These people are confused. Just need some loved ones. Wrong version. Well, I love God. Why don't we you? We call it straight Jesus. Live from the Pathway Studios in Johnston proper. You are live from the Path. And you're listening to live from the Path. We're coming to you for the Pathway Studios here in Johnston proper. Maybe. As far as you know. Yeah. It could be a lie. The Internet does what it wants. We could be in a a beautiful the San Fernando Valley. So I had an argument with the children yesterday Yep. That I implied that by naming something like New Jersey or New York, you're implying that the old York was not good enough, and you have to be an improvement. No. No. People often did that to honor where they were from. No. This is new from York. This is the New York. It's also folks who have high hopes. In Missouri, there's a town called New London, and I think they just had really, really great hopes for what this town That it might've been a swing and a miss. They have a gas station. I'm not mad

at new England, New London. Just high hopes. There's a guy that guy that goes to school called the tube. Oh, man. His his wife really must've had a rough go. Like the guy who founds the town and he could have called it like Derricksville or Johnston Town or something like that. Instead he goes, this is the new London. Bold. Mind the gap. Either she had to really believe in him or lived a really, really crappy life in the same house. Alright. Here's what we got going on the show this evening. I

we we looked for Hold on. You have to introduce our guest. Okay. Sorry. Greg Hudson is here. Now he's been on the show before. You've met Greg. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Mike, you've met him. I met him. Yeah. So so so two things. One, Greg Hudson is on the show. Thanks for coming in, Greg. I'm excited, especially, like, with the topics we have tonight, I feel like, he's the man to have. I I I definitely agree. Second, the question for the night, and you don't have to answer this. If you're on the audio, just the podcast only. Actually, I'm good if you wanna weigh in. But the question is whether Mike is a vest man. Oh. Because he's wearing a vest. He came in here with a vest on. First thing I noticed. Yeah. But it's not like a it's not like a a Patagonia vest No. For for you west siders. No. This is like REI situation. Yeah. This this this looks like he jumped a rookie cow cow farmer. Yeah. Yeah. Like a Wrangler or maybe a guy that works on trains. Yeah. But, like, if he only looked on one train or handed a guy tools who worked on a train or who, like, took pictures of the cows while someone else inoculated them. That's that's the state of this place. I'm a tell you I'm a tell you two things right off the bat. One, this is my initial gambit into the vest world. I keep seeing a lot of people with vests, and I think I could pull off a vest. So I told my wife, and she got me this lovely vest used

from the old Whale Thrift Shop in Knoxville Uh-huh. Uh-huh. And to to to foray into it and give it a shot. Okay. And I'm gonna tell you the second thing, Ben, and this is where you can shut up for a minute. Uh-huh. Everybody loves this vest. Who? It commends nothing but respect from an actual cowhand. I'm a tell you a story. I walked into I walked into the Casey's in this vest. I went and got myself a medium soda in this vest. Yeah. I walked up to the counter with said medium soda, and I said, hey, man. How's it going? He goes, is that all you're getting, friend? And I said, yep. He goes, we'll see you later. And I went and I left. No. How much did I pay for that soda, Ben? Yeah. You thefted it. I paid in respect. No. Vastoral respect? Your baptism into that vest is one of theft,

degradation. They love. Everyone loves this vest. Wow. My wife says it's smoking hot, and my other brother seems to think it looks pretty nice on me. No. In fact, he said after I said, hey, man. Be honest with me. What do you think of this vest? And his eyes got real big. He looked at me and said, I've also recently considered becoming a vest man. Okay. We high fived. Yeah. Okay. The guy that Casey's looks at the at you coming up and goes, this looks like a man of low moral character. And if I don't give him this for free, he might burn a cigarette onto my arm. No way. He gave me the peace sign. That's how you knew it was legit. That wasn't say the peace sign. Yeah. He didn't say that at all. No. Came right up. He was begging for peace. Anyway He thought you you intended to bring ruckus. All I hear right now is the is it's the ramblings of a sad, pathetic nonvestware. That's what I hear right I like it, Mike. Thanks, Ray Hudson. Bible says, Lord makes me a make me a vestal in God's. Yeah. Vestal. Hey. That's that's plural vests, unless you're wearing two. Hey.

Actually, just before we roll into the topics. Yeah. Did like, we made, like, a, like, a our on our knees begging plea for people to submit things to the ten year. Did you have any submissions? Yes. No kidding. No. Bullet. Okay. No. I thought of a number of characters I might betray on the way here. But so far, no one no one has submitted any indication that life for the path in in preparation for the five hundredth episode, which is about two and a half months away. So far, no one has contributed anything to say life in the past has positively impacted me in the following And we made, I mean, a complete fool of ourselves. We debate begging people. Just tell us that it's made any impact in your life at all, and no one has submitted it. I debased myself. I wore a vest, and that's that's where we left it. Say there's still time. You can hit up on the complaint line (515) 517-0085.

Call or text. If you've got anything to share, we're gonna try to put together some, self glorifying media in honor of our, hanging around for 500 episodes. And if you wanna be a part of that, even if it's for your own vanity, just submit that to the Life in the Path complaint line. Or if you've got some something else, like you, took a selfie video or something like that and you wanna send it to us, you can do the message function there on the Facebook if you like the Facebook page, or, you can say [email protected], and we'd love to hear whatever you got. It's it's a great investment Mhmm. In the show. Yeah. Gotta stop. 500 episodes is nothing to shake his dick at. I mean, gosh, me and some buddies did a podcast. We made it 18 episodes. Yeah. And I'm not gonna I'm not gonna share what that podcast is because I'm a big believer in not promoting another piece of work while you're on a current piece of work. So I'm not gonna do that. Wait minute. Is but is it still live? Like, you might do so Oh, yeah. You could you could find a pod catcher and find that podcast. I'll let you know after the show is done. Okay. We'll talk about the name of that thing. Very good. It's called the TV yearbook. Oh, Hey, this is people go on to shows for this. So we won't over kick the puppy, but like, if you go on there, Greg and some friends, they they go back through kind of old TV shows. We do. I would say, like, childhood TV shows. Watch the best and the worst episodes, and we evaluate them. Yep. Yep. Of certain TV shows. How do you know the best and the worst before the show starts? Oh, we we go to the Internet and find out what they have to say because the Internet has to be trusted. Okay. This is what leads us to our first topic of discussion. It does. That's what we call a segue in the in the game. So if we so so if I was Ben, what's tell me the scuttlebutt on this thing. Okay. It's and some of this is in my mind, but I think probably in others' minds. It's the it's the proliferation

of of AI. And and I saw and I want you to be careful. You you people who the conspiracy theorists. Like, I I we're talking about what I think are practical implications on maybe unintended consequences. Yes. That's okay. That's what I want. Not blatant nefariousness, although I'm sure it exists, but, like, just being thoughtful. And so here's here's what I saw. Saw three examples of this over the last, I don't know, seven to ten days that hit me. The the first one was the, if you go, if you search for chat GBT,

or I think it's a chatai.org, the, the, the basically it's a public launch or release of a conversational, chat artificial intelligence. And it's it's core thing is intending to solve kind of conversational questions where you might go to Google and just type in three words that you think are relevant and it comes back and finds you kind of a curated, set of answers, or here's what we think you're looking for

this. You can do something like, I've I said, hey, how can this chat functionality, through AI be used to benefit an insurance company? And it wrote me like a five to six paragraph article to describe it. Wow. And it was pretty darn good. Like, I'd kinda thought about the question I looked through and like it's competent. I saw another example of some pastors who are like, hey, can you, produce me an expositional sermon that ties together the sermon on the mount,

the death of Jesus, and, his his the birth, the narrative from Luke four. And it spit out like a two page sermon and, again, pretty darn good. Like, I didn't see anything to to argue with in this sermon that it produced the AI. The AI was scriptural. It was, it did a, it did a really good job. And like, it was con it wasn't clunky. It was conversational. Like someone totally could have written it. And so there's a, there's a lot of thought on like, Hey man, it's the creation of content to say, Hey, what are the, what are the 10 mistakes that every, college freshman makes? And maybe this thing can come up with it, you just published it on your blog. And you're like, look, look. Because it's organic. Right? It's not looking for an article that already exists. That's right. That's right. Now, I mean, it's it's using the way AI works is you you you feed it a bunch of stuff. It's it's artificial intelligence, meaning it uses existing information, text, web pages, pictures, all kinds of things. It ingests them. It gets like a view or a framework of a world, and then it should be able then to react to things, even creating things out of whole cloth based upon what it knows already and the information you already provided it, which differs from Google. Like if you Google something, it's simply curating. It's going to go find something that already exists and go. We think this helps with what what you were after. This can create something out of whole cloth. Do you have to have, like, an account to interact with this thing? For for this, if you go again, I think it's chatai.org

because I tried it. You just have to give it an email address. They're trying to make sure that you're not, there's not bots hitting it. So there's, like, some level of validation to make sure you're a person. Now hold on. Listen to this Mysterio world. What if a bunch of bots asked the AI a bunch of questions? Okay. Is is this where we're going? Because now I'm getting freaked out. Okay. So Getting freaked out. Yes. So kind of. Let me give you the two other examples, and then I wanna talk to you about the things that were in like, seemed like red lights, flashing orange. Mike, don't worry. Bots can't pick which one has the crosswalk in it. So That's true. I think they're not gonna make I've outguttering them for years. Where where are the stoplights? I don't know. Anyway, go ahead. Okay. So the second was image generation. And so there's a there's a pretty popular app called LENSA, l e n s a, and you they use artificial intelligence to kinda generate

images that are like, they're pretty cool looking. There's a particular art art thing to them. And this comes on the heels of a different AI image generator that was going around for, a couple months ago where, like, you could just describe something in text and it would create it. So you could say a, a eight foot tall man wearing an Abraham Lincoln hat riding on a unicorn, crossing Abbey Road in the style of MC Escher.

And, like, it could do it. It could do it. Now it said there's things that it didn't do very well. Like, it it tended to get people, like, six fingers. But, like, generally speaking, it did a really good job of of producing this thing that you described. As a matter of fact, there's a scuttle but over the last few days, because some guy just published a children's book using completely AI generated images for his book. And so, so, but there's also, there's a real risk in this lens app because like you, you basically give it 20 pictures of your own and what they were finding at least at its earliest iterations is it tended to create images that at some point like had some offensive to it like that were offensive. So like women tended to be sexualized. Even if only the only thing you provided, it was like children's pictures, like pictures of you as a kid or something like that.

There's also like cultural stuff where like, I read an article from an Asian lady and she said, basically, you know, 20% of the images came back and like her breast size was double. And a few of them, she was like, they created a naked image of her. And so the interesting part then is you think it's doing that because something about what they're reading in the pictures you provided, they've you then kinda use all the pictures that were fed into it, or it was trained on, which is like all kinds of stuff from all over the internet. And it says, we think this is what you're after and it creates them. And so like scary, scary invasion of privacy, deep fakes of creating pictures of people that like for events that never existed. So third example, saw there was a, there's a website where you can do, it's like an AI rift maker. And so you can go on there and create, like, tell it to create. I I this is what I tried. I said, I give me a, create a blues riff in e minor,

that's funky high, with strong bass and guitar, and it created one. And and, again, this isn't like it went and found one in the archives of all the music that exists somewhere. It created something brand new that didn't otherwise previously exist. And so what got like, this is all pretty cool. It's really, really cool to to be able to, like, with basic inputs, see, like, things being created in front of you. But a couple things, and we're gonna focus on the second one. The first one is is, like, there's all kinds of interesting implications about, like, who what are you replacing from a human perspective? I can generate articles

like journalists and information on the Internet, And it's being created and sourced from a place that already exists. Like that's copywriter jobs. These are illustrator jobs, like, and even our notion of what it is to create art, does it have, does a human have to do it? A guy submitted an AI created art into a state fair and he won. And a bunch of the people were throwing a fit about it because he probably just showed up and said, like, like I said, the a blinking on a, on a, on a unicorn. And so did he share that after he won? Yeah. Yeah. He said You're you're just encouraging people to lie about it. Yes. They're like, I produced this. Yeah. Well Yeah. I don't think so. Well and, like, is it I mean, can can, like, real art people spot the difference between an AI generated thing or a a curated thing? It depends on what it is. Like, I I'd like it's a it's an immature like, it's maturing, the AI, which is always true for AI, but, like, I've actually looked at it even for my day to day job. I have some exposure to how you think about AI. AI is only good as as the things you put into it, and it's always maturing. The more it sees, the better it gets because you're you're continually providing context. But that but I think that's the language that starts getting in trouble. Like, when you say better. Oh, yeah. Like, the more that it sees, it depends on what you let it see. Right? Like, if you think of it like like people giving Rottweilers a bad name. Right? And they're like, there's not bad pit bulls. There's bad pit bull owners. Right? And so, like, AI seems to be like that. Right? Like, if you treat it away, like, it's still curated.

It's just curated on the input, not the output. Yes. So now think about and this is this is number two, and this is the thing that started kinda flashed in my mind is how easy it is to change or control or shift cultural narratives, norms, and facts.

If you can auto generate content that otherwise represents a particular view of the world. Because if you think about if these things were as good as what you're feeding into it, the, the guys who created the image program where you could type in the, the, the unicorn and the a Lincoln, they warned and the, or even the lens of guys like warned and said, we trained this thing based upon what was out on the internet, but like you guys have been on the internet. This is assess pool. It's full of some of the vilest stuff you've ever come across. And there's inherent, don't over index on the word and the heaviness of it, but there is inherent bias in it. The things that end up on the internet and the things that don't Most of my family pictures, for example, aren't on the Internet for everyone to to take in, but, like, violent events, news stories, sexual content, these are the things that proliferate the Internet. Memes.

Right? Jokes and other things that are based upon stereotypes or other things that we laugh at ourselves about when you take it into context. Think of all the pictures that were taken in the last year. Think of all the pictures taken in 2022, the number that were placed on the Internet that are normal, so to speak, and then the number that are abnormal. That's right. 99% of the pictures that were taken are pretty normal. That's imagine. But those aren't the pictures that are making it on a Facebook. Oh, a small percentage, a sliver of them. That's right. But then if you're curate based on all the pictures in 2022, you get a really warped sense of what's normal. Exactly. Right. It's no good. Exactly. Right. So then you got two, you got two options. The first one is, is that you go, well, you have to, you let it run free. Basically it's going to spit out what it's going to spit out, which means that unchecked

you have, Google as an example, by popularity. Here's the most popular article. If you can, if if an AI, application has a particular sense for what it thinks cultural, the right answers are to things or what norms are. And then that content starts proliferating or duplicating itself very, very quickly and becomes popular simply by how, like, how many places it's referenced and used.

You can shift the cultural narrative very, very quickly, very quickly. And so, like and it's not a one year problem, but a ten year, you could completely shift how people think of things. It's a bit of like a ministry of information. Like, what am I thinking of from 1984? Right? Like, your ability to change. You don't actually have to change the thing that was said. You just have to overrepresent this thing as a reality. And then because everything else is an algorithm and a bot, now it's all just representing

like by volume. And the more that it contexts and uses that, the more likely it is to come up and it represents something as as being more true or more substantive than potentially what it actually is. Yeah. Okay. So there's a risk in it. Yep. Right? But the alternative, however, is to say, well, you can't just let it run free because it's got inherent biases in it. Someone has to curate it. And this is the exact problem that we're having with when you talk about social media, right? It's the things where Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and like all the, all the major social media platforms are trying to figure out what can, what do I show people? And what do I not, what do I suppress? What do I dot like? What's okay. What's culturally normal. This is what the, the, one of the easiest things is that like, ladies who are breastfeeding, but like often share things. Oh, look, it's cute. The baby's feeding. And like, it depends on the day and the algorithm. Sometimes it's obscene because there's a half a breast in there and sometimes it's cute and it gets to go through. But like who gets to make that cultural

norm question of what we, what can be shown and what can't be shown. And like the the the change in Twitter guard from from Jack Dorsey over to Elon Musk, like validated the exact problem, which is like, no one is actually gonna be able to in fact, we were talking about this with Facebook. Mike Mike's, I feel bad for Mark Zuckerberg. Yeah. Which is like, you're trying to play, like, say what is and what what is good and what is not good across, you know, 8,000,000,000 people over x number of countries.

Like, it's an impossible job. Did I tell you I wrote him a Facebook messenger? Like, I don't know, five years ago? I think you did say that. Okay. Yeah. And, like, got like, was getting he was getting railed. Now the hubris the hubris to think that you could do this, I think, means that you might not quite understand the problem. Right? But, like, at the end of the day, like, he was being, like, drug across the coals because of humanity's behavior. Not that his app was malfunctioning. Right? Like, it was basically, how could you allow this and not allow this? How could you allow this? Yeah. We should allow this. Right? And, like, that is so subjective between

social mores, the community you're in, the people that you're around. And, like, the thing that I'd sent him was is, like, as soon as the caveman the the figurative caveman figured out how to chip something into his wall, he was saying how much his neighbor sucked. You know what I'm saying? Like, like, as soon as he got an opportunity to say something for everybody to see, he did it, you know, immediately. And so, like, if I want to whatever I wanna do on faith now granted, I, like, I totally believe that, like, certain things are categorically obscene. If I go to see what my friends are doing and they're for for, like, example, their advertisements are showing me obscene things Yeah. Then that seems like, yeah, that's their problem. Right? But if, like, my friend is posting obscene things, that seems like my problem. Right? Like, why am I friends with a guy that puts obscene things that I don't wanna see? And and my level of obscenity is probably different than other people's level of obscenity. And so, like, if you if you wanna flood, say, my Facebook page with half naked ladies, me and you aren't gonna be friends no more. Right? And that's just the deal. But that's not that's not Mark's problem. You know? And that's not that's not Elon Musk's problem. That's the guy's problem, and I don't have to be friends with that dude. Right? And so this is where it's like the whole thing seems super difficult because if you try to change that, hand that responsibility

over to AI in any capacity, there's still a guy marking, like, demarking, like saying this is this is this is good. This is this is no good. And then and if the thing gets to this is now listen. The strong possibility. The thing starts looking at it and the AI goes, well, I don't agree with what you said is good. It is no good. I'm gonna move the flag myself a little bit over to the right. And then you say, it can't do this. Here's the thing. One line of code that you missed gives it the the opportunity to reassess its own boundaries. Uh-huh. Right? It's not like it's it's literally thinking. But, like, when we when we put up boundaries, I don't know how many y'all have, like, goats, sheep, cattle. Right? Like, every farmer will tell you, you put up a fence and you go, they will never get through this impenetrable force I've set up. And what will you find two weeks later on the other side of your brand new fence? A cow standing there going, how did you get out? And you walk the whole fence line and you reassess everything and everything's plugged in and working and you go, what happened? I don't know.

And so, like, that's AI. Right? Like, AI to me, that's what it is. It's like even if you set it up boundaries and inherent say, like, this is what I want you to know. Like, it's there you'll you'll not think of everything that it can possibly do. It's a leak in a pool. You know? Well, because AI AI can think much quicker than you can. Absolutely. And it will think of things that you have never thought of. That's right. It will find a way outside of the fence, which means either Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk need to figure out a way to contain it, which is uncontainable. Yeah. Correct. Or the government needs to find a way, which is impossible. That's right. Or we let AIA just do what it wants, which also has wild concerns. And we're not trying to go down the road of conspiracies. No. But no. Understanding that there's some concern here. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And but and it's it's like logical concern. Like like, I'll take it back out of the clouds. Right? And, like, that wasn't meant to be, like, a conspiracy based I didn't take it. But it's just the truth. Right? Like, I I if even if you have a a rudimentary understanding of how to, like, program an Excel spreadsheet, You'll type the exact thing in that you want to happen, and then you'll stare at it and go, it didn't do it at all. What happened? Yeah. You put an apostrophe that didn't belong there. You put a space that you shouldn't have. Right? Like, just a small thing. And, like, what like, the people that write in these quotes, all they do, clickety clackety all day. Nothing but blah blah blah. How how broken is my English that I use every day? And I've been running it for forty years. I still can't spit out a sentence that I want with clarity Right. And say, let's go. Actually, so that's interesting is it starts all kinds of interesting questions about things that are

subjective and probably rightfully so as a humanity that AI could start drawing lines on. Like, should I watch the output of that chat dot ai and see whether it uses an Oxford comma or not? You know what saying? Go. This is the new this is what we're doing. This is the norm. And it's not because we decided, like because even even someone like the Associated Press can go, yeah, man. Use it. And we're still we're like, nah. I don't think I'm gonna use it. And it still has the tendency to be based on a popularity contest. Like, what what what more people who use the Internet in a certain fashion think.

Right? So, like, if the input is like and this is this is people's complaints about Facebook, like or or Twitter or whatever. It's like you go on it, and you're like, it's being taken over by the extremes. I would like to own a gun, but I certainly don't wanna go shooting up people. And I don't wanna stockpile 18,000,000 rounds, and I don't wanna have a canteen basement. Right. Right? Like, I just want to have, say, a weapon, but there's no place for me, like, on social media with that attire. It's either doomsday, don't touch my guns or I'll shoot you with them, or don't ever touch a gun. They're horrible, and they kill all kinds of people. Right? You know what I'm saying? Yep. If AI is if AI is taking in just the worst of us Yeah. Or AI is just taking in the most extreme of us or if AI is just taking in the most polarized because all the middle of the road people aren't saying anything. Stay out of it. Because because why would I wanna get involved in this? That's right. That's gonna bring some bias. That's gonna bring an AI perspective that's a little warped based on the reality of normalcy in American or true worldwide life. Because, like, the middle of the road people are actually going to the Internet mostly for its output. They don't care about providing it input because they don't wanna be they feel like it's part of a wheel. Right? Like, you're trying to you're you're trying to stereotype me just by having input. Right? It amazes me actually that Ben does Google reviews. I'm completely taken aback by this. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I do. And, like, I would never even consider How many Google reviews do you do? I've got quite a few. I'm of the top 10%, coffee shop reviewers in The United States. Have you Google reviewed more than 50 things in your life, Ben Foust? Yeah. What? Yeah. Right. Drink that in, Hudson. Right? I didn't see that coming. Yeah. So so, anyway, I would go look at a Google review, but if they say, what do you think of the place? I'm like, that's none your business. Wait. With stars or with comments? Oh, very I very rarely with comments. Probably probably 10 comments. Ask him what very rarely means. I bet that means he's kept it to two paragraphs. No. Half time. Every establishment gets two paragraphs. The other ones get seven. No. No. Do you ever input that in? Hey. What do I think is Scooter's coffee here? Then enter. And then a paragraph spits out. Just put that in. That's a great. That's not really you, Ben. So think about it. Like if you, as you guys were talking about kind of the, the, the inputs, you're talking about,

a censored Chinese population and a very spotty internet access Africa. So so, again, like, the the the chat the chat AI, is only feed on what you can put in there. I tell you who's really awesome at kicking out, propaganda, freaking Russia. Like, those guys are on it all the time kicking out stuff. Mhmm. And so it's just, I say all that to say it is,

we are already in a time where truth is discussed as if it's subjective. The reality of it being subjective starts to, or a popularity contest, but, like like, not being

tangibly true, but but the whims of opinion shift what we represent as true. Like the ease of doing that in broad ways and in ways unless you're super careful that you can easily succumb to, like, those days are upon us. It's the same risk that, like, what did they they just released a temple of do or a, Indiana Jones movie, and they de aged Harrison Ford. Did you guys see that? No. Haven't seen the previews for it, but I hear it's it's really well done, but also really creepy. Right. Because, like, the guy should be 80. And he said he looks like he's 48, and you're and you're like and so we can't if you can't trust what you see and you can't trust what you're reading because you don't know where it came from, which is true already. But by volume, you could go, look, man. 80% of people, like, this is the top result. This is probably right.

I just the the ease of which things can shift and change a narrative will create interesting things if you're a person who believes things that are becoming harder and harder to believe in a society. And so this is where it comes back to how I think about, like, how we talk about things of faith. And, like, I could even see, you know, as you're talking about the notion of miracles, it wouldn't be a surprise to me to find, you know, five years from now where we're in places now where we're we're talking about it, like we're talking about the Egyptian God raw or something. Right? They're like, oh, it's something that people believe, but was widely not believed.

Okay. It doesn't mean it's they make it not true, but our ability to to then sort out what is true by its representation on the internet. Like you start losing Snopes is gonna go into overtime. Like they go overdrive here. Like, it's just something to have in the back of your mind, I suppose. And to just be aware of, I don't know. It's not all bad, but, like, I it just it it it means here's here's actually at the run up what it means is that the things where I we were always been concerned of which we think shallow relationships live and which the inability to have cough like dinner table conversations with people have been very difficult in our Internet age. It makes the local disciple making faithful living out of the trueness of of Yahweh

and the the faithfulness and mercy of Jesus Christ and the reality of that in in your life to be all the more evident on its local billboard, which is you as the landscape in that is going to be more and more shifty. Yeah. Shifting is probably maybe even the better word to say it. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Boy, it's it it couldn't be more true. Right? Because, like, we've always said that, like, the best way for people to understand and know who Christ is is, like, by how we love them. Right? And there's a certain thing that knowledge can't replace. Right? You can have a knowledge of all kinds of things, but, like, you can't replace how the presence of the holy spirit,

like, makes you feel. Right? And, like, empowers you in a way and, like, gives you a peace that, like, you've tried to you've tried to attain with every search on the Internet, even even in our modern day without AI involved. Right? People will scroll down 10 pages of Google until they find the answer they want and go, finally, I found a person that's just like me. Now we're good to go. Shallow community. I don't know them. They don't know me. Blank works on a page, and we're gonna go, I'm gonna define myself by what this guy agrees to. And and some of this is once again is one of the things we were talking about before the show is, like, when we're trying to find out the root cause of why it seems to be an epidemic of anxiety and depression and people, like, searching and searching and searching to not only find peace, and then they give up on it and then just say, I don't really ask actually have to find peace. I just wanna name the thing that's wrong with me, and then it will be better. Mhmm. Mhmm. Then they and then they they steam forward and go, at least I can put a name on this thing, and then I can find a way to like, the way that the world's going to address this. And then it takes them another ten years to go, actually, if I'm being honest with myself, that didn't help at all. I still feel crappy and not full of peace. And I don't know my creator, and I just feel a mess, and I don't know what I'm doing here. Right? And, like, the the the progression of AI based on the polarization of the way the Internet works right now, there's no way that that gets any better in that front. Yeah. But it should all the more

cause light to be very obvious. It does. And I would also say that for a person that you're talking about right there who is looking for truth, who is looking for meaning, who is looking for just kind of a way out of this mess they're in, whatever it is. If they're stressed, if they're anxious, if they're even suicidal here, and they go on the Internet looking for some options and there are real people who've written stuff. There's AI that's written stuff and who even knows what's true or not. They go looking for this truth, but the truth and the and the truth is ever shifting. Yes. Yes. Because there is no truth when you have AI doing what it's doing right now. And when you have people doing what they're doing right now. And when you have a warped reality, which is the foundation on which AI is doing this work. It's it's it's changing the meaning of truth. Ben, you mentioned earlier, like when you control the truth, when you can control the methods in which truth is revealed,

it's a real problem in a lot of different ways. And again, we're trying not to go down to a conspiracy. It's just the nature of this thing called the Internet where you can find whatever truth you want on page 10 of the Google. You can and when you are lost in this world, and I mean this in a very very deep and meaningful way. When you were lost in this world online searching for something, Something that you can't even find because the truth online is ever shifting because of the nature of the thing itself that is the Internet. Yep. Right. And that's why the rock becomes incredibly important. The rock that is. And it's and it and it stands out. Yep. Right? Like, the fact that like, I and and people will call it archaic. They're like like, you're you're you're claiming to be worshiping a god that's, like, x thousands years old and, like, none of his attitudes seem to change with the times. I'm like, how refreshing is that? Like, it's it if it was true when he said it and it's still true now, doesn't that lend something to credibility? Yeah. Right? And but that now on the other hand, this is where it comes out of the conspiracy clouds. Right? Because, like, the difference between a

a conspiracy is like that there's a bunch of mustache twisters behind this whole thing, like, moving it and targeting it. And there's I think we can agree there's probably some. Yeah. But, like, I'd say 94 95% is just flat out ineptness. Like, people are are inherently believe themselves to be smarter than they are or capable of handling something better than they are. And then once again, your cows get out. We Right? Or or, like, I mean, just, like, we there are limits to our human wisdom. Fifty years ago, an anxious pregnant mother would have been recommended to smoke. Hey. Calm your nerves down a little bit. Here's a here's a couple of new ports. Put on this. Put on this vest. Look cool. Right? No one's ever said that.

What happened, Hudson? We're on the same side. It's it's so, like and I I I seem to recall. I have to go back and and and look for the there was a show where we kinda talked about this where, like, there were just core things that, you know, like, we believed this is society, and then, like, we learned more. And then we go, you know what? We should stop that. Actually, I'm a little bit worried about my I need to change out the floor in my kitchen. And I was I had to take off a couple layers, but I had to leave the bottom layer because I had to test it. And the tile is made of asbestos, and so was the so was the glue that's underneath it. And so, like, I can't put there's a hardwood floor underneath it. Looks nice, but I'm not gonna stir it up. But, like, I went over to, to a family member's house for, for Christmas, and sure enough, they've got the same freaking there's this asbestos tile in their house. Right? Because there was a time in which we go whiz bang, man. This is a great material. Holds up, sturdy, put it everywhere. Yeah. And then I think I was about to put luxury vinyl in my place. Yeah. And I thought, well, it's gonna be ten years. And we'll be like, well, crap, man. You shouldn't spray foam your house, and you shouldn't put LVT in your on your floors. But we all thought it was a really good idea. Like, that seems

that's not crazy. That's, like, super likely because we got jazzed about it. Yeah. It's I mean, it's and and and that's the thing. It's like, wisdom is is taking in things and also calculating like, taking in all past failures and successes too. Right? Wisdom is looking at the whole picture in a big macro view. Right? And so anybody that says whatever we think right now is dead nuts on. Right? The technology we think is gonna finally save us, the the the whatever way of thinking, the way we're gonna govern, the the the way that we should handle voting, whatever. Like, take any scenario and go, we've got it licked. Like, the only thing that I can point in my entire life that I know is unchanging and the same is God's, like, immeasurable love for me and, like, and his scriptures that have proven true and, like, his presence in my life. Everything else, up for debate. Like, it just feels like you cannot get a handle on it. As soon as you fix your car, it breaks down again. In some way, you had no idea how it was gonna happen. And we learned this in bible songs in elementary school, like, foolish man built his house upon the sand. You know? I'm singing the song, and the wise man built his house upon the rock. I mean, this is stuff that if is you are if you grow up in the church, if you grew up churched at all, you probably know that song, at least in the Protestant church. It's very, very popular kids' song. Right? And of course, it's based on what Jesus said. But my gosh, I I can't even imagine not having a grounded reality not a grounded reality, a grounded, like, foundation in something. Right. In this case, God being that fantastic foundation, but also

just folks who are wandering around with an ever shifting like center of gravity. Yeah. How discombobulating, how disconcerting, and and no wonder so many folks are just just looking. Yeah. Yeah. Looking for something. And I think that's the truth about what we're saying about the input to AI. Mhmm. It's 95% people roaming around in the sand. There is 5% that think that think they're inventing better sand. Yeah. But at the end of the day, still sand. Right? That's the problem. The problem is it is still sand. Silicon micro pellets. That's right. It's gonna be great. It doesn't matter what which way you've engineered it, which new polymer you found, it's still sand. Yeah. And it still moves, and you still can't count on it. Because ten years from now, you you're gonna be out of the game, friend. I was talking to a guy about, like, server technology. Right? And and, like, they he was talking about some data farms, and he's like, usually, data farms will change out all their servers, like, every three to four years. And I'm like, holy cow. How long has that been going on? They're like, I don't know. Fifteen, twenty years? And I said, well, like, when's the projected level out? Right? Where they're like, the technology isn't increasing in such a wild way that, like, it makes cost benefit sense

to wipe out your entire server racks every three to four years, and they're go, it's not foreseeable that that's gonna be the case. There's a name for that. Just the exponential growth curve of that. I mean, there is a name for it. I can't remember what it was, though. Yeah. Just it was gonna keep keep extra growth. It's like a curve that's gotta level out, and I'm like, we're twenty years in. This I mean, there's no way we can keep coming up with technological marvels that make it worth the, whatever, $10,000,000 it probably cost to to change a whole server floor out there. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It's cost effective and worth it Yeah. Every three to four years. I'm like, mind boggling.

Yeah. Get a get a terabyte on a Skittle and then a terabyte on a grain of sand. It's just gonna keep going. Yep. Then a 100 terabyte, it's just gonna keep going. That's just crazy. You're listening to live from the path. Yeah. So so just to again, like, if you listen to this and you're like, hey, man. I think them knuckleheads don't have any idea technology wise what they're talking about. Let's ignore the fact of the undergirding. Like, the the the key consideration here, right, is that either something that, like, an artificial intelligence is either going to mirror a fallible humanity in its whole or

require a curation by a fallible human. And either way, the volume of which, the ease of the creation of which, and the underlying biases and fallibilities in humanity, this creates a risk on us, on people's ability to discern what is real, what is true, what is what is factual, and what is good. And that's the thing to be mindful of in conversations like this. Not I'm actually I think, like I said, think the technology is pretty cool. I'm not a Luddite here. It's just like you have to have some sense of the risks that it creates beyond,

oh, hey, I think I can, when I saw an article that said, hey, we can skip AP English because this thing could just could just do it for you. And it's probably true. It'd probably do a better job than you. But then the, then the core question is like, what is the value in a human at all? Like, what do we is is that what we value in each other? Simply the ability to churn out information? Yes. Be because here's the thing. It's like, Jesus says, absolutely not. Right? That's he spent no time speaking about your ability to churn out anything. Right? And so, like,

it's funny that, like, all the values that that inherent Yahweh would point us back to, all the things he instilled in his people and continues to instill through his Bible, right, are all the things that you cannot fulfill on the Internet. Like, you you just can't do it. You can't do you can do a sense of community. You can't have actual community. Right? Like, you cannot have you cannot have relationships that that are that are deep and fulfilling and peaceful through the Internet because they could give or take you, and they could lie to you all the way there. Right? Like, relationships are built on like, to to get down in those deep crevices, they're hard, tough conversations sometimes. And people when they're ugly crying, you know, or people when they've hurt you and then they've mended it again. You know? And and, like, you don't get you get to see once again the curated version of most people on the Internet. Well, I I think that's that's not I don't know if I agree with that. I think it's true at

like, that it's possible to have community. It's just not super likely because, like, you run the same restriction if you're talking to somebody over the phone. Like, you could they could choose not to pick up the phone. They could choose not to share certain things. It like, it's saying that the only sense of which deep community can happen is if someone is in sharing a breathing space with you. I think it is harder. I think it has the risks that you're mentioning. Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah. Okay. So so what would okay. So, like, to that end then is like, then what is the difference? I guess the risk is much greater. The likelihood of deception increases exponentially when you're talking about a community in that way, and therefore the risk of betrayal. Now we all know that face to face betrayals happen all the time. However, when you're in a face to face situation, there are stakes. There are stakes. Someone walks through the door of a church, someone walks into through the door of an office, all of a sudden the stakes are raised because your person itself is is a part of this. It's not a screen name. It's not even a voice on the end of a now your humanity,

your physical stature is there in that space. And the stakes raise, and therefore, the likelihood of perception goes down. It is not eliminated, but greater likelihood in the years Like, there's there's feelings in rooms. Right? Like, walked in a room where you feel like there's a bunch of tension in here. Right? And, like and you you can't you can't take that in over over even a video call, right, with all senses minus, you know, minus smell or something. Right? Like, you still can't quite take in, like, the feel of a room or or or people's body language as well as you could if you other medium is curated. Yeah. Yep. Right. Which is that's the big question

I think of this century is going to be the nature of our curation of ourselves. Like, does it mean to compile how humanity represents itself or the mirror of which technology shows it? And what do we, what do, what do we do with it and how do we represent ourselves? How much of it is true and real and how much of it is a posturing for humanity that probably doesn't even exist quite right. Yeah. But you know, like just as a as a general statement, like, that's an exhausting life. Oh, yeah. Right? Any type of posturing is exhausting. Right? So, like, even if you get the opportunity to curate, which we do, like, even on personal levels, we can curate how we are viewed on the Internet or whatever, but let's take the Internet out of it. Right? Like, if I posture myself to be this type of person, every phone call I get, I have to act that way, which means I'm I'm I'm making it up as I go. Right? It's not a genuine reflection of who I am. And, like, that's leading a double life in any way is completely exhausting.

And the it's you're right. It's more of a risk on the Internet because you the likelihood of you getting away with it is way more is is is way more apt. Right? And it's it's why we see people that are it's it's sad, really, but the amount of people who are, like, YouTube influencers or Instagram influencers. And then if you were to go back and look at their body of work over the last six months to a year, you're like, these people are banging it, man. They got everything they need. They're so jazzed up. They're so happy. And then bam, they're in the news because they said, I don't wanna live here anymore. And they're out, and you're like, how could this pause how could they get away with this? Right? Not not the fact that they that they lived a life that they thought, I'm just in a a place that I can't get out of and I want gone. But the fact that you didn't have a close enough community

that would have seen the signs before. Right? That would have looked at something and said, holy cow. Because the whole the whole world was bamboozled. Well, it's a it's a rental community, Mike. That's what it is. And and they're renting you for free. Mhmm. That's what they're doing, like, for TikTok influencers. And, hey, if you're doing that and and it's working for you, fine. That's fine. There's a way to do it healthily. Sure. But but ultimately, the world is renting you for free, and you're willing to rent yourself out. And I'm not trying to speak like about prostitution or anything. I'm not talking about that, but they're renting you. But once you are not interested anymore, once you are not entertaining anymore, they drop you like a fly and that's what folks in the Internet do. They drop you like immediately. And

for someone who is in that situation of like the influencer, deep down you know that. Yeah. Because you've been on the other end of that and you've seen other people doing that and the moment they're uninteresting, the moment they say something, the moment they do something, I'm out. And you know this relationship is as shallow as it possibly can be Yeah. With your followers. Yeah. And I and I think that actually lends it to, like, what I think the the the bulk of, like, our societal issues are, like, Internet withstanding is, like, people have a genuine sense of wanting to be known. And, like, if you don't wanna know them for who they are as a flat Stanley,

then they'll become a whatever Stanley you wanna know. Right? And they will just continue to pursue people knowing them, even if it's it's not even you anymore, even if it's so curated that you couldn't keep it up, that that they they just want to be they wanna feel like people know them. And so they'll change their identity. They'll change the way they live their life completely. They'll change the things that they say. Like, they'll they'll they'll they'll take infamy over over just regular old being famous just so that you would know me for some reason. Right? And and and once again, like, obviously, you know where we're coming from on life from the path. Right? Our identity is found in Christ. And so, like, that is not a conversation that we're struggling with on the daily. You know? And so, like, I I think a lot of people's anxiety and depression and worry and all this stuff is is is all bound up in in just their their their sense of just being known.

And we can say, look, there is a creator who knows you and a community that wants you, and they're like, I will take any form of knowing except for that. Mhmm. I don't want that. Because then, if that community and and that's the the view of of most Christian community is is like, God doesn't only wanna know you, he wants to be all up in your business. He wants to be in your life. He wants to take some of the pitfalls that you're about to fall into or the devastation that you're about to cause others around you, and he wants to he wants to pull that back in and redeem it. And you want to be known differently than that. You wanna be known by your own steam. Yeah. Yeah. Agreed. Alright. You've listening to live from the path. You know, I I'm I'm curious if you're if this has been on your mind. If you're thinking about any of this, let us know if, if you found the conversation interesting or boring as crap. Just let us know. This is the Bob Eisenhower live from the path complaint line. (515) 517-0085. Hey, Nolan.

This this is Ben who from the gas station earlier today. If you're listening, hit me a heads up. Just let me know you jumped on. That's, use that complaint line. (515) 517-0085. Talk or text. We'd love to hear from you. Brian, this is the vest man from the gas station. No. This I've talked to him. Talking to a different guy. Okay. Got it. Different gas station guy. Yeah. The guy that hit me up with the free soda and the peace sign. Yeah. We're just two cool dudes, Brian. Just me and you, bro. How'd that Doctor Pepper work out for you, by way? Delicious. Good. That what you got as a Doctor Pepper? Yeah. Why? Did I guess right? Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Doctor Pepper is the soda of all vest people everywhere. I'm not surprised by red. Colors on. That's what I'm saying. That doesn't make the statement that you think it makes that Doctor Pepper. What do you mean? I mean, there's a there's a certain there's a certain essence of a of a Doctor Pepper combo with a vest that says, like, I don't know who I am. I need to put 31 flavors in so that I can bend like a gummy to what people say. It's 23

flavors. And the Doctor Pepper combo says I can take on everything. No. That's what it You're a one flavor man. No. A ginger ale says that. A ginger ale? Yeah. It says I can fly peacefully without stomach troubles, and I can take names where necessary. No. A ginger ale man plays with those toys inside the doctor's office that are meant for children. And he sits down Indian style right there and then goes, I'll have another candidate. Right? Please. My belly hurts me. Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. You ask why. That's the problem. That's what a doctor Pepperman does asks why. Okay. So the the second thing, the the core question, if I remember correctly, Mike, was like, can you follow Jesus and be,

an unpredictable wild man? Is that is that the gist of the question? I mean, kind of, actually. I was just thinking about it that that of all the we talk about spiritual disciplines a lot, like spiritual disciplines of praying and reading your Bible and and and these things. And, like, I think they're all good and healthy things. But it it occurred to me, one, historically, like, how we view reading our Bible and pray and, like, prayer time. Right? Yeah. Like, they they just weren't available

in cultures prior to ours, you know, throughout history. So, like, if I wanted to just say, look, I my prayer time is from, whatever, 05:30 to 06:30 in the morning. Like, most people just had to go go to work, you know, and so they just got up and and and went. And same thing, like, didn't have access to the scriptures. And so they memorized it, and they kept it in their heart, and they sang worst tunes or whatever throughout the day. Don't know exactly what they did. I didn't live there. But what I'm saying is it's like, it wasn't as available. Yeah. But if people were gonna come to me and say, hey. I feel like my I don't not I don't have a close relationship with God right now. These are the two main things I would say. Are you spending any time with God at all and in what capacity? This is what I would recommend to you. Yeah. So but in on the flip side of that, I I was thinking about, like, God has created, like, personalities

and imprinted upon us in different ways. You know? Like, if we say that we're hands and feet and elbows and and whatever, like, there are some people that he created to be very vestigious. Nope. Vestigial tail. That's what you're saying. It doesn't make no sense. Vestigious. What am I saying? The people that are regimented. Studious.

Fastidious. Fastidious. As in neat. Yes. Neat and Tidy. Tidy. I'm talking about tidy people. And reg organized. Organized. I like this word better. Neat and tidy Joe's. Like like like, their their general bent is just to be more organized. Right? Like, they they're good planning and keeping schedules, and, like, they they do this very well, and it doesn't seem to be a burden to them. And they're like, yeah. This is great. And then you meet other folks that, like, it's it's not sinful behavior, but they're just they're just flighty. They seem a little bit lighter than everybody else. They just kinda dance from thing to thing, and they're not doing bad things, really. They're just I don't know. They just don't get real bogged down with keeping tight schedules and and ordering of dharma and Greg. They're free spirits. Exactly. They're a little free spirited. And it occurred to me that, like, I think that

like, is there room within god's kingdom, like, for the free spirited folks? Yes. Have I seen the free spirited folks be excellent proclaimers of the gospel? Absolutely. Yeah. People that live a life that I could I could have no chance of living. Like, they just have a certain thing about them that they see all cultural mores and and worries, and they're like, they're not concerned with it in the least. They break them all. You know? But but if there's a freedom to it that they seem to embrace, but they're almost always missing the Bible time they intended

or not sitting down nailing a forty five minute prayer right in the morning or whatever. You know? And and once again, don't hear me wrong. I'm I'm I I love both these things. I wish my life actually reflected that more. I know people that do this, and I'm blown away by them. I think they're there's a change in their life because of it. But on the flip side, like, I gotta think that God created an elbow, you know, as part of hands and feet to be a little bit more free spirited. Do they need to be concerned that they are not sitting in the kingdom of God where they need to be? Mhmm. Right? So is there room or or or, I mean, is there a way that we would change in which we counsel people? Like, is there a one size fits all for, like, hey. I'm feeling disconnected from God. Well,

how are you reading your Bible? How much are you praying? I think you should consider doing both of these spending more time with God. I think the the risk of saying there's the one right way to do it, I think we'd transcend to the danger zone of legalism and whatnot. But also we kind of get into the area where dutiful becomes the only way to Christ. And obviously there are things that must be done. But I don't know, the John Eldridge book, Wild at Heart. When you were asking the question earlier, are there wild men, wild women? Are there wild folks who are serving God? And of course the answer is yes,

but in the book, I remember the very first chapter, it told the story of an elder at a church who went on a sailing trip and it was crazy because a big storm came. He almost died because the waves were crashing, but you know what? They all worked together. They pulled the boat into the harbor and was death defying. And then he just looked at the person and was like, it was the most fun I've ever had in my life. And then the question was, well, what do you as a church elder, what do you what what are you supposed to be? What what word describes what you need to be as a follower of God? As a man who's following God? And he thought about it and he's like, dutiful. And that's the word he came up with. It ain't bad to be dutiful. Right. But there's gotta be better words to describe the relationship with God and Jesus than just dutiful. Yeah. Because we look throughout the Bible and the question is, like, name some fellows in the Bible who yeah. Obviously, they're serving God,

but 100% of their life is not dutiful. Yeah. They're kinda wild. They're kinda wild. They've gotta cut their own trail on this thing. Yeah. No doubt about it. So I and and maybe there's not like, like, I'm not looking for, like, the top 10 things you could be as a Christian. Right? But what I'm I'm looking for is maybe to try to because there there's dangers on on the complete wildness. Right? Like, most of the stuff that we run into, like, especially people that tend to believe that they are driven solely by the power of the holy spirit, no grounding in scripture, no grounding in outside teaching. They just cut a trail, do whatever they want. Yep. They're the ones that tend to that that that tend to take the Lord's name in vain. We'll put it that way. They tend to attach God's name to something that they wanted to do. Right? And then they and then they they basically paint They reverse engineer

Christianity to suit their own lives. Yes. To look more like them. Right? And so, like, there is a legit danger in that. And so, like, there can't be there can't there can't be a recommendation that says, look. You the Bible's not a big deal. The Bible's always been a big deal. Right? It was a big deal in the first century. You know? And and so we're just saying that our our access to it on the daily could be something that we could talk about. To to not wake up every morning and then you're running late for work and get tailing it out of there, and you're like, I did not get my twenty minutes of bible reading in. I feel separated from god. That it doesn't come that easy. Your separation from god doesn't doesn't come from you missing one twenty minute bible reading time. Yeah. So so some considers considerations here. God God speaking is a big deal. That's true. Yes.

And I I think I think the word faithfulness hits me a lot better than dutiful because faithfulness doesn't prescribe the, implicitly the means of which God calls you to be faithful to what he's asking. It means that when he speaks, you you move, you react,

and and that doesn't necessarily bind you in the same ways of a human understanding of duty does. Duty sounds regimented. And interestingly enough, to a couple of things that were coming to mind is is, you know, if we think about a studious Bible reading in the morning at 05:30, Two things that are true that I know of is that one in Jesus' day, it's not like anybody owned their own scriptures.

Like, didn't have it. They could not get up at 05:30, unroll the scroll, and start taking a read for multiple reasons. One, didn't have it. Two, it wasn't sunny out. Three, they didn't have alarm clocks. A lot of the, the, the, the, a private notion of time is a relatively new thing. Even even like a clear notion of time is relatively new. This is why, like, we harass some of the, some of the, the quirks in the biblical record where we're like, even the, even the hour of Jesus's crucifixion, we're like, how could they be off? It was like, because no one had a watch, man. Yeah. Ninth hour, eleventh hour. They're just like peeking up at the sun. And it was in your if you remember when Jesus was crucified, it was cloudy. They don't know what time it is. Like, and so the, like, you first started to see this regimented by the church with a bell. So, like, they start ringing at the someone's keeping track of a time, gonna sundial somewhere, trying to give you a rough estimate of when it is. You the the notion of a personal time of which, like, I'm going to wake up before the sun and do a specific thing. Like, that's a modern thing. That's a really modern thing to do. And so we can't look at the last eighteen hundred years of post Jesus Christianity and go, boy, we should just like, every one of them failed because they weren't up, you know, at at 05:30 in the morning reading the scriptures. Now I will tell you that, like, traditionally, people focused in absent of those things. They focused more on on memorizing scripture because they would learn it. They would hear it. They would talk about it. They would sing it like the notion of an extra, an outside of the scripture song.

It it certainly existed poetry too. But like predominantly, they sang the Psalms. They sang things that were otherwise things that Jesus said or or something that the Bible did. And so there was more of that, but, like, I, we just gotta be careful of, like, deeming behavior that that is probably good for us as being the holy thing.

And that if you don't do it, God is somehow angry. Because, like, I I I'm certain that there are situations of which, like, you can't like, you couldn't if you went and followed God faithfully, you couldn't possibly keep up with your daily Bible reading.

Like, you couldn't. It wasn't gonna happen. Because you're, like, because you're out doing the thing that God has asked you to do. And and, like, I it's it's almost the balance is so difficult here because, Mike, to your point, like, we're we're not trying to say I think we wanna protect that, like, God speaking is is valuable. And so, like, do I wanna hear God speak? Yes. I do. Did he speak a Bible into existence? Yes. He did. If I have it available to me, why the heck would I not wanna take it in as often as possible if the Lord is speaking through it? I should want to, but it's not a time clock. Like, it's not your job, like, in and out to go read scripture or the boss will be mad. Like, it's really if God is speaking,

don't you want in on it? And like, if if you've got not to feel an unnecessary guilt upon those types of things, if God is otherwise using you in some other way, that, don't create an arbitrary barrier that doesn't exist between you and God. That would be my my fear here. Yeah. Yeah. And I I and and maybe some of this is is, you know, you or us trying to fit God more in our schedule. Right? So, like, if I can if I can nail out my Bible reading in the morning, maybe I won't feel so

separate as I go throughout my day and pretty much move him to the back and not include him in most of the day. You know? And and so I I don't know. I I know I know I would still I think you're right. Like like, spending we use the metaphor a lot that says, look. How do you how do you build relationships with anybody? Right? You spend time with them. And so, like, spending time with God is how you build that relationship. Now maybe that I would probably say it's not best practice to have him be the second fiddle in whatever you're doing all the time. I I think that's like, let me let me take that because I think that is one of the key things the questions you'd have to answer, which is, is there something unique about our times

that make this kind of structure more relevant than perhaps it would have been two hundred years ago, five hundred years ago, eight hundred years ago. And the sure sheer busyness of our lives, the ability to even think of our time in blocks of schedules and and the, like, kind of notorious scheduling of that time. Like, again, The United States version of on time is different than say France's version of on time for lunch. Right? It's just different. Like, in Mexico, even, like, we're the same continent. And we, like, we're a lot stricter on time when it comes to these types of things. And so, like, our notions then say, well, if I'm planning a day like this, am I being intentional about making sure and in that I've created the space to put God at the forefront? That isn't as necessary

if your life is simpler. If your if your life was basically, I get up when the sun rises, I go farm my land for for the value of my family and for some meager trades at the at the thing, and then I come home, you're not having to be so intentional about scheduling it in because the notion of your schedule isn't the same. And so it's taking a modern problem and saying, how does Jesus honored within it? And I I think that does make sense to think of it that way. Now I I think God might be after our busyness, like the sheer need of some of this thing, and the thought of squeezing in. Like, I I think that's a risk to us anyway. But, like, I think it is an attempt to say based upon what our cultural norms are,

what do I need to do to make sure that that Jesus is rightly honored within them? When we talk about what people have been doing historically, I mean, you all make a fantastic point. Eight hundred years ago, nobody has any papers. Nobody has any papers. We have the luxury of having so many papers, not just Bible papers. We have books that people have written about the bible and then books that people have written about books, which people have written about the bible. Like, we have access to so much. There's two things I wanna talk about. Yeah. Number one, I don't think we should be in a place where we're feeling some sort of historical guilt because we have more access to stuff, but we're not using it more than because we have it. Oh, we feel bad because people at 880, they didn't have it at all. I don't think we should be feeling bad about that. The fact that we're not living up to our full potential of what we could have access to because we have so much eggs. I don't think we should do that. But number two, I think people who did live a long time ago before they had the papers, they were regimented as well. Like the stuff you described, what do we do twelve hundred years ago? People got up when the sun rose when the sun rose and then they they milk their cow. Do they do a prayer? They may they might do a prayer, they might not do a prayer. They do all the business they have to do because 99% of people had no money back then. So they do all those things that they had to do.

And then Sunday, that's when they get to see the papers. And even they don't get to see the papers, they just see the priest or the preacher, whoever it is and wherever they are, Eastern Orthodox Church, Catholic Church, there are no Protestants twelve hundred years ago, but Right. That they're still regimented in a way that works for the time that they're living in. Yeah. Now us today, we have a lot of peripheral regimental stuff. Peripheral busy regimented stuff like we got soccer practice, we got this. These are all peripheral things. Yep. But the quantifiable time that we're spending with Jesus, I wanna talk about that for a moment. Yep. Because you can easily add it up.

It depends if you're a quantify guy or a qualified guy. I'm a very much a qualified guy because any sort of just going through the motions, there have been a lot of songs about going through the motions. Right? Yep. Going through the motions, I don't know if that does much. I'd rather have five minutes of really, really deep meaningful time than thirty minutes of dutiful time. Mhmm. That's how I feel. Imagine you guys feel kinda similar. Right? Yep. So guess when it just comes down to it, if, the original question that you had mentioned at the very beginning was, wait. What was the question at the beginning? You be a wild man? Yeah. Can you be a wild man? The answer, of course, is yes. Yeah. Because I think the quality of the time that you're spending

is the key part of what we're talking about. Because twelve hundred years ago, eighteen hundred years ago, I mean, what if Timothy, in like fifty nine AD or whenever, he leaves town and he leaves one of the letters from Paul behind. What's he gonna do? Might go back and get it. But for those couple days when he doesn't have it, what's he doing? You know what? He's still spending quality time with God. You know what he's doing? He's still preaching. He's living his life grounded in the rock of God, grounded in the rock of Jesus. And the actions that he are taking, even if they're not like quiet time actions, those actions that he is taking

are centered around God. And therefore, yeah, they can't be quantified. I always spent this much time giving to charity. That's much time preaching to other people. Yeah, you could quantify them, but the fact that Timothy is living his life focused 100% and every word he speaks has God at the center. Every action he takes has God at the center. Even if it's the action of going to the market and buying fruit. You know what? When he's walking down that street, he's walking down the street in a place that has God as its center even if he's not thinking about it at the exact moment because that's his life. So so if if if you feel like the output is not that. Yep. Right? If you're feeling feeling like your output is not the Timothy output, we still find the two things, the bible reading and the prayer to be an excellent place an excellent place to resent that those things. Yeah. Right? Yeah. But it So you have to do that, though. Yes. Yep. I mean That's right. It just moves the barometer to say it is more about the integration

in your life as opposed to thinking of those things as an input. Like And checklists. That's right. That's right. It's it's not because, like, I I have run into people who, like, start to feel super guilty where, like, hey. I missed my daily in fact, I've I don't know. I've started this a million times. Like, I'm gonna read my bible every day, and it probably takes me two weeks, and then I've lost it. And then, and then I felt that I feel bad. I feel guilty. And I somewhat feel like, oh, I let God down and I'm now separated from in that relationship. But like, I'm not

like, I made that up because I drew a boundary and then I didn't succeed in it. And so and the risk then is that now my my actual relationship, the reality of that relationship with God, like, is feels off simply because I created a false boundary of which to measure whether it's off. Men, can we explore that for just one second? Yes. So you read the bible for two weeks. Yep. Alright. And then two weeks and one day, you stop reading the bible. Yep. How has your life changed in that particular day? In reality, it did not. Exactly. You're walking around. Are you doing stuff different because you didn't read the bible that day? Now I'm not fiercely advocating that we should avoid bible reading. That is not at all what I'm saying. Right. But the reality might have changed based on those boundaries that you created for yourself. But in the end, on day 15,

right, if anything, I think your guilt is gonna be a hindrance. And because Yes. I think the problem. That's concerning. And see, but just the other side of the seesaw here, like, I know people that, like, the guilt doesn't show up. If they miss their their time with God, whether it be Bible reading or just sitting around worship and praying, like, they don't feel guilty. They're like, I miss my time with God. Like, I want that that's what I want. That's right. Right? And so, like, if that's your reaction, yes. This is exactly where we want to be. Yeah. Right. I think when we start talking god just he just doesn't deal in guilt. It's not a it's not a a a rebuke tool that god uses. If you read the, like, the entirety of the Bible, he does discipline his sons and daughters for sure, but not with guilt ever. That's just not the way he operates. I don't well, I suppose it depends on how you define guilt. I I'm I do believe, like, a lot of the things that we would otherwise attribute to our conscience, things that stick with you are God saying, I'm not going to leave you here

with the with, like, letting you know that there that there there is a separation here if there was one. Yeah. But, like, I that's a situation which I don't think there is one. I I God's because God isn't arbitrarily trying to find you because you didn't read your scriptures that day. But when if you're living a life of integrity where, like, the notion of what you believe, understand, know to be true is integrated full in your life. When you start living outside of that, you are going to feel it. And, like, oftentimes, I think we misapply guilt as a bad thing to say, oh, like, I I I've I've been made to feel guilty of this. Well, what's the difference between feeling guilty about it and bringing something to your attention? And what I want what I want to do something that walks outside of what God wants for me and then have him not bring it up? Have the holy spirit not lay a burden on your heart that goes, hey, man. You're walking away. Yeah. And and you're right. Like like the the the call the call to repentance, like, you could label that as being made to feel guilty, but the truth is you are guilty. Right? You're not being made to feel guilty. You are guilty. Right? And it's a presentation of fact. Yes. Yeah. And I do think and this is where we gotta be careful is that I feel like God does certainly use that. That's the notion of this of the of a helper. Like, if you're if you're off course, you should know that. You should feel it. God wouldn't leave you in it. I don't think humans actually can handle this. I think humans can't handle judgment. They can't handle guilt. I think it's not good for us as humans to try to enforce those types of things. I think we're just not we're not trustworthy in it, and and it creates a superiority and a lack of humility. I think it's not valuable. And so I do I would say that, like, it is not a human's job to create, enforce, and twist guilt onto people just like you're not qualified for an ultimate judgment in someone's righteousness in the relationship with God. But I I do think what we often attribute to is guilt. Like, I I was thinking about this.

This is an example I think we've used in the past, but but when when I got to basically got the vibe that, like, downloading music off of the Internet without paying for it was wrong. I felt guilty about that, but I didn't feel guilt. Like, I felt guilty about it because it was wrong. Yeah. Like, like, and what would I expect God to do is to be presented with something that is hindering my witness that is creating something in me that's bad and have him. What does it look like for God to make sure I know that? Well, it looks like what we often attribute as guilt. But the, the, the thing is, is that in the presence of guilt, like it's, it goes back to the thing we were talking about. I think it was it last week or a couple of weeks ago where like, there, there could be a lament for having fallen short, like in the presence of sin. And, but your right reaction is repentance and acceptance of grace. And so the notion of like that guilt shouldn't nag. It doesn't live. It basically is the bridge between, Hey, you're missing it. And you go on, shoot, let me turn around from it and God going right on. And like, that's it. And so like, we shouldn't be carrying on like

hours, days, weeks, eons of guilt. I I don't think that's godly unless we're refusing to repent from it. Yeah. So I really, what I think we're we're we're recommending and where where I feel, like, at peace with some of the things we're talking about is, like, you, as a forgiven son and daughter, you should seek time with God. You'd like, you just should be looking for it. And maybe it doesn't look at 05:30 every morning, and maybe you don't keep a, like, a detailed diary. But the the the other side of that is not, like, you live completely on in the wild with no contact with God because, like, your output's not gonna be what you're intending it to be. Yeah. And so, like, even Jesus who's not keeping a detailed diary or a schedule of prayer, that man will sneak out to pray. Right. He will find a way to Climb a mountain. That's right. He will do whatever was necessary for him to be able to reconnect with the father. And so and maybe that just falls in line with with the opening gambit, which was God created elbows and knees and and knuckles,

And maybe you're one of those, but whatever God created you, in whatever way he created you to worship him, you should be doing that. Mhmm. And and you should it doesn't have to compare to your neighbor, but it does have to equal you spending time with God in whatever way that looks like. And I I think it does like, whether it's regimented or not, I think it does equal solitude with him at some point. I do think it means spending time with him. Right? That's how you build all of your very personal and deep relation relationships in your in your life is with solitude solitude with them, you know, spending time with just that person. And so, like, there's no reason that that would not apply back to spending time with God. No doubt. I think there's two things to consider. One, the point about guilt. I've never seen evangelism based on guilt ever work. Right. Right. Now folks in history thought it worked great. Like, whether it be the Puritans, we're just gonna guilt you into believing. But usually people would start, quote, believing

because of, like, almost social, like, reasons. As in Yes. You'll be ostracized, etcetera. But when Roger Williams formed the colony of Rhode Island based on kinda separating church and state as in the authorities, in charge of the state should not be the church authorities because then what you get is this kind of idea of forced religion, which Roger Williams says, forced religion stinks in God's nostrils. That's Roger Williams' famous quote. Uh-huh. I think that's right. I think it's a great quote. Yeah. I think it's a brilliant brilliant quote. Like, just like forced charity is not charity. Right. Forced religion is not religion. Forced and so this idea that we're guilting somebody in, that's no good. But the second point being, like, Mike, what you're saying about solitude. I mean, has gotta look

differently for so many different people. I agree. People who got a journal, people who do it at 05:30AM, people who do it at 05:30PM. And I think for the longest time, American Christianity specifically really wanted to put people, like, in a box, just in a really, really, really tightly wound box in all sorts of different denominations. And and God is bigger than that box. That is way bigger than that box. God is way bigger than the Christianity that was created specifically within The United States because

these branches of Christianity were created by men. Yeah. And and men and women and and they are fallible. Yeah. Which is why we're talking about, like, getting away from, like like, checkboxing a religion. Right? Like, you're you feel like you are saying, hey. I don't have to live within your box. Right? And and and sometimes our output of that is is like, yeah. I don't I don't journal at 05:30, whatever. You know, don't judge me. Like, all the while, you're basically being offered, like, living water, and you're like, you're not gonna tell me how to take it. I'll take it whenever I want. And then your rebellious response is, I won't actually come get it. Like, I won't ever go to the living water because it it doesn't fit the box you created for me to get it. And so, like, that's the mistaken output. It's like, yeah, right now, like, consider this done. You are free from religion. Right? But if you're passing up the living water as part of your rebellion from religion, you're an idiot. Like, you're an absolute fool. You don't understand the living water. Yeah. If you're not seeking to to to meet with God in any way, you're not you're not giving the finger to religion. You're you're you're causing yourself not to have living water. That's dumb. Yep. That's not a good way of thinking. Yeah. And I will say that I think the existence of this box of this, like, this is what a good Christian does and the indications of which are lazy ways of which, us we've created to assess spiritual maturity. It was like, oh, if you're doing if you're behaving in this way, then we know you're good. If you're not doing this or you struggle with it, then we know that you need help. It's it's it's a lazy way of going about it. And frankly, back to the point of of both guilt and judgment is it puts humans in the wrong spot. It puts us in the position to have to go, oh, it's my job to assess whether someone is is is in good standing with the Lord or not, and I'm going to do it by kind of these arbitrary behaviors that we've set out, things that maybe are good for you, but might not necessarily be,

like, the same way that God uses somebody else. And I get it because what this feels like is a super risk. It's the same reason we have the problem of embracing the work of the holy spirit, especially in kind of some of our mainline denominations is we're like, yeah. But if you leave it up to the spirit's discretion, like, they could totally misuse it. They could blame the holy spirit and say that this is for god when it's totally not. If we all agree on the scripture, then, okay, then we don't have any problem. But, like, that's actually both it's it's a but it's a both and. That's how you assess whether something is actually of the spirit or, like, the spirit or not or of god or not as you look at his bible and go, okay. Is this acting consistently with god's character that elevate and we gave you there was a few shows ago. We gave you a broad trajectory of heresy.

If it elevates people, probably heresy. If it elevates god, you're probably better. I guess, that's your rough go on it. And people have used the Bible for the same like, in the same foul way. Totally. Yep. Right? So, like, there's there's nothing holy. Like, we're just talking about understanding the character of God and saying, yes. I wanna spend time with him. He's he's everything. I want I I want to have time with him. And, like, it doesn't have to look a certain way, but it does have to happen. Like, there's no caveat to get out of that. Yeah. You do need to be spending time with God. You should want to. Your heart should yearn for it. Right? And, like, I don't know what that looks like for you exactly, and I probably would try to not swim in guilt waters all the time. But if you need some basics, there's no reason not to head to that scripture. Right. There's no reason not to set apart a prayer time. I think you I think all these things are great, but but we're just talking about, like, not checkboxing it. Right? Like, not putting it in such this rigid thing and also not using that thing as an excuse not to do any of it. Right? That's that's not gonna work. And also not using the fact that you're not in a box as an excuse to not do anything. Exactly. I mean, that's that's that's more the output I see. Like, that's the thing is when you put humanity into this thing, we're saying, look. You're not tied into a specific religion or or or or specific, you know, way of of worshiping god. People are like, great. I'm free. And then they just go jack. They don't do it at all. And they're like, God doesn't is not moving in my life. I'm like, you spend no time with God, and then you're mad at him? That seems wrong. Now now here's what's interesting is, like, in that situation, I would I would prescribe

that the person even if you're reading your Bible every day, that's in and of itself a facade. Like, on the opposite end, if you look at, at a relationship with God and you say, what you guys are prescribing or describing is like, seems dangerous and not boxed in and unwieldy, I feel like you understand the potential work of the Lord in this, in his humanity correctly. Like that's right. That's how it should feel. It shouldn't feel like your human program. It shouldn't feel like, oh, like an, like an army.

It should feel like the the holy spirit is the wild friend. Like, he could he could be if it's integrated in your life, you should like, at any moment in time, you say God could speak, and me listening could totally turn up the world. It could it could put this rooster upside down. And if that if you do not anticipate that very thing, then you are misunderstanding what God is up to and capable of in this world. If, like, his only notion of faithfulness is whether you said, yes, but I read the scriptures today. I actually think if you read the scriptures well, you'll go out and start doing some wild stuff on your own. Like, because God spoke there too. Like, the very notion of his forgiveness is crazy. The notion of of the the how you forgive the world around you is nuts. Loving your enemy is nuts. Like, all these are all crazy behaviors, human to human that the bible prescribes because God spoke there. And so I I just I I like there just gets to be hesitancy in the more conservative circles where we're like, if you if you take away some of these things in these boxes, then people become unpredictable. And, like, that is a probably a right understanding of the god that you're serving. Not capricious, but unpredictable. You don't know through which, in which way he will use somebody and how it will be used to otherwise draw people to him. I think you should be open to wildness. I like that phrase, not capricious, but unpredictable. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. That's really good. You ready? Yeah. Let's go. Let's give it some advice. Dear, I'm from the past.

My husband and I were raised within religious communities. Among other conservative values, we were taught that a wife is to be responsible for domestic labor, and a husband is to be the primary breadwinner outside the home. Yes. Even in the nineties and two thousands. We were still deeply involved in these communities when we married at 21 and 22. I wasn't physically attracted to my husband at the time of our courtship or marriage, but he was and still is very kind to me. I was led to believe I was following God's path by getting married, and the union allowed me to escape my domineering father. The initial relief and freedom I experienced slowly evolved into feelings of resentment when I started realizing my husband is not equipped emotionally or intellectually to provide for the family I hope for. Luckily, we have agreed that many of our family's traditional values are simply not serving our needs. I now enjoy a career and provide the majority of our income. I'm still responsible for most of the housework despite many conversations about balancing the labor. My husband recognizes that he needs to step up but has struggled to follow through. Men doing housework was not modeled for him growing up, which makes it challenging. His heart is in the right place, but that doesn't help me. I feel burned out and alone. We have been in the marriage counseling for a year. Nothing has changed. I'm turning 30 this year and starting to despair about the future of our marriage and possibility of having children. I want a partner I can count on. Am I chasing a fantasy?

There's a lot in there. There is a it's quite the essay. Yeah. So Was it written by an actual person? Could be. Could be AI? Like, this I'm taking it in weird, I guess. She explained that they came from a rigid background Yes. Which probably guided the part of which which she made a decision man. Mhmm. I I I do kinda wonder, is it possible that she's blaming that on like, that's the only way to get away from a, what'd she say, an overbearing father? Yes. Because she was expected to not take care of herself. Like, she had to be married. Was is that is that kind of the vibe I'm getting? Ah, I don't know.

But in either case, it started off that way, but they seem to be an open communication. The man seems to agree that these beliefs archaic at best and should otherwise be amended to reflect, goodness in the Lord and current societal norms.

And then they've pursued that very thing. In that transition, she has found success in her career. He is kindhearted and cares for her, but, like, is not good at the things traditionally that that that his original viewpoint would have

absented him from, like things he wouldn't normally have to do anyway, or wasn't required to be good nor has he ever seen modeled. And so he's struggling with that. Mhmm. Mhmm. This all sounds right to me. That's exactly how you would expect it to happen. Yeah. Nothing nothing seems surprising. You know, I like to focus on the good stuff at first because what I hear is we have a woman with a successful career. That's great for the family. Yep. Alright. Just as important maybe not just important, but also important, the husband

appears to be supportive of that and says, hey, this is great for the family. Yeah. It's different. It's unique. It's not what was modeled for him growing up based on based on the story. So right there, that's an enormous win. I guess, again, based on someone who grew up in a very very certain worldview. Right? Yep. The words that offered me the most encouragement, his heart's in the right place. Yeah. Like that phrase, if it's if it's a genuine phrase, then my gosh. There's so much opportunity there. Yeah. I'm I'm I'm I'm a little befuddled here in that they've been married for nine years. Did it say nine years? Yeah. Nine years. And she's worried about the the the future marriage and having kids.

But she's also says we're having a hard time sharing the the home duties. And I can't for the life of me think what home duties are consisting between two people. Right? Like, you don't currently have kids. What are you doing at your place that's causing so much work to have to be done? When we when we before we had kids, we went through one trash bag a week. One trash bag a week. Trash bag a week, and it was amazing. You could clean the whole house in twenty minutes. And that's if you wanted to get the vacuum out. Yeah. And if you really didn't need to, you could ignore it if you wanted to for another week. You know I'm saying? Like, I'm I'm blown away about the amount of housework that is necessary for this household to run. I went I went out to buy food for somebody today, like a single person. And, I don't know how I ended up by myself, but like, I mean, I had to put up a whole bunch of crap. I'm used to buying for a family of six. And so like, got two giant jars or something. I'm like, there's no way they're never going to go through any of this stuff. I mean, like, it was a real weird circumstance of what I actually walked out of there with. Yeah. Shouldn't have gone to Costco, man. Yeah. So so once again, I'm I'm slightly confused. Some of this story is not quite adding up. Yeah. Like but if the room is taking this thing in right, like, look at it from her perspective. What is she actually worried about? Well, it's not happening fast enough. So, like, she's she's they've shifted some of what you might think of as burdens, the burden of the bulk of the money coming in. It sounds like the burden of the housework. And so she feels like I switched and took over the part that he was otherwise doing the place where he could be helping out in the housework. He didn't actually pick up. And so what it feels like is that her burden became double, and his burden became like an eight. Yeah. That that's what she's feeling. And that's probably right.

Like, you're probably feeling that correctly. I my caution here would be and I don't know how quickly all this stuff kinda moved in your marriage. Like, how how soon did you figure out that this wasn't working? But but it it is very difficult for someone to model behavior where they really have no idea. So think of this man's perspective. His dad didn't act the way that you're expecting to act. His core religious belief through his whole life up until marriage didn't otherwise reflect this. You even though you've both agreed that things should be different, the primary person giving you instructions on how what you need to act like is your wife, who's also the person on the other side of how you're going to behave. And so, like, I I was talking to somebody else over the over the holidays, and we we we were talking about people and kind of evil people's,

whether they're evil people. Mhmm. And one thing I said is is that, like, the the more people I've I talked to, the more kind of pastoral situations I've been in, like counseling type of stuff, everything's gray. Everything's gray. People are gray. Even the most evil person you could think of, if you look back, like, first, you check me. They have a dad around. What kind of behavior would model for them? What was considered acceptable and okay when they were growing up. What kind of trauma showed up in their upbringings? That's right. And, like, it's not it's it's not that that they're not responsible for their behavior, but, like, there is way there are ways to explain it. And how difficult or easy it is for them to otherwise abide by good notions or behavior do vary by person. Like, it doesn't change the standard, but it may not be super easy. And so, like, I I this guy seems, by by your indication, like, he's trying. He's just not succeeding. I don't know if this particular marriage counselor stinks. You know, I would, I, one of the questions I would ask is who he's hanging around with. Like, is he hanging around? Like, are you still going to the same church community where like, he's, he's the wild left winger? Like you're trying to trying to bring this into the nineteenth century and like, and everybody's against it. So, like, his community, I I would be interested in and maybe an encouragement to him to be around the right types of people who share similar values, but also hold to to I I I presume what he still believes religiously. And for you, like, I it it just feels a bit early to to to cut the rope. I agree. It's too early. Yeah. And I would just say to the gentleman here in this relationship,

I mean, Mike, what you said earlier, like, how much work could this possibly be? So let's make it really, really simple. Alright. I know you know how to use a vacuum. Yes. Oh, you have hardwood. I know you know how to use a Swiffer, both dry and wet. If the wet Swiffer seems a little tough for you, there's plenty of online tutorials for you. Sure. I know that dishes are maybe unpleasant, especially considering your background, but start with putting away the clean ones and then let's slowly get around to the dirty ones. And then finally for the big one, laundry. Do it. Alright. To the wife in this relationship, do your husband a solid and do just one thing. Buy three baskets. Have him buy three baskets.

And the one basket is whites, the other baskets is colors, and the third baskets is untouchables. Husband, do not touch this. Those are for Don't do anything with it. The whites put them in cold water. The colors put them in cold water, dry, dry, easy, easy, easy. It'll take care of 90% of the laundry. Yep. Just never touch this basket. Yeah. And then that's 90% of the housework. You gotta do it, dude. Actually, this dude is he's he's classic because he's being stereotyped a little bit here, but, like, this is a classic dude problem. Mhmm. Right? And it's not about it's not near as much about doing housework at the house as your wife feeling known by you. Like like and and I say that in a way because, like, if you can take in that she is working a full time job and she comes home to work a second full time job in her estimation of all the things that need to get done, then if you know that and you know that about her, you will innately start to find ways to take some of that burden off her. You will find ways in your schedule to begin to make that. And now you're doing two things. Right? You're knowing your wife well. Right? She's not just a partner in this thing of of getting the house clean. Right? She is part of of it's it's the woman that you are attached to, right, spiritually and physically. Like, this is the gal, and you don't know her enough, and she starts feeling resentment about that. You know, she starts feeling that you're kind of taking advantage of her a little bit in all the things that she's doing, and you seem to not be worried about this at all. Now if I was gonna turn around and focus on the gal, like, there's one phrase that you use that, like I I don't know. It just it really sticks with me because I don't know that many people that can say this about their spouse. But like you said, he was and still is very kind to me. Right? Is that if is that the first thing that comes out of a spouse's mouth? Like, when you talk to people at work and they describe their spouse, like, I don't know that I've heard someone describe and say, yeah, my husband, he's he's just very kind to me. Right. He's very good to me. But, Chris. And, like, very few people actually get to say that about their spouse. And so, like, some of these

I'm I'm I'm in I'm saying this without without trying to sound overbearing, but you you have a thing built up in your head that I kinda feel like no man would be able to make. Like, you've been reading a a slew of romance novels, and then you look at this stubby doofus that you married, and you're like, why couldn't he be more this? Right? He was never gonna be more that. Right? And then that looks like that or that treats this like that or like some kind of cavalier awesome dude, he ain't gonna do laundry either. Right? And so, like, you're taking all these characteristics of, like, this perfect man that doesn't actually exist. So you're a little bit grass is greener here. Alright? And I I I I think I feel bad for your religious upbringing, and maybe you got in a marriage that you weren't totally prepared for. But, like, to take some of the weight off that, so did everybody I know. Everybody I know got into a marriage, and the first year was just rocky mess. A little bit of rocky mess. No one knows how to coexist with another person. Right? And so, like, there's always gonna be push and pull and struggle. So, like, the biggest advice I could give is one, like, you need to temper your your expectations.

Like, you just make sure that they're in reality. Right? That you don't think that your husband, of all the all the possibilities he could be, because that man doesn't actually exist. Yeah. And then for the dude, you need to know your wife, and, like, you need to know her. Like, you need to sit down and write down some questions and say, I would like to know more about you. Here's the things that I would like to know. Right? And then start putting some of these things into action. Yeah. And, you know, I might suggest too that especially coming from the situation that you've come from, you are probably going to miss miss the mark, to overshoot it. Like, when you come from a rep something that feels repressive, you you do run the risk of, like,

baby bathwater problems where, like, you overrun some things. And so I I just I just would advise caution that, like, similar to the conversation we're having earlier about, like, humans' ability to, on sand is like where you're at today may not be the mature, wise place that you're gonna be at three years from now. And so be cautious making decisions. We we spent a long time talking about this, making making big decisions on a narrow focus. And so just just be be careful about that. Because, like, I I that was the core complaint was that the guy was the guy came from a repressive background, but then he let that go, but he's still ugly. That seems like the core problem. He he's not a looker. Yeah. Yeah. And I I mean, I get it. I get it. You wanna be, you wanna to to like to look at the person that you're stuck with. Everybody wants to marry a Clooney, man. There ain't there ain't that many of them. There's, one. Yeah. Yeah. I I agree with that. So, yeah, I mean, just I I just give it some time, but you're right. Like, I think the guy's gonna have to get to know his wife

better, and she she like, she needs to be able to still feel valued. The here's the problem is that the shifting of what feels like kind of the burden of of a lady working like that. Like, I don't know if if I believe I'm gonna be cautious how I say this, but, like, I think men are often wired to feel that. Like, they don't require as much of the, I want you to know me. Do. They it's they still do, but like, they feel, they feel accomplished for that type of provision And women doing that type of work, like, their their need to otherwise be be known and understood and appreciated by their husband, like, it's not as innate. They actually still much still pretty much value their husband's feedback over just the innate contribution that they made to the family. Yeah. Where, like, where, like, guys often

tend to be like, this is no. Frankly, this is how I'll give you how it expresses it poorly. This is where guys go they come home and they sit on their brains, and, and they do the two cheek sleep because they're like, hey, man. I was out, and I did my job. I brought home money, and I don't really do anything at the house when I get home. Like, that's that's bogus, but, like, that's the that's the negative way of which this type of thought process is reflected. But it also means that guys can often sustain themselves off just knowing that they're contributing, for a longer amount of time. Now they still need it. They still need to know be be shown appreciation and for someone to recognize that they're doing that. But, like, I think I do think it's a little bit more innate. And so You noticed she didn't say, like, he's lazy. He plays video games all day. No. He's a slob. Yeah. Right? Like, none of the common Nope. Bum husband crap that you would normally expect. Yeah. I I feel like he's getting a little bit of a bum shake. That's what I feel like. Nonetheless, I still think he needs to step up at least in a minimal sense. Absolutely. Because there are things to be done to make this relationship be better. Yeah. Yeah. They should here's the thing. People always gonna outhandsome you, friend. Nope. But they ain't gonna outwork you. Right? This is true of just about everything in life. There's always a better looking, stronger, faster, better jumper, better eyebrows, whatever. There's always a better version of you out there somewhere, but but I'll be hot dang. They ain't gonna outwork me. I think I'll make sure I get this done. Best you. Outbest me. To to quote

well, shoot. I don't remember who who said it, but if you wanna be happy for the rest of your life, don't make a pretty woman your life. Yeah. From my personal point of view, get an ugly girl to marry you. Absolutely true. Same should be true for dudes. Yep. Okay. Ready? The question was, am I chasing a fantasy? Secular says, I'm sorry to say this, but I'm afraid you may be. While you've escaped it, your husband is still trapped in the role he was raised to believe was his. The question really is, can he recognize this and adapt to new circumstances? It would be wonderful if he could, but if it isn't in the cars, you should not start a family with him. Yeah. You're no you have no onus on this. The the dude is completely at fault according to secular, and there's nothing you could do. You're chasing a you you realize the word fantasy, that means you've created it. Mhmm. You know I'm saying? Like, you're you get to take no responsibility in this that you've created a situation where that man cannot fulfill anything that you're asking for. I feel like that's really unfair. Also, all the things that we that she expressed in her, in her message. My goodness. There is certainly room for improvement,

but just based on relationships I have heard of Yeah. We are a long, long way from the basement. Yeah. I agree. I agree. Comes to poor relationships. Does not seem so bad at all. I've heard some real humdingers on some husbands. And this dude seems like I don't know. I feel like we could deal with him. We could go to coffee and have some of the straight stuff. Always been kind to me. Yeah. Yep. The raw material is totally work. Like, you got you got good clay here. Yeah. There's some moldability. Okay. You want one more, or are we done? Now let's do one more. Here we go. Your life from the path. Path. I was cohost of a celebration where one of our guests, a seemingly very nice young man who was dating a relative, was observed goosing half a dozen women while on the dance floor. I don't know if my relative is aware nor do I know how the recipients felt about it, but I wonder if what he did could be considered sexual assault. Should I talk to my relative about it? Would it be proactive and protective or hurtful and intrusive? Well, you've been on the Internet. I had a partner who once suffered form who once suffered from and is now in recovery from sexual addiction. I believe in advocating for awareness, recovery, healing, amends, open dialogue, and respect for everyone. I don't know what, if any, next steps are appropriate other than to mind my own business. Can I please have some input?

Signed, apparently, a pamphlet. I don't think he's coming to the next wedding. No. The gooser. No. The family function veto. I wonder who wrote this. Cohost of a celebration where one of the guests, a very nice young man I mean, what part of him was nice apart from his goosene? Was he respectful? I don't understand.

I don't think you can be a respectful goocer. I don't think so either. It seems like the type of dude that think it would be alright to goose a bunch of ladies he don't know. That doesn't seem like a nice young man. Think of what it would take. I mean, just fellas in the room. Like, what type of of I I don't even know what to call it. Bravado? Fortitude or something for you to get that close to it, like, to just stick your hand somewhere like that. I would not goose them. Guts outrageous. Wait minute. A goose is where you pinch a lady on the butt. Right? We're talking the same thing here. I think that's in the realm of possibility here. Things adjacent to that or that itself. Like a hand like, I think it's, like, a could be a hand just underneath It could be between the legs. Number of things, but all inappropriate frightfully stayed out of this. Crap. Okay. Oh my goodness. Yeah. So far, the dictionary is not helping. Goosing is the present participle of goose.

Great. Really? Yeah. That's pretty much all that offered. Okay. Okay. There's nothing nice about this young man. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, it's like It's so confusing that there's oh, very nice. That means he Oh, yeah. Okay. Hold on. Smiled. To poke, prod, or pinch between or on the buttocks. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's about where we're at. Okay. Okay. So, anyway I I would say if it's what was the the question about? Like, what should I do?

Yeah. Well, this young for I feel like eight if he's eight, this is a different conversation. We're assuming he's a Let's say he's 22 year old or something like that. Alright. We'll put him at the 22. Does the young man at question, does his girlfriend, the relative, know? Is she is the is the relative aware? Because this girl brought this young man, this nice young man, not nice guy, to this event. Is she aware? If she's not aware, I would tell her. Yeah. I would tell her different. Okay. Now hold on. Absolutely. This is because this falls in dicey territory because it involves

like, she she brought already brought in sexual assault in. Right? But, like, this almost feels like an a b c conversation. Right? The guy did the goosin'. The there's plenty of ladies there and ladies' husbands there to, like, deal with the goocer. Or, like, you as the cohost of just, like, the person who threw the party, are you in charge of bringing down the heavy on the goocer? Yeah. Well, I here's what I would say is that, like, just because people were present and should be able to otherwise bring it up defend themselves, it doesn't mean that they always do. So if you found it gone undefended, someone's gotta defend it. Yeah. Someone's gotta come after that. I would say I would lee I would leave it in the hands. I would say I would tell the girlfriend, and then between the girlfriend and then anybody else deciding whether they care to pursue any particular like, I don't think it's your your gig to go, hey. I think you were sexually assaulted. Right. I think you bring up the behavior to the girlfriend, and then I think you allow other people to kind of make their own decisions. I mean, frankly, it does depend on the company you keep. Like, this might not be a problem at all. That's true. You, you were saying like, there is a there's a relationship thing in there, a culture. I think this guy's, like, wildly inappropriate. Agreed. But, like, the level of offense is in the eye of the beholder. I've often thought that, like,

like, I don't know what you'd have to do to me to be offended by it. Like, I'd probably laugh at anything remotely like a goo I'd like, what the heck? Why would someone wanna do that? Gooseneck. Right. I wouldn't it wouldn't no. But but, like, that's that's my that's where my head is at. That's right. That was only used as a comparison to, like there's a sliding scale depending on who it happened to. That's right. Like, someone else like, it doesn't really particularly matter your background. It just like, someone violated your space and yeah. I mean, how your reaction to it is yours, and it gets to be yours. But, like, I don't know that I that someone else can prescribe what that is. I would call the dude. Hey, man. Do you goose a bunch of people at this party? What no. I didn't. Yeah. You did. The reports are wild. Then why did you ask that question? And, like, people were drinking. There's no way that report is right. Are you saying you did or did not goose? I was I was nothing but respectful. Does that mean respectful goosing? No. I didn't. I There's six people that think you goosed a bunch of people at this party, and the consequences are heading your direct So I need to know, did it happen? Specifically in the form of six husbands driving to your house right now as we speak. Yeah. Because I'm giving them all your address, bro. You walked around goosing everybody. Craig is just jealous because of, he's he's tied down in his marriage, and, I I I still get to play the field. Yeah. Friendly heads up. They're coming your way. Friendly heads up. You will not be invited to other events. Well done. But if you do get invited to other events, just so you know, it's just because those six husbands are waiting for you in the parking lot. That's right. I'm gonna just assume if you're invited, they're gonna be there. I'm gonna goose them when they get here. But I but I didn't do that thing, you said. You're totally guilty.

Yeah. I don't know. This I I oh, this is an awkward situation. Here's the caution. The caution is is that you you go and, like, what is a problem for you, you create you overstep your bounds of a relationship that isn't yours. Now it is the the reason the boundaries are difficult is because some oftentimes people don't speak up for themselves. They won't they wanna be the awkward person who complains about the thing when they probably should've. You should've mentioned it because the guy's a he's a goozer. Yeah. And you and and somebody should. But, like, I I I think the the caution is is being an an advocate for justice on someone else's behalf where it isn't their consent nor is it that they agree to how you're representing the situation actually creates a bigger problem than the one that you have. Yeah. It feels like just

on its face, it feels like there could have been drama involved. No one created it. And then after the fact, we're trying to drum it back up. Well, yeah, it depends on it depends on if they are advocating for justice or not in this particular sense. So Yep. I'm gonna assume that the person who wrote in is at least a position of I don't wanna say authority in the family, but also a position of prominence as the cohost of this event. Mhmm. Given that she is a cohost and in a position of prominence, I'm going to also make the assumption that the six people who were goofed were very unhappy and then told her about this. And so given that, at that exact moment, I assume that they want something to be done. If that was the case. Yeah. If that is the case, and given that you are a representative of the family from this position of prominence, then I would absolutely say something. Yeah. Michael Even if it causes the drama because I think

Well, if they asked you to do something, if they didn't ask, well, it's a different situation. But still That's what I'm saying. More complicated. That's where I would agree. I would just I would make sure that you that you're representing the concerns of the people that actually were impacted, not just your your view of it or your personal offense. Yes. Because in because, like, in the in the situation with Ben, like, the dude goose Ben, and Ben's like, that's gotta stop, dude. And then that was the end of it. Right? And then she finds out about it two weeks later and then, like, makes a big stink out of it. Ben's like, we already handled this. It's done. We're this is not a deal. Like, we're we're letting this go. Yeah. I mean I mean, like, that's locker room behavior. It happens everywhere. But now to that extent, there could be some people where this is actually pretty uncomfortable even though it's wildly kind of accepted,

you know, in male locker rooms around the high schools everywhere. And so, like, again, I I think you gotta you you do have to represent your own perspective, but it does need to be specific to the person who is impacted. I just that's that's the only caution is that you'd be surprised at what people don't have a problem with that you may. Also, the line between accepted in locker rooms versus happening in locker rooms is an important distinction there. Yes. Yep. So I think the level of inappropriateness is is present regardless. But accepted versus happening versus commonplace, there's a those different words have different meanings. But, ultimately,

I guess it just depends on how aggressive you wanna get after this. Yep. Yeah. I'm I'm I'm gonna stick with my advice that I don't think this is your business. I think I think the folks involved can handle this. No. Mike, if you were at a family let's say you're a family reunion, and Greg Hudson, I'm gonna ask you the same question. Sure. And you saw somebody in your family goose and others, is there any way that, like, in is there a situation which you wouldn't mention it? I would well, yeah, I would probably not mention it at all if I if the people were people that can handle themselves. Right? Like, now if we're talking, like, my eight year old niece or something, now that's me. My grandma, Sure. Right? But, like, anyone in between Wait. Wait. Somebody goosed your grandma. Your grandma's goosing a bunch of people. No. No. Someone goose someone goose grandma. Okay. Knock it off, granny. I have some very large uncles Uh-huh. That would probably

have dibs on this particular thing. So Yeah. I mean, here's the thing. It's like, I'd like to see a dude try to goose my wife that hate me. I'd like to see it happen. My wife would tear this dude up. You know what I'm saying? So, like, I just I I don't know. It sounds wrong because, like, like, the current culture is is, like, we like, gotta we gotta stand up for this stuff, and we gotta stop it. Right? And, like, I don't disagree. If people feel uncomfortable about it, yeah, it probably needs to quit. But, like, they have the complete freedom to handle it themselves too. And if they wanna make a deal out of it, I think they can. And if they wanna let it go, I think they can. Like, we should give them the freedom to not make it a big deal because, like, basically, we're we're tying them the other way. Right? We're saying, like, in the past, we'd go, hey, man. This behavior is totally acceptable. Not a big deal. I don't care how it made you feel. Right? And then put them in a box. Right? And now we're doing the exact opposite that says Right. This thing happened to you. We're definitely gonna make it a a big deal. I don't care how you feel about it. Right. And, like, that doesn't seem right either. Right. And so, like, if someone came to you and said, look. This made me very uncomfortable, and I need to know what's being addressed. You go, I'm on it. Yeah. Don't you worry about this. I'll get this handled. Right? But, like, if like I said, like, ages kinda matter to me, but, like, adults ish, I I don't I just feel like it's their business. And I feel like I'm coming off as insensitive, but, like, I just feel like it's theirs to handle. Well, it's situational. Yeah. Is very situational. Yeah.

Okay. Secular answers. If what your relative's date did was observed by other guests, he must have been the talk of the party. I do think that happened what what happened bears discussion with your relative. However, rather than frame it in terms of a sex addiction, might be more accurate to suggest that he may not know how to handle alcohol. That was shorter. Wait. Were they were they boozing? Well, it's a party, dude. Well, I I I mean, maybe they're drinking something manly like a ginger ale. A ginger ale, and the dude's all popped up by ginger ale goosing people. Sounds unlikely.

Sugar, hon. You're right. He probably had a doctor. Hey. You're listening to live from the path. Thanks for hanging out with us tonight. We very much appreciate it. If you got any comments for us on the show, give us a call or text on the Bob Eisenhower live from the path complaint line. That's (515) 517-0085. Also, the place where you can send us anything that you I don't know. Any thoughts on the show that makes sense from the macro level for this 500 show celebration that we got coming up. It's gonna be a real letdown. I know that. I'm a say, look. It's so boy. 500 shows. But, anyway, we would love to hear from you. In the meantime, thank you, Greg Hudson, for coming in. Always appreciate your insights. Word. And be faithful in the means. God will handle the ends. You've been listening to live from the path.