Joshua Keith Craft

0:52 Yeah. Are you recording? Yeah, we're recording, man. You know, Josh just kind of casually if I didn't Dude, you know what's crazy? I'm one of the closest people to you and I had no idea what was going on until I got an email from Erwin McManus and was like, "Josh Craft coming in the arena." I'm like, "Dude, I know that guy." Well, I mean, I've I've been in it. I've been in that's like his mastermind. So, I've been in it since it started. Yeah. But to be the featured like guest. Well, he's been doing that. I'm down I guess I'm downplaying it, but he's been doing that with like his friends on the he does these pastor calls once a month and so he's been doing it like with people that are his friends that he has him come on like last last month was Jabin Chavez. Okay. And so he's like I would you know want you to come I don't even know what he wants me to talk about yet. So we're going to figure that out. But he's just been kind I think to me it's like he's been just kind of doing this with people that are his friends. But it means a lot to be asked for sure. Yeah. I mean dude my mom asked me to be on her podcast. That's that's the list podcast. No, she doesn't. But that's that's what I'm saying. That's the list of my invites. And you're talking like, you know, you've got one of the most uh noteworthy uh like forethought I would say thought leaders in Christian culture in America today. And you're like, I know you're friends with him. I know you guys have a great relationship. But he's like, "Hey, I I think people I want to talk with you so people can hear, you know, what we talk about. I know you guys talk a lot." I think that I think that's cool personally. And I know you're just kind of like, "What?"

2:08 I think it's No, I think it's really cool. I mean, I I um my dad required us all to read The Barbarian Way when I was a junior in high school. So, okay, that was really my introduction to Erwin. And what's crazy is and he became like probably like I guess a hero of mine, but a real mentor from a distance of mine a long time ago. Yeah. So, and we were we weren't really friends with him. And so, I just was like, man, I read every book he wrote, all that stuff. And so it's it's crazy to it's really cool in my life to now have a relationship with somebody like that who I've looked up to for I mean my whole adult life since I was 17 or whatever however old I was. No. And I love that man. I And that's why I think it's so cool is like and so like I think it's funny that you say that because you have some other stories and so what like you and I always kind of text back and forth or talk about like what we want to where we want to go in the discussion. And what I love about it is it's never like here's where we're going to end up. It's just like this is like let's pick this path and see where it goes.

3:07 Yeah. I don't know how valuable this is in like a podcasting format or anything, but I'm enjoying it. Yeah. Well, I'm enjoying it too, man. And uh you know, I I from what I've the feedback that I've had from people is that they enjoy the the one the kind of the way that we end up getting there because I think that it truly is the thought process of you know what a dialogue is like you said through. So anyways, yeah. And I think what I'm what I'm constantly uncomfortable with that I think's good constantly uncomfortable. Yeah. is um none of none of what we're saying has been fact checked. So like I'm going to I'm going to say the wrong thing and probably get caught a bunch of times and then have to come back and go, "Yeah, I probably didn't mean it that way." Well, you fact checked yourself whenever you switched to 6%. Like I think on every podcast we did, you're like 4%. I'm like, "Well, I find Yeah, I find out later." But, you know, that's that's my thing is like when you're it's such a it's such a challenge as a communicator because when you're sitting there and you don't have any notes in front of you.

4:02 Yeah. And you're having to and I mean I don't know we probably I probably could do we could probably do like podcasts that are really outlined and stuff. I think they'd be really valuable. I know they would be. Believe it or not, I've got a little bit of experience in doing that. Yeah. But when you're not sitting there with like a whole script in front of you, it's you know what am I going to say? make sure the first couple podcasts that we did, I said like so much. All right. And I don't usually say that word when I'm communicating, but when I'm thinking, I'm obviously saying it. Yeah. I It's funny you say that because I hear that myself as well, and I hate it every day. I've had to catch Yeah, I've had to catch myself. And it's definitely It's definitely a big challenge, but I think it's been fun. I'm enjoying it. Yeah. Well, me, too. And so, anyways, the reason I bring up that What episode number is this? 20 I think it'll be 20 27th. You know, we didn't celebrate cuz you you talked about that the 20 episode milestone was like a milestone, right?

4:54 No, no, six was when we got over average, man. Like you you we we we celebrate that. We crossed a long time ago. Yeah. We're good. Um we can shut it down. Let's just Yeah, let's just let's just like throw our shoulders out by c by patting ourselves back. The last episode. Great. Awesome. Yeah, we made it. We made it. Yeah. Uh no, man. But so define like I want to talk about defining moments because like I think it's so funny that you're like I said I had to get an email from Erwin rather than hearing from you. Yeah. You text me that today. Yeah. I know because I was like dude what is wrong with you? You know like I was like how am I hearing about this? You said Yeah. You said we'd be stupid if we didn't talk about this on the podcast and I said let's be stupid. Yeah. Cuz like AK I just want to you know it's a great thing to do. Let's just let's just take this cool opportunity to shove it under the rug. And um I I know why you don't want to do that and I cuz like you're not a self-promoter and I'm not a self-promoter. I actually hate talking about a lot of the stuff that I do and but it's something I had to get over because if you believe in what you do and I do believe in what I do, then you know it's going to help people and you want them to help and and there's a difference between trying to help like trying to be like, "Hey, I just need your $49.99." As opposed to being like, "You need to do this. It'll change your life." And I've tried to do things for free and unfortunately what my experience has been is when you do things for free people do not value it.

6:09 Yeah. And so then they they don't put as much effort into it and shocker it doesn't work. So there's there's different like you have to pay a price. But anyways that that's a whole another topic that we could go down. The thing that makes me laugh you're getting ready to be in Erwin McManus is the arena which is awesome. When's that happening by the way for anybody? April uh April 21st I think. Right. So this will probably air after after you go on Oh no actually no it'll air it'll air before. Um, so you're going on there April 21st, which is awesome. And but like you've had a lot of cool moments in your life. And so I'm kind of curious just as your friend because defining moments is something that I learned from your dad. Uh, how would you describe that, man? Yeah. So, he wrote about it in uh in your divine fingerprint in his book about um you know this it's probably my favorite it's one of my favorite things that my dad's ever talked about or written and he's really never preached a message on it but it's about how most people they look at life and they define moments a certain way so or or they allow moments so you know if you think about person saying this was a defining moment for me like Michael Jordan right got cut from his varsity basketball team And was a defining moment for him. And for most people when they think about defining moments, they think about, you know, for Michael Jordan, that was like his catalyst to work hard and become who Michael Jordan became.

7:25 For me, it became personal. Yeah. Exactly. And um so for most people, the way they approach defining moments are how the moment defined them, right? They say, "Well, this moment happened like my parents got a divorce or I had this great idea or I met this person and it was a defining moment for me. And really the way it actually works in our minds is we we define what the moments mean, right? So we say to ourselves, well, here's what this meant when this happened. And for for most people in most moments in their life, unfortunately, their defining moments aren't positive. Most people's defining moments are not these positive moments. They're really negative moments. And we use that a lot in mastermind rooms. So, we'll walk people through how to take a moment that you see as a negative and shift your perspective on how that moment was actually a positive defining moment if you if you if you want it to be.

8:18 Yeah. You know, and so that's so that's the perspective on defining moments. I don't know if I have a lot of cool ones. No. Well, I mean I but I think that that's so powerful because psychologically the the things that get burned in like what creates neural pathways and the things that become like as you described as is defining moments are are coupled with intense emotion. Yeah. And so they create beliefs in people like I the one I always use as an example is if you if you like as a six-year-old if you almost drown in a pool you're old enough to remember that and you might be the person that's afraid of water for the rest of your life. Now if you're a person who hasn't had that moment you're like what are you doing? Like I I like for me I grew up in San Diego. So like that's a great perspective. I mean like I think you know people that are scared of dogs. Great. Like I was grew up with dogs. I would have friends come over to my house who are scared of dogs and one of the reasons why they would be scared of dogs cuz they got bit by a dog when they were a kid or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. And so like you could easily from a logically logical place like do you have you been by other dogs since then?

9:14 Yes. Have you been bitten? Well, no. Bec like do you think it was because you were afraid or do you think it's because not all dogs bite you? Maybe. Maybe. like your recollection of the event as a whatever age old you were when it happened is not as accurate as it would be as an adult because you know kids kids have no idea of context like I still have to if I say to my son like hey it's happening tonight he's like how many sleeps I'm like no no sleeps and he's like this day that's how he understands I'm like yes this day because like night day afternoon it's just like sleeps and so like and I say that and it's cute because he's six but like as you get older like your context text and your understanding of things, you understand that like events are tied together. Like this dog could have been beaten. This dog might have been from a pound. This dog, you know, like there's all these things that you kind of go like, okay, you start to identify cause and effect relationships, but we don't have that when we're young. So, people end up walking around with these stories that they have as a kid. And I always say like no one would ask an 8-year-old, hey, I need you to handle the finances for the the family home. You guys would have a lot of fun for like, you know, 10 days and then you would not eat, right?

10:19 Because it be over. Yeah. It'd be over. like you guys have a great couple days and then like for by and large for the average American household it'd be like well things have gone bad if you let your 8-year-old dictate to you and so no one would say that's a good idea but we do that all the time and so like with with our and like you said they're negatively defined moments but like what would you like I think what's interesting about what you said is that we go through these moments and they create beliefs for us. Yes. And and so you know if you def if you allow a moment to define you like if you if you tell tell yourself I have no control over this experience and my perception of it then what you're also saying is well my beliefs I didn't create my beliefs either but most my beliefs just happened. Yes. That's for most people I think that's true. Yeah. And and so that's a bad idea. Yeah. So how that's a bad idea for a lot of reasons. Yeah. Well, I so I want to go I want to dive into that because that like I think that that thought process of like you define the moment, the moment doesn't define you is incredibly empowering, but like how how cuz like we are shaping those beliefs very unintentionally. And this is where you have people that if you actually stopped and like exposed their one of the things I enjoy about doing this with you is I feel like we kind of dive, you know, 12 ft deep on things into the pool. We don't kind of we kind of like we start off shallow and we go, "Okay, let's go down." And I've really enjoyed that because it's it's created a pattern in my mind that I find myself doing this a lot with myself and with other people and it's been really beneficial. And what I always, you know, to me the bottom of the pool in this analogy is is the belief because that's ultimately what's what's holding everything above it.

11:53 So like you've had some things that you've experienced when we were talking about things that have been disappointments in your life. Like what do you do? Like what's your process to kind of go through and you know give definition to them and to Oh yeah. I mean I don't know who I don't know. I'm sure there's people that have mastered that. I wouldn't say that I've mastered that. I'd say I wrestle with it a lot. What's interesting, you know, is the the past the past and the future don't exist, right? Like fundamentally, they don't exist right now. What what exists right now is the present. Just this moment. This moment right now is the only thing that exists. Past doesn't exist anymore. The future doesn't exist yet. So the fact to me that the past doesn't exist means that the only thing that exists about the past is what I think about the past. Like my memories of the past, what I believe that the past means cuz it's not here anymore. I'm not currently living in that reality, right?

12:45 So that's a different reality that I had before. Yeah. You know, right? So everything in my life now is actually real. Well, what I think about everything in my life now is based on what I believe the past means. It's not even the real of what the past was cuz there's no way for me to There's this really interesting Black Mirror episode. Black Mirror is this this dystopian sci-fi show on Netflix. It's very It's very interesting and very dark, right? I've never watched it. Yeah. I feel like you shouldn't be allowed to watch it. What? Me? I should Yeah, you don't need to go down the darkness. Yeah, I it's hard for me to watch at times like, "Oh, that's dark." But there's there's a I think the episode is called The Entire History of You. And it's this man, the guy the I think his name's Charlie Brooker. He's he's such a great thinker how he approaches writing these episodes. The guy that created the show, but he the episode is about how there it's in the future. It's set in the future. And in the future, you have the ability to record every moment of your life and pull it up, right? you know, you have a recorder in your eye and you can pull up. So, like if you're so it's a it's a story of this couple that whenever they get in a fight, they just pull up the recording of whatever they're fighting about and they Oh, man.

14:03 And it's and it's it's uh it's such a it's not a it's the story doesn't end well. Yeah. Right. I won't ruin it if someone wants to go watch it. But it's actually not a good idea. The the kind of the premise of that episode is it's actually not a good idea to remember everything, right? to have the ability to remember everything in your life. But what you do, but what's what's true about memory is what you do remember is ultimately what you want to remember, right? But you don't remember. What I think is so so interesting about the way our brains work is I don't remember the fact like facts. Yeah. I I I remember things through my filter. I remember things through this subjective interpretation. And I can say that this is a I can say that this is an accurate memory. But it's really not. Yeah. There's there's no and and there's no if you if you dive even deeper into that to me there's no way to even know whether or not your memories are factual.

14:59 Right. Well, and that's where you can get this whole thing like, hey, this whole world is not real. Like people can go really deep into this because what you're saying is everybody perceives things through their own filter, which is 100% true, which is why like eyewitness testimony has gotten less and less valuable. And you know, as you now we have cameras everywhere. Well, I mean what what people don't maybe know about like Einstein's theory of relativity, right? is in in the theory of relativity he defined time as a um as a dimension like like space. Yeah. Right. So time is time is something we we it's this is I I still am try try to wrap my head around it. So time is something that we perceive as linear. It's this linear thing. Time everything has a beginning, middle and end. In the world of quantum physics, and the world of relativity, uh the the only reason time exists, so what they say is every moment exists at the same time, right? The only reason time exists is because our brains have to have the ability to perceive change.

16:06 So our brains kind of create this thing called time. It's not that like the events didn't happen, it's just they don't exist. So like the past doesn't fundamentally exist neither does the future. But we have to have a way to perceive time perceive change. So the way we perceive change is through this lens called time. But physics in the world of physics time is not uh time is not the thing. It's that yeah that I'm not saying that just to like be confusing. It's it's very confusing to even read about and I would say I'm not a physicist and I don't really understand it that way. But the reason why I say that is because here's what is true. Here's what is true for me. It's not that the facts of these things didn't happen, but every every memory of of every memory I have in my life is something that's a judgment that I've made. It's a I've I have an opinion that I've formed or a belief that I've formed based on my experience.

17:01 Yeah. And that was completely up to me to formulate that. And then I have this, you know, we live in the present. So then I have this stuff in the future that I see and every decision that I make, I heard Erwin say this one time and I thought it was just such a great thought. Every decision that I make in the present is because of how I I perceive my future. So every decision that we're making right now is because of how we think the future is going to be. Yeah. Right. So if you want to understand why you're making the decisions you're making, just what's your p what's your picture of the future? And that's why you're deciding what you're deciding. But yeah, the picture the picture that I have of my future is also dictated by how I interpret my experiences. Right. Exactly. That's what I was trying to say. Yeah. Right. And so if you have if I have negative beliefs that I've formulated based on what I perceive to be negative experiences, then I'm going to assume that the future is also going to be negative.

17:57 Right. Because that's been my life story. Okay. Right. And that's how most people don't realize that they're living. Yeah. is we're we're not trapped in the present, but in the present, we're going to make decisions that create the future. And what I have to admit to myself is I have a way of seeing the past that determines the decisions I'm making in the present that are going to determine my future. And if I see the past through like a negative lens of any kind, then I'm going to make negative decisions that make my future probably worse than it needs to be. Yeah. And now let me let so like I'm really I'm actually really pumped. I didn't know we were going to end up here but I'm I'm seriously pumped to die. Dude, I'm so pumped that we're where we're at because going to correct me on Einstein and relativity. You know I hope they do because like I don't know if you saw I think I went crosseyed there for a second. I was like I'm sorry you said I want to meet that person cuz they can help me understand relativity.

18:49 Relativity is insane. Yeah. When you were like all moments exist at once. I was just like it's Yeah. No, we can move past that one and let the physicist talk. Yeah. Thank God, you know, God bless the physicist. Um but okay so this is something that I think is so interesting. So I agree with what you said that we the way we act now is based on the picture we have of the future which is influenced by how we've looked at things on the past. Now if I take that and I I just kind of extrapolate that I go okay well surely the answer is if I want to see a better future I just need to change the way I think about the past and we have absolute license and isn't that easy? Now that is not easy because that's why psychologists exist and we have all these psychiatry and all these different like mental health specialists that that help out. Now where I find this so interesting I I I always look God is the grand designer of everything and he's hardwired us in certain ways I don't think we necessarily understand and and one of those ways is like I think one of the most amazing things that if you're an evolutionist I would love to hear you explain conscious like where conscience where does your conscience come from that little Jiminy Cricket like I I and I loved how CS Lewis talks about Mere Christianity as like such a an echo of the fact that there is a divine creator.

20:01 Now, here's where I've seen this so interesting. So, like I'll give two examples in culture. I feel like especially in Hollywood, they love to be able to like almost just kind of like gloss over this. And so, I used I watched Mad Men when it was like out for a while. This is before I was a marketer actually. So, it's kind of funny that I by I always felt drawn to marketing, which is funny that I do that now. But, so in Mad Men, you know, Don Draper, right? He's this genius guy, but he's an absolutely terrible person. Cheating on his wife. He's kind of a jerk to like pretty much everybody. And so he has this assistant. I can't I don't know her character's name or anything like that, but she basically does something wrong with a guy and something happens at this apartment and she like needs to be picked up. And so he goes and picks her up and she's walking back like they're they're in the car driving back and she goes, "Don, I I I'm really sorry. I just want to" and he just stops her and he goes, "Hey, it didn't happen." And she just looks at him like that and he's and he's like, "It didn't happen." And then and that's the end of the scene. And I remember when that when that happened, I was not serving God. I was in a really just not great place in life. I remember looking at that and I was like, no way.

21:03 Like it it it it bothered me so much because I was like, is that really possible that you can literally just like dupe yourself into it? And like and then I watched another movie called The Hitman, which is which was I actually really enjoyed it because it was a lot more psychological than I thought. And I'm going to ruin it for anybody who wants to see that movie. Uh it it's all right. It's I mean I enjoyed it, but more because of the psychological aspect. Basically, this dude um pretends I won't ruin the whole plot of the movie, but I will tell you at the end, he ends up with this chick and they end up killing her her ex-husband who was a really bad dude. And like the end of the movie is they're happily married, they got a couple kids and like the the kid starts to say something and they think that the kids found out and then like the kid was completely mistaken. So, they both look at each other and just kind of smile and like that was the end of the movie. They're both just so happy they were able to kill this guy and then get away with it and like nothing bothers them now because you know, hey, they just decided and and I just look and I go, "No." I I go, you like, "No, I'm serious, man. It bothered me from the first time I saw it because I'm like, God has put something in us like he he's written the law in our heart is what it says in the word of God, right?

22:05 It says that he's written on on the inside of us. And I just I think that God's in his grand design, he put this need that we have for him. like we're we're not built to function without our creator. And so there's something in how we look back at things that is um that that we we can't violate that. At least not in my experience. I know that people can have a seared consciousness is what it says. But then there's this other side where I I feel like we have this sinful nature that wants to make sense of things. And so as long as we can rationalize things, we can put them in a box and do some pretty awful things. Like one of the presuppositions of of neural linguistic programming which is psychology and is that is that everybody does something ultimately in their mind it's for a for good. And you think about what people do to each other. Like we could go into human trafficking. There's some awful stuff that goes on. I cannot fathom how that person could be doing in their mind somehow be thinking that that's partially good.

22:59 Yeah. Oh, did you did you finish watching did you finish all the Mad Men the whole show? No, dude. I I lost I couldn't stick with that show. Yeah. What's interesting is what happens in that show is uh Don Draper uh long story short, he's not Don Draper, right? He's he's assumed an identity of somebody else from World War II. It's like this whole and he and he's got all this massive cognitive dissonance because he's trying to live as if his past didn't happen. Oh, well that makes tot Yeah. I mean, it's not like a redeeming show. I I didn't really finish the show either, but I got to that point. Yeah. So, so um so but but to even what you said before a person who is um doesn't believe in intelligent design uh they they they the definition of base morality for them where that comes from is tribalism. So for all of human history, we've had a desire to be in with the tribe. And so for there's certain behaviors that are antisocial, right, that would get you removed from a tribe.

23:58 Like if you murdered somebody or So they think that this somehow just got into our DNA. Yeah. They think that it's an evolutionary aspect to our um to our existence, which to me I like I wouldn't say I'm an evolutionist, but evolution is also Charles Darwin was going to be a a pastor before he became Charles Darwin, right? Yeah. So, um, so I don't I don't personally I don't think that the theory of evolution is incompatible with Christianity. It's it's incompatible with kind of a young earth uh with creationism, I think. Well, it's not it's it's really not. I mean, because God because the the the the um the theory of the Big Bang was put forward by a Catholic priest. Really? Yeah. I mean, so technically, God could have used all this stuff to create us, right? And so people I think I think in that and that's where I'm probably a little bit different than a lot of people.

24:49 I see this going here, dude. Well, well, because people uh there's there's there's plenty of there's plenty of debate and differences between uh the Christian belief system and the biblical worldview and the rest of the world. We don't also have to take on like all of science. Right. Right. So uh which has always been a little bit of a problem for me. It's like we we we've that's that's a whole conversation for another day. It's like we've decided not to be very smart and not to have smart conversations because this is what the Bible says and the Bible's not really a biology textbook. It's not it's not a it's not a uh it's not a textbook at all. It's not a it's not a deal for like I was talking to someone the other day. This is I'm going down a road that we don't probably need to go down, but talking about like the book of Enoch. We're talking about the book of Enoch and all this different stuff. And you know, people want to know and they want to understand.

25:40 Yes. And you know, that's really what you're getting at. But what to me um the thing about the thing about any like I have people ask me a lot of Bible questions or ask about stuff like this, like we're like going down this like Darwinism road. Um my my biggest question is how does that affect how you're living your life, right? You know, with with people. So the way you look at the past and the way you look at your life is how does that affect how you're living your life? And that's and that's something we have to be able to answer. I don't mean to go down all those I just have opinions about that. But I don't mean to go down all those all those roads unnecessarily but at the same time there's a story that all of us right the human beings like we think in stories we communicate in stories. Storytelling is the oldest art form that exists. I mean, oral oral storytelling existed before cave paintings existed.

26:38 Yeah. It's how we pass down tradition. It's how we pass down knowledge, everything from generation to generation. And every every human culture on the planet has a storytelling tradition of some kind. I mean, when we get with our friends and when we uh spend time with people that we love, the context of that is telling stories. Yeah. you know, like you go to dinner with somebody, you're you're going to spend three hours talking about all the, you know, telling each other all the stories about your life since the last time you saw each other or whatever it is that you're navigating. And so there's all these stories that we tell ourselves about life. There's stories that we tell other people about life. And um all of that starts with our past, right? And so most people, they don't tell themselves a good story about their past. Yeah. You know, even even people that are Christian, even people that believe that God has a great plan for their for their life, they don't tell themselves a good story from their past, and so they go, "Well, that's just a part of my past I never need to talk about."

27:30 Yeah. They try to bury it. Yeah. That's that's something that never happened because like I was talking to a few years ago I was talking to someone who I'm close to and we were talking about a mutual friend of ours and um this person not a mutual friend of me and Nick mutual friend of me and me and this friend. This person is one of the people in my life who more than anybody I've ever known is incapable of taking responsibility. Like they find a way to have it never be their fault for anything, right? like relationships going bad, them messing up at work, you know, I hear these stories with I've heard these stories with them for a lot of my life and I go, man, like how do you not how do you have this little of self-awareness, right, that you would not think you have any part like, oh, another relationship broke down and I wonder what you had to I didn't contribute anything to that.

28:23 This person, this, this, and this or like you had this project go really bad at work. Like, is that maybe because of something you did wrong? No, I just had a bunch of idiots on my team, right? It's like this is that person. So I was talking to a friend of ours about that and they were having such a hard time with this person and this person had one particular had a um a this person had gone through a divorce and when they went through their divorce everyone around them knew that it was a 50/50 thing. Like both of you guys contributed to this breakdown. Everybody who was close to them people who were close to them were saying don't get married right right before before they got married for a lot of reasons. we were saying don't get married. So they they got a divorce and if you hear them tell the story of their divorce, this person who they married was the embodiment of evil, right? And that was the problem. So the problem was I married a person.

29:15 Yeah. Who was just totally evil, right? Um if you ask me or any one of the friends and people that were around this person, it was like, no, you guys were both not healthy, right? and you were both toxic with each other and it just really when you got together it got way worse. Yeah. Right. So it doesn't justify the divorce. But I was telling I was saying in the context of the story, the reason why I'm saying that is because my theory on this particular individual was this person cannot take responsibility for anything that's happened to them in life. Because if they did, I think subconsciously they know they would have to go back and look at all the other things in their life that haven't worked. M because of them. So for me, so for them to take So we were working on a project together and this person didn't help with the project and just kind of told both of us that uh we were so unhelpful and blah blah blah blah blah. Like we had a bunch of conflict about it. And so that's like my our friend was saying, how come this person can't take responsibility for what they did wrong? So I was like, look, we've known this person for a long time and here's my theory. My theory is that subconsciously they're protecting themselves.

30:28 Yeah. Because if they if they really took responsibility even on a project as small as the one we're working on, they would have to start looking back and taking responsibility for other things. Yeah. That have contributed to a breakdown. And that would cause them so much psychological pain. Yeah. That they would almost rather just live life and go, you know what, they don't they don't say, "Oh, that was a different me." Yeah. they their their perspective is um not that I was different at that time. It was just I was uh victimized that you know by life but that's such an that's such I I actually find remarkably even though I score low on this on every test ever I actually find a lot of empathy here solely not not not that I would condone the behavior but solely because to me this is what I mean about the the way God's engineered people. What you're saying right there is they have a fear of inadequacy which is a massive fear.

31:20 Tony Robbins says there's only two fears that people had. One is that they're they're not enough, aka they're inadequate. And two, because they're not enough, they won't be loved. That's how he he he simplifies it. I tend to agree with that. I think you can get into a lot of different fears. Fear of lack, loss, like there's there's those things, but like really that comes down and I think that that's partially what God's wired into us that from a sinful world has been taken out. It's like God wired us to be loved, right? like he like I've been really thinking a lot about um just the whole purpose of the earth and the design and like I do not by any stretch have it figured out and nor do I think that it's possible for me to you know to grasp the full mind of God on that but what he's given us in scripture and what I can deduce is is like we have this need to be loved. I think you can see it everywhere. There's evidence of it. Now here's the thing. we want to be loved and we know we need to be loved. And then when we're given to parents who are very, you know, fallible, which is all of our parents, we then end up not being loved the way that we necessarily needed to be loved in a lot of cases. And as a result, then we hold it against our parents. We then build these stories like what you talked about and you have a bunch of people who are like walking around hurt hurt hurting other people when in fact if you realize that the only person that could ever satisfy the way you need to be loved is God and that you can actually know the love of Christ and to actually have that satisfaction when you have that love that's not based on who you are but it's based on who God is. There is a you don't need validation anymore. And this is what I think that so much of uh if you take God out of the equation. I don't know how you make sense of this. I mean I think from a you know to me from an emotional intelligence perspective there is this simplistic view that we have of people.

33:00 Yeah. That we don't really take people as the whole person that they are. Right. Right. And so we can have a really simplistic view of people and then when they reveal to us their humanity that affects us negatively in some way and so then we criticize them as victimizing us, hurting us, being a bad person when that person is just a human. Right. Right. So like you really you and me both and like all of us like you expected when you were growing up you didn't see your parents as a human being. No, you they're perfect. They had everything figured out. Yeah, of course they did. You know, I remember when I actually realized they didn't. It was like shattering to me. Yeah. I mean, I'm sitting here and I think there's a lot of people that are younger than me, like people in their 20s and that can look at me at 38 just like I would look at 38 year olds and go, "Wow, they got a lot figured out." Like, I have nothing figured out.

33:51 You're cooking, Unk, huh? You're cooking, Unk. That's what they would say to you. Like, I have nothing figured out. I have less figured out now than I've ever had figured out in my life. You've been very upfront about that on this podcast. Well, and but but you you like my kids look at me. I have, you know, three kids, two that are getting ready to be born, and they look at me and they're like, "You you have a plan. You have everything figured out." It's like, "Well, I have a plan for this vacation we're going to go on." Yeah. I mean, I know how I'm going to I don't think you're giving yourself I I mean, I think I think I'm very much I'm very much trying to figure out how to live my life to the best of my ability. Yeah. I I think I think the reason you say the way things the way you do is because you don't have it all figured out. I think if I actually started like going into different areas of your life, there's a lot of things that you that you have. I have some stuff figured out. But the thing you have to admit, right, the thing I have to I wrestle with this like pretty frequently in my life. I'm a villain in people's story.

34:43 Like I am there's people that there's people that look at me and don't like me. Yeah. And hope that I lose in life because of how our relationship went. Right. Did I intend for that to ever take place? No. But I'm a human and I did I probably did some wrong stuff. Yeah. Right. or some stuff that affected them negatively, right? Vice versa. I mean, there's people that are villains in my story that um would never would ne if we had if I sat down with them and had the conversation, they'd be like, "Well, that was never my intention, right? It's never well, you know, to me, honestly, the intention doesn't matter. Still affected me." So, so that doesn't matter. But but the the problem that I have like in my life and the problem that we all have as human beings, right? Number one, we don't really take the whole person. We have a tough time actually with taking the whole person cuz like you're saying we're hardwired. It's for love. I think it's also for acceptance. Like we're hardwired to want that.

35:39 Yeah. That's part of the need for love. We want you know I want unconditional acceptance. I don't want to really accept anybody unconditionally. No. Right. Yeah. Because Well, cuz that's hard to do, right? Like Yeah. And you see a lot of people that are looking for that. So So here's the thing. Like here's the here's the raw truth of that, right? The only unconditional relationship that you and I will ever have is with God. Yeah. Every other relationship that exists on the planet is conditional. Completely conditional. Well, yeah. I think I think the closest thing we get to God's love is is our parents. Is our parents, right? If we have if we have good parents, right? Yeah. You know, or I I think I could do anything and my mom would never walk away from it. I think I don't think my parents would ever like my parents love me like they you know what I mean? Like they love me deeply. And I feel the same way about my kids. I like I can't imagine them doing some horrific things. That'd be a hard thing to have to wrestle with. I could never be like you're dead. Like we're not talking. Yeah. You know what I mean? And I think that's the closest thing we get to it for sure. But but even so like for me like in a marriage, right? This is one of the things uh people that are immature like I think young in marriage don't understand is they think they can get married to somebody and then they can go home every day and just that's the person you just fully be yourself with and just let your hair down totally.

36:48 Right. It's like, "No, no, that person like I like Courtney I think loves me unconditionally to the best of her ability. She doesn't want to deal with all my crap." Like my wife doesn't want me to come home and tell her all the bad ways that I feel and all the negative thoughts that I think and uh all the fears that I have and all the anxieties and all the She doesn't want to hear that. Yeah. Right. And it doesn't really It doesn't help our relationship for her to hear that. my kids. Like I want to have as close of a relationship as I can with my kids. I don't I should not come home and trauma dump on my kids. Well, no. Because you know you know who trauma dumps? Your kids. Because this is part of maturing as you start to get better at like you know leading yourself. And so like all of us like we think that there's a relation. So I think I think to what you're saying we want to have relationships that are completely unconditional and we're all looking for those. But you're only going to find that like with God. You're You're not.

37:45 Yeah. But I I think I don't know, man. I feel like you kind of ended up in a dark place that like here was like my my spouse doesn't really love me. No, I wouldn't I wouldn't say it's dark. I would say that you you if you're gonna have like so it's so use the parent example like my parents unconditionally love me and they would be for me. Um there are things I would I could do that would affect our relationship really negatively where I would make it really hard for us to have relationship, right? like if I was a drug addict, if I abandoned my children, um, you know, any any number of things I could come up with, it would make it really hard to have to for them to really like express love to me even though they would love me. Like with God, it doesn't work that way. With God, you can be as screwed up as you want to and God will still love you. He'll still be there for you. He'll still reach into your life with different people. And um what what we have to learn how to do, okay, is cuz the thing is to me if I want to have acceptance of any kind in a relationship, you know, this isn't really about defining moments, but this is the typical well if I want to live in that space, um number one, if I want someone to take me as a whole person, I got to take them as the whole person, right?

39:00 I got to understand this person is a bundle of contradictions. Not every day of their life is the best day of their life. And it's the same for me. So, if we can agree on that in a relationship, we have the chance to have a good relationship cuz we're going to agree going into this relationship that we're both human beings. But number two, I think I have to understand, and I think you learn this, you know, as you get older, is that as much as possible on in my relationships, I should be truthful and I should be honest and I should be authentic, but I should also be on my best behavior. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Because because how much like this is my always been my challenge whenever people are like oh you know but who would really be there for you cuz like that's the question people like if you know 3:00 a.m. like who you you know this is this the kind of stuff that people talk about like who's going to bury the bodies like we're all going around murdering people. People love that like conversation. Um and I get it. I I do get it. But my my immediate thought to that is I'm like cuz look if someone needed to be killed um I I have some friends and you you and I share these friends.

39:58 We are recording this though so let's not Okay. Yeah. We'll stop with that. Um, but but the point the point being the point being I think my my thought process on that is like look at some point and I I feel this way about all my closest friends. If I am like decide to wreck my life and I do a bunch of like let's say I do everything you just mentioned. I become a drug addict. I abandon my kids and my wife and all this sort of stuff. At some point, I've become so selfish and so like that I I need you to take so much care of me that I'm basically saying to you, hey, you need to interrupt your entire life, all the stuff that God's given to you and all the stuff that you've worked to develop so that you can care for me. And to me, I think that that's like that's a bridge too far. And the only reason that God like people can still love you, it just probably won't be the way that you think that they should because you're so caught up in yourself and so self-absorbed that you can't accept that maybe somebody loving you is telling you no and being like you need to you need to get your act together.

40:51 Yeah. And that's where I think like people would call that tough love. That's actual love. I think when you look at all love, it really is I mean God relates to us in the term of covenant. And what is covenant, Josh? It's basically saying like this is what I'm going to do. This is who I'm going to be. And the difference between us and God is that he's faithful to it and never falters. And but I believe I truly believe that we can become those types of people as we become more like God and as we mature. Like I mean, you know, I I don't know how deeply I'll be tested in this with my wife, for example. I mean, there's some scenarios I could run through that probably aren't helpful for this podcast, but like I I what I'm finding as I'm like growing in marriage more is like it gets deeper and better because we become, you know, the the actual components, which is me and my wife, become better. We become more like God. we we become deeper in our commitment in our ability to be faithful in not not that we're like, you know, there's a bunch of infidelity. You know, when I say faithful, I mean like faithful to like being the person that that that your your spouse needs.

41:45 Faithful to being a covenant person where you understand just how highly and how special this relationship is that you learn new ways to serve each other and you learn new ways to to that really is is what it is is giving. Like that's the ultimate expression of love is that you give. And I find that the the less needy you are, like it's it's hard to love somebody really well when you need something from them. Well, that's what I mean Garrett said that a million times on on y'all's podcast. You know, if you want to have a hard life, make it about you. Just make it all about you. You know, my dad my dad has always said that all all pain comes from a story that's selfishly told. Wow, that's great. I've never heard him say that. That I've heard him say that a lot. Um, so, so cuz cuz it comes back like what's the reason why I would want to be that way with somebody, right? Because I feel like I should be entitled. I deserve to just be this way. Yeah.

42:36 Right. And and there should be a a place in my life where I get to be this way. Um, but in general, and that's just one that's just one problem that people have, right? So, so in general for me it's if I look back on my life and I think about I like I personally believe right that God has a great plan for your life. Yeah. And that he's always doing everything he can to work within the context of the choices that you're given him to produce that great life. Um, if I look back at my life and I look back at my story and I think about all the negative things that have happened to me and all the things I don't like and all the all the opportunities I haven't had and all of that, then I'm making myself the main character in the story. Yeah. And it's all about me. It's all about how I feel. And uh, you realize this when you have kids, I think, that your life has you're it's really not about you at all, man. you know, and I I want it I really want it to be about me.

43:33 Like I have I know you're saying that seriously, I'm laughing because it's like dreams. I have stuff I want to accomplish. I have things I want to give my time to. Um I have a lot of different cool stuff I want to pursue in my life that I might not ever get the chance to do. And I and I have to in my own kind of uh my own life, I have to give a lot of that stuff to God and go, "Okay, God, like I trust you with like maybe some of these dreams are from you. Maybe some of them aren't. they're just my ideas, but I have to give that to you because I'm a part of I'm a part of things that are bigger than me. And what matters more than what I want or what I need is what needs to happen. And um I think that's I think that's when you start to step in general into maturity is when you stop to stop thinking about just really what everything is means to you. Yeah. And and a defining moment becomes about what that means to other people or what you meant to other people.

44:27 Thank you for listening to The Dialog. Make sure to like, share, and subscribe. And also, if you think someone else would enjoy this, please send it to them. If you want to get in touch or learn more about me, what I think, speak, and write, you can go to joshuacraft.com, or you can also follow Nick and I on Instagram. Our handles are in the show notes. We'll see you next time.