From the Pathway Studios in Johnston Proper, you are live from the Pathway Studios here in Johnston Proper. My name is Ben Foose. Thank you so much for joining us here on this Monday night. I'm glad you're hanging out with us. We should be a really good show today. We've got all kinds of stuff going on. Here's Mike. Mike, there's one thing I want you to know before we get started. Yeah, tell me. This week's show is brought to you by Valley Services. Who's that, man? So Valley Services Cleaning is a local company. They do new construction cleaning. They do residential cleaning and stuff. You can check out more information by going to valleyservices.net. And you basically got two choices, right?

Here's how I see it. You can either pay someone to clean your house so that you can kiss your spouse, or you clean your own house and pay someone else to kiss your spouse. I feel like there's only one option, right? Yeah, I don't think that's going to be really hard to… That's what I'm saying. You might as well just have them clean the place. Now, hold on. Let me ask you a question, Ben. And is Valley Services one of those places where I need to pre-clean my place so they don't think I'm junkie? No, no, that's foolish. I mean, keep an eye spot, all right? But, yeah, you can call them up. And so if you go to valleyservices.net, you can get a hold of them,

and they can help you out. And here's what I want you to do. If you get a hold of them, I want you to do two things. The first thing I want you to do is I want you to tell them thank you for sponsoring Life in the Path because you can hear us now because they're bothering to pay to have us on the air. And the other thing to do is say that you heard their name online from the Path, and they'll give you the fifth cleaning free. No doubt. Yeah. That's a pretty good deal. So go to the website or… That sounds way better than paying for the fifth cleaning.

You know what I'm saying? That's what I'm talking about. Okay, if you want to clean my house? If you go to valleyservices.net or call Charlotte at 515-277-5611, that's Valley Services Cleaning. Also, we're brought to you this week by On Purpose Promotions. Go to onpurposepromos.com and get a hold of Jared there. If you have… If you want… You print stuff, right? You want T-shirts, you want mugs, frisbees, stuff like that. Jared's your man. He'll give you a good price and get some quality work done.

Don't go on the Internet and just put your face on something. That's a mistake. If you're going to do it, do it right. I've done that before. He's right. That's a mistake. Call Jared on On Purpose Promos. All right. So here's what we've got going on this week on Life in the Path. So we're on week 24, proof 24 from the guy from God is a manager. Godisimaginary.com. He's basically upset here. Proof 24 is ask why religion causes so many problems.

I might just agree with this guy, but he tends to go off on a tangent that makes me have to disagree with him, even if the title was otherwise compelling. You know, I'm kind of excited about this because we're almost at the halfway point. The guy has 50 proofs why God is imaginary on Godisimaginary.com. I think he's added some bonus proofs maybe. Yeah, there's extras if we get through them all. I'm sure we'll get through them, but we're almost to the halfway point. And so I'm kind of exceeded where the meat and bones of it is really going to be. So we'll see what he comes up with. So we're going to hit that. We're also going to be talking about, we've got some advice on Dear Life in the Path. Hopefully, if I get this worked out, we might still make this yet. So if you're listening to it online, it's Monday night.

It's the night before the election. And we're going to help you figure out who to vote for in three simple questions any kid in a gunner can answer. And that's going to tell you where your vote goes. Okay, this is going to be great. Yeah. So we're going to straighten that out for you. I'm so undecided. So I'm glad we have this service. Okay, good. Yeah. No, we're here to help you out here, Dan. We're going to do that.

We're going to do some, like I said, Dear Life in the Path. We'll get you some advice. We're going to do Secular vs. Solomon. If you're unfamiliar, it's America's, I like to call it America's fastest growing game show, internet game show. I'm not sure that's true, really. In fact, I'm certain that it's not. Yeah. But that's what I like to call it. And basically, we're going to give you a bit of wisdom. And your job is to tell me whether it is a secular bit of wisdom or whether it is a biblical bit of wisdom. Secular.

Generally from Solomon. Generally a proverb. And if it is a secular bit of wisdom, you need to tell me where it's from. What is the country of origin? If it's not from God, goodness, where did it come from? No doubt. That's what your job is to tell me. Also, I've got some Pope-style advice. And so I'll give you that Pope-style advice for you. Mike, you got some? I put out Pope-style advice today on the Twitter, and someone came back at me and said it sounded like a fortune cookie. And then I was offended.

You know, I'm like, this is why I don't use the Twitter. You know what I'm saying? This kind of thing happens. But that means you could probably make some money on it. Well, I had to talk. Put it in a cookie, sell the cookie. Here's the thing. It's like, when I have Pope-style advice, I felt like I was going to have to argue a rebuttal, and I thought, the Twitter's not a place for this. And this is exactly why I don't use Twitter. You know what I'm saying? It gets embarrassing. Yeah.

We appreciate you giving it a shot. Thanks, Troy. Okay, solid. Yeah. If you want to follow us on Twitter, by the way, if you go to lifeinthepath.org on that right-hand side, you can like our Facebook page, and you can hook up with Twitter if you'd like to see the tweets from the show, and you can check it out there. And that should be exciting. Well, I wonder if I follow us. I don't know. You should check it out. I should check it out. All right.

So I tell you what. Let's get this thing rolling. We're going to start out with, generally speaking, what I like to call America's fastest-growing internet game show. It is called… Live from the Remax… Okay. So here's… Sorry about that. That was a good build-up, though. This is just the kind of program we're going on, all right? Okay. So here's the deal.

I'm going to give you a bit of wisdom, and you need to tell me whether it is a biblical bit of wisdom or it is a worldly bit of wisdom. All right? And if it's a worldly bit of wisdom, you've got to tell me the country of origin. Okay? You guys ready? I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm ready to do it versus Solomon. Okay. Let's move it, man. All right. Seriously, I'm ready for this game show, and you're doofsing around with weird stuff.

There's silences happening. I'm starting to freak out. Okay. Solomon. All right. Here we go. Number one. Act in the valley so that you need not fear those who stand on the hill. Act in the valley so that you need not fear those who stand on the hill. Secular or Solomon. Mike? I feel like that don't make no sense at all, and the Lord Jesus makes sense to me. I'm going to go with secular.

Point of origin? Impeccable. Is Bolivia still a country? Yeah, sure. Why not? I submit Bolivia. Okay. Bolivia's in. Troy Englinger. Act in the valley so that you need not fear those who stand on the hill. Hey, man. They're still higher than you. I don't understand.

That don't make no sense. I'm going to go secular. Make it throw a rock at you or something. Tibetan. Tibet. Free him up. Dan Hudson. Yeah, I'm as well. I think I'm going to go secular as well. I think I'm going to go Indonesia. Indonesian? There's no valleys in Indonesia, Dan. Well, that's why they have to write about it.

That's why it's a bad bit of advice. They're all going, I don't get it. It's a proverb. It makes no sense. Act in the valley so that you need not fear those who stand on the hill. The answer is secular. The Danes. It's a Danish proverb. I see. Now I know for sure they can't be trusted. Here's the thing. What does that mean, act in the valley? Like, conduct your business in the lull so the guy up top…

I don't get it. Ben, hit me. I don't know. There has to be wisdom in there somehow. Just not biblical wisdom. Act in the valley so that you need not fear those who stand on the hill. In other words, do everything you do in plain sight so that you know… You're an easy target for the guy on the hill. The people that are above you. Don't do anything in secret. Everybody can see you. That's the worst plan of war ever. Maybe it's not war.

Maybe it's just do your business so, you know, you're not hiding anything. You're trying to give it a godspin and it's from the Danes, Dan. The Danes aren't a godly people. We all know that. All right, here we go. Give strong drink to the one who is perishing and wine to those in bitter distress. Give strong drink to the one who is perishing and wine to those in bitter distress. Secular or Solomon. Troy. All right, I'm going to say secular and I'm going to go Guatemalan. A Guatemalan proverb, Dan Hudson. You know, that has a Russian proverb all over it. I just see a lot of people depressed.

Strong drink. Take some strong drink. That'll help you out. So I'm going to say secular and Russian. A very offensive Russian stereotype. Thanks, Dan. Mike Foose. I'm throwing out Solomon. Solomon seems to be a friend of wine and strong drink. Dance with it. Okay. Give strong drink to the one who is perishing and wine to those in bitter distress. Proverbs 31.6.

It is Solomon. Dance with it. Dance with Jesus. Dan. Stereotypical Russian slash the Lord. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. It wasn't Jesus. It was Solomon who was drunk. It was Solomon who was drunk. I believe we call the Bible inspired word of God. Do we not? Well, that's true.

Fair enough. I'll give you that. Here we go. The beginning of strife is like letting out water. So quit before the quarrel breaks out. The beginning of strife is like letting out water. So quit before the quarrel breaks out. Secular or Solomon. Mike. Are you still using the ESV for the Bible references? Yes. Solomon. Mike's in for Solomon.

Troy. Solomon. Dan Hudson. I'm doing Solomon too. That just sounds Solomon-esque. Everybody's in for Solomon. Okay. What does that mean? Beginning of strife is like letting out water. So quit before the quarrel breaks out. Relax. Yeah. When you see trouble coming, if you're going to keep opening to that valve, you're going

to keep, you're going to get the, if you mess with the bull, you're going to get the horns. The levee's going to break. You're going to keep letting the water out. One proverb is explained by another. Is the bull the horns? Is that Solomon? Solomon. I feel like that's not Solomon. Proverbs 32. Mess with the bull and get the horns. Solomon. The Incredible Hulk.

It's like, it's basically once you get it started, it can't be controlled and it'll eventually all spill out and you, uh, it's a, it's a full on fight. Okay. Well, it's a trickle of strife. Beginning of strife is like letting out water. So quit before the quarrel breaks out. Proverbs 17, 14. Yeah. It's not a trickle strife, Troy. You're totally missing this proverb. It's, it's the big one. It's coming. If you let a little out, you're going to get the big.

Not, it's just going to keep trickling. That's not a problem. So stop it before the quarrel breaks out. If you can fix it with a plastic cup. That's what I'm saying is it's, it's, it's a small thing right now. So stop, keep going with the strife or you're going to let the rest of it out. Yeah. It's going to be a ballroom blitz and then you're going to be in on it. Is there some reason you don't connect with me? You don't say that. That's fine by me. I really have no desire to connect with you, Mike. Calm down.

All right. Here we go. Sorry. Shut it down before it breaks out. Whoever restrains his words has knowledge and he who has a cool spirit is a man of understanding. Whoever restrains his word has knowledge and he who has a cool spirit is a man of understanding. Secular or Solomon. Dan Hudson. I'll say Solomon. Solomon, Mike. Secular Salvador. Salvadorian. Everyone's cool in Salvador.

Troy. It's the strong drink. Stay away from the tropics, Troy. That's my area of the world. Solomon. Here we go. Whoever restrains his words has knowledge and he who has a cool spirit is a man of understanding. Solomon. Proverbs 17, 27. Shut the spigot. I've made a mistake. It's trickling. Strife.

All right. Here we go. Choose neither a woman nor linen by candlelight. Choose neither a woman nor linen by candlelight. Secular or Solomon, Mike. Genesis, Jacob. I was going to say Arabian. And Troy. This is it, Rachel. Secular Turkish. I was ripped off. Secular Turkish. Dan Hudson.

I'll go secular. Oh, I need to have a place. What's known for their… Who's known as the blindish people? I'll go with the blind. What are the strong stereotypes can you feed into, Dan? Egyptian sheets. Aren't those supposed to be really neat? Egyptian cotton? It's from Egypt. I don't know. The blind shippers of Uzbekistan. Okay.

Dan's guessing Italy. All right. Choose neither a woman nor linen by candlelight. Secular Italy. Congratulations, Dan. Ah, yes. Very good sir. To find pasta. Dan, you're amazing. You're incredible at this, Dan. All right. Here we go. Better is a dinner of herbs where love is than a fattened ox and hatred with it.

Better is a dinner of herbs where love is than a fattened ox and hatred with it. Secular or Solomon. Troy. Solomon. Solomon. Mike. Solomon. Dan Hudson. I had some herbs earlier and I'm going with Solomon. Okay. Three Solomons. Now, here's where I think this particular one is funny. It's because it implies that herbs are the inferior product.

It does indeed. Vegetables are a downer. Gotta love the fattened ox. That's all you got. It's better to have something nasty with love than something delicious with hatred. You know, it's kind of funny. You guys rocking vegetarian Wednesday need to give it up. I went to a wedding on, what was it, Saturday night and it was like a fancy kind of wedding, you know, but they had fancy sandwiches for dinner. I'm like, great, this would be awesome. So I go rolling through there and I get this sandwich that just looks awesome and I pick it up and I take it back to the table and I start, I open the piece of bread and I look at it and it's like eggplant with a bunch of stuff on it.

And I'm like, I feel like I got this, I got Shanghai'd, you know, like I thought it was going to be a meaty sandwich and there's eggplant in there. So I had to hide it and then go get another one. Did you at least try it? No, absolutely not. Lame. Now, if you would have read this beforehand, you could have said, I'm excuse me, is there love with this? Is there love with this one? Are you done with the biblical teachings? Do you guys have the hated, fatted ox over there, please? I know this is the wrong answer, but I'll take the ox. We've been married a while, we'll take the ox.

I know they're trying to say that the ox with the hatred is worse, but I think I'll take the ox. Have you seen the eggplant? You know what, as soon as you do that, you're going to get a bunch of protesters out front for the ox of America with like a picture of a sad ox that, why has everybody got to be down on me? I feel like my rights are being violated. Why can't you be happy and have the ox and love? Better is a dinner of herbs where love is than a fattened ox and hatred with it is Solomon, Proverbs 15, 17. I call it. So did I. Here we go.

He who does not know one thing knows another. He who does not know one thing knows another. Secular or Solomon. I'm going to go with secular on that, Ben. And I'm going to put the country of origin at India. Secular Jamaica. Troy. Solomon. Solomon. Definitely. Dan Hudson. I was going India as well. He who does not know.

I mean, you got to put it. Dan. Dan is on fire tonight. On fire. You are so racist. And it's not racist. It just sounds like a secular. I feel like the World Wide Web is going to betray us as we've lost all listeners from India. There goes those India supporters. And the Russians. I feel like Dan is a kindred spirit to my people. Oh, I love life from the path. They don't eat ox.

I especially hate the ox. I don't do impressions. All right, Dan. So you're still India? Yeah. He's sticking with it. All right. He who does not know one thing knows another. Solomon was the worst guess ever. Secular. Kenya. Kenya. That's right next to India.

That's right by India. Solomon. They're short and pithy. They have to keep it. There are a lot of runners over there. They have to keep it short. Hey, if you don't have. We do. We do pithy only. I'm still thirsty. Give me a drink. But not too much. It'll be a ballroom mix.

I don't know this, but I know about this. I'm the fastest man in the world. A hungry man is an angry man. A hungry man is an angry man. Secular or Solomon. Troy. Secular. The Engeldinger household. Exactly. That's what I was thinking. It's me. I think I said that three years ago. I'm going to go secular Hungarian.

Lame. They're hungry. Troy's in with the cheesiest answer. Dan Hudson. It's secular Irish. An Irishman is hungry and angry at the same time. Potato famine. Mike. Secular and Botswana. Botswana. A hungry man is an angry man. Secular. England.

Right by Botswana. England. It's a global economy. Botswana. That's what they get for joining the euro. I got hungry. All right. Here we go. Next. In all toil there is profit, but mere talk tends only to poverty. In all toil there is profit, but mere talk tends only to poverty. Secular or Solomon. Dan Hudson.

I'm going to say that's a proverb. That's the game. Everything is a proverb. Thanks for playing Dan. A proverb written by Solomon. Okay. There we go. Sorry. All right. Mike. I'm down with Solomon as well. Okay. Solomon Troy.

I'm going to go for Solomon too. All right. So what's the nature of this thing? In all toil there is profit, but mere talk tends only to poverty. Yeah. The gist of that thing is like you can sit on your porch all day and say that field needs mowing and then keep talking about it and talk about how you're going to mow the field. If you never do it, the field will remain unmowed. Agree? No pain, no gain. Get up and do something. Your lofty ideas have gotten you nowhere. Yeah.

Maybe you shouldn't be so mad, hungry man. If you just eat already, you wouldn't be so upset. Sometimes that proverb will go through my mind when I have this big list of things to do and I'm just kind of overwhelmed by the list thinking, I guess I won't do anything because I can't do it all. Then I'll think, get up, you lazy bum. I got to do something. Number 19 on the list was be mad about list. Yeah, exactly. I'm so angry. I see this actually a lot in my own life and it might even be like a cultural thing or my age range. So my wife's dad is a construction guy.

He runs his own construction business. And so he'll be there and we'll be helping them out. There'll be some kind of construction problem. And me and probably Mike and maybe my brother-in-law, we'll sit there and we'll be thinking of the best way to handle this thing for like three hours. Like, well, you know what we can do? We can get a crane and a pulley. Right. We'll get two ladders rigged up in a triangle. A couple rubber bands and an angry Irishman. And I think we can get this thing straightened out, right? So we'll think about it for three hours. In the same amount of time, he's done the hardest thing possible, but it's done in three hours.

And so, like, he's actually, he just starts doing the work. He did it. He's already had a concept in his mind as he thought it through. I'm trying to think of the easiest way to do it and I'll spend three hours thinking through it. He, on the other hand, even though it's a difficult way and requires hard work, will have started it already and finished it by the time I thought of the easiest way to get it. Yeah, like, a perfect example is, like, when people go to roof a house, right? Like, you see eight bundles of shingles on the ground, right? And I think we need six guys and we'll get an assembly line and we'll have people halfway up the ladder and we'll just chain it up there so not one guy's lifting a bunch of singles. And he'll just pick up a bundle and start walking up.

And by the time I've rousted up six dudes, he'll have all the shingles already. Yeah. And so, yeah, that's the truth of it. Yeah, definitely. So, in all toil there is profit, but mere talk tends only to poverty. Solomon, Proverbs 14, 23. Are you keeping score at the home game? Everybody on the chat doing all right? Everybody's doing okay? I'll keep track of Troy's losses. It's not looking good for him. I'm horrible. Yeah.

Okay. All right. Admittedly. Here we go. An enemy will agree, but a friend will argue. An enemy will agree, but a friend will argue. Secular or Solomon? Troy. Secular. Irish. Irish. An Irishman. Dan Hudson.

It sounds an awful lot like a Solomon. And this is what mixes me up, is I have them memorized in the NIV. And sometimes ESV, English Standard Version, throws me off. So, I still am going to go Solomon. Solomon. Mike Foost. I feel I have no choice but go Solomon based on the facts before me. That makes me so mad. And I'm hungry. Give me an ox. An enemy will agree, but a friend will argue. Perhaps better said, an enemy will agree, but a comrade will argue. Russian.

No. Russian proverb. Secular. I was really hoping that was Solomon, because I had a diatribe to follow. Thank you. But it is not. Very much. Josh, Wutka, and comrades. Smackdown with Troy. Here's the thing, though. I find that proverb to be true most times. Like, how much do you have to dislike somebody to agree with ways that they're failing? Especially in their walk with Christ.

You know, like, there's a place for grace that God always has for people, but like, you know, either they're acting rebelliously in their relationship with God, or they're acting foolishly because they don't know the difference. Either way, if you're any friend of theirs, you'll at least point it out to them. If they choose to continue acting the way they're acting, you know, you have grace and love for them, but like, you just can't permit it. And so, sometimes that's hard to swallow. The most unloving thing you can do is watch someone go to their self-destruction. Yeah. And say, well, you know, it's their fault. Exactly. That's totally unloving. That's an enemy.

You know, and it's hard. It's actually hard to get yourself to realize that you were put in that position, right? Like, you don't have to be a Bible scholar or a theologian, or, you know, as long as you have the love and grace of the Holy Spirit, and you know that you could handle it with the way that he would handle it, he picked you. You know what I'm saying? Just go do it. Go talk to a guy and say, look, I noticed you have something going on here, and it's not lining up with the scriptures. Is there something we need to talk about, you know? So, and, you know, it's a conversation to have. I agree. The Russians, they know things.

Yeah, they're all over it. All right. So, here's the deal. You've just been a participant of Secular vs. Solomon, America's fastest growing internet game show. Thanks for hanging out with us so far here on Live from the Path. I tell you what we're going to do. We're going to take a quick station break for you guys listening on KTIA. We'll be right back with you listening to Live from the Path. If you're listening to the live show, hang out, man. You get the bonus content. We're going to take a quick station break, and we'll be right back. So, here's the deal for you guys hanging out on the internet channel.

I appreciate you guys sticking with us and catching the live show. There will be station breaks that exist on the radio broadcast that goes on Saturday. Not for you guys, though. Not you guys. You get the bonus. That's exclusive content. The whole ox is what you get. Actually, so here's one thing I did want to tell you. I hate his fatted ox. Is there's a sweet band coming into town. The Wren Collective Experiment's going to be in town, and they're going to be on, I think, in Davenport on the 10th, and in Ames on the 11th. We've actually, there's been a couple songs that we've been doing at church recently by Wren Collective.

They were in town, I want to say, six or eight months ago and played with Jesse Anderson at First Federated. No kidding. Yeah. And so, anyway, they're real, they got a real, like, unique sound. If you go to, just Google search Wren Collective Experiment, and they're not even the main act. They're supporting somebody. They're supporting 10th Avenue North. At 10th Avenue North in town. So, anyway, that should be a really cool show. The tickets, I thought, I think were reasonable, like $13, $15 or something. It doesn't even matter.

You're wasting your money other places. Go pay good money for Wren Collective. Yeah. So, anyway, go check that out. Enjoy that. Hey, welcome back. Thanks for hanging out with Live from the Path. Here's where we're heading next. So, if you're listening to the live show, it's Monday night, and you may or may not have decided how to vote yet. And so, we want to help you out. Okay? I think we can help you.

We can get you in a spot where you can make the correct decision as to where to cast your vote. Because it's a tough deal. Where has this quiz been? You know, I feel like I'm torn all over the place. Okay, it's three easy questions a kindergartner can answer, and based upon your answer, I will tell you who you're going to vote for. Okay, ready? Question number one. Do you prefer basketball or skiing? Dan? Basketball. Troy?

Basketball. Mike? I've never been skiing. I've got to say basketball, Ben. Okay, a basketball is a vote for Barack Obama. There's one. Here we go. Do you prefer chili or granola? Dan? Chili. Granola. Granola. Mike?

Granola. Two granolas. A chili is Barack Obama. Granola, Mitt Romney. Score! Number three. Dog or horse? Dan. Dog. Dan's in for dog. Troy? Horse. Mike?

I've got to go dog on that one. Dog is Barack Obama. Horse is Mitt Romney. Dan, you're firmly in the Obama corner. Well, now I know how to go. I've been struggling with political issues and social agendas, and I feel like I actually had this idea. Basketball, chili, and dogs. Looks like I'm voting for Obama. Now, hold on, Ben. Where is this base from? Okay, so here's the deal. My wife got a text today from Mike's wife, and his daughter came home with a worksheet

from school, and it was like, meet the candidates. And the chart tells us more about the candidates. And under Barack Obama, the chart had basketball, chili, and dog. His dog, Bo. And under Mitt Romney was a picture of a guy skiing, some granola, and horseback riding. Here's the thing. My daughter brings us home. She's in kindergarten, right? She brings us home, and I'm looking at it, and I'm like, you know, based on this information, I'll go for Obama. Like, seriously, Mitt Romney seems like a real square. Skiing, chili, and basketball. You bet!

Skiing and granola. We don't have anything in common. It's skiing, granola, and horses. Like, I don't… We have nothing in common, Romney. Like, seriously, we don't know anything. What a wild worksheet. Like, of all things to put in front of a kid. I'm like, it's just weird. I saw on Facebook tonight, it had which one of the presidential candidates most likes peanut butter and jelly and chocolate milk. And it literally had a link to follow it and figure out which presidential candidate you liked based on if you liked the snack, peanut butter and jelly and chocolate milk.

Who was it? Because I said yes. No, I didn't follow it. I refused to give in to that. That's ridiculous. Well, how am I supposed to know, Troy? Now I'm back to not knowing how to vote. Keep… All he's going to be at the voting booth is like, but I really do like chili. Just think. Peanut butter's good, but how do I go? Just think. Basketball.

Chili. Dog. That's totally me. All I know is definitely no granola. What do I do with the judges now? See, I'm undecided because I can't ski. I can't ski, but I do love me some granola and horseback riding, so I don't know. That's why there's three, so you can make a reasoned choice. You're two out of three. Two out of three. I'm 66.6 repeatedly, Romney. Now you've delved into the level that Live from the Path gets involved in the political process.

Here's where we're at. Vote Jesus. That's your vote. Vote Jesus. So if you need any political advice apart from the basketball chili and dog, then you're voting for Jesus. That's it. Ben Foost. All right. Here's where we go. Let's hit our God is imaginary man. All right. This is where we're on proof number 24 from Godisimaginary.com.

There's 50 proofs as to why he thinks God is imaginary. This is a generally entertaining exercise. Broadly, we should be able to answer questions. If this is a barrier for this guy, I don't think this is a soul barrier, but if it's a barrier for somebody about how they see religion, how they see following Christ or God in general, we should be able to answer that. So this is his proof number 24 as to how God is imaginary. And he asked, ask why religion causes so many problems. Here is his case. If God were to exist, wouldn't you expect there to be a huge benefit to those who follow and obey him? Why? Instead, do we see the opposite?

For example, there's growing evidence that the delusion of religion causes significant social dysfunction. Statistical research is revealing the problems that go with religion. For example, a recent article in the Journal of Religion and Society points out that religion is correlated to the significant social difficulties that we can see in America. And here's it. I'll give you just a little taste of this. It says, in general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion in the prosperous democracies. The failing view is that religion is harmless, even if it is delusional. That turns out not to be the case. America is the most religious country of those studied in the developed world.

America also has the biggest problems in terms of things like homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion. So, anyway, his general consensus is, in other words, religion is harmful, not helpful. The reason is because God is imaginary and religious delusion is hurting all of us. Now, I will kick this off with, he provided a link to where he got all this data from as to how belief in a creator is tied to higher mortality rates, more STDs, teen pregnancies, things like this. If you click the link, it goes nowhere. It is a broken link. Kind of like his argument. So, I guess, let's ignore for the moment that that is not established. The thing that he said really can't be established. From there, what do we think of the premise?

Well, I mean, here's the deal. Like, if those facts are true and maybe the link's just broken, right, I would assume he's doing it based on just numbers, right? Not on a percentage. And so, if you're basing it on just numbers, America's a pretty big nation. You know what I'm saying? Like, population-wise, we're up there. We're in the top five. What are we, top two, second, or third? Whatever. Right? If you're going to have a lot of people, you're going to have a lot of discourse. It just comes with the numbers.

It's just like whenever they find out that one of the fast food restaurants is putting kangaroo in their hamburgers, McDonald's is always the first one to get the point because they're the biggest chief of the Indians. And so, it's the exact same thing going on here. But I think his broader point is, is what he's trying to get at, is he's trying to say that, like, if you have a belief in a creator, wouldn't you expect things to be different? And the truth is, the belief in the creator is not as nearly effective as following the creator, right? Like, if I believe that there is a God but ignore everything that he's ever told me, then my belief is pretty much a waste. You know, I mean, I could believe a lot of things. I could believe that I'm going to win the lottery every time I play. But if it never actually happens, and I base all my decisions on the fact that it's going

to happen, I'll be the first guy in the bankruptcy line because I've spent money I don't have yet. And so, like, if you say, look, I believe in God and my actions aren't following, it's true, you may believe that there is a God, but you obviously don't believe in all the facets that make him that, which is his sovereignty, his love for you, his sacrifice for his people, and the rules that he set up to try to keep you in line with his way of doing things, right? And if you ignore every single one of those, you may have a belief in God, but you don't have a belief in the God because you ignored every aspect of him. The problem is here, he's bringing up religion. I would agree with him, religion will get you in trouble. Religion might get you pregnant. Religion might give you a sexually transmitted disease. Religion, you know, but a follower of Christ will have none of that.

You cannot follow Christ and have a sexually transmitted disease unless you're not following Christ. You know what I'm saying? I mean, you can't get, you won't have an abortion if you're following Christ because Christ wouldn't do that. He's throwing everything into the name of religion, mostly because, again, he doesn't understand who God is. He doesn't understand Christ. He doesn't believe in God. He's against God. So he doesn't understand what a Christ follower is. And he doesn't understand that following Christ means living by his word. And living by his word takes away all the things he just said happens in a society that's

religious. So here's the thing. I was listening to a guy, I was listening to a guy talk on this a little bit and cause he was, they were seeing an uptick of growth in their church. And, uh, you know, he, he started talking to people and then they would give their testimony before they got baptized, you know, and he kept finding that most of the people that were coming to church, getting baptized, um, some of them had some very powerful testimonies of being involved in witchcraft and you know, all this other stuff he goes. So, but that may, may have made up 10 to 20% of the people being baptized, the other 80% are people that went to church their whole lives and they never got the gospel. Like either they didn't have ears to hear it or they, they just didn't understand it. Right. And so I guess my question is, is like, I find this a frustrating in a, in a good godly

way, I guess. But like, I find it frustrating that I don't know how it's being missed for religion. Right. Like where is, where is Jesus getting lost to the point where people have, have, who have gone to church pretty much through their whole upbringing, they dump it by the time they're 18 and they come back when they're 28, 29, 30, or when they got married or had a kid and, and to only to re-find it, right? Like why are we losing people to religion? Why are we losing people who grew up in the church to religion at, at a young age? I don't understand. Do you guys have any thoughts on that? No. I, you know, well, I mean, to a certain extent it's easier, right?

Like if religion basically being a set of rules and so it's, it's easier to bow out and agree to a set of rules and then realize you can't keep them and then walk away from the whole thing altogether, right? Because to the extent that, that you can set out, uh, Hey, my life is going to go well if I adhere to these particular statutes or standards or whatever. Um, like that's, that's kind of the nature of the society that we're in, right? Like we like to, uh, you've got a goal sheet, a big list of stuff and like these are do's and these are don'ts. Um, and then I think what ultimately happens is people, people start down that path. They can't hit the rules. They can't, they can't do the things that they're supposed to do and they completely miss God in the picture. They just got the religion part out of it, the rules and the stuff out of it.

Uh, and then when they feel like we're teaching that though, like, I mean, the whole point is, is I mean, if we, if we, if you point back to, look, these are the things that God has set up to keep you, uh, within his character and in line with him and connected with him and relationship with him. Um, when you fail, accept his grace and get right back to where you came from. How is it that, how is it that people are grabbing the rules is that, and, and only the rules, is that just a human tendency? Well, I think so. It's sometimes it's the easiest articulation of your faith, right? Uh, I would say a majority of kids would be able to tell you what the 10 commandments are, right? Like they get not, not necessarily list them off to you, but they, they get the concept, right?

Um, we tend, tend to use to at least spend a lot of time on that in like children's Bible studies and stuff like here's, here are the 10 commandments. Here are the rules. Here's the way you should live. God wants you to do this. God, why? Sometimes it's like a kind of a parenting thing. God wants you to act like this. Oh, God wouldn't approve of that. Um, you know, and a lot of times, because I think it's a little bit more difficult sometimes to articulate it to children. I think sometimes we go with the easy thing. Kids will understand rules easier than they understand grace.

And, and like, that's why things that, that Jesus storybook was, is been a relatively popular thing because everything points back to Christ. Every single story in that book is like, it'll tell you a story that was otherwise in the Bible and then tell you how it points back to Christ for kids. It's an excellent book. And so, and you know, but that's what I'm saying is like, I think that that is kind of difficult sometimes for parents to articulate. I think sometimes we think that kids can't understand that. Uh, and, and I think the easier thing is to say is the moral lessons, the moral lessons from the big stories, from the David and Goliath, from, you know, from the 10 commandments, from these things. Well, here's where someone screwed up. Oh, we should be nice to our neighbor.

Look what the good Samaritan did, you know? And it's not that there aren't moral things to take from that, but like those things are easier to articulate to children than, uh, sacrifice grace. And that time I love from God. And so if they don't ever make it past the rules and morality stage to seeing through it, to see the basis of all that being God's gracious nature and love, I think that's where they get separated and they end up sticking to rules rather than actually following Christ. You know, also, um, that is the oldest lie in the book of, of Satan looking at a rule and, and questioning, did God really say that? I mean, that's what he said to Eve. They said the same thing to Jesus. Yeah, exactly. And if we follow, I mean, kind of going back to the rules, if you do follow the moral

code of God, you don't get in trouble. I mean, it saves you from all kinds of pain and heartache and toil and, and, and just mess. Um, but it has to be linked with a relationship. Otherwise the rules, the rules are just oppressive. Yeah. Well, maybe we're just not explaining the rules right now. I actually feel like, like maybe I have an opportunity to learn some of this with my own kids too, but like, you know, here's the deal. Like the Bible is basically a character study, uh, of, of your Lord and savior, right? Of, of, of God, the father and Jesus, the son and the Holy spirit. Right. And so if, if you can look at the Bible as a whole and go, this is why you're not God

because you can't do these things, any of them, the miracles, follow the rules to keep yourself from sinning. You can't do any of this stuff. And so if you can grab the whole, the whole character study of the Bible and realize like, this is not how much of a fail you are. This is just an explanation of why you're not God. And so accept his grace and get as close to him as you can and, and, and, and follow him because he sets the path. He sets, he sets the, the way to live in a way that, that puts you in relationship with him. And, and really once you've seen the difference, once you feel the difference in that relationship, uh, you're still going to fall and fail, but you want to go back instead of wanting to run away.

Yeah. It's a God you want to run, run to, as opposed to getting upset with and running from. Right. Why are you always so mad at me? Uh, for, because I don't follow the rules and really the truth is God's like, just needed to show you that you're not God. I didn't set this rule up to make you feel like a failure, but you need to realize who you really are. And that's, that goes right back to that proverb where we're talking about like a friend will tell you the truth and an enemy will lie to you. But God always tells you the truth when he says, look, if you do this, you're going to separate yourself from me and it's not a good place to be. And we tend to hang or try to try.

That's how we get all the different, uh, sex of Christianity that will tell you whatever you want to hear. Right. Like, uh, this is, this type of sin is going to be okay now because X amount of time has passed or God really didn't mean it that way. Well, God told the truth in his Bible and, and you want to find a group of people that's going to tell, tell you that, that God didn't mean that. And now those are the people that you gravitate towards because then, uh, you know, who, who's telling you that is a friend telling you the truth or is an enemy lying to you? I probably say the enemy is lying to you. He's trying to take God's word and soften it just like he did with Eve, just like he did with Jesus after, uh, after he got baptized.

It's the same Satan as, as crafty as he is, he only has about one trick, which is to convince you that God is not who he says he is. Yeah, absolutely. You know, it goes back to, obviously we've got the rules. Um, you need a reason to follow. You can look at, at a rule book, um, and it's just the, this section of, uh, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this. But then you've got to realize that there's a reason to follow those rules. Our relationship with God is the reason we follow these rules. These are set for us so that we can have a closer relationship with our God. It's not just so we can't have fun. It's not just so we're not allowed to do these things. It's so that we are allowed to do the greatest thing, which is have a full on relationship

with our Lord and creator and have everlasting life with him. Yeah. And, and it's, I think we gain, if we can make, if we look at these things in the right perspective in that the things that generally God puts restrictions on aren't restrictions again, because he doesn't want us to have fun. It's because they're generally perversions of something that he's put into the world that are much greater than what we're settling for. You look at something like, like things that are in the sexual immorality plane, right? Like we're going to settle for generally debased things, quick things, lustful things. And God is saying, look, I want you to stay away from that because you're going to get hooked on this thing that pales in comparison to what I've created and what I'm offering you in this, in these longterm relationships, in these, in these mature and growth potentials that you have within the relationships that I've created within the framework that I've

created. And he's saying, you're going to miss it because you, you embraced, uh, you know, the, the, the Hershey's kiss as opposed to the, the, the giant bar of chocolate, right? You know, and it's, it's not because as we look at him, we say, well, God doesn't want me to have fun. He says, no, he doesn't want you to miss the fun, right? He doesn't want to miss the things that he's created that you're settling for, that the world has offered him. Not that, not the bigger things that he's created for you to enjoy. And, and like, that's the protection is, is he saying, you know, you've given up too easy if you've settled for this, you know, for this one thing or, or this, this small debased behavior. It's like, I've, I've, they're just so much more.

Keep your eye on the ball. Right. You know, we've given into sexual perversions when he's got this, uh, structure of true, perfect or intimacy with, with a partner that he's allowed and he's created for us. And going back to the actual proof that, that obviously we've been debating and talking about here, um, you know, the first line goes into a lot of stuff where he's talking about, wouldn't we expect different from, from someone who's actually truly following and obeying God? I agree with that entirely. I do, but not on a ground where it's disproving God to where it's proving God. We're looking at it from a round of all these things that he's listing out of, you know, these religious people and these followers of God are giving into this and there's so much murder and there's so much sexual perversion and abortion and everything.

Those are things that are consequences of human fallibility that we've given into, not the obeying of his commands and of his law and of having a relationship with him. We avoid those things by having the relationship with God. It's not that we've given into, or excuse me, it's not that we've, uh, um, had this relationship and this bad comes from it. It's, we haven't had this relationship and these are the consequences for it. I agree. All right. Well, so anyway, that was, uh, that was proof 24, uh, that look at the problems that religion causes. Not a real humdinger. No, no, his, his was basically tied that there were, that there, uh, by, uh, believing in God, it increases the homicide rates.

I just frankly seems unfounded. Yeah. So he's wrong and it doesn't disprove God, even if he were right. Right. Yeah. We're leaving in a false God. We'll certainly do that. Uh, believing in God of the Bible and following, uh, following the Bible as it's written. Uh, you're in a lot better shape. I, I, I would disagree with that totally. Yeah. All right. Well then, okay.

We'll see, uh, we'll see what's happening. That was, uh, goddessmagic.com. Uh, next week we'll be looking at proof 25 and, uh, uh, let's see. So he'll be at the, the midway port, uh, midway point on, uh, on his 25th proof. And this is understand evolution and abiogenesis. I know everything there is to know about abiogenesis. I don't even know what that is. I've never even heard of that. It's in Proverbs, Dan. Okay. Read ESV. Uh, that's my problem. I have the new living Bible.

All right. So that's what we're going to hit next week. Understand my Bible go. It's living. It left. I'm, I'm heading out. You don't have any big words. Uh, so be excited for that next week. Uh, I'm, I'm going to rock it. I'm sure of it. I know it. Like I said, I'm, I'm pretty good at abiogenesis. Okay.

Well, we're going to hit that. I tell you what, we're here real quick. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to take a quick, uh, for the guys hanging on KTA. We're going to take a quick station break and we'll be back with you in one minute or so you are listening to live from the path for those of you hanging out on the internet. Uh, you get to keep rocking with us for another minute. Hey, yo. So here's, here's the deal. We got some dear Abbey's coming up. Yeah. It's going to be weird for you guys on a podcast because I'm going to introduce it again. Like no one has heard it, but I have, but I am certainly going to, we have dear Abbey's

and this, I'll give you a heads up on what's going on here. It has to do with a, uh, irritating coworker who makes sensual noises. Oh my. And misspells her own name and what to do about it. So be ready, be ready for this way of bad advice. I can't wait. That's a real problem in the world. I had no idea this type of thing goes on. We actually, uh, do you have a minute? I mean, less than a minute. Yeah. Uh, at a preacher's meeting today, they were talking about that's a big deal. Even in the church world, you got to be careful with sexual harassment and, and it was an insurance

company did a seminar about all these things you got to watch, you know, and, and protecting the children and stuff, but also within the office con, uh, context of, of, uh, being careful how you, and I'm like, really at church? I mean, really? Yeah. I don't know. Huh. Interesting. Hey, welcome back. Uh, thanks for hanging out with us here on, uh, on live from the path. You can catch us every Monday night from 10 to 11 PM central time here at live from the path.org, or you may be listening on Saturday nights on KTIA. That's 99.3.

Thanks for hanging out with us there. That's on at 10 o'clock central time also. And I appreciate you hanging out with life from the path. You can, uh, you can catch us during the week at live from the path.org. You can hook up with clips from the show, including our game shows, uh, that secular versus Solomon. We've got a new game show coming up, Ben. I'm really excited about it. Yeah. I think that's going to be a sweet one. So we've got new games coming up, uh, next week, Bethany, Joy Johnson is going to be in studio. Uh, she's going to perform a couple of tunes.

Just kind of tell us what's going on in her world. Yeah. We haven't had some real talent in here, uh, since the last talented person left. And so, uh, I'm pretty excited to have some, have some talent in here. Uh, so be excited for that. So we'll have a good musical performance coming. Uh, now we're going to hit, uh, dear life from the path, uh, which is going to be, there's going to be some, there's going to be a conundrum and we're going to try to help solve it. We can fix it in a Jesus type manner. We have the technology. Here it is. Dear life from the path.

Uh, I work in a cubicle in close proximity to my coworkers. I can't help, but hear everything. A coworker who sits next to me is driving me crazy. She spells her name wrong to customers every day, 20 times a day. She also makes seductive moans during the day. I also want to peek over the cubicle to see what she's doing. Would I have mentioned to her that perhaps she must spell her name so often to customers because she's spelling it wrong in the first place? Her retort is, no, I don't. Everyone in the office can hear her too. They think it's funny. Uh, life from the past. She's driving me nutso.

Should I record her for a few hours and play it back? Unless I do, she won't believe she does it. By the end of the week, I can hardly speak to her. Please help me. I don't know that I've ever been in a situation where I have not been able to spell my own name correctly. No doubt. I think she's just playing with him. Yeah, I would assume so. Yeah, there's no way. There's probably no way. She's got to be bored to tears at this job. Okay, I've worked at a phone bank before.

Like, after the 30th phone call of the day, you might say some things that, you know, while they're true, they may be ridiculous. You know, like, uh, my name is Mike spelled M-I-L. You know what? It's no big deal. Engeldinger, how do you spell that? It's got four E's in the front of it. It's really none of your business, caller. So, what kind of advice do you hand out to this lady? You know what I'm saying? She needs to relax. I mean, it's none of her business, really. I mean, what you have is a serious worker sitting next to someone who is a little more of a

comic relief person, and that's how she gets through the day, and, uh, you know, hey, ask the move if you're that worried about it. You can move to a different desk, maybe, or, I mean, she's not violating any company policies, or else the company would be after her, I would assume. Right. I mean, surely they monitor the calls. Maybe not. I assume they do, but. Wait, are they implying that she's making the moaning noises on the phone? No, but she's spelling her name incorrectly all the time. They must not care. It's not your business. The company doesn't care.

I actually do quality for my job, and I can't imagine actually docking someone for spelling their name incorrectly. Well, I feel like you as a manager should feel bad that you've hired a person that can't spell their own name. How'd they get the application filled out? It's like, wait a minute, your driver's license says something completely different. You said your name is James? No, no, it's Bert. It's Bert spelled J-A-M-E-S. Okay, Bert James. They have a relationship problem, though. She just doesn't like the girl. Well, she doesn't like her job.

That's the problem. If you're bickering about something so slight, you need to focus on your own work, first of all. Obviously, you're not doing so if you were literally able to hear every time that your co-worker is spelling her name incorrectly. I can't imagine being in a job that I'm truly devoted to and making sure that I'm doing correctly and being able to full-on understand everything that is happening. You're saying she's a busybody. Yes. Right. Yeah. She needs to just pick up the shingles and put them on the roof. Stop talking about the shingles and stop talking about the moaning that she's saying, it depends

on the relationship that she has with this person. Obviously, it's not a very good one. If it were a good one, I would say, just say, stop. It's becoming uncomfortable. But since it's not, if it is becoming so uncomfortable with her that she feels it might be a sexual harassment thing. No, here's the deal. You have an HR for a reason. That's all I'm saying. She's over-sexualizing noises. It's probably just a regular noise. And maybe she thinks it's a dirty noise, but it's not. It's just a regular noise.

I'm afraid I would just go, hey, man, are you all right? You sound like you're dying over there. Here's some roll aids. Actually, I'm speaking from personal experience. This happens sometimes. And I'm being honest when I say that. Some people actually do get extremely inappropriate at the job. That's how they're dealing with getting the day over with? I don't know if I would go as far as, I don't know how she described it. But I've never considered passing the time making weird noises. And I think 98% of the population. It's two o'clock. I can't really tell.

I think 98% of the populace would not do this. But I think that there's a chance that someone is so bored that they're doing this. She's trying to get a laugh. Right, exactly. Secular says, although your co-worker may seem to spell her name wrong to you, there are variations on the spelling of many names. Oh, man. Jeannie and Jean. Sherry and Sherry. Brian and Brian. Stephen and Stephen. The spelling of someone's name is usually determined by one's parents. So lighten up.

I don't think that's the point at all. I think secular is missing. I'll agree with the lighten up part. Your co-worker may be unaware that she makes these sounds. Instead of criticizing her, perhaps you should mention this to her. I don't think you need to make any recordings. If the noise is distracting others in the office, a group of you should approach a supervisor about it. Like a gang. Or an uproar. An excellent way to get things done. You know, here's the thing. When did people get so scared of talking to another person? Start flipping over desks.

I can't go up as one guy and say, look, man, she's making weird noises. You just want to look into it. I got to get eight guys to come with me like, we're fed up with the noise. Honestly. Like a bunch of children, man. Seriously. It's embarrassing. It says, if not, I'd recommend getting earphones. Now, see, that's probably a big slap in the face. I would open the package loud, get them out, roll them up, and go, check this out. In they go. You're too loud to me. I don't know.

This seems like they can all be solved by simple conversation. Headphones can make a very public and very straightforward announcement to someone, by the way. Okay. Dear Live from the Path. Last one. Can a man be too good to a woman? I dated this fantastic lady for four years. We made a commitment to be true to each other. She broke up with me. Her reason? She said, I treated her too well. We were good to each other. We never had a disagreement.

We went on several trips together. I love her so much. How could a person be too good to the one that he loves? Did she cackle or anything afterward? My guess, this sounds like it was written by a 14-year-old boy. We went on trips together. I love her so much. We never had a disagreement. We held hands on the bus to school once. Here's the truth of it. If you want to put your relationship on some type of scale, if the words, we never have a disagreement come out of your mouth, I believe you probably don't love your spouse enough to fight with her.

Yep. Friend, enemy. We talked about this earlier, right? There's no way if two people in an intimate relationship are not going to disagree. It's just going to happen. Now, there's good ways to argue and there's bad ways to argue, but it's going to happen. If you don't argue with your spouse, I submit that you have an intimacy problem because you should be. At some point, you're going to have to disagree with something. So either you're just not talking to each other, or you could care less what the other one thinks. It's like the mailman. If the mailman comes to your house and he's rude and unsightly and you're like, I don't

care. It's the mailman. We're not going to talk about it, right? If you have that same relationship with your spouse, that's a C or a D minus to you. Bummer. That's not a good marriage. Ben. Yeah, I'm in agreement. Hold on. Hold on. We don't have enough context to know whether there's something wrong with her or something wrong with him. Right.

Right. Like, in some ways, in some ways, it's obviously either lying or really, really deceived here. You're too good to me. Yeah. Let's split. Yeah. That's obviously not a reasonable position. It's not you. It's me. Yeah. Well, it doesn't even sound like she said that. She said, the reason we're breaking up is because you were too good to me. She likes the bad boys.

I've actually had a friend. We'll call him Dan. We'll call him Dan. He's wearing a purple sweater. Who is like the nicest guy I've ever known in my life. I mean, just absolutely bend over backwards, cotton candy, sweet. And twice he's had a wife leave him in pretty horrific circumstances. And as an outsider, I look at it and go, what? He's like the nicest guy in the world. And I'm like, maybe you can be too nice. I don't know. Like you say, you almost need a little friction. You need not friction for the sake of friction, but it's honesty.

You know, if you're too afraid to say, hey, you know, I disagree with you here or have a conversation. If you're a bend over backwards guy, like that's not a bad thing to attempt to get along with people. But like if you're a bend over backwards guy or gal in a marriage, then the person essentially just married themselves. Yeah. And I don't know that's what he was. I don't want to say that. I'm just saying, you know, generally speaking, you know, right. The people when you're looking to get married, you're looking to you're looking to compliment each other and you're looking to have a union before God that basically it's looking to it's a foreshadow of Christ and his bride, the church. Right. And so they're not the same guy. You know, the church fails left and right and Jesus saves them back. And Jesus and the church are not the same entity. They're two different things that they use in conjunction to get something done.

And so like two people, if there's two people in a relationship and one of them always agrees with the other one, that's not really a relationship. That's the same thing goes by the wayside when you get those machismo dudes that that read Ephesians and say, I'm head of the household. This goes the way I say it's going to go. You're not really running a marriage. You're running a one man dictatorship. That's not a marriage either. Ephesians five. Where's my roost? Ephesians five. You know, someone quoted me a Bible verse today that didn't reference anything. And I was really irritated by it. They said something to me. And they said, you should read this and blah, blah, blah.

And gave me the verse, you know, and I looked it up. I thought, well, this will be poignant. It had nothing to do with anything that I said. So I felt like it was pretty akin to my act seven diatribe that I always run. If I don't know what else to say, I just go act seven. Like it was my life verse, you know. Should we get secular's advice? Yeah, yeah, let's go. Okay, secular's advice says, if a woman is used to abusive relationships, she may find being treated well not exciting enough. Dan called it with the bad boy. This usually happens when the person confuses love with feelings of anxiety and pain. Others can't resist a challenge and find stress-free relationships boring. I'm sorry you're hurting, but please understand that you may have dodged a bullet.

Once you accept it, you can move on. And I'll come with you to the game on Friday night if you'll send me a letter. Thank you, Larry. Hmm. I mean, he's got to be missing somewhere else, right? Like maybe he is overly nice, but it's basically not the full aspects of the relationship. Like you could be nice and fulfilling in your relationship, but if you're focused on being nice only, you're just… Who wants an entire diet of cotton candy? Yeah, right. Sometimes you need a little, you know, broccoli or something. You can't serve a person and Jesus Christ at the same time. So your kindness, I would almost interpret it as, is that you may have idolized a person to the point where if not every whim they have is genius. You know what I'm saying?

And so like there just, there has to be some kind of friction there. Otherwise, I just feel like you're not close to him. Yeah. All right. Hey, you're listening to Life on the Path. Here's the deal. Once a week, we try to give you what I call Pope-style advice. And the basic premise here is that let's say 10,000 people are standing outside your balcony and or first floor ranch. And they said, look, we're not going to move on through the week until I get some sort of advice from you. And I think everyone probably has this, things that they've learned in their life, something that happened to you that week that would be useful to share to everybody. Yeah. So anyway, that's the basic premise of Pope-style advice. And I'm up this week.

And mine's directly tied to a Bible verse. It was something that I was reading that was related to kids. But it really hit me, I think, in my whole life. And it's based upon Matthew 5, 37. It's when Jesus is saying, let what you say be simply yes or no. And boy, I feel like in our communications, we're just way more complicated than that. And generally mine, when I fail at this, it's generally out of good intention. I like to help people. I have a lot of ways that I can. And so if someone says, hey, can you help me out? I like to say, yeah, yeah, no, I'd love to do that. Yeah, yeah, I'd like to take a look at that for you. Or, yeah, I'm willing to do this.

And I can get to it this week. You know, those things ultimately end up not being true. I will overextend myself saying that I can help somebody in like five different ways, five different people. And ultimately, if I thought about it at all, I'd realize that I can't do that. And I like to think of it not as a lie because I had good intentions. I do want to help. But if I'm being honest, I'm not going to. It's not going to happen. But I had a guy that's in one of our ministries and he handed me a, he had like a pamphlet that he's creating. He goes, hey, okay, get this done. We take a look. I said, yeah, send it over, man. I'll look at it today.

I looked at it a week later. And then I got it back to him. And I was like slammed busy that week. But the thing was is I said, I'd look at it that day and I'd get it back to you. And I didn't do that. And to me, that falls under the let your yes be yes, let your no be no category. Like if I say I'm going to do something, like do it. And sometimes I ride the wave of good intention and say, yeah, but I said yes because I really do want to help. And I have the intention to do it. But if I really had thought about my circumstances, I would have known better and not been able to say that I would. And it just leads to a lot of things that just aren't true. And they're not necessarily wrong on the heart of it, but they're also not accurate. And I don't know.

I was reading this. It had to do with parenting. It's the same premise like when you're looking at your kids and you tell your kid no. And then they do it again. And you're like, no, no, I said no. Well, that means your first no wasn't right. Right? Your first no wasn't a no. It was like a half warning no until you get to like the fifth time. And then, okay, now this is the firm no. And I thought, you know, my first no is not really no if I'm not going to act like it was a no to begin with. And so anyway, it just made me think about how much of our conversations are fluff or buffer or things that just ultimately aren't true. They're shallow ways of talking to people.

And if you're going to say you're going to do something, do it. If you can't do it or don't think you can, don't say yes. Now, it's not like you can't say that you're going to do something and then circumstances change. And then, like in my case with the pamphlet thing, I should have called the guy the next day and said, look, I meant to do this last night. I'm sorry I didn't get to it. I'll have it done here and then done it like that. But I intentionally didn't call the guy. I did not call the guy and just showed up with it Sunday. That's dishonest. It's a dishonest way to deal with people. Yeah, and I think I agree with you 100%. I think a lot of people read that verse and go, look, I need to make sure that if I say I'm going to do something, I'm going to do it. But they don't think on the reverse side is I need to stop agreeing to doing so many things or look at it in perspective.

I want to be an honest man. Well, some of that honesty is not opening your mouth in the first place. Maybe you should just be quiet. Say, look, I hope things go well for you. I'm sorry I can't help. And that's hard because people who are bent that way on their personality, they like to help people. And when they can't, they overextend themselves. And basically it's a wash. So anyway, I think the verse in itself is pretty clear, right? Just say what you mean. But that also goes for whether you had a good, even if your intentions are good, don't say things that just aren't going to happen. Just be honest with yourself before you talk. Talk slow.

Don't just say something because you need to make a response. Like, think about what you say, mean what you say, be clear about it, and be intentional about how you talk. Because we have a culture that has a lot of stuff going on. We're very busy people. And we have a lot of words that come out of our mouths. And, you know, some of them are just plain dishonest whether we intend them to be or not. So that's my Pope-style advice. 10,000 people, mind your words. Make sure what's coming out of your mouth is honest, that your commitments are actually commitments. And that when you say you're going to do something, that you're going to do it. And don't tell people that you're going to do it if you ain't. Thanks for listening to Life from the Path. We catch you every week here at lifefromthepath.org at 10 o'clock p.m. on Mondays or Saturday nights at 10 o'clock on 99.3 KTIA.

Make sure to check out the website. Catch other clips from the show from artists. And join us next week for Bethany Joy Johnson. You've been listening to Life from the Path, brought to you by Valley Services.