Joshua Keith Craft

0:53 So, dude, we I was thinking about, you know, I listen to our podcast while we while I run and uh Thank you. Yeah. Well, thank you for being a listener. Oh, you're welcome. Well, so I also think I always think it's interesting to listen back when you're not in the conversation. Um, you know, cuz I'm just I don't I'm curious to like I I'm enjoying this is like an intellectual um if I was like if my mind was an athlete, which I like to think that my mind is an athlete, this would be a different form of exercise. Like I would be used to doing like weightlifting and long-distance running. This would be like Pilates and you know bar or whatever, you know what I mean? Like so it' be stretching me in a different way and getting and developing like a different strength of muscle. So I enjoy it. So, I was listening to the one from a few weeks ago and you were talking about, you know, I asked you what you're certain of and like you were kind of like, well, I'm not really certain of much, man. And but then at the same time, you started pushing down principles. And so, I was like, okay.

1:45 And I've heard you talk about this before. So, like I wanted to kind of dive more into that into your understanding of principles, how you use them, and just um you know, cuz I I know that I know that like I know you you're principles over preferences, and I that's something I've heard you say before, but I'm just kind of curious how that works its way out. And you Yeah. I don't know. I think you're talking to me like I'm the expert on the podcast. Well, I I'm trying to I'm trying to draw it out of your brain, man. So, um, everybody has a value system, right? Values are there's a million definitions for core values, but for me, really simple definition of core values is it's just the criteria you use to make decisions. Okay? So, we all have we talked about pain management on, you know, one of the episodes about about how America's turned comfort into a core value. So the danger of uh living life by default it's not you know what a lot of people say is well you got to have core values everyone has them you already have them right right because you're already making decisions every day I'm already deciding things so I already have criteria for making decisions I just it's not that I need to have core values it's that I need my core values to be good ones right right and just because you value something doesn't mean that that it's a good thing you know comfort like we talked about that on that episode, but comfort is not inherently a bad thing, but too much comfort is a bad thing.

3:04 Yeah. Right. Um, happiness is not inherently a bad thing, but pursuing happiness too much becomes highly selfish and self-focused and indulgent to where everything becomes about you, right? So there's there's there's um tension in those things and Aristotle Aristotle called those things limited goods, right? So these things are only good in limited supply in our life. Comfort's only good in a limited supply. you comfort's not good for you all the time everywhere. That's an interesting thought process that there's certain things that are only good for you in a limited supply. Yeah, he called them he called them limited goods and there's such thing as unlimited goods. So like friendship is an unlimited good, right? You you can't have too much friendship, right? You can't go, well, you know, I'm friended out and too many people love me. This is just drawing my mind. You suffer from that, right? Too many people love you. I have joy missing out. I don't know if too many people love me, but a lot of people want to be around me. I think a lot of people then once they get to know me, they're like, "Oh, okay. I get I get why he doesn't answer his phone. Be quiet."

4:00 But so when you have a limited good, that's not something you should place a high value on. It's something that you can uh you you should be a little bit indifferent about. Money is a limited good. Right. Right. It's not only limited in that it's only good for you in a limited quantity, but it's also limited in the world, like in the universe. Is that how he defined it? Is what is like infinite like aka you can both things. So the way he define it is both ways. So one is it's only good for you in a limited quantity but also there's only a limited quantity available in the world. Right. So comfort there's only so much comfort you can have. Right. Right. You can't be unlimited comfortable. Right. And even people that try to do that they find themselves uncomfortable. Yeah. Right. Unlike the princess and the pea. Uh so so money is something that is not necessarily inherently bad to pursue in a limited quantity because you need money to live. Yeah. Need money to pay your house payment, need money to buy food, the economy, all that. But then if you try to turn money into an unlimited good where you're pursuing an unlimited supply, you'll sacrifice a lot of good things in the pursuit of money, right?

5:15 So unlimited goods are the kind of goods that we should pursue. So philosophers call these things all different kinds of things, right? So we call them principles, right? You know, ancient philosophers call them ver virtues. There's things that are always right, always good, always true. Okay. So that's how you're defining principles is things that are always right, always good, and always true. Yeah. So you're you and again back to what I was saying like we have a core value system. We have a value system in place in our life. The problem that we have is not that we don't have values. It's that our values are not uh virtuous. Like our values are not principles. So Jesus in Matthew 7, Jesus tells the story. He goes, "I'll tell you what it's like when you listen to what I say and do it." Right. Right. So there's two things. You got to listen to what he says, which a lot of people will listen, but not many people will do it. So when you listen to what I say and you do it, you'll be like a man who builds his house in the rock. And when the storms and the winds and the waves come of life, your house won't be destroyed. Or you can be like a man who builds his house in the sand. And when the storms come, your house is destroyed. Right. So in building a foundation, so the words of Jesus are like the bedrock. So we need to find whether you believe in the words of Jesus or not as universal truth in the words of scripture as ultimate objective truth. If we want to live a good life, we have to find objective truth and try our best to make all of our decisions with that criteria. Right? Right? So things that are unlimited goods, uh things that are always good, always right, always true, things that are principles. So Jesus says the stuff that I teach is like building your house on a rock that when the winds come, right?

6:59 Right. So in in building a house, I know this cuz I built a house and I've been around construction. You don't just lay a foundation down on a piece of ground. Right. Right. Especially where we live. We live in Texas. The soil here is awful. You drill piers into the ground. Like we're sitting in my house today. There's 17 where I am. I learned a lot about soil while we were building this house where where the part of Texas that we live in is all clay. All the soil's clay. It's horrible soil, right? When it rains here, the water just sits on top of the ground. Um when they did the foundation on my house, they had to drill 17 piers into the bedrock. So they had to drill all the way down through all the clay to wherever bedrock was. And those piers are all different heights based on where the where the bedrock is that supports all this clay. Wow. Right. So when you build a barn, you don't do that. Like when you build a barn, you put a slab down and then you just put the barn there.

7:56 Right. Right. When you build a house, you put piers. When you build a skyscraper, you the the engineering of the foundation's like even more Yeah. significant. I mean, you're talking about drilling piers 200 feet down. I mean, that's how those big buildings in New York are able to stand up is not only is the ground in New York like granite, but they they drill the pier so far down. The building's anchored so far down, it's not going anywhere. So, when Jesus is talking about this, that's the picture I think of in my mind is your core values are the foundation of your life. They're the foundation of every decision that you make and they're the reason why you and I decide what we decide. I get to decide how far down I drill I drill into bedrock with those values. So if I attach my values to things that are always true, things that are principles, I'm building my life on the rock, right? You everyone has a value system. So if I if I don't take the time to drill that, again, we live in Texas where there's a lot of houses with foundation issues because cheap homes, they don't do piers cuz piers cost money. So what they do is they just they just kind of treat the dirt and they put concrete down on top of it. And concrete seems like it's pretty rigid, but the soil underneath the concrete moves and then the house has all kinds of problems.

9:11 And the problem with a if you've ever bought a house, you know this. No one wants to buy a house with foundation issues. You go see the disclosure, you're like, "Oh, this house has foundation issues. No way. I'm not buying it." Because foundation issues can almost there's no telling how much it could cost to fix, right? Because not only do you fix the foundation, but then all the house is settled. So then you're fixing all the all the walls and everything else that's in the house. The doors don't close, right? On and on. It could be not infinite, but it could cost you as much as buying the house. Hey, you might have to tear it down and start over, right? So So that's to me what living by by preferences is about, right? Is be is spending time in our lives going, okay, I want to live by truth. I want to live by things that are objectively true, not not subjectively true. Not true based on my opinion, not things I want to be true, but things you see throughout history that are true. And we have access to scripture, which to us represents the ultimate truth. So if you read scripture and apply it to your life, you're doing that. Right.

10:16 Right. And you and I have to be willing to sacrifice our preferences for the sake of principles. And even in terms of relationships, I think this can be a really big challenge. You know, the a lot of people say the Beatles broke up because of Yoko Ono. Yeah, man. You know, this is a pain. This is a painful one for me. I'm a big beast. Yoko Ono. Not amazing, right? Um but she's not the reason the Beatles broke up. Right. If you know the history of the Beatles, there was this guy who everyone called the fifth Beatles name was Brian Epstein. He's their manager. Right. Right. So Brian Epstein uh made everything happen for them and uh navigated all these personalities, all these dynamics, especially uh between John and Paul who are always kind of, you know, bickering a little bit and they were able to produce great art in spite of all that.

11:08 Well, Brian Epstein dies and then the argument started between all the Beatles, right? So they start arguing about which manager they're going to have, who's going to get the credit on what song. They released two more albums and then it was and then it was over. Yeah. Right. So the Beatles didn't uh come apart because of principles. Right. Right. They came apart because of preferences. And that's how most people live their life. Most people live their life. They're like, "I don't like that. I wouldn't do it that way. I don't like what this person says. I don't like what this person does." They're not assessing whether or not there's principles. Like if the Beatles would have been able to say, "Look, we uh we love making music. We wanna whatever the principles are that would have driven I don't know. I was trying to think I was trying to think where you were going with that one. I don't think the Beatles are particularly principled people that you know I don't know them but uh in that era we weren't really talking about that and music's not really about that anyway. But the Beatles agreed in principle they agreed on the importance of music. They agreed on the style of music they were playing a lot of times.

12:07 What they didn't agree on was preference stuff right which which does matter. It's not that preferences don't matter because if you get a songwriting credit on a song, the amount of money you get paid is different on and on, but that's what ended up dividing them. 80% of business partnerships end in end in divorce. Like business partners split up. And the reason why is not because they disagree on the principles. It's because they disagree on preferences that this partner doesn't like what this partner's doing or this partner wants things to be different or on and on. Most of the time the the divides in our life are based on preferences. Like even the um and this maybe is controversial, but we're not sitting in front of an audience right now who's going to like boo me or whatever. I like how you always have these hypothetical audience booing you like whenever you said it a few episodes ago where you're like, "Well, this might be out there, but whatever." Remember?

13:01 Oh, yeah. That was when we were talking about the government. Yeah. Well, I think I think the uh Yeah, but this is going to be maybe a hot take. The idea Okay, of uh maybe not now. I'm qualifying it too much. I'll just say it. Most people in America are divided on preferences, not principles. Okay. Right. In terms of political party. So people can't, you know, people they can't even be around their family cuz their family's there someone in their family is a Trump supporter or vice versa. Someone in their family doesn't like Trump, they don't go around him. That's all preferences, right? I mean, I don't know honestly who actually likes who actually likes Donald Trump. There's there's lots of people, you know, I mean, as a person, I mean, I think it's more like we like what he does and we'll just get over the rest of it, right? There's a lot with all due respect but you know there's a lot of people that that do like I'm saying I'm not just trying to be hot take guy and I'm not trying to I get that dishonor the president say the principles are involved in like in presidency or leadership or politics.

14:02 Well let's say Americans right like Americans want freedom they want personal and individual freedom. I think the vast majority of Americans agree with the constitution. I mean we don't subjectively agree with the application of it but we agree with the declaration of penance. We agree with the constitution. and we want America to be prosperous. We want to live good lives and the con all those things are more like preference focused things or principle focused things. But then where people get divided and they can't make any progress is on preferences. So the question of a liberal versus a conservative is not do we want America to prosper. The question of a liberal versus conservative, and I'm more like saying this in the dictionary definition, not like the modern definition, but the question of a liberal versus conservative is how do you do that? Right. It's not whether or so then we turn but then what happens is when you get so hung up on preferences, we turn the argument into we're the good guys, those guys are the bad guys.

14:59 Yeah. Right. And it becomes you and there are, you know, I think there's evil everywhere. I think people go and it's very it's very uh it's relatively popular now in conservative circles to say a a Democrat can't be a Christian and if you're liberal you're not on God's side of the argument. I don't I'm not qualified to make that kind of distinction. I would say I don't I don't really necessarily have an opinion on that or like a lot to say about that. Um, I think that there's I think that because my personal philosophy on that particular issue is that everybody's evil. Right. Right. Like like the Bible says in Jeremiah, the human heart is desperately wicked. Uh who can who can tame it? You have conservatives that are uh not godly, not principle people. You have liberals that are the same way. And in the country we live in, we mostly have to pick between the lesser of two evils that most closely aligns with our value system. So I can't personally for me, I can't ever put my stamp of approval on any side of the argument because I think they're both idiots, right?

16:07 And I think a lot of times I come across like overly cynical and nihilistic, but that's just because I don't trust politics. I don't trust politicians. I really place a lot of trust in God. And I think that what built America in my personal opinion is compromise and being willing to people sitting across the table. Like if you read about the the uh Continental Congress, the Continental Congress, these guys had significant massive disagreements between the states and they were able to come together and write something as beautiful as the Declaration of Independence. And that required all of them. Like there's this HBO documentary. It's not not a documentary. It's HBO series on John Adams. And in the I don't know how true this is. I don't know if it's like a real story, but I really like the the perspective. It's John Adams and Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin and they're writing the Declaration of Independence. And Thomas Jefferson, you know, was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence. So he shows up with his first draft. John Adam looks at it and he goes, "This is perfect. We don't need to do anything. This is amazing." And Ben Franklin stops him and he says, "No, everybody, you have to change something in here because everybody has to have a say." Like in this country now, which is such a great to me like American perspective is the ability to um sit down and listen to people who you massively disagree with, but overall even in a political and and this is not probably the right time in history to say this, right? because of how divided everything is. But even in a political sphere like the world we live in today, pretty much everybody's trying to do the same thing. They just disagree on how we're going to do it. And even the most wicked person, you know, C.S. Lewis said that wickedness when you think about it is just the pursuit of uh some good in the wrong way, right? So, even the most wicked things, like people could listen to this and go, "Well, what about the pro-choice movement? What about uh the, you know, the the evil aspects of this part of the whatever the whatever the agendas are, right? Like the u all the different battles that we fought like the drag queen storybook reading to kids and all that stuff.

18:23 Well, what about that?" And the that's that that really fundamentally there are there are principles within there. But here's what happens is because we're divided on preferences, we end up turning our preferences into principles. Well, what do you think the principles are though in the drag queen one, man? I'm trying to understand. I'm trying to understand like Yeah. I mean, I think I'm idealizing on purpose. Okay. Um, I think I think people think that they're pursuing this idea of like individual freedom, right? And I think they're pursuing this idea of uh this uh quote unquote noble idea of wanting to expose people to the world and expose children to things that they think children can handle. Like, and we disagree on that, right? And there are there are places where we disagree on principle. So, I'm not saying that, you know, that's probably actually a good example of disagreeing on principles, this whole drag queen thing, but that's an extreme example.

19:22 Most of the time we uh we have uh in in whether it's politics or business or whatever, people are trying to accomplish the same the same goal. And the problem is they're just disagreeing mostly on preferences. But then when you get in there and you start, this is when the real divides happen though. When you get in there and you start talking about principles and people don't share your principles, they don't share your principles in the right way. And I think people are trying to navigate that. I think people like in politics, we're trying to navigate that because it does feel like there are aspects to the liberal element in this in the west that are very antithetical to Yeah. truth, right? you know, and that is that that is when it becomes a a principle issue. Okay. So, so like what are there some principles that you could point out that you live your life on that that are like core principles for you that you're like, man, these are things that like I have based my values on based on how you described the Yeah. I mean, I think I I the way I see it for me personally is I uh I I want to I I have values that I think are principles, right? because I just want to simplify like so many people have you know like I said so many people have a million approaches to core values and so for me my core values are honor humility excellence and generosity all those things are principles right but the expression of that really matters so honor for me is about treating people like they're valuable and they're special you know I want to treat everybody that way that's that's what that's what honor means for me right like humility means it's not about me at the end of the day right excellence means I'm going to I'm going to give my as uh generosity means I'm going to live an unselfish life.

21:07 And so the reason why and I don't want to I think I'm probably I'm probably probably feels like I'm talking in circles cuz I'm cuz I'm thinking while I'm talking. So the the I I think a lot about the assumption of motive like the story you tell yourself about people. Yeah. So sometimes we're genuinely divided on principles, right? like there are aspects to uh conservative politics in America that are diametrically opposed principle from a principle perspective to liberal politics in America. I'm not denying that that exists. Okay? But we live in a world and this is where like the key premise is for me. We live in a world where all of us are wrong on some level. Right? And that's that's a little bit of my premise is everybody's evil, including me. And there's stuff that's my own evil that I don't see, but I can really accurately see the evil in someone else.

22:07 So the Bible says Jesus said to before you worry about the speck in your brother's eye, take the log, take the beam out of your own eye. So what I really want to work on in my own life is how well I live by principles, not how well I measure another person's ability to live by principles. Because this is when it becomes really easy. So you have conservatives that don't do the right thing that are going, "Well, I don't do the right thing, but the liberals are doing the wrong thing more than me, right?" You know? Yeah. Right. It's like we talked about this a few episodes a while ago about, you know, if if we're going to value morality, right? If we're going to value morality as a country, and I you know, I grew up watching as a teenager when all that stuff happened with Bill Clinton. I remember how big of a deal it was that Bill Clinton had cheated on his wife and Bill Clinton had done all this stuff, but then there's no outrage really. There's a there's a limited amount of outrage on the right for Donald Trump.

23:01 And and throughout his life, he hasn't been a standard of moral excellence. Right. Right. He just whether or not you can explain it, he just he just hasn't been. So that's that's sacrificing to me to use that as an example. That's sacrificing principles for preferences. Like, I prefer Donald Trump's policies. I don't prefer, this is really where people are at. I prefer Donald Trump's policies. I don't prefer Bill Clinton's policies. So, I'm going to get more upset at where Donald Trump or where Bill Clinton doesn't align with principles than I will with Donald Trump because I value the preferences more. But do you think people were upset that he cheated on his wife or that he did it in the Oval Office? clearly using the authority that he had as president to kind of, you know, make happen what happened. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I think I we were both kids at that time.

23:54 Yeah. I think um but they were they were, you know, when you look at all the stuff with Ken Starr and all that stuff, they were after him for a long time before that. Right. Right. And they used that as evidence to like impeach him. So, the reason why I'm going down that road is because I believe that all people are fundamentally flawed, right? We all have a we all have a we all have a sin nature and it doesn't So when I'm I'm sitting here as a conservative, okay, it doesn't do me good like if I can say to myself, hey, we're probably more divided if I'm sitting here talking to you and you're on a completely different uh you know, we're not on the same page about a particular topic. It doesn't do me good for me to turn that into a principles-based discussion, right? and it might be principles, but if I want to navigate that conversation, I go, you know what, we probably kind of fundamentally agree on trying to do the same thing. And so maybe maybe it's just our preferences that don't align. And that's how you can have like an effective dialogue with somebody who you just disagree with.

24:58 Yeah. You know, can can you define principles again for me? I just want to I got Yeah. Things that are always right, always good, and always true. Okay. And and what like what are you using to assess what's always right, always good, and always true? Well, for me, right, it's scripture, right? Okay. For me, that's I mean, uh, so if somebody doesn't abide by scripture, you're probably going to have a lot of diff principle differences. Princip Well, I think that's the problem, right? That's the problem with um that's the problem with like the drag queen thing, right? That's that's the problem with a lot of uh the the approach to like postmodern ideology, which is this idea that truth is subjective, right? That we all get to define truth for ourselves. And um that's just you you can want that to be true. Like I I can want it to be true that I get to define truth for myself, but I it's just not how right it's just not how the the universe operates. You know, I could say, well, I don't believe in the law of gravity.

25:52 That's not true for me. It doesn't matter, right? It's irrelevant, right? I can say uh a a and this is the debate, right? I can say that a a man can be a woman. Gender is a construct. It's not a social construct, right? You know, yeah. Uh it's just not it's biology. So now there's all these different layers to that and preferences which are fine um I guess for people to have. But the thing I'm saying is when we're when we're operating in a in a when operating in the world requires that we interact with stuff we disagree with all the time, right? There's going to be people that disagree with us on preferences that we agree on principle. And those are people we should still probably do life with. Like there's I'm surrounded by people, you know, you and I are in a tribe of people where we agree on principles, but we don't always have the same preferences.

26:52 Like me and Garrett are a great example of uh we don't really take vacations together and stuff. Like the way he wants to do vacation is not the way I want to do vacation. That doesn't mean that we're not buddies and we're not best friends and we don't agree on on principles. Hey, your preference is not my preference, man. I'm not getting up at 4:00 a.m. to go do whatever it is that you're doing that day. Yeah. You've never climbed a mountain with us to this date. No matter no matter how many times I invite you, man. But guess what? We all agree on we all agree on principles. I know. I would just love it if you would just, you know, change your preferences. So even in this extreme, and this is why I'm going down this road. Even in this extreme of this massive political landscape, there are I can approach that intentionally with the perspective of maybe these people share my principles, maybe they don't. If they don't, then that's a different conversation. But if but for the most part, most people are divided based on preferences.

27:48 Okay? So people leave churches based on preferences. They they end their divorce based on preferences. They do a lot of things based on preferences, which is how you do something or what you do about something. Principles are why you do something. Right. Right. So there are there's always ends of the bell curve, right? There's always fringe elements that are, you know, in politics you fringe elements gen genuinely that are genuinely evil, right? And have the wrong principles and have the wrong agenda. For the most part, what people are navigating is just preferences and and how we do stuff. And what I was saying a second ago is it's important the stories that we tell ourselves about people. So, I can't have a conversation I shouldn't have a conversation with someone whose motive is evil. Right. Right. I shouldn't do life with people who who are on that end of the bell curve that they're genuine approach is to perpetuate evil in the world. There are people that are that way.

28:46 Yeah. Serial killers are that way. On and on I could go. Um the problem arises when I assume motive. So if I look at someone, if I'm sitting on the right, which I sit and I look at someone on the left, and I think that they're on the left because they have an evil agenda, then that's where I am. It's that's not even, you know, I'm kind of changing the subject, but that's that's where we can have conversations that aren't even based in principles, they're based in preferences. Because a lot of truthfully, a lot of my conservative perspective comes from the fact that I was born and raised in Texas my whole life. Yeah. Right. There's a lot of people that live in the northeastern part of America, right, that are in in their mind and in their life, they're Bible believing Christians. They go to church every weekend and they vote blue. They vote Democrat. And a lot of that's because of the what they were raised in. So, it's not that they don't value the same principles. It's that their preferences aren't really effectively aligned with mine. But when we have a conversation, I can see their perspective and they can see my perspective. And we can actually from a from a and I know this sounds impossible. It's like I'm saying like sitting here talking about this at this point in history is you know like throwing stuff out into the ether. Like that's what actually built America is the ability for us say look we agree on principles but like our preferences like let's figure out a way forward that both of us can be okay with and let's live based on compromise. So what people have done and this is I know like a really I think a deep philosophical discussion but what people have done is they've turned their preferences into principles where everything's a principle now and we can't have any conversations and there's absolutely no compromise because everything works this way and that's not true. Like you can take a stand on um the the drag queen dynamic that hey we shouldn't be having you know we shouldn't be exposing kids to gender ideology when they're a child. their brains aren't able to handle that.

30:43 That's a that's a principle issue, right? Based on biology on and on and on, but what's the what's the solution for the price of uh the price of healthcare in our country, right? That's a preference thing. And that's something we can sit on and discuss. And I'm not really like a very I'm not really not a very political person, I think, like we've talked about on this podcast. But the importance of principles is understanding that I can get around people and I can get to know people and if I share their principles, then we can we can agree to disagree on a lot of preference stuff, right? You know, and and the world would be a better place if that was our approach to life. Yeah. And there are some people that just, you know, there are some people that don't agree with our principles, right? that we're not going to be on the same page about principles and we're not going to be aligned like Islam and Christianity. There's just no possible way for Islam and Christianity to ever be in alignment with each other. Right.

31:38 Right. The the premise of Islam and the premise and the principles of Christianity are completely incompatible with each other. So there's not a way for us to compromise as it relates to that. So what happens there? Yeah. What does happen I mean what's happened in history right is uh a lot of wars and death I mean if you look back at the that the founding of Islam as a religion Muhammad in the 600s uh went around all around the Arab world and conquered and killed everybody that didn't agree with him you know the Ottoman Empire which came after that uh was was Muslim and 80% of Christians in the world lived under Muslim rule so it's really like from a ideological standpoint like one of these principles is going to win out over another, right, in the span of history and and in the past some have won in the past others have won.

32:32 Man, well that's a uh it's a lot to chew on. I know it is. Yeah, it is. But I mean it's um it's it's uh I mean at least you know like I I think that that kind of takes away some of that if you can divide preferences and principles, right? I think you select where you need to battle and where you need to discuss. You know what I mean? Because there's a difference, right? Yeah. And I think that's a really great way of um simplifying all the stuff I just spent a bunch of time saying. I mean, I'm just trying to like draw this out of myself while we're talking. That's my job. But but when you understand the the the the difference, so like you know, when you understand the difference between preferences and principles, you you understand, okay, where where do I need to draw lines in the sand? Yeah. And then where can I have conversations with people and where can we just genuinely like agree to disagree but still be in relationship with each other? And I think too many people swing to one side of the they they tend to turn their preferences into principles, right? And they go, "Okay, well everything has to go my way and that's a principle-based discussion, right?" When it's really not. It's a preference-based discussion. But then there are times where you have to go, okay, I got to draw a line in the sand here because my pr the principles that I'm living by, the truths that I'm living by, the objective reality that I'm trying to live in, I'm trying to build my house on the rock. And so I have to, you know, I have to be around and do life with people who are trying to build their house the same way.

34:00 And that's a complicated, it's a complicated discussion to have with people. And it's a complicated thing to learn. And it requires that we go, okay, well, what I'm going to do is not uh, you know, we talked on a previous episode about presuppositions, right? I'm not going to have these assumptions about everything in life that things are binary. Nothing's really binary, right? You know, well, gender is, right? Besides that. Yeah. And some code. Good job. Yeah. Right. But but understanding like that but having that understanding goes like okay I draw a line in the sand on all on all the gender construct stuff but there might be other things where like I'm saying with like healthcare right there's there's that's a tough that's a tough question and it requires a lot of really great thinking and it requires in order for that to really be in order for there to really be a solution to that it requires a lot of smart people with a lot of different preferences getting together and trying to figure out a solution cuz none of us are really happy about that right let's make it happen you know.

34:57 Yeah, none of us are happy about that dynamic. But I think that the the uh the main thing in my life that I've seen like me and you know I'm with I'm with my dad. I'm with Pastor Keith and I just do a lot of life with him and me and his preferences. So let's like be practical. We just went really philosophical. So I'm going to be practical for a second. Me and his me and his preferences are radically different. I mean the kind of food we would eat, the cars we drive, the way we approach all kinds of different things. But where we don't where we don't disagree is in our principles. And that's why I can be with him and do life with him. Like I wouldn't say I'm I wouldn't say what he says and I wouldn't say what he says how he says it and I wouldn't do what he does in all these different ways, but I really fully I see the fruit. So when you're talking about um if you've been listening to this episode, we appreciate you for joining us this far while we've taken this explorative journey in the world of principles and preferences. The whole point of the the whole point of the podcast is so if I want to focus on principles, what I have to think about is fruit, right? What's the fruit of this person's criteria for making decisions, right? So when I look at my dad, I look at his marriage. I'm around him all the time. I look at how he raised me. I look at the quality of life that I have and have had from the time I was a kid. And I go, man, I want to cultivate that same outcome in my kids, right? Would I say things all the same way that he said them?

36:33 Would I do things all the same way? Would I? No, I wouldn't. But there's so much fruit there that my preference is, you know, there's a there's a difference between having fruit and not having fruit. And um I want to be with people that have fruit. And that's what principles are about. preferences are just about the way you like something. It's about like the type of fruit that you want to eat, you know? So, like what most people get divided on is just their way, but they don't and so they don't get they don't they're not able to see the principles, right? And they're kind of touching on these things. But in life, if if you know, if you're listening to this and you have a a person in your life who you disagree with, like I don't know, the kind of food that they eat or the kind of clothes that they wear, the kind of car that they drive or whatever that is. Um, look past that into how that person lives their life and what the fruit of their life is and whether or not that aligns with how you want to live your life and what the fruit of what the fruit of what fruit you want to have in your life. and then you can still be aligned with them even though your preferences are different.

37:40 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.