gorge myself and go into a food coma. I talked to Dan about his whole message of gorging yourself on apples. Sure. I was very, very disappointed when he said that because I was hoping the message was going

to be go ahead and gorge. Right. It's Christmas. Apples are fine. Yeah. Jesus is born. Have all the cake to eat. Have all the ham you can desire. You know what it takes me is I was looking at like some of the nativity scenes, you know, we're driving around town, we'll see some nativity scenes, you know, and so I see these things and I'm like, you know, realistically, Jesus was born in the manger, but he didn't live there, you know, so by the time the by the time the wise men showed up, I'd assume that a roof would have come available or they have found ulterior places to live. It's not like, you know, they're like, well, the, you know, our baby's born here. We're just going to live in this manger and wait for these wise men to show up, you know, like, how long was it for the wise men to show up? I actually have no clue. I think it was about a couple of years. Oh, was it really? Yep. Yeah. It wasn't like directly. So it's not like, you know, they're like, they just start hanging pictures in this manger.

I was going to say, we're just going to live here now. The way that they kind of portray it every year that I've ever heard the Christmas story is it kind of happens immediately. Yeah. I realized it took a couple of years. Yeah. Like the star was up, the baby came out and they're like, the wise men just kind of. I honestly, to this day, and I hope I don't sound too naive. I probably will. I always thought that the wise men were there when he was born. Oh, no. I didn't know that they came afterwards. That would have been Herod. Huh? Herod sent a decree, kill all children two years and younger. Different Herod. Oh, that's right. There's multiple Herods. I know there is multiple Herods. Or was it Caesar or a whole bunch of different. It wasn't Caesar. It wasn't Caesar. Yeah, no, I didn't realize that there was such a long time period.

Yeah, it had been some time. And this whole, the Jesus baby is always like real Aryan looking, you know, blue eye. Yeah. Oh, the Anglo-Saxon Jesus, just completely white. I'm like, yeah. Dude was born in Jerusalem. Have you seen that picture that like that eight-year-old kid drew of Jesus? It's like an eight-year-old gal. And, man, I wish I could remember the name of it. I think it's called Prince of Peace. But, like, I read some of that book where the little boy that said he went to heaven, you know. Yeah. And he came back and they kept showing him pictures of like Jesus, you know, like the old school, you know, Protestant looking Jesus, you know, with the robe and the curly hair. And he's like, no, no, no, no, that's not the right guy. That's not the guy. You know, I didn't see him. And so now they're doubting the kid's story. And then finally this kid sees like this Prince of Peace picture drawn by like an eight-year-old prodigy of Jesus. And he's like, that's him. That's Jesus. That's the guy that I saw. I want to see it. Yeah, take a look at it.

Prince of Peace. What is it? I believe it's called the Prince of Peace. That's pretty cool. Yeah. Well, see, that's, I don't know. That book's got me. I've read like ten pages of this book because I wasn't really interested in it. Oh, man. Yeah. Yeah, that's the picture. Okay. Here, I'll get it. I'll work on it. Okay. So, you know, so it was the book about the kid who, man, he like had to go have like an emergency. Emergency appendectomy or something. I don't know. But he was having a rough time. He was barely surviving. And he went up to, and he claims that while he was out, you know, he went up to heaven. He went and saw, he saw his grandpa who he never met. He saw like a child that his mom and dad had miscarried before he was born and that he knew nothing about it.

And then, you know, he met Jesus and talked with Jesus for a while. And he explained Jesus at a very biblical level on, as a four-year-old, you know. And, you know, and it turned out, you know, so when he came back, you know, they asked him, they asked him, but they said he saw John the Baptist, which seemed like pretty cool, his friend John. And then, you know, they were talking about this Jesus anyway. He goes, well, what did Jesus look like? And they kept showing him pictures out of the Bible and, you know, traditional renditions of him. And nobody, he'd say, no, no, you know, that's not him. And then finally this kid was like, they were out and about in public, and they saw this picture of Jesus that, like, the eight-year-old prodigy had drawn, had painted, and it was him. That was, she goes. Oceana Cromeric? Yeah. They said, I don't know what that means. Okay, all right. That's the name. Okay. There he is. Here's the guy. Like, her drawing it was some kind of oddball story, too. Well, I don't mean to bring us aside again, but, you know, I mean, if we're talking about, obviously, that's something I did not know about the wise men coming a couple years afterwards. I was watching a show on this the other day with Noah and then God flooding the world. Do you think God flooded the entire world, the earth that we live in today, or do you think he flooded the area where mankind was just being kind of, flourished from, I mean, the Cradle of Life area just flooded like a gigantic valley that was hundreds of miles across, and they wouldn't have been able to see any further than that of the world?

I think the, yes, whole world. Whole world? Yeah, I think it almost has to be. Well, I would say that he got rid of all people. Whether it matters or not, I don't know. Oh, no, I know it doesn't really matter. But, like, the point was to get rid of the humans that were currently there, and I don't know how far expensive they got. Like, you know, where the God's like, you know, I'll just flood this part. I don't care, you know. You know, maybe that's what's, there's parts of carbon dating that may have been thrown off slightly. If God just didn't bury, you know, one half of the world, it makes it look like it's been around a lot longer. I don't, like, there's tons of cool scientific questions that I, you know. And, you know, actually, me and my wife were talking about that earlier this week. It's like, when you get to heaven, like, where the God will sit down with you and tell you stuff. You know, like. Dude, oh, man, I'd be so happy. What really went down? If I really sat down with God and was just like, dude, I have so, so many questions. Oh, God, tell it again, tell it again. Oh, okay, okay. Okay, this is what happened. Okay, so Noah was, like, building this boat. You know what I was like?

And then it took Noah the course of, like, 80 years to build that boat or, like, 100 years. Except for he had modern technology, robots and computers and stuff. Oh, yeah. Dan's pretty certain he was buying parts from a manufactured warehouse. What? Noah's boatbuilding.com. Dan threw this out there a couple months ago. Noah, I think he was just kidding around, but, like, he goes, you know, I always wondered if, you know, maybe they had modern technology, like, when Noah was around, and then it all got flooded out and they had to start over. You know, so, like, Noah was on the web. They invented cars, vehicles, whatever. They had all kinds of heavy machinery. Noah was using a bobcat to put the thing together, you know. And then all that technology, people got wiped out. The whole thing of gopher wood, just bringing it in shipment by shipment. Which would be really funny, right, because if Noah saw all this go down and now he's back to, you know, she the leaves when he gets off the boat. And he's like, man, I really wish we would have kept the computer or two around. We really could have kept that iTunes. That's why I went for the bottle. Okay, hold on. Here's a clip of Dan. I know you're watching Dan. Here's Dan Hudson's thoughts on Noah of the future. That's true.

Maybe Noah was checking the forecast. He's like, oh, boy, he wasn't kidding. We better get on this boat. Do it. John Bachman says, big rain. Big rain are coming. Yeah, we always think of him, like, cutting down trees with an axe. Like, man, that was a big job for him. He's like, who knows? Maybe he had a computerized factory and he's had a, who knows? I don't know. I don't know, Dan. That's kind of a stretch. I'm not really on board with what you're saying. I don't even know if I am. I just often wonder. It sounds pretty cool and all, but I don't know that I'd give that more than a couple minutes. Let's just say, maybe the Jetsons, there's more truth of that than you know. And that's really our history. You sure you don't know Tom Cruise? I love a Jesus, Oprah. I love a Jesus. Crazy dance.

Crazy dance. Future. Future past. No, the Cosmonaut. I guess I know what we're doing after the Crazy Love Sermon series. This is my Planet of the Apes upbringing. See, the whole space-time continuum thing shift. Yeah, it's back. There you go, Dan. Did you see the action? I miss Dan. I miss Dan. That's awesome. Where is Dan? All right, you're listening to Life in the Path. Yeah, all right. It is getting a little hot in this deal. I just realized there's a window right there. I've overdone it. It's because he's got two sweatshirts on, Troy. I think it's on here right now, and I've got a t-shirt and shorts on. I'm loaded up. I like to be warm.

I do like to be toasted. I hate it. I was wearing long leggings last week under my jeans at work. I hit at my desk job. That's a bit of a stretch. If it wasn't anatomically impossible, I would truly believe that I have some sort of polar bear genetics inside of me because I never get cold. I have woken up in the middle of the night with snow on me, and I wasn't cold. It was because I had to go to the bathroom. Hold on a minute. There's not enough to that story. I've woken up having to go to the bathroom without snow on top of me. Please provide further detail. Okay. You guys have probably heard the story about when I was in high school, Trey, and I shared a room together, and at one point in time, I had thrown him through our window. Right, right. Not the wall. That was a different time. I had thrown him through our window. Oh, sorry. I'm on a mistake. Thrown him through our window. All your throwing people stories meld together for me. It was ridiculous.

How many times I've thrown him or other people. It's insane. But I had thrown him through our window, and he went flying out and broke. The glass part didn't break. It kind of just broke or kind of snapped off to the side, but the glass didn't break. And the screen completely flew out of the window. But it was back in our old duplex where it was one level, so we fell like three feet. But so we never told my parents. And we just didn't see the point of putting it back on the screen. It was really easy. And I know this sounds bad now, and I apologize for it. But I apologize, Mom and Dad. We would sneak out through that window because there was no screen. It was perfectly easy to slide the window and walk out. And we're good. Yeah, well, you'd be a fool to try to go through something somewhere that's not easy. Right, exactly. You've done the right thing. You get what I'm saying. At one point in time, when Trey moved out, I had the whole room to myself, and I put my bed right next to the window. Well, at night, I would get really hot, so I'd keep the window completely open. Well, one night, I had slept backwards.

I hadn't put my head against the headboard. I had my head against the other side of my bed, which was right next to my window, and my window was open. And it snowed that night. So I woke up, and I had snow all over my face. I had snow all over half my body. And I woke up because I had to go to the bathroom. And I woke up, went to the bathroom, came back, and I still had not realized that I had snow all over me. And literally looked down, and there was snow all over my bed. My window was open. There was half a foot of snow on my windowsill, and I realized what was going on. And I wasn't cold at all. I mean, that was perfect weather for me. When it's negative 10 degrees out, if it's not snowing, I'll put my fan in the window. I don't get cold, and I don't know why. Well, it's handy, I'd say. I'd love it. I absolutely love it. I get hot very easily. Don't get cold at all. Like right now, I'm wearing shorts. That's true.

You are wearing shorts. I don't deny it either. You're listening to Life in the Past. That was a great story. You asked about it. I never said it was a good story. It was great. I feel like I'm closer to you. Ben used it to segue to take off his sweatshirts. Yeah, man. I figured as much. This is a tight one, too. I found out yesterday that I got 15 pounds on Mike. Yeah. Same genetic makeup, extra 15 on old Ben. Pretty embarrassing. That office shop does that. It does. Hey, so Mike, Mike, guess what I found? This is not even a rumor. This is true. I found this out today. So Jesse Anderson's back in town.

They have a concert on January 15th. And guess who they are sharing the bill with? Who? He's your favorite man. I'll give you some clues. He's your favorite dude. He refused to come on the show. Oh, there's going to be a lot of people. Yeah, I was going to say, there's a lot of people who have done that. You've had a personal interaction with him about not coming on the show. Perry Noble? Nope. Dale Tackett? Nope. How many people have you had a personal interaction with? You can't get his name right. Oh, it's the guy from… You did an impersonation of him on the air. Wait, was the guy from Federated? Yep, yep. Ah, what's his name? What is it? David Bush.

David Bush refuses to come on the show, David. So to those of you watching, I would recommend going. It's Sunday, January 15th at 6 o'clock at First Federated Church here in Des Moines. Three folks on the bill. David Bush, Rend Collective Experiment, and Jesse Anderson. And they're in town. So there you go. That's pretty sweet. Yeah, that is pretty sweet. And it's free. Well, there's a free will offering. Probably. Mike, I don't think you can put a five spot in and say, not David Bush. Please don't give this to David. I really should make amends with him. I've talked to him, though, and he does not. He's not interested in the show. No, he's not coming on. He made the show sound like it was some kind of mud pile on the Christian landscape. Like it was to be avoided at all costs. He did not like it. I said, you should come on the show. He goes, yeah, you've got to get a pretty big test line to get me reeled into that show.

Oh, man. Our show is terrible. Or he's discerning. Maybe he sees things how it is. The Lord has blessed him with discernment. And then I thought, I'm talking to myself here, Mr. Run the Mouth. You know what I'm saying? I'm talking to my exact polar guy. Like this is the same dude that I am. And then I'm like, I hate myself. So that reminds me. So lots of cool stuff going on, though. So they're going to be on. So Jesse Anderson is going to be at First Federated on the 15th. Make sure to check that out. If you check out Double J, he's got a couple of shows on New Year's, on New Year's Eve. What? One at Old Ween. One, I think, at the, I think at Pleasant Hill. How do you do a couple of shows? He's doing one at like 1 o'clock in the afternoon and then one at 8 or something. Oh. So let's go to that one in the afternoon.

I don't know why people can't get a legitimate website. But go to it. Check him out on Facebook. It really irritates me. Ben gets irritated by the whole Facebook connection thing. I should be able to put in DoubleJ.com and have it come up for me. And I don't like it. I don't like it when I can't. Are you going to pay me the domain name? It's eight bucks. Maybe the guy. Maybe he sat down, budgeted himself, and he was like, man, that's one more t-shirt. Wait for a sale. I love DoubleJ. I love DoubleJ. But he's got to get a website. Well, especially for the type. Facebook's free. Will you unroll that one half of the sleeve? You're creeping me out. It'll fix it if I roll the other side up, too. No, don't do that. No, just fix the one that's rolled up.

No, I'm going to double down. Go ahead. Keep talking. It seems odd for a man that's like as modern-driven as DoubleJ is, you know. And he doesn't have a website. Like, he's got Facebook and Twitter and all kinds of stuff and no legitimate website. Like, it's like having a business with no billing. It's a mistake. Well, you're fighting for noise. There's a lot of stuff going on Facebook, right? You could be checking a guy out legitimately, and all of a sudden something pops up, and so-and-so come on in on a photo that you put up two years ago. And now you're looking at that deal. You get your own website. People can't fight you. It's you only. Pants, do you have your own website? Pants, roll up your sleeves. I don't. Pants. Both of them? Yeah. Be like me.

Don't do that. Don't do that. So anyway, that's coming up. What can I be like, Troy? You got any other music news? Like, I think Winter Jam's coming through town, right? Yeah, Winter Jam's on the 20th. Of January? Yeah. Yeah, so Sanctus Real's going to be there. I'm excited for that. I'm afraid I don't recognize a lot of the other folks. No. But it's $10, and you can't buy ahead of time. So you just got to get in line and hope you pick up a ticket. I'm sorry, man. I didn't catch any of that. What do you mean? Troy was deciding. You too bothered by? I'm going to check out myself. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Did you do that?

Did you bicep and then look at the TV to see what you're buying? I'm going to do it. Wow, that is awesome. All right, I'm going to pause. Look how cool I am. I can't have you. Pants is going to be frozen there like that. I can't see that. Okay. Perfect. So Winter Jam's on the 20th, and that's going to be at Wells Fargo. They sell the tickets the day of, and it's a flat $10. We tried to get press passes, and they said no. I don't think they do press passes. Yeah, that's what they tried to do. That's what they tried to do. No, at Winter Jam. Oh. I thought you were saying at Wells Fargo. I was like, wait a minute. That's not true. Yeah. No, no.

Wells Fargo. I mean, stuff that comes to Wells Fargo, yes. Us, no. Winter Jam, probably not. Why not? I'm still trying to get press passes for the Need to Breathe concert in March. Yeah. Did you hear back from anybody? Nope. Not looking good. Not looking good. What day is that Winter Jam again? It's on the 20th. It's on the Friday. You and I thought we should do? Five days after the Jissa Anderson-David Bush concert. Can't do it. I think they should set up a babysitting for that day for the church. Shelly and I talked about it a month and a half ago about her taking the youth group to it. I don't know if anything ever came to fruition with that. It doesn't have anything to do with the babysitter. Just saying, I mean, there might be a group going already that could push more people into wanting to do the babysitting so the more people can go.

Mike, don't look at disgust. I hope that you still have a lot of kids to babysit. Not. Oh, that'd be interesting. I feel like are you… You're 13, you need a babysitter? Interesting. Okay. I think a lot of people from church would go if they had somewhere to put their kids. Yeah, that's true. Church set up a babysitting. I think that would work out. I don't know how that pertains. Anyway, Winter Jam's coming up. Jeff Arendell's going to be in the studio, I think, on the 31st. Okay. His new CD's coming out. Saved on Sunday's going to be in March. They've got their acoustic albums coming out. What happens between here and Arendell? Nothing? No, no. We've got some people lined up.

We've got a couple folks that we haven't had on the show before. We'll be stopping by in February. Okay. Yeah. Dale Tackett's coming? No, he's not coming. I'm going to call him. He's not coming on. You know what? He's too much of a chicken to post his phone number, otherwise I'd call him. But he won't do it. He won't put his phone number on. I said he was Francis Chan on the show. Chan will post his phone number. He probably doesn't have a phone. You probably got to get a hold of him by traveling Swallow or something. Traveling Swallow. We're going to send him a fox. No way, guys. Okay. I can't come on. I've got a telegraph. I've got a telegraph.

We're sending him Morse code. I respond to the sound of a lie detector going on three states away. I've never looked with that target. I do like Francis Chan. I do, too. He's another perfect example, right? I look at Francis Chan, and I listen to him talk. I'm like, Lord, I can't be more like this guy. I really appreciate what he does and who he is. He's a little emotional. I'm not that way at all. I'm like, Lord, I want to love like that guy loves. And God's like, I created you to love, but not like that. I have stuff for you to do. You know, get off of it. Stop wasting your time. There's people that you can reach because of your personality and your emotional status and the way that you show yourself way better than I could or Mike could or Pants could or Ben could. I mean, anyone else. Pipe fitters and gamblers. That's you, Mike. Do you smoke? Yes, I do.

I got a Jesus for you. Yeah. You're the Jesus talker at the smoke shack. Speaking of, so late night Jesus. So check this out. We went to Jesus. So we had our Christmas thing at 730. Pathway did our Christmas thing on Christmas Eve. It was great. Awesome. And then it got to be, we left I think at a quarter after nine or something after we got things kind of patched up and hooked up for the next Sunday. And me and the lady decided that we wanted to go to some sort of like old church and do the candlelight service. They have it at 11 o'clock or midnight. Late night Jesus. Yeah, so we were trying to get the kids to fall asleep, kind of like driving around town looking at lights and stuff. We ended up at this church downtown. And I tell you what, it's been a while since I've been into a, like a denominational church, especially one of the old school denominations of which this one was. And I decided that if you're trying to find God and you're going into one of those places, that could really freak you out.

Like there could be comfort in some of the customs and stuff that they have. But like this guy, they took, there was a processional at the start of the deal. And there's this girl holding the cross out like this and kind of marching it down. And then there's a guy who comes rolling up behind it like he's the guy carrying the championship belt behind Evander Holyfield. And he picks, and he's got this big Bible and he does this. And he kind of walks behind it, you know, like he's showing it around like everybody else is. And I looked at it and I thought, okay. I mean, okay. But then I thought if, if you hadn't been there before or you didn't have a personal relationship with God and you saw that, it's like, that would kind of creep me out because you could find yourself in a different, uh, in a different religion and they could be holding up something else, right? Like a, like a stuffed pig or a, you know, a circle with a line through it, you know, it could be the same. Like the Indiana Jones seat. It would totally creep you out. And so, uh, I mean, I don't, it was the, the guy with the Bible got me though. Like it was a big old, like buckles and everything Bible. Oh, wow. You know, and he's got his kind of, like the original one. It was a Catholic church, wasn't it?

No, it was not a Catholic church. It's like, this is the one that was written by those dudes 2000 years ago. This is that. Well, so now he, here's, here's what I decided though, is, is, is, is we, I think we go a little bit far in, in some of our, uh, like our non-denominational stuff because like there's something cool about tradition and, and what's cool about tradition is seeing God having worked through people, you know what I'm saying? Like sometimes we act as though, uh, people have not loved Jesus for 2000 years before today and that their stories aren't cool and that God hasn't done cool things with them. It's the same, same reason that we do like our serve, the serve both thing that we're doing where people, we ask people to kind of email in and say, you know, how have you helped somebody and serve both Christ and them so that, so that we can look at those things and we can celebrate. We can celebrate God working in your life, uh, and, and helping to serve other people. And it's kind of that same thing with like church history is there's a lot of negative things associated with church history, but there's a lot of people that loved Christ, right? And that followed God in the church. And if you separate yourself from that, you're missing out on God. You're missing out on stories of inspiration to say, look, look how God worked in that guy's life. Who cares that it was 70 years ago, 300 years ago, you know, 1800 years ago, it doesn't matter.

And so, uh, a couple of things I got from this thing is I thought, I mean, it was kind of cool. It was really hot in there. Um, and it was kind of impersonal cause they had, they had the, a big choir and a brass orchestra and stuff. And there must've been the junior high brass orchestra because there was some mistakes. Uh, but, but you couldn't see it, but you couldn't hear them. What do you mean? I didn't hire them. Hey man, truth is the truth. It wasn't good. It wasn't good. I didn't have any control over the, over the lead drummers. Hey man, you got to bring out your best does for the Christmas service. You know what I'm saying? Everyone's bringing their family, but they had a, they had everybody hid. Like you couldn't see the choir or, uh, the brass guys or like anything. It's like when they started playing, it felt like it was a recording and there were no, uh, uh, no bass frequencies. Like it was all like mids and highs that were coming out of these speakers. So I, I think intentionally they make it sound like it's a 1950s radio. Oh, that's bad.

And so like, it was kind of impersonal, but that, that part kind of creeped me out. And they, behind the, um, you had to do a special stand up for a candle and it was called like the peace lantern or something. And what they had done was is there's a, there's a fire that's at the, um, uh, it's at the church in Bethlehem, um, that was built upon where, where Jesus, where they think Jesus was born, right? The church in the nativity. And, uh, so there's like a fire that's been going there for, you know, a thousand, a couple thousand years. And so, uh, the boy Scouts that are in that area have arranged to like get, take a fire out of it, light something, and then have it kind of shipped out everywhere. And so they brought this peace light through and it'd been like a part of a fire that's running at the church in nativity. Um, and then they brought it and they kind of walked it in and you had to stay in it. How do they get it overseas? Please, you can't have an open flame on a boat. I, they must've, they must've worked it out. That's how do they do the Olympic flame that they run around the world, right? They have those guys. It has to get on a plane somewhere. You can't, they don't let you have a flame on the plane. I, they, they got to put you on a boat, right? It's more, you can probably more likely get a flame on a boat than on a plane, right?

You'd think so. Uh, Beaker, the, the sound guy was credited in the, in the pamphlet. It told me who the sound engineer was and I, I, I, I didn't have time to go find him. I had to leave halfway through. I couldn't save the whole thing. Why? I was tired. It would, I expect. I was tired. I, here's what I expected. I want to go to a candlelight service, but I'm tired. I don't know. It was, I expected that, uh, they were going to do a bunch of hymns and stuff and then kind of cut you loose. But they did like, like three hymns, like some of which you had to sit out. Like they told you the verses of which you were not permitted to sing. The choir handled those. Uh, and, and then they did, uh, then they did a lot of the Bible reading, the processional and then like, uh, a little bit more reading. And then another processional where like the stuff, the cross and Bible that had gone down came back halfway and you had to stand up and look at it again. And then, and then went back up to the front and then they did a sermon, um, and the sermon lasted like 20 minutes or whatever.

And the kids were getting antsy. And then I looked ahead cause they, they, they, it's a beautiful pants that they put together and there's like eight more tunes, all four verses or whatever. And then some, some congregational reading of which you're required to respond. And I thought, man, I can't, I can't hold out that long. You know, there's nothing more awkward than congregational reading. Like, I don't care. I have absolutely no clue what that is. It's where, it's where like, uh, like they, they, they do the call and response or they set you up. Right. So like, like they'll, they'll be reading a Bible verse and they'll say for God, so love the world. Uh, and then the whole congregation will go that he gave his only begotten son. And then the preacher will bust back in and go that whosoever shall believe within him. Then the congregation goes, she'll have eternal life. You don't say, but, but like weird, they drag it way out. And so it'll be like three or four verses long. Psalms 119, the entire chapter, the whole, whole congregation will get, and then you'll get like the three types of readers all trying to bomb through it at once. Right. Like Johnny speed reader be going, for God's love, you know, it'd be, and he's talking real loud cause he wants everybody to know that he's a speed reader.

And then there's the, there's the other half of the congregation that's super slow and they're like, and they're, uh, you know, so, so they're kind of slowly reading it. And then the dudes in the middle, they're trying to create a rhythm to it. So everyone can follow, you know, like, like it's terribly awkward and pain. It's painful to listen to. It's awesome. It's really bad. I would say get rid of it. I mean, I want them at pathway. Oh man. It is just a disaster. It was it. Anyway, the whole experience was like, I think there's things you can take from it. Um, like there's something kind of reassuring in those things, but there's something that was, that's a little off putting, uh, to me and some of that stuff. Cause I, you kind of get the sense that somebody's phoning it in. Um, you know, there, there's a guy, they had like this main area and there's a guy whose job it is to rope it off once he believes it to be full so that no one else could come in and it can't be any more awkward than walking into a church, looking to sit down and there's like a guy guarding the pews. Yeah. Oh no, no, no. So, so you know what they did?

I think they've done this before. Like these are people, these are seasoned folk. They just go around cause there's no one guarding the sides. Oh right. They, they look at this barrier and go infiltrate the pew defense system. They sat outside like, all right, alpha team, you go left, beta team, you go right. I'm a hit up the middle so I can distract. Yeah. Where they got like one guy guarding it. Yeah. And you should have seen the look on his face when he, when he figured it out that they were just going around him. I mean, he had horrified and he had, he had kind of ditched his coat and suspenders were shaking at the right, right arm out. Like he wanted to walk over there, but he was concerned that if he left his post, somebody would snipe down. That was their whole plan in the first place. So he went with the second line of defense, which was a dirty look. You know, you shouldn't have gone past the rope. I love this guy. I gotta meet this guy. I gotta say, what do you do if you're that guy and you go up to him and say, could you please in the middle where everybody else is?

And so you turn around and say, yeah, we saw that. This will look more comfy. Then what do you do? Do you yell at them and ask them to leave? Yeah. Like there's a, there's a certain amount of force that you can't put in. Right. I'm sorry. God's house is not for you, obviously. Well, I can't. That's the thing is like you, you already prescribed the boundaries when you put the chairs out, right? But if you put a chair there, some guy's going to feel free to sit there, you know? That's for sitting. Yeah. That's, I mean, that's the place to be. Well, and there was obviously space, right? Because they went to the sides and then sat down. Right. It's not like they were sitting on someone's lap. They were milking themselves in, you know, giving a little showsy to the guy at the end. Can you scoot over? No, man.

I can't. I really think we should try this. I want this job. Like, I really want to go stand at a church and just right next to a rope, act like I'll let you have a clipboard and everything. Just sit there. Just like, oh, sorry. You can't. That would be cool. Like someone sits down in the pew and Troy walks up and goes, you got a problem reading for us? Seat's taken. Seat. Get over there. Seat's taken. Can't sit here. Anyway, we're going back. Probably not that same joint. But I think it was kind of cool to be in there and everything. That's awesome. There were definitely some distinctions about the place. I think that just sounds terrible. Now, here's the deal.

And if it's been a while, it did smell of old folk. Like when you have a congregation that is like 70% or more over 70. 70 years or more. Yeah, 70 years or more. It has a certain. It smells like asper cream and mentholatum. Yeah. It's like the goodwill. That weird Bengay smell. Or the Salvation Army. It smelled like the Salvation Army. Greeters at Walmart of the world unite. Here's the deal. All the Jesuses are sad. I don't understand it. I don't understand what about this denomination that says, you know what? If there's going to be a Jesus in here, it's got to be sad. He's got to be like looking down like, oh, man. It's a pensive, weeping Jesus. Everywhere. There's not a happy Jesus in the lot. Yeah, there needed to be more triumphant Jesuses. Show that picture of that Jesus again.

That thing was solid. Like, that's exactly what I'm saying. Do you know something you don't know from that Jesus face right there? Yes, I do look good in this beard. Yes, I do rock this beard. No, I don't. Something about, like, stained glass windows. Those weird me out. Like, the whole pictorials of different, I mean, saints and all this different stuff on the stained glass windows I've seen. And then, yeah, all the, like, half, like, the bust statues of, like, some of the saints and St. Mary or whatever, Mary the Virgin Mary, whatever they call her. And then the Jesus bust. And then, I mean, it just weirds me out. I'm just like, what part of the decoration project made you think that that was necessary? Like, have you guys ever been in the basilica? I don't know. I'm not sure what that is. Well, I think it's… Is it open on Sunday? Is it the basilica of St. John or St. Peter in Des Moines? I'm not sure. Well, the difference between, in Catholicism, the difference between a cathedral and a basilica is a basilica is actually ordained by the Vatican that the Pope can visit there. Like, that's the difference between a cathedral and a basilica. A basilica, the Pope has been to and can be to.

They don't go… He doesn't go to just regular cathedrals. There is a basilica here in Des Moines that is a mile or two outside of downtown. We went there for my world religions class when I was in high school. We went to the Buddhist temple here in Des Moines and the synagogue here in Des Moines. And we went in there, and it's gigantic. I mean, just ridiculously huge. And at every cornerstone and then post, support post throughout the church, there's a bust of some saint or of Jesus or of the Virgin Mary. And it just weirded me out walking through it. And I can't imagine being non-Christ followers going into this church or this, excuse me, basilica for the first time not having any personal relationship with Jesus. I can't imagine how much that would push me away. Like, if that was the first place I went to as a non-Christian… And the creeps, yeah. It doesn't really creep you out. It just… It's a bad awe is what I got. It was like, wow, they are all about the pomp. You know, that stuff kind of creeps me out anyway. Like, people who… I just can't imagine the frame of mind of somebody who either paints or does sculpting or even crochets that's like, I'm going to do the Lord. I keep saying, like, I would never… It doesn't matter what my artistic ability would be. I would never think…

I could not do it justice. I'm going to do a representation of Jesus. Like, well… I would never do it. See, again, I don't know. Like, I think we've gotten too concerned about that to the extent that, like, there's… With a lot of the saints, like the Catholic saints and stuff, I mean, there's a lot of guys who live right for God and have some really inspiring stories to listen to, right? That you can learn from and be engaged by. Should it be the… Should it… Is it too much of a focus in that denomination? Whatever. I would probably say so, right? The answer is flat out yes. Yeah, it is. So, but… But, I mean, there's a lot of interesting guys in the history of the church that you can still find… You can still look at their lives and say, look at how God rocks. You know what I'm saying? Like, and so I think we need to be careful about buffering up against that in such a caustic fashion. Like, there's something you can certainly take away from that and see the glory of God in with those folks. Yeah, and I can agree with you on that. But at the same time, what I think, too, is the whole…

God set out quite a few awesome dudes in his book. Right, you don't see the Church of Moses. Yeah, you don't see the first… Or you don't hear about the Virgin Mary as much in the Bible as you do in Catholicism. Yeah, I'm not saying it's not oversold. What I'm saying, though, is that it's… I don't think it's an aspect of the church history that should be rejected, right? Like, there is… I think there's redemption in it to that particular thing. Are they… Is it unhealthy to put such an emphasis on it? Perhaps, right? But, like… Now, I think you are making too light of it. I was kind of with you for a while, but I think you are making… It's not just unhealthy. It's a problem. It's a problem because you're praying to them. Yeah, and you're taking light away from God. Mary. That's true. I would agree that the focus on Mary is not healthy. But what?

And the saints? And St. Peter? St. Patrick? They pray to those folks? Yes. Well, that's a problem. There's like a patron saint of pretty much everything. Here's the thing. Patron or matron saint of beer. That's the difference, right? It's not a problem to recognize them and the great things they've done for God. God has done that. You know, that's what the characters in the Bible are about. You know, God has recognized the people that he's chosen to do his work through, which still basically just points back to a loving God that has chosen these people as a conduit for his abilities, right? So, that's one thing. But, like, when you pray to them as intercessionaries, that's an issue. That's a flat-out issue. Yeah, I agree. Well, let me flip it around this way. What kinds of things do you think, as non-denominational churches, take too lightly? I'm not saying that the focus is in the wrong spot.

What I'm saying is to making sure not to demonize something that is not that. You know what I'm saying? Like, there's a difference between something being completely lost or just being misused. Well, I think that probably ties right into your hill to die on thing, right? Like, a lot of people – usually, like, when Christianity is looked at, it's looked at Catholics and Protestants. It's Catholics and everybody else, you know, basically. Because, I mean, there's a good amount of Catholics in the world. And a lot of the problems that the Protestants have, which we – we're a non-denominational Bible church. And so, we don't have a lot of the traditions at a Catholic church. So, we're on the other side of that, right? Uh-huh. So, a lot of the problems that people tend to have from our side looking at the Catholic church is a lot of the traditional things, you know, because they think the tradition has taken over the love of Christ. Yeah. You know, people worship the tradition opposed to Jesus. But the Catholic religion and the Protestant religion, they believe the same things foundationally. Right. Like, they believe that God is three persons. They believe that Jesus was sent. You know, they believe that he died for our sins. Those are – and is it a hill to die on? Those are the hills to die on. Like, are you a sinner? Do you need a Savior?

Jesus is that Savior. He is one of a three-person God. Right. Exactly. When you drill down to the basics of it, yes, we are from the same area of faith. Yeah. But then when you start expounding upon it and then actually getting to – I mean, obviously, as a new Christian, yes, those are the biggies. You make sure that – I mean, you live in the right way. You accepted Jesus Christ, your Lord and Savior. You understand that. But then when you start getting a little bit away from the milk and starting getting really into the bread of our faith, I mean, that's when it starts going, oh, well, this is way over here and then this is over here. And see, I think I totally agree with you on that point. I think it's well-intentioned people who have added things that are unnecessary to add. You know what I'm saying? They're like – I guess I don't know. Catholic doctrine is very complicated. It's very intrinsic, and it's very hard to understand. That's why you have to go through years of study to even begin to follow – most Catholics – Most Catholics don't even know it. Right. They don't know that. They just go to church on Sunday, and that's it. Like, usually the higher-ups in the Catholic Church, you know, the bishops, the Vatican, you know, they put out policy.

They put out procedure. And nobody knows the full breadth of that except for, like, the tight-knit group that is the Catholic that makes, you know, decisions on behalf of the Catholic Church. But I think what it boils down to is do they love Jesus? And there's Catholics that love Jesus. There's Catholics that believe that he is the Son of God, that he died for their sins. And, you know, they still go to a Catholic Church, but they don't pray to St. Patrick. You know, they don't pray to St. Paul. You know, like, these are not – they're not necessarily – you're more fighting an establishment than you are the people in the establishment. And I think I've done that before where I lose track of, like, oh, you're a Catholic. And I automatically take every piece of baggage that comes with Catholicism and put it on this guy. And I try not to do that as much as I can. When I hear someone, when I'm talking to them about my faith and I hear someone say, oh, well, I'm this denomination and I'm this denomination. And I think to myself immediately, processing, oh, what don't I like about that denomination? And I really try not to do that because, I mean, we love people no matter what. Regardless if you're a murderer, I mean, you're a rapist, you did this, you did that. There are people that God loves. There are people that I have to love. Well, you know, and actually I had a conversation about this over Christmas with somebody that I ran into. And he came up to me and he goes, so, Mike, are you a deacon at your church? And I go, well, we don't do deacons. You know. Yeah. And he's like, don't do deacons.

Wait a minute. What? And I'm like, no, we just don't have them. You know. I said, we're non-denominational. I don't know. We just don't have deacons. You know. And so, anyway, he's talking to somebody else. And I'm like within earshot of him. And he's like, yeah, he says they don't even do deacons. You know. I'm like, oh, man. I didn't realize this was going to be such a sticky issue, you know. And so, this same fella, he goes, I talked to him a little bit later about it. He's like, I'm going to be a deacon at my church. I'm like, well, that's great. You know, that's very cool. And he's like, I'm going through some classes and this and that. I said, okay, cool. And so, present time comes around. We all get stockings. And there's like $5 worth of $1 pull tabs in our stockings.

You know, like the grandma always does this. Always puts like pull tabs in there. And he gets the pull tabs and goes, yeah, I'm against gambling. It's against my religion. And I said, no, it isn't. And he goes, yeah, it is. It is absolutely. I said, what religion are you? Are you Jesus? You're Jesus, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I said, it is not against your religion to do a pull tab. Yeah, it is. Yeah, it is. We don't believe in that at all. I said, okay, fine. So, I run into him later that day, like another hour or so passes by. And he goes, yeah, you know, if it wasn't for bills and everything, all my money would go to charity. All my money would definitely go to charity. I said, you know what you're saying isn't biblical, right? Like, you know, what you're saying is like you still have to provide for your family, be a good steward of your money. What you're saying is not biblical. He goes, oh, I'm not 100% Bible.

I'm like, what? What's the qualification for a deacon at your place? You know, like you're half Bible. You know, I'm not 100% Bible, he says. Not all the time. Not 100% Bible. I'm like, here's why we don't do deacons. This is why we don't do deacons. I mean, what is there? Is there no type of program where you put these guys through and say, look, if you're going to become a deacon, which is essentially just an elder. You know, a deacon, it's just an elder of a church. But the qualifications for an elder of a church are brutal. They are brutal. You are a one lady man. Your kids are supposed to be well behaved and obedient. You know, you show good financial stewarding. Like, there's a lot of qualifications. Books upon books upon books of qualifications. To being an elder, right? And then he's, now he's an elder. He's not 100% Bible. I'm not 100% Bible. But he's an elder.

I'm like, you know. At least he doesn't gamble. Whack. Oh, but he completed the process. There was a nice workbook. Well, that's what I think. He got the certificate. A group study. And this is the problem that most people have with, like, organized religion is they – It turns into a company. Well, they sheep herd you, right? Like, they find out – like, there's nothing wrong with guiding people in God's church. There's nothing wrong with someone saying, look, I need a place to get plugged in. I need more – whatever. I need more spiritual teaching. You know, I want to know how to study my Bible better. These are all perfectly good avenues for the church to say, great, we have classes available, you know. But then you take that same approach and magnify it times 1,000. And now you're the guy that's like, okay, you've been going here three years. I think it's time for you to start going to deacon school. Like, that's one of the major downfalls of Catholicism is they don't let God call their pastors. Their pastors are chosen, and then they go to school, and then they're sent places. And they don't let their pastors let God call them and say, I want you to start a church here.

Steve, Steve, my servant who I've chosen you to live in Altoona, Iowa, I put you here for a reason because I choose the times and the places where you're born and where you live. And I want you in Altoona because I want you to start a church here. When you go through organized religion school, they train you. They put you in a domination. They say, well, we have an opening in Portland. Go to Portland. God didn't tell you to go to Portland. That guy told you to go to Portland. You know what I'm saying? Jimmy did. Right, Jimmy. And then after six, eight years, I don't know what the rotation is. They say, okay, you're out of Portland. We're sending you somewhere else. And that's not a healthy way to grow a church, to keep a church, to get someone familiar, and to be a leader of people when they know that their leadership is leaving. So that seems very hard to grow a foundational life lesson when your pastor is gone after X number of years. Every time doesn't matter. Right, right. So the question from the chat was, seems that the requirements for being an elder are pretty straightforward, just a mature believer who can handle the word well. Generally speaking, yeah.

Yeah, that's fair. Yeah, I mean, 1 Timothy 3 kind of lays out. Yeah, it puts it into more specific terms. But, I mean, to that extent, generally speaking, if you're a mature believer, you're not running into problems with loving money. You're not inhospitable. You're respectable, temperate. You're not given to drunkenness. You're not violent. You know what I'm saying? So, I mean, you're the keeper of your household, so your wife and kids fall sued. But the thing is, is, like, your life preaches that. Your life preaches that you are a mature believer. And your life preaches that you can handle the word well. You look like this, right? Yeah. Right. It's not, oh, he completed the deacon class. Good. You know, just because you could read 1 Timothy 3 doesn't mean that your life reflects 1 Timothy 3. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, and you know what? Actually, you find that the guys that you want as elders in your church are the guys that look at that verse and are scared to death. You know what I'm saying?

They look at those things and go and have an ultimate respect for it. But, like, I, you know, I'm not ready to, I, I, I won't, how can I say this? Like, when you get yourself put in, when you're in a leadership position at a church, you're accepting a responsibility that's much heavier than others. You know what I'm saying? God's going to judge you more harshly for the people you're in charge of leading. Right. And when you take that lightly, you're going to have some real problems. Like, I would hate to be on the wrong side of Jesus when I'm in charge of leading people. And that is, that is, I mean, the elders are part of the leadership of a church. You know what I'm saying? It's not like the one guy, pastor guy can handle everything. You know, the, the leaders are basically the, they're the movers and shakers. You know, the guys that are taking care of a lot of stuff. And, and when they're part of the leadership, they're the go-to people. And they, you know, they take that job lightly or they're only the leadership because they've taken a class. That's poorly. That's not even good leadership, you know? Well, you know, I don't know that that responsibility doesn't automatically extend to everything that you are in the responsibility of leading. For example, from your family, you know, as a, as a man, I think you have a higher calling to, to lead your family in, in, in, in following Christ. And if you fail at that, I think you, I think it falls under the same standard. I think, you know, you're held accountable for that and not leading your family appropriately, just like any eldership in the church would have that same responsibility. Yeah. I don't know.

I would say, at the very least, it really made me mad, actually, to be honest with you. Like, I was very upset, and I had to pray immediately. Because he was mocking your non-deaconship? Well, it wasn't the deacon conversation. It was that I'm not 100% Bible. And I'm like, oh. You know, I was so mad at the church that he had gone to because he had not, like, I think he's on an honest path to Jesus. I really think he is. And I think there's, there's maybe just not enough, of course, you know, this is the way that I think, like, there's not enough manly fellows in his church that are willing to grab him by the shirt tails and say, we don't just sign up deacons. Well, that's, well, that's, that's not what we do here. You know, you, you love Jesus, and your life reflects that. And there's a certain piety and arrogance when you walk around judging people and telling them, you know, you know, how to live and how they're no good, and you're okay because you know Jesus. You're missing Jesus. You're missing that whole thing, you know? Well, dude says he's, I'm not 100% Bible, is going to be leading people in a church. I mean, he's a leader. He's an elder now, a deacon, whatever the actual, the official name of it is for the church. Dude's not 100% Bible, is officially a deacon in a church. That's, that's not right. I wouldn't, I wouldn't expect Dan to come up to me right now and say, hey, Troy, you know, you've been coming to this church for about 10 years now. On and off, give it. Yeah, on and off. But would you like to become a deacon?

Would you like to be an elder? And I say, why not? Do you feel like you're 90 plus percent Bible? Yeah, do you think you're, do you think you're getting a B plus in Bible? No. Let's just cut this straight. We need 93. We need, that's the curve. Is it on the curve? Ben sets the curve at 93. You can basically dump Habakkuk and Philemon. Don't. Otherwise you're not. Psalms is an automatic 10% decrease. Have you ever heard anyone call it Philemon? No. I've heard a couple of people call it Philemon. What is it? Philemon? Only Jamaican. I call it Philemon. Philemon? Philemon.

Philemon? I think it's Philemon. I think it's Philemon. Pants, how do you say it? Philemon. Not Jamaican. It sounds like, it sounds like a spice when you say it like that. Philemon. You don't say it right. Philemon. Philemon. You're listening to life. Elder Philemon. Let's seriously not continue this. It looks like you both want to. Okay. No, I'm out. All right, good. Is it right to just call him Phil? I was reading the book of Phil. Well, then we don't know if you're talking about Philemon or Philippians. Phil, Philippians is not a dude. It's a people.

You said read the book of Phil. You could be abbreviating Philippians. But I wasn't. Like a dude. How do I know your intentions? It's not an intention. It's a fact. I think it is an intention. So, you know what? That gets us on the subject of Heal the Dying. And, again, this came up with a context last week. We were talking about that pig Bible. Well, I'm pretty sure I was correct about it. So it's especially designed for, like, cancer, people that are going through breast cancer. And so, like, they've gone through, and it's got a pink cover, and it's got certain verses highlighted in pink. And one of the guys from the dive, it's from the youth program at Point of Grace. They were in here last week. And he said, you know, one of the things that, you know, somebody who's been an influence in his life had said was, you know, is it a hill to die on? Is it something that's worth really going to the mattresses about that they've highlighted things in pink throughout the Bible? And I was thinking about that distinction as to, you know, what is a hill to die on? Like, what is the thing that I should be concerned about? Where's the line where I say, you know what, this stops? And here's where I got caught is I got caught thinking about, you remember when Paul's in prison, and he's talking about there's people that are trying, because he's in prison, they're taking advantage of him being in prison.

So to their own gain, they're starting to preach the word. And Paul says, you know what, as long as God's being preached, that's fine. Well, he's not condoning the behavior, but he's saying, you know, I'm glad that God's being preached. And so I got to thinking about guys like Benny Hinn or, you know, whatever street urchin, you know, you guy who's obviously doing something shifty. But here's the deal. He's like, I can go to a Benny Hinn deal, and he can learn to love Christ from that thing, even if he's not among the guys falling over the stage. Because Benny Hinn's a faith healer, right? And so, like, there's a lot of people whose ministries I find disingenuous, and frankly, I'm concerned with their doctrine. However, people can find Christ through that, just like people might be able to find Christ through a pink Bible with the, you know, verses highlighted in pink only on hope. I think it's problematic, but whatever. People could find Christ. So then I think to myself, do you not still have a responsibility to, like, identify untruth? Like, if either it's true or it's not. Biblically speaking, Christ following in general, like, the ways don't justify the means, right? The means are part of it. How you live your days is how you live your life, and you better live your life for Christ, right? And you don't tell people false things about God just so they'll believe in him, right? You don't make it sound like you believe something that you don't. You don't put on shows. You don't say you've seen angels. You don't do, you know, X number of things if it's not true, right? You don't tell people God's working in your life in a way that he isn't. So the question then is, look at a guy like Benny Hinn.

Let's say 90% of the people he's charlatanizing. But 10% are in there, and they look at the thing, and they love, and they come to Christ because of it. Puts them on a, you know, a spiritual walk. So you shut down the Benny Hinn show. 10% of those people aren't hearing Christ. Is that a problem? I mean, to me, that's a hill to die on. Because untruth is untruth, regardless of how you play it, right? And the thing that people say, like on that Bible deal was, you know, well, someone could come to Christ with it, you know? You don't raise a stink about, you know, they're highlighting the pink verses because my concern was, and I think this is what Mike was concerned with too was, is that you're only highlighting certain things. You're highlighting, like, hope verses. And I feel like it's potential that someone could get the wrong end of the stick. It's as if your only spiritual direction was from Joel Osteen. You know what I'm saying? Like, that's what I'm thinking. That's where my concern was. And so the thought is, is like, is it a hill to die on? Well, is there untruth there? And I don't, this Bible thing actually doesn't fit in my category because it's like, there's not untruth there. But, I mean, anything that is not true is a hill to die on for me. I'd say if it's bringing people to Christ, that's great. The bigger question, I think, is, is it making people turn away from Christ? If it is, then that needs fixed.

Because that's also a good thought. Yeah, and it brings people to Christ, great. I think that really matters on what your definition of bringing people to Christ is. You know what I'm saying? Because let's say the 10% of dudes you're talking about come from the Benny Hinn concert. They felt a spiritual move. They're like, yes, I believe in God. I believe in the power of Jesus Christ. This is fantastic. But they don't believe that they're a sinner. And they don't believe that Jesus died for their sin. They're just amazed that God Almighty can heal people. And so now they start to tell the virtues of God. And knowing God, and he can do amazing things. And these are the things that I have an all-powerful, all-knowing God can do. But they don't believe that Christ is the Son of God who died for their sins. That's not coming to know Jesus. You've got a problem. That it's not, but they're at least saying, yeah, God can do this. And then hopefully. No, not hopefully, but that's the thing. When people see, when they say, okay, I've seen that God can do these great things, but I don't know Jesus as my Savior, I've gained nothing. I have no gain.

Like, there's not a benchmark for almost knowing Jesus. Either you understand that you're a sinner and you need Jesus as your Savior, or you don't understand that. And that's a huge problem. That's what I thought about throughout the week was my problem with that Bible. It's because when you just highlight the hope verses and say, here's what God is, it's okay to know that. In fact, it's magnificent to know that God's love for you is extravagant. That you serve and love the most, you know, the loving God that created you. He is your Father. But the problem is, is that if you don't understand that you're a sinner and that his son died for you, that doesn't matter. It just doesn't matter. It's no gain. And so, you know, the truth is, you know, people will say, if people come to know Christ because of it, if people don't, if they're learning their version of Jesus Christ, that's no good. They need to know the whole Bible's version of Jesus Christ. They need to know what God thought we needed to know. That's why he wrote the Bible. Now, every bit of word, every word in there is God breathes and useful for instruction, teaching, blah, blah, blah. You know what I'm saying? Like, what's in that Bible is what God wanted in that Bible. And you can't pick out the parts that you think are most important. God put everything that he wanted us to know in that Bible. And if you don't get a full picture of Jesus Christ and who he is and who you are in comparison and what you need to do to get out of your, to, to, to be presentable to God Almighty, then you don't have Jesus. You just have a watered-down version to make you feel better. That's the part that scares me about that Bible is when you start saying this Bible has highlighted things that people say, okay, at least they're knowing Jesus.

But they don't know Jesus. They just know something that's made them feel better. And that doesn't keep them out of hell. Yeah, there isn't a heaven without a hell. That's true. You've got to have two destinations. So I guess for you, Mike, is that a hill to die on? I think so. I think it is. Now, I'd have to, I don't know, I'd have to pray on that because I'd have to do more looking and make sure that I'm not, I'm really just, I'm not against it. I guess I was really concerned with their attitude and when they did it. I was, I was, I'm concerned why they've, why they've partnered with any organization representing Jesus Christ. It just seems like a shady move. You know, it just seems like something that's altogether best avoided. And, and it's not like people can't know Jesus because of a pink cover. That's not, that's not what I'm saying. I guess what I'm saying is that when you're taking the Lord's word and trying to sell it to factions of people and only highlighting parts that are important, that's, that makes you Jewish and Mormon and Muslim. Yeah. That makes you, that's what every other religion has always done. They pick the parts out of the Bible that they like and they say, yeah, that's us. We're not buying into the rest of it. I think that's not. I agree.

This, this may seem a little bit interesting, kind of a side thought, but personally, I don't really like the idea of the hill to die on thing. I, why? I just don't think it's my choice. Like if God wants to die on the hill to die on for me, he'll send me. Like if there's something that I'm supposed to be a warrior for and for and fight for, I just, I don't think that I'd get so passionate about something unless I really, really knew that God was, was wanting me to be the one who's fighting it. And maybe that's really naive and I'm not trying for it to be, but I just, I just don't see myself running into battle with, with this corporation that's, that's doing this whole pink Bible thing unless I know God wants me to. So, so, so from your perspective, then I mean, the Bible is full of certain, certain truths. Yes. Yes. So, but what you're saying is you're not required to act upon those truths unless you find a special calling to do so. I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is if I'm going to outwardly, truly fight against just one specific thing, I feel like maybe, and maybe I should be wrong. And if I am, maybe do give some supporting points. So I correct me here. Yeah, you're not right. Okay. What I'm saying is I think that, yes, I mean, if it's something that's an untruth, steer away from it, but something that I'm really going to go fight about is something I think that I would definitely pray to God and get, and try and get some actual clarification on if it's something I should be fighting about. Like, if I'm going to focus all my energy on making sure that there's no more pink Bibles, I think that there should be a reason behind it more than just, oh, man, I really don't like that color. Or, you know, why is that just being bolded out? I mean, you've heard me. I'm kidding about the just really not liking the color part, but. I mean, don't pervert the argument just so it looks lame. No, I'm not.

I'm not. I'm not trying to do that. I understand the argument. I know that there are bolding out points that not necessarily is the only thing that should be bolded out. I mean, they make the whole Bible pink. In all honesty, I mean, the whole thing is going to end up giving you hope. I mean, I don't know. I'm still not sure whether it's an overreach to the extent that, I mean, you do point out personal things or specific things to people. You can give them guided studies to say, look, here's other places you can find information about hope. I mean, it's in the concordance. You know what I'm saying? Like, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, there's nothing wrong with getting someone started. You know, I don't want to oversell it. Like, I am, like, so against the pink Bible that I'm just ready to hop on mad. But I guess, I guess what, I think people are, I think when you just say, whatever, everything's cool, then you're just being lazy. You're taking, you're falling into the same trap that tends to be a pharisaical trap, right? It's like, well, someone has taken what Jesus has done and then added to it. But, eh, they don't seem to be hurting anybody. Well, take that times a thousand years and then, you know, ask why God sent his son when he did. Because that's what had happened to the Pentateuch, the laws that he had written down up to when Jesus came. That's exactly what had happened. People had taken what God said.

You know, they added some harmless things here and there. And then they started to worship the harmless things. And then that's a problem. What did they add in? What? You're talking about them adding in stuff and then a thousand years is going to make a big difference. Are you talking about, are you talking about now or in the Pharisees or in Jesus' time? In Jesus' time. Well, that was the whole problem with the Pharisees, right? Is they added, they added things on top of the law that God had already set out, right? Oh, okay, all right, yeah, no, I understand what you're saying. Sorry, I was confused there for a second. I wanted to make sure I knew what you're talking about. And it seems like a, it seems like a molehill, right? Like, it seems like it's not a big deal. Okay, yeah, and, okay, that makes sense. And there's certain things that are, you know, but I think it's all about a thing of perspective, right? There's nothing that gets me more fired up to fight about something is when it's from someone else who is claiming to know Jesus and claiming to love Christ. And then you see something happen and you're like, that doesn't sound, that just does not sound right. Like, someone who doesn't know Jesus gets a lot more grace, I think. Someone who knows Jesus should know better. Right. And I don't see any reason why avoiding that conversation or avoiding that, you know, that topic is going to do anybody any good.

And you know what? And it's happened probably nine out of ten times that I've been dead wrong about what I felt really convicted about. Like, ah, this is outrageous. And then after about 20 minutes, I'm like, I am a pious fool. I'm glad we talked about this. I'm going to shut up about it. I'm not that way about that pink Bible. I'm pretty sure that I just, I still don't like it. But I don't think that makes the guy who reads it, buys it, sells it, you know, off the charts. I'm just saying, I just don't think it was a good idea. It could have been avoided. So what's the whole premise behind it? It's for, like, breast cancer awareness and survival and stuff like that? And they made certain hopeful phrases in pink? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the thing is on the Hill to Die on things, the question is not so much. Like, how far are you willing to take the discussion, right? Like, there's certain things I just can't concede on. And by concede, it's not saying that I've determined that that guy's wrong and I will not associate with him. The question, you know, like, there are foundations of the faith that I just, for example, if the whole Bible is not God-breathed, that's not the faith.

Like, the things that I follow and believe are not the same thing. My life does not near look the same if there are parts of the Bible that aren't true. It just doesn't. You know what I'm saying? Like, I don't accept a religion where it is part man, part God, right? It's got to be all God. Otherwise, it's not Bible because I don't trust people. People can't craft them. We are flawed as a condition. Right. That's not the faith. That's a religion. And religion is problematic because people are involved with crafting it, right? And so, I mean, that's something that just – that's a game changer for me. That's a hill to die on. Either it is or it isn't. And so, I mean, there's things like that. I mean, there's things that are within the Scripture that I think people have healthy discussions on. And I think if ultimately if they have hearts that are pursuing God and saying, look, I just want to make sure that we're understanding this correctly, I think those are healthy discussions, and I think it's wrong to turn from those. I think it's wrong to not facilitate those and have two people that love Christ trying to get to the same area when you're looking at the same Scripture because the problem is is that we are – we have a giant God who is awesome who is to a certain extent within the confines of a human language, multiple human languages, trying to get multiple people from different cultures to look at the same thing and come across with the same understanding.

So, you know, that's where I'm at. When I say hill to die on, it's things that I won't see. It doesn't mean that there has to be aggression behind it, but there are things that I can't – I feel like I can't back away from. Okay. I think I was thinking – I would think I was taking your analogy of a hill to die on a little bit differently than what you were saying because I was thinking you were talking about like something that I'm so passionate about I'm actually going to go out and literally like not physically fight but fight against. Like, abortion clinics I'm completely against. 100%. No doubt about it. There are so many stipulations that I talk to and about this all the time of, well, what about this situation? I don't care. And I'm more than willing to say that and state that. I don't care. Abortion clinics are terrible and should be gone. That is a – that's kind of a hill to die on for me. That's one of those things that like I will get in a heated argument about and literally very heated argument about. I thought you meant like something you were literally going to go and protest against, fight against, all this different stuff. I didn't really think it was like in a conversation. You took it pretty literally. Literally, yes. Like tomorrow I'll find you at an abortion clinic with a sword and you're stabbing at the outside of the building demanding justice. I'm trying to bulldoze this thing down with my bare hands. I will have justice.

You know what? I'm just going to throw Trey through it a couple times. I mean he's gone through walls. I know it works. It's my weapon of choice. I've seen it. I use Trey as a weapon. With a tray. Give me the tray. Not a lunch tray. A Trey Engeldinger. Just throw him straight through a wall. So the chat question goes back to something kind of we were talking about earlier is to say the Catholic Church adding tradition to Scripture should be fought against. I feel like it's a personal thing from a Catholic believer, right? There are people in the Catholic Church who have a healthy relationship with Christ. I think if the traditions aren't blocking your relationship with God, if you're not putting them above or equal to – Now, the church is a corporate body in the Catholic, does do that. And I think that's an issue for the corporate Catholic Church. From a Catholic's individual standpoint, they can have a healthy relationship with Christ and participate in those traditions without it being a problem. That all boils down to do you know the person? Do they love Jesus? You know, like that's – I think that's the whole breadth of it, right? If you know the person and you know they love Christ, then it doesn't matter.

But that's all done on a personal relationship. That's not done on a corporate dealing. You know, that's not something that you handle over – you know, you don't make decisions based – and we have a problem with that with the Catholic Church. Because we – most Protestants or people who are not Catholic tend to have that problem with the Catholic Church. And I heard a guy put it this way one time. He said, it's not an argument against your enemy that you're trying to win. It's an argument with someone within your family that you're trying to come to the same conclusion. So while I disagree with most of the Catholic traditions, I believe that we all believe in the same God. And I believe that we read mostly out of the same Bible. Their Bible is a little different. You know, but on the most part, they believe that Christ is who he says he is, that he's the Son of God, that he died for our sins, and that we need a Savior. If we can agree on that point, that's the place to start. Yeah, I was going to say, that's the foundation. You've got to build on that, though. I mean, no, I understand what you're saying. You came to the end of that's where to start. I'm not disagreeing with you. You're the most passive-aggressive dude I've ever met. I don't. You were just taking a sword to an abortion clinic. About 20 minutes ago, and now you're backing away. Mike, be careful. He's going to throw you through the wall.

No, I'm terrible at, I'll be honest, I'm terrible at discussions. I am. We've picked the wrong guy for the radio show. I know, right? And I try to be good at discussions, just sometimes I don't know how to explain my point. Okay, so where were you at? You think that that's too light of a stance on Catholicism? Or people that you know that are Catholics? Catholicism. Pants is the next Catholic. I know. What do you do if you do get to, you're talking with a Catholic, and you both agree on that main thing, that Jesus is the Son of God. He came down, died for us, and he's our Savior. But then they get into the other stuff. Like the Catholic Bible is called the Vulgate. It's got other stuff that the Bible doesn't have. Yeah, and actually, I've been in a discussion like this a couple times with a couple different people, and actually people that I really love, really respect for their faith. Like I met a fellow there a couple years ago, and he is a solid man for Jesus. I mean, he exudes the characteristics of an elder that you would look for, but he's Catholic. And so we foundationally disagree on a couple things. We foundationally agree about Jesus.

We don't agree about saints, and that kind of thing. And you know what? Here's the thing. Like when it comes down to it, I put it in the same category as looking at somebody who, as long as they're praying and listening to God, I just can't imagine God won't sort that out. You know what I'm saying? I know that sounds like a really chicken answer. But, like, I can't grab a guy who loves Jesus, loves his family, does his job, is respectable, and is a good steward, and is willing to talk to people about Jesus Christ. I cannot grab a guy by a collar and say, what have you done with your life? Because the Holy Spirit's in there, and I don't know that God is going to let himself be confined by the fact that they're deep in a tradition that they don't see as being wrong. You know what I'm saying? Like, God's not as near as easily fooled as man. And so I look at a guy and I'm like, you're in prison yourself that you pray to saints. That's ridiculous. That's not in the Bible. What are you thinking? And then I see a guy that has total faith in Jesus Christ and then also prays to a saint, and I don't know what to say to that man. I can say that's not in my Bible. He'll say it's in mine. He's praying to a saint, though, right?

A man. Isn't that putting someone above God? That prayer is not going to God. It's going to a man that has been idolized by more men. But the thing is you have to understand where they're coming from on this. Like, what they'll say is that we pray to that saint because that saint is who takes it to Jesus on my behalf. Yeah, I think Jesus is the way to get there, not the saint. But that's where their error is. It's not in the sovereignty of Jesus Christ. It's in their loving relationship with the Father. That's where their error is. They don't think it's possible to know God on a personal, loving relationship. And so, really, I look at them as people that are missing out on a great relationship with God. They're not people that don't think Jesus can do that because they're still – they think the prayer is going to the same place. They think that the prayer is getting to Jesus, and Jesus will handle it. But the intercessor is the saint. Is that about – am I understanding that right? That's how I get the conversation I got. I think so. Like, I had – I talked with a guy a couple months ago, and he was – we were talking about this a little bit. He's a diehard Catholic, and he wasn't agreeing with the stuff I said. So, getting a little frustrated, he said to me, he's like, what are you going to do when you go up and when St. Peter asks you, what are you going to say to him?

And I just flat out told him, I said, I'm not going to say a thing. I'm not going to talk to St. Peter. I'm going to talk to Jesus. Yeah. Jesus is going to tell me, well done, good in faith servant, or I don't know you. Right. That's a good answer, Ben. And he said, I don't know what you're talking about. You've sinned all the time. I said, I'm human, and I don't mean to be rude, sir, but how about yourself? I don't sin. I don't sin. I go to church all the time. I said, are you breathing? You're sinning. You're a person. You sin daily. I do it. I do it multiple times a day. Nothing wrong against you. I'm not trying to get at you, but you're alive. You're a sinner. Yeah.

See, that's exactly my problem with that Hope Bible. Like, that exact attitude, right? Like, if you miss the part that you're a sinner and you need Jesus as a Savior, if you don't think you need, if you don't think you're a sinner and you don't think you need Jesus to save you, you can give or take Jesus. And I really think that Catholic ordeal is a problem with relational aspect to God, and not so much a, they don't think that Jesus is Lord, because they do. Foundationally, they do. I think they're missing out on a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and I think that's too bad. And I don't know enough about the Catholic religion to speak on it to any type of authority. I just know what the people that I've talked to, when I listen to them talk, I think you're adding more people in the mix than you need. Your Father loves you more than that. Right. And times I've talked with my aunt, who's a sister. She's not a nun. She's a sister. Apparently, there's a difference. Talking with her about how they can, how she can worship that, and letting her know, you know, the Bible you use isn't really the Bible. And she's saying, well, no, men created that. We've got this. And I told her, I said, yes, men created that through God.

God told them. And you have excess books. There's no point for it. She was telling me, there's a lot more books than that. They're very important. And I said, well, if they're very important, why aren't they in the Bible? They don't need to be in the Bible. They're very important. The higher ups, the cardinals, and the bishops, they know those. You don't have to. See, and that seems like just a relational aspect to God. You know what I'm saying? Where they live under a certain structure that's like, only these people get to have this relationship with God. And I think they're missing out on the give and take and the actual relationship part of God, which is why it's been replaced with traditions and mores and doing certain exercises all the time. Because if you don't know a relational God, then you just do whatever you think you can do to make it happy. Is the New Testament just completely disregarded or something like that? Well, what part of the New Testament do you think they're missing out on?

Probably the whole bridging between man and God from Jesus. I mean, Jesus says that he is the way, the truth, and the light. But there's still truth. He does say that he's the only way to get to God is through me. It doesn't say the only way to get to God is to St. Peter, then to me, then to God. It doesn't say you've got to go through John, Jacob, Jingleheimer, Schmidt, then him, then me, then God. Troy, but you're not looking at, you're looking at this from a, it's a black and white process issue. It's not, they're taking away the sovereignty of Jesus Christ. They're not saying that God doesn't do the heavy lifting here, or does these things. They're saying that I am not worthy enough to talk to Jesus on my own. God does not love me like that. And so I tell Peter, and Peter takes it to Jesus. That's the difference. And so what they're missing out on is the loving relationship with Jesus Christ that God is more than happy to offer. I think, I truly think it's a relational thing, and it's not a process issue. And that's where the priests come in? I mean, where you're confessing to a priest who gives it to God?

Yes. Those are exactly why they do that. Yes. I see it exactly like that. I used to not think that way. I used to think that they thought the priest does something about it, but they tell the priest, and the priest takes it to God. Because they're missing out on the, once again, if you don't have a relationship with God, then you do everything that the Catholic religion looks like to try to appease a God that you don't have a loving relationship with, right? That's why you hold a big fancy Bible and do a smoke, and then everyone takes communion all the time, and you dip your water to try to clean yourself. That's why you do all these things, because you don't know any way to appease them. That's like when someone new comes to the church, that's why certain churches will bring a pie by, because everybody loves pie. But if they knew the people personally, they would know that they have two cats and six dogs, and it would probably be more helpful to bring them the dog food. You know what I'm saying?

That's the difference between having a relationship and just trying to appease a person that you don't know. And I think Catholicism is very heavily built on trying to appease a God that they don't have a relationship with. I agree. Pants, final thoughts? I agree with that completely, Mike. I think you summed that up pretty good. Thanks, Pants. I appreciate that. That never happens. Where's Dan? In all honesty, I was thinking about that, and in college, for one of my classes, I went to a synagogue for one of their services, and I was a little surprised, because it felt the exact same as a Catholic church, as a Catholic mass. And the whole time, I'm thinking, Jesus is missing from this completely. So I don't know what to do about that. But overall, Ben, I think this was a good night. Thanks for summing it up, Pants.

Good job. Good job, Pants. Hey, you've been listening to Live from the Path. Thanks so much for hanging out with us tonight. It was kind of a heavy one. Yeah, it was a little heavy. Chat, thanks so much for jumping in. I think that's a good conversation. Very much appreciate that. But we will see you next week. We're coming out of the new year. It will be January 2nd, yeah? Yeah. Oh, man. Lots of stuff going on in the new year. Things coming up. Make sure you mark your calendars on the 15th for the Jesse Anderson concert at First Federated Church. Also on the 20th Winter Jam is coming up. Now we're going to call it just the Jesse Anderson show. Yeah, that's what we're going to do. All right, we're heading out. Thanks for listening to Live from the Path.

We'll see you next Monday, 10 to midnight. And you catch us during the week at livefromthepath.org.