Joshua Keith Craft

0:53 So many people are not aware of their filter that we've developed to to process information. Like you don't really see the world as it is. You see the world as you are 100%. Right. And like and that's like oh wow that's a great like that's a great one-liner. But when you actually start to realize how much is filtered through I mean let's just be really basic. If you're tired are you perceiving the world a little bit differently? Yeah. Okay. If you're stressed if you're hungry right? So like the we can understand that but we don't understand like no I got a great night's sleep last night and you know everything is good okay so now what's kicked in all your thinking all your experiences all your expos like your presuppositions I took an NLP course and they did this thing where they had to you had to say something with no presuppositions because they they wanted to make sure that you're not assuming things so define for everyone what a presupposition is pres well presupposition is like that you're not um you presuppose is by the definition so like you're basically no assumptions.

1:50 So like if if I say like hey you feeling okay today like what's my presupposition that I'm that I'm not doing maybe you're not right and so like and that's a really simple thing but but like we bring that filter into everything that we do because no one really communicates neutrally no because well because your brain's wired this way right like I love learning how the brain works and when you start to understand that your subconscious takes in everything but your actual conscious mind just helps you deal with what you're doing you realize that basically it has to recognize Oh, we've seen this play before. This is what happens. So that's why whenever somebody does something outrageous like crimes are committed in public, if you're going to the mall, we've all been to the mall playbook. If someone then bursts in with bad intentions, half the people are just it takes them they're so shocked when it happens that they can't really react. You know, I mean, like people are like, "Oh, I was paralyzed by fear or whatever." It's also just a massive disruption to everything that you that you're used to going on. And that's a very extreme example, but this happens all the time where it's like, "Oh, I know how this goes until you don't." And then it's like like you know you get you have all these mental shortcuts that you go directly to a certain place.

2:54 That's exactly right. And there's a there's a book called uh strangers to ourselves came out like in the 80s and the guy talked about how so much he's a psychologist and he talked about how so much of your identity and processing and decision-m is not in your conscious mind. It's in your unconscious mind. 100% it is. Yeah. And it was like kind of a precursor to NLP. The NLP was around the same time, but this guy wasn't talking about NLP. What he talked about was the way to program your unconscious mind is to tell yourself stories about yourself. Yep. Which is NLP. Yeah. NLP helps. If you're wondering what NLP is, it's neural linguistic programming. Yeah. And that that became to get big in the '90s. Like Tony Robbins basically came up on NLP. And I think an NLP precursor is CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy, which is actually from the 60s. This is the first which the precursor to CBT is stoicism. So there you go. philosophy, right? It's almost like this stuff has been around for hundreds and hundreds of years.

3:49 Yeah. Or existentialism. I mean, before CBT, you had existentialism with like William James and you get to determine your life. And I there's a great quote from William James. I love that. He goes, "One of the greatest breakthroughs of our modern times is that we have a choice to choose uh our our attitude in any given situation circumstance." I love that quote because it's so powerful. And I'm like, man, yes. And then you read that he was around in 1920 and you're like, "Oh, what's new for me is actually not new for the world." I think that's the point of what we're doing. Yeah. Is what's true has always been true, right? And I love I love the future. I love thinking of new things. I love the idea of the world, like what the world's going to look like in the future. But also, there's things that have just always been true forever that there's always been people that are saying, "This is this works. This is true." and they put different you put different names on it, you know, NLP, uh, CBT. Now people are talking about metacognition.

4:44 It's just all different words that mean the same thing, like you're in control, right? You know? Yeah. [clears throat] I I when you start to realize though as an adult, like I was talking to a man recently and I was trying to explain to him like, look, from the time that you're 0 to 7 is when your subconscious is formed. And then from there up until some point in your teenage years, you're really establishing your map of the world. And do you remember like I remember very consciously when I had this revelation. I think it was like my late teens when I was like the adults don't actually know what they're doing. Like dude, this was a big revelation for me. I remember I looked around. I was like everyone's just making it up as they go along. And this was like an unlock for me because I felt once if that was the case for them. Well, now you know I I don't have to feel like I'm behind all the time like oh I just don't know how to do this stuff cuz everyone's making it up. And that's actually like there's new stuff that's coming out all the time. Like right now in AI, which I know you've been going down the rabbit hole of AI because we're friends and you share some of the stuff that you look at like there I think it's amazing that something comes out. It's like well who's the forerunners? Oh, he's the thought leader for what the last 6 months, you know what I mean? Like Yeah.

5:45 Yeah. Okay. And and I so I think that that's really interesting. But going back to what I was saying about the the the rules for life when you start realizing that you have some things from your upbringing cuz when you're young, what do you know? nothing. Like you don't sit there and go, "Excuse me, uh, I don't want you to teach me that because I don't actually fundamentally agree with that." Whatever your whatever your parents do is what becomes normal about everything. Money, how you treat people, how you're how you're loved, what the expectations are for behavior, for cleanliness. Like there's so many things like I remember going to my you programmed all through your life where uh you know I think one of the great things about being a kid is you're open to whatever. Exactly. It can also be but that's also be dangerous. I mean, that's why we have to protect our kids. Exactly. But adults aren't willing to suspend their disbelief. They they oh, I already have an established position on that. Here's the school of thought that I'm in. Here's the camp that I'm in.

6:39 You know, you you you you grow up and you now have to figure out which box to check that you identify as all that different all that different kind of stuff. So then you go, well, uh, I'm not really an individual now. I'm now I'm in a group. Yeah. And when you're a kid, you don't think about anything. No, dude. When I moved to So, I went to England at 21 for Bible college. And I remember I felt like my truth had been rocked so much because suddenly I realized how much of what I just considered to be 100% the way world works was the culture of America. And that one was a like that one opened me up. It made me so open it was bad. I honestly think that because that was part of what allowed me to eventually walk away from my faith in God was because I was like, well, I've got to, you know, all this other stuff I thought wasn't true. what you know wasn't true. So I got to open myself up to a lot of the Christianity that I had was just a cultural thing because in England that's what it is, right? It's like, oh, Christianity was a period of our our country just like uh, you know, tutorism, you know, it was like, yeah, it was just a part of our just like the time we worshiped the water gods, right? It was just part of our history and we've moved on from that. And so, like it's it's interesting because I don't think people really if you don't leave your bubble or if you don't get outside your culture other than for like a vacation, you kind of like, "Oh, that was fun." But you're not really brutally challenged on things. And then when someone says something, a lot of people's first reaction is just offense, right? like they like they don't want to hear it because it it forces it's challenging in a way that's creates a lot of uncertainty.

8:02 Well, I think it messes with uh you know like you're talking about NLP it messes with your mental shortcut. So yes, you've you've learned this. But I think the thing about truth so you know I think about like the word of God like this the Bible that the Bible's like a map with X's drawn on it. Right. Right. You know here's where this is here's where this is. Here's where forgiveness is. Here's where prosperity is. Here's where uh health is. Here's where truth is. Here's where grace is. But most people, like most people younger than us, have never used the map, right? You've used you've used GPS. When you had a if you have a map Yeah. Right. And you have an X on it, you got to know where you are on the map. Exactly. Right. And most people don't. So they think, well, I have the X. And the example I've always used is if you draw an X on the map and you tell me that you're, you know, if you tell me you're in Texas and you want to go to California, but you're actually in Hawaii and you want to go to California.

9:03 And I say, "Hey, look, you're okay. You're in Texas. Go west, right? You're not going to you're going to go all the way around the world before you get to California." This is a lot further away than I thought. Yeah. Wow. This is crazy. You know, and so many people, they live their life that way, not because they don't know where the X is. Like you can you can understand where the X is on the map, but if you don't understand where you are, which is most people's problem, most people's problem is they don't understand. They we all have thoughts. We all have ways of thinking. You know, one of the things I like about things like NLP or CBT or all that is it teaches you how to think about what you're thinking about and it teaches you to program your thoughts because your your your thoughts are programmed by somebody or something. And the way my dad always says it is who taught you to think the way that you think and most people never consider that question. Most people never consider the question of where did my thinking come from on any subject especially like big ones. So when we talk about when I I I have ended up a lot in my life but especially now talking about money like talking about God and money and prosperity and people love that like everybody wants to talk about God money right it's like yes there's never been any bad experiences with church get so excited you know when you talk about money and poverty being a mindset and all these different kind of conversations people on Instagram love it they yeah we posted I wouldn't say it went viral or anything but some people weren't were upset you know it got it got in an an above average response.

10:27 We had an above average response. And what you see when people talk about things like money is you don't see a logical response. Most of the time you see an emotional response, right? So you see people that respond. Money is a hard thing uh for so many people and so they talk about it in an emotional way. But we talk about a lot of topics in an emotional way. I was going to say how do you know if you're logical or emotional? Because you know the way I understand it a lot of times you know saying you're logical makes you feel the emotion of certainty you know I mean so like how do you know if you're outside of emotion or or logic or whatever. Well I think one of the ways is ask yourself do I do am I looking for something I agree with or or am I looking for something that's true? Right? Is truth isn't always something we agree with. Right. And scripture you know anything that's true. We we've talked about truth a couple times on here, but truth I think every episode.

11:20 Yeah. Truth will offend you. Truth will challenge your preconceived notions. And one of the ways to start to address whether or not you're living in a logical way or truthful way is when you understand where your thinking comes from. I think a lot of people don't know where their thinking comes from. So we were raised in a certain culture. We live in a certain part of the world. Um our families were a certain way. our experiences. Every every person on this planet has had completely no even if we raised in the same family and in the same kind of environment all that we've had completely different experiences from each other and like I said if you don't truth can be this X on the map which is fantastic but you got to know where you are if you're going to if you're going to take a journey on the map and most people don't know where they are they don't know their own thinking very well so you have to be willing I think if you really want something that's true and I think we should talk about money because if you really want to talk about it what you have to be willing to do. So, if you're listening to this and you've already made up your mind on what God says about money and uh the perspective that's truthful on money, this is not going to help you. I think I think that's just fundamentally if you make up if you live with just a completely madeup mind and you're not ever open to change, nothing will ever help you. No, you'll never change your mind. You never you'll never have a different conversation. You'll never be willing to listen to anything that's different. It's like you said, I mean, the thing we have to admit as human beings is we don't really know what we're doing. And even when we know what we're doing, we're just kind of pretending. So, we're taking our little mental shortcuts. That doesn't mean that that's that's right or wrong. It just means that's how our brain works.

12:55 Now, do you think that we don't know anything, though? Because what I found a saying that I used to say is that the world's not so much black and white, it's a lot of gray. But there is some black and white. Do you agree with that or do you disagree with that? I think I think what's really interesting uh I'll try not to give you too long of an answer. I so postmodern postmodern thinking is all truth is subjective. Right? So that's where we're at now. This is where the Yeah. This is where the idea of uh gender is a construct and your truth and my truth and what I what I think is true because because your perspective like we started by talking about that your perspective is more important than anything. Mhm. It's more important than what's actually true. So I think objective truth is out there and it can be known. But so there is a like a black and white. There is a right and wrong. There is an evil and a good.

13:48 But the very interesting thing to me is all of that is very subjectively applied in all of our lives. Like we don't we don't I I don't know if as a human being I'm capable of being all the way good or all the way bad. I think there's aspects of my life that are good. I think there's aspects of my life where I struggle quote unquote. That's what people say. Like I struggle or I make mistakes. That's where you're bad. That's right. And then then you go, well, what who's definitions? Like who's whose definitions of good and bad? And so I think that if you you know there's a whole logical exercise, right? If you if you go, okay, absolute truth doesn't exist, you've just made an absolutely true statement, right? So so fundamentally absolute truth does exist. what what postmodern ide ideology says is, hey, you really can't know what's true anyway. And so you just should believe whatever you want to believe and that will serve you.

14:45 What's really interesting about that to me is that what matters most is your perspective anyway, right? But what people do is they they miss, you know, there's a saying that those who those who don't learn history are doomed to repeat it, right? I think one of the ways to know something's true is if it's always been true. So, biologically, male and female has always been true. So, it doesn't it doesn't matter. I mean, to me personally, it doesn't really matter what's happening in culture. We're probably we're probably honestly fighting the wrong battle here because eventually all this stuff if if something's false, it always ends up going away. Like, if something's a lie, it's always eventually revealed as a lie. It just might take a certain period of time. So stuff that's true is always has always been true. And so when you look at things like NLP or existentialism or cognitive behav behavioral therapy or stoicism going all the way if you go back thousands of years through human thinking what you see is philosophically what's true is that you are in control of your thoughts, attitudes and actions at any given time and that ultimately constitutes your destiny. You might not agree with that. You might not like that. You might think it's a little bit different than that based on what though.

16:01 Yeah. And that's the question is most people that's based on some mental shortcut that they took. It's based on a victim mentality that's been developed over a period of time. And that that might not even be my victim mentality. It might be a victim mentality that was handed down to me. Oh, for sure. Right. That hey, this is our family. This is how we are. And I'm not saying these things aren't hard to hard to navigate and hard to deal with. But we're talking about having logical thinking here. And when you when you can it's not about eliminating emotion. You can't eliminate emotion. But when you become a person that asks the question who taught me to think the way that I think then what you begin to the next question is uh is that good? Like do I like the effects? Do I like the effects of the thinking that I was taught? Like I was taught a lot of good things growing up. I wasn't taught every good thing. Yeah. And my parents are human beings, but I was taught a lot of good stuff growing up. So I go, "Who taught me to think the way that I think?" Well, my dad. What kind of fruit does that have?

17:01 A lot. Okay, great. Right. What you can't, And this is why to me Jesus said that you'll know people by their fruit. You're not going to know them by their theology. You're not going to know them by a clip on the internet. You're not going to know them by how they present themselves. You're not going to know people by how good their content is or whatever other how much money they make. None of that stuff matters, right? Well, money maybe I don't know depending on what you want out of life. But you'll know people by the fruit of their thinking. So what's the fruit of a person's thinking? This is where we talk about like the effectiveness question. Yeah. How's that working out for you? So Jesus said you'll know something is true by the fruit of it. So what's the fruit of this thing you believe to be true? What's the fruit of that in your life? What's the fruit of it in other people's lives? And what a lot of people illogically do because they just I think we all have capacity for logic. Like we all have the the capacity to think. We all have the capacity to approach our lives in an intentional way. I think that's a gift that God gave us. I think that's a very to me personally that's a very spiritual aspect of who we are is the ability to think logically.

18:09 And I think that's a I think that's what the Holy Spirit actually helps us do. I know that's like a really different perspective than what a lot of people hear on something on a topic like the Holy Spirit, but we are given the gift to think more logically than any Oh, yeah. being that's on the planet that we any being that's in the universe that we that we know about. So, it's a gift from God to be able to approach your life logically. So, the more you step into thinking logically, the better your life's going to become. Right. Right. And most people never get there for a million different reasons. And it the reasons to me personally, the reasons aren't as important as asking the question, who taught me to think the way that I think and do I like it? Right? And that's so what you're basically saying is that that's where your beliefs come from about things. And and very few people had their parents sit down and go like, here's what we believe about money. Here's what we believe about people. Here's like what ends up happening is your beliefs come out in number one your actions because you can't say you believe something if it's not backed up by action. But there'll be a lot of like statements that come along with it. So if you grew up in a household that didn't have a lot of money and you were tight all the time. Uh you know you'll you'll hear things like well of course you know of course this is going to cost us much. Oh well we can't afford it. And like you you'll so what when you hear we can't afford it. I remember the first time I heard your dad talk about how they never said we can't afford it.

19:32 My parents never said that. that that's I heard that all the time. They would just say, "We're not going to buy that right now." Right? Even if they couldn't afford it, right? But that's very different for a kid because now it's like, "Oh, we have the option to, but we're not going to." So, what's the belief underneath that? If we wanted to, we could, but we don't want to. Now, what you're not saying to a kid is is like, "Yes, we could buy that Lamborghini, but what it would mean is daddy would have to do this, this, and this, and mommy, you know, like you're not going to lay that out for a kid, but you're just going to say we we're not going to buy that right now." Okay, that's a very different belief. But, and this is what I so subtle because if you're hearing we can't afford it, what's that say? Means that there's a limit. We only have this much money and there's not a lot we can do about getting more, which is absolutely not true. Yeah. It's fundamentally not true in America that you that you're like and a lot of people might have a problem hearing that, but like could and let's be let's just be really simple. Could you go get a second job? Yeah, but I don't really want to. Okay, great. But but you're admitting that you could get a second job.

20:24 Yeah. Could you get a better education? Could you find a new opportunity? Yeah, exactly. Could you could you sell stuff on eBay? Could I mean, there's so many different ways. There's a hundred ways. So you could get it. It's just you're not willing to pay that price. But but so people are programmed with money and you start saying things like, "Oh, you know, we're going to find out what God has to say about money." Like the reaction is typically, I mean, inside our church, people clap, which is funny cuz I don't think that that's like, you know, you seem to do tithes and offerings every week these days. And like like, okay, we're going to talk about money. And people are like, "Woo!" And they cheer, which is not a common thing. Uh I think in most places like, "Oh, here we go. Preachers after my money again." uh you know, like they're trying to get a nickel out of me or whatever. And I think it's a really interesting thought process that I've never really understood. Look, I get it. I've heard about the preachers that swindled people for money. I you know, I grew up in the church, but I remember whenever I wasn't serving God, I I was sat there in a church one time and I was looking around. I was like, man, you know, the preacher, this was Jurgen in uh Pastor Jurgen in San Diego at Awakened. Now it's C3. Um he was preaching. I was like, this guy's actually giving me It was opposite. It was C3, now it's Awaken. Oh yeah, whatever. I was there.

21:29 Obviously, you can tell I was really a plugged in member of the church cuz uh you know, I didn't go there that often. But the point being, I was not serving God, but I remember I would sit there and I would listen to him preach and I'm like, I like this guy. Like I feel like he's very authentic. And I looked around, I was like, man, there's really nice lights. I'm sitting in a chair and like I'm hearing something from somebody. There's nowhere else in the world that I think I could go in and basically ask to be quote unquote entertained if you want to be really cynical about it for a couple hours and just be like, "And by the way, I think if you ask me to pay for that, you're wrong." But we have this paradigm with church and and when they say, "Hey, we're going to put the offering out where it's like, well, what the heck?" Yeah. Well, I think we have that. I think you know it's really interesting and I mean we should start at the beginning but what's really interesting to me about discussions about money in the church uh and in Christianity is the way people react to money shows that money is their god.

22:21 So Jesus said you can't serve God and mammon and the word mamonos in the Greek the word that mammon comes from isn't money. He's not saying you can't serve God in money. We shouldn't serve God in money but what he's saying is you can't you can't trust God. So meonos in Greek means whatever you trust in or value, right? So you can't trust God and trust other things at the same time. Yes. You can't trust God and trust yourself at the same time, right? You can't trust God and trust your money at the same time. And so for a lot of people, the truth the truth that we have to I mean, you know, like people come up to me a lot and they go, "Why do you talk about money so much? Why do we talk about money so much? Why do churches talk about money so much? Can't we just talk about love and forgiveness and salvation and all these other things? The Bible, the third most mentioned uh subject in scripture is money and possessions. 40% of Jesus's parables were about money. Uh the second most mentioned topic in scripture is prophecy, right? And or sorry, 28% of Jesus's I know, I'm sorry, I'm messing that up. So 40% of Jesus's parables were about money. 28% of the Bible is prophecy which is the second most mentioned topic in scripture. The first most mentioned topic in scripture is God and his sovereignty. Right.

23:38 Right. So once we have an acknowledgement of God and once we understand uh the prophetic nature of scripture that you know it's not just predicting the future, it's there to encourage us and uplift us and all that stuff. Then let's talk about the third thing and that's and that's money. There's more verses in the Bible on money and possessions than there are on faith, hope, love, salvation combined. Yeah. Let's go back to what you said about meas and I don't want to interrupt your flip. I think the point is so important though because really what you know what money does more than anything and the way Jesus talked about all the time is it reveals your heart and that is what God is ultimately after is he wants your heart. We have so money is like alcohol. It's like uh the way I've always thought about it, like people that I know that drink a lot or get drunk, when you're drunk, you're just more of what you are already. So, if you're a happy, right, if you're a happy go-lucky person and you're everybody's friend, when you're drunk, you're the you're everybody's best friend in the world. If internally you're like dark and depressed and a little bit sad, you're the sad drunk, which is weird because sometimes you're like, "Oh, that person's so happy." And then they're like an angry drunk. Like, everyone had that friend. They're like, "Dude, that guy gets in fights when he drinks, but he's normally so nice." And it's like, "Yeah, you're right. Because you're you're inhibited. Yeah. Right.

24:49 You're you have your guard up. That's that's what I learned in driving school. They said, "What is the first thing that that alcohol does?" It says it removes your inhibition. Yeah. So, when you let your guard down, that's who you really are. Yeah. So, money works the same way where it just it just reveals, you know, there's been I was on a conversation with somebody before we started this podcast and we were talking about how these guys had gotten into business partnership and everything was good until they started making money, dude. And then now we're going to fight about it. Yep. You know, because I don't think I think you're getting I think you're making too much. I think you're making too much of a percentage based on how much work that you're doing. And that wasn't the conversation they were having when they started. Yeah. And so the more you accumulate, the more it reveals what you really trust in, right? You know, I remember when I was when I was 16 years old, I wrote my first thousand check. I wrote it I actually wrote a check. like most people aren't writing checks anymore, but when I was 16, I had checks. So, I wrote my first thousand check to the church and that that really hurt. But then I remember when I wrote my first $10,000 like tithe check, I was like, man, 10, you know, $100 on $1,000 is like, okay, well, that's a good amount of money.

25:58 $100 you do, you can do a lot with $100. $1,000 on$10,000, you're like, okay, you know, that's kind of a lot. Once you get to $10,000, you're like, I don't does God really want me to tithe? Yeah. cuz you start you start thinking like well what what could you do with that money but that that's it that but that's where like so if you said you trusted money most people I think the natural reaction like no I don't but here's how I think it really shows up whatever amount of money would be enough that you would never have to worry about it again what's the immediate feeling that you have I'm free I have freedom yeah now I don't I can just play free I can do whatever I want now in life don't have to worry about all the stuff that normally worry about like this pressure would be gone like I could go do is well, guess what? You trust money. You trust money a whole lot. And like we all do. I mean, there's times there's been times in my life where I log into my bank account, I'm like, "Oh, man. I'm winning. This is so awesome." And then there's times I log in my bank account, I'm like, "Everything's falling apart in my life." And it's all based on the little digits that I see in a bank account number.

26:59 It's the meaning you put to it. Yeah. And we all have, you know, that's we all have a tendency to to head that direction. Like when you look at the history of possessions, um there was a time in history where money didn't exist, but God was still talking about possessions. He's still talking about stuff that you owned, right? And um and so the the biggest question is what do you really what do you really trust in? But like you're saying, most people wouldn't think I really trust in my money, but what gives you a sense of security? That's exactly right. What gives you a sense of security is what you trust in. Yes. And the truth is for every human being on this planet, money gives us a amazing sense of security or lack thereof. Like if we don't have money, we don't feel secure. We don't feel like we're winning. We don't feel a lot of things. If we have money, whatever that dollar amount looks like, then if we have money, then we feel like, oh man, I'm finally secure. And the truth is, if you believe in God and if you call yourself a Christian, that can't be your relationship to money.

27:59 Yeah. So the way the way I've said it different times throughout my life is most people worship money and use God as a tool rather than worship God and use money as a tool. Because what you see through scripture is money is a tool. Money is not the end-all be-all. Money is not the end. Money is not an and ends. It's a means. Yeah. So money is a means to get somewhere. So for me in my mind, the way I just genuinely think about money personally, money is freedom to me. The more money I have, the more free I am. I don't have to do anything anybody says, right? I don't have to go I don't have to work a certain place. I don't have to work with certain people. I don't have to go be anywhere I don't want to be because I have money to do that. That's that's what fundamentally in my mind, like my natural human mind, that's what money represents to me. That's not what money that's not what God wants money to be to us is our own personal sense of security, right? what God what God wants us to do is take everything that's in our life and use that to help build his kingdom and help help make an impact for him. But again, there's there's so many questions attached to this, but the problem that a lot of people have is they they already have all the answers. Well, I think they're already so conditioned to it because I hear what you say and here's I I don't think here's how I think a lot of people's minds work and by a lot of people I'm saying myself as well. I think you say like I'm blessed to be a blessing. Like if you're a person who's done relatively well for yourself, you know, you're kind of like, "Okay, I'm blessed to be a blessing." And when you think like, "Hey, you know, God doesn't want you to use money uh for yourself. He wants you to use it to advance his kingdom." If you're a Christian listening to this, you're like, "Okay, yeah, hallelujah."

29:34 So, in your mind, it's like God's going to give me $5 million and then that way I can use like $50,000 of it to bless somebody. And and like those percentages might sound ridiculous to you, but you know, you think when I have more than enough and I have so much that it's overflowing, then I could do that. And that makes sense. And Jesus operated in a completely different way with money, right? Like it it was kind of like when he's talking about people worrying, he's like, "What are y'all why what are you worried about?" Yeah. Well, the perspective I mean, I think the perspective of, you know, we we should over the next couple episodes get into this because the perspective of scripture is so challenging to human thinking on money and it's challenging to even what we think biblical thinking is on money. Yeah. Because a lot of us have denominational thinking. A lot of us have cultural thinking. Yeah. Uh on and on and on I could go. But the but the thing is there's there's a difference and this is what I would encourage everybody with.

30:26 There's a difference between asking questions cuz you want an answer and asking questions cuz you're trying to make a point. Oh man. Right. Yeah. And so the I have a I've I have I've had friends that are lawyers and I still have friends that are lawyers. I mean all my lawyer friends aren't are still my friends. Right. Yeah. Well, speaking of a lawyer, we're done. Um, but people that are professional lawyers, like professional arguers, they ask questions that they already know the answer to. Yeah, they're leading you somewhere. If you go in a courtroom and a lawyer ask you questions, he knows how you're going to answer the question cuz he knows what the follow-up question is going to be. Yeah. Right. This is how people approach thinking on anything, but especially money. So, they already have their mind made up. They already have their mind made up on questions they've never even asked or been asked. So, but when you ask the question like, "Oh, no. Here's the answer. They and that's a mental shortcut and there's nothing wrong with mental shortcuts, but that's a mental shortcut that's been created that's based on something. Yeah.

31:21 Now, the the question we ultimately have to answer is what is that what is that based on? Like I had a conversation with a guy recently. I've written about this stuff a lot and I've done um I've done a lot of research. I've done we've done a we've done a series on this in our church. Um, but I had a guy recently that I did all this kind of research through the history of Jesus. And we'll probably talk about that on a later episode, but that that Jesus kind of, if you look at the evidence, I'm not saying yes or no, good or bad, if if it is or it isn't, but it looks like Jesus had a lot of resources at his disposal, right? We'll talk about the reasons why, but fundamentally, if you're like, "No, Jesus was poor." I don't know because Jesus was God. So he could go get just if you just take that I'll I'll give evidence later. We'll give a lot of stuff later and you can go to you can go to my Substack. You can go to doo.joshuacraft.com and read this right now. But if you think that Jesus was God in the flesh and he can go get a coin out of a fish's mouth, you can't really believe that that guy was also poor.

32:25 Because because if you do, you're you're saying that Jesus was some way limited by human conditions and oh well maybe he So then people go, well, he did that on purpose. He did it on purpose to limit himself. And then they quote this verse. There's this verse in second Corinthians. The Bible says Jesus became poor so that we could be rich, right? Okay, hang on. So, okay, even if you go, "Oh, Jesus was poor. Why was he poor, though?" "Oh, the Bible says he was poor so he could be rich." "Okay, well, then what does it mean to be rich?" So, you go down all these I'm not just trying to be confusing, but I'm saying you go down all this line of questioning. And that's and that's what I that's what I want us to to cover. But what if you're going to take this journey with us like on the podcast, what I want to encourage you to do is uh don't assume you already have the answers. So, don't ask a question and assume you already know the answers. ask a question and let God reveal to you the answers and be willing and this is the hardest thing to go back to what we were saying a second ago about adulthood.

33:22 Yeah. The hardest thing as an adult is to be willing to be wrong. Right. Right. We you know like you said, "Oh, you know, I realize that adults are just making this stuff up as they as they go along." We don't want people to realize that. Right. Like I don't want my kids to know I don't really know the right answer. Like I've been I've talked to I've been I've had so many correctional conversations throughout my life on this because I'm the kind of leader like if I'm leading you and you're on a team with me and I go, "Hey, we should go this direction." You're like, "Why do you think that?" I don't know. It just seems like the best option. I don't really know, but that seems like the best one. Well, you're supposed to be you're supposed to be absolutely sure as a leader. It's like, "Well, I'm not absolutely sure about anything, right? How can I I this is the best this is the best answer that I have based on the information I currently have which is always incomplete right I feel that way as a parent I feel that way as a person I think honestly most people feel that way they just don't want to be seen they you know there's such a desire to be seen as knowledgeable I don't really necessarily see myself as knowledgeable I see myself way more as a searcher like I'm just trying to figure it out so so people will listen to to um listen to me talk about stuff or they you know we listen to Everybody talk about stuff and then we go, "Oh, here's what camp they're in."

34:35 Right? So, okay, you're liberal or you're a conservative or, oh, you're, you know, I had a guy one time, I was talking to a friend of mine in the gym. And, you know, my favorite thing is when people just just come up and talk to me like Oh, you love that. It's like in public. It's like, please just I don't I don't know you. You don't you know me. I don't know you though. People love doing that. Let's not act like we know each other. like just hey just in your mind go oh I saw Josh today I'm not that big of a deal I'm not a celebrity but people in our community will always come up to me but this guy didn't even know who I was I was talking to a friend of mine in the gym and we were talking about God wants us to win or some kind of conversation like that and he goes hey man are you like a Christian I'm like yeah sort of you know is that what you said sort of sort of make sometimes oh man and uh and I was like no I'm a pastor and uh he goes you're a pastor I go yeah he goes where do you pastor at I go oh like Elevate Life Church. I there's a there's a Lifetime in our city where we live and it's just pretty much down the street from this Lifetime gym. And I said, "I'm a pastor at this church." He goes, "Oh, that's one of those prosperity gospel churches." I go, "Well, let me ask you a question." He goes, "Okay." I said, "Uh, do you want to do you do you want to make more money at your job? Like, do you want to be successful? Do you want to have a great life?" He's like, "Yeah." I said, "Do you think God agrees with that?" He goes, "Well, yeah." I'm like, "So, it sounds like you believe in the prosperity gospel, right?" Cuz like we throw out a word. People throw out a word like the prosperity gospel. They don't even know what it means. They just see a big church or person who is a Christian who believes in bibl who believes in success who believes God wants them to be successful in life and they go, "Nope, that's not true." Based on based on what? Like there was a guy um that I I have, you know, I have these conversations a lot. There was a guy in the comments in like that post that it wasn't I don't It was really You posted just for people that don't know, you posted about snap finance and how people aren't winning. It was one of our earlier episodes.

36:31 Yeah, we talked about that and and how poverty is a mindset and we I think we got a little I got a little bit ahead of myself talking about this stuff um which is good um to talk about. So, one guy said, you know, God wants us to have abundance, but only in a spiritual way. He only wants us to have spiritual abundance. And so, he quotes, he writes John 10:10. John 10:10, the Bible says, "The devil's come to the enemies come to steal, kill, and destroy, but I've come," Jesus said, "I've come that you might have life and life abundantly, life to the full." Right? So, people read that verse and they go, "Well, that when God says abundant life, he means spiritual life." He means abundant spiritual life. Says who? Says a lot of church traditions. Says a lot of different like schools of thought. But when you go look at the words Jesus used, he didn't use words that say that. He used this uh for life he used this word zoey. Zoe doesn't mean spiritual life. It means just life in general. And then he used for abundance there's this Greek word parasos which is again not a spiritual term. It's a term that means more than what's required extraordinary. And biblically it means f more than full of everything. So so we limit God by saying hey God just wants me to have so so many people I was talking to a guy this week about this.

37:50 So many people, they have this viewpoint that God wants them to be prosperous, but he only really cares about eternity. Yeah. And we've developed this narrative as Christians that says, "Hey, it's just really honestly, man, I I'll say it how I hear it because it doesn't make sense." And this is really the way a lot of people talk. God created you. He gave you a life to live. He doesn't really care about any of that, though. What he cares about is heaven or hell. what he all God cares about is eternity and that's all you should care about too. I'm like how does that make any sense? How why would God give me a life to live? Why would he give me uh years on the earth to live a life if it was just solely about eternity? Why would he just put me in eternity? Yeah. No. Yeah. Once you get saved Oh, that guy the earth. Yeah. Exactly. You know, shuffle off your mortal coil and go ahead, brother.

38:41 Your mortal coil. Yeah. So these are these are thought processes that have just been developed in people. Yeah. Right. And there's nothing wrong with thinking these things. There is something wrong with not thinking these things intentionally. I think the goal of this the goal of this podcast for me if you're like a listener or whatever is not for you to agree with me, not for you to agree with Nick. The goal of this podcast is for you to start asking some questions about why you think what you think, why you believe what you believe. And what people have to do is get to this point where they want to discover truth. We don't invent truth. Yeah. Like back to back to what we were talking about, the law of gravity is was something that was discovered. It wasn't something that was created by by us. So there's things in the universe that we didn't create. Truth is one of those things. Humans don't have the ability to create truth. And once you discover truth, you're feeling in Acts 17, Paul talks about how you're feeling your way towards God. So once you align, and we did an episode, we talked about this a little bit. Once you find this alignment or or these things that are like shadows of truth, then you go, "Oh, I want to I want a greater truth. I want a greater truth. I want a greater truth." And the great thing is God always is going to reveal to you deeper and greater truths because every truth, everything that's true to me points to ultimate truth.

40:04 Yeah. Right. So, let me ask you, so because I know you want to talk about this for a few episodes, I have some thoughts on what you've said. Do you want to keep like to just dive down in those or do you want to do you want to leave it with people to be like, "Okay, examine what you think and we're going to start diving into some things." No, let's go. I think we got time on this episode. Okay. Whatever you feel like talking about, man. Yeah. Well, I I so my cuz my immediate thought it's such an interesting thing to hear people say like really think about this that you would argue that the God of the universe wants to make you poor or he doesn't care. I mean, it's e it's it's there's there's a combination of these. So, it's it's mo but where people mostly end up is God doesn't care. He's not concerned with this or he uh doesn't want us to be rich. He doesn't want us to If he if he so if he doesn't I whatever whatever camp whether it's the he doesn't care and we're making it too much of a thing or he yeah it's kind of the same it's kind of the same place.

41:00 It's a very it's a it's a belief that kind of puts a cap on things but I can't understand how you could from a a place of looking at a limitless God to sit there and go okay this this God wants like he has a problem with me being wealthy. Okay. Which, you know, maybe you could make an argument for that because you're putting it in God's place. But what I'm getting at is I feel like it's it's a way for people to almost give themselves an escape valve of like, well, there, you know, there's you don't want to have too much, right? Like there there's like cuz you talked about if if God's saying use money as a tool and you and I agree with you, money just makes you more of who you are. It's almost like it becomes an amoral thing that we've be that we've made into having this immense power and like it has this force over us that we don't know. when really it's like look, if you had somebody who was al altruistic in their devotion to God, right? Like they they were 100% in everything they did was 100% for the kingdom. Would you not just keep pouring resource to that person because you know they would direct it wherever God wanted them to?

41:59 Well, yeah. And that would be Jesus. Like yes, I can make a I can make a fish come. I can have people that are uh what is it the the women that followed him around in Luke 8. I think it talks about how they provided for him. There's so many opportunities. And not to mention, if you know the character of God and you know anything about success, can you imagine a God who created the universe down to the minute detail? By the way, this is Jesus in the flesh going and making some stone, you know, people think he was a carpenter, thinking think he was a stonemason, whatever he was doing. Do you think his work was good? Pretty good. He's all right. I mean, do you not think that people like, "Hey, if you need to get some stones cut, like go see this guy Yeshua, cuz this dude can cut you." Like, do you think he's not going to be making money? I think it's absurd that people even ask these questions. Well, I think but they're but that the but that's the thing like you're saying ask these questions. They're not asking questions, right? So, the problem that people have is they're not asking questions and even the questions that they're asking like I have guys come do this. I have people do this to me all the time.

42:53 Right. And they go they come up to me, they ask me a question and I go, "Look, I you're not asking me a question. You're trying to make a point. So, just make your point." So, people like to disguise points as questions. Okay. So, that's what you were saying about the lawyers. Yeah. So they go, "Well, I'm they're making a point with their question because they're they're trying to get you. And I don't mind being God. I just just tell me what the point is." Like I'll I'll tell you what the point is. I'm not going to come up and pretend to ask you a question like I'm searching to know when I really already have this all figured out. And that's the biggest thing. That's the biggest thing for anybody that's listening to this, if you're still listening to this, like, and you're kind of like not liking it, is I I respect you for that. But the biggest thing is so many people already have the if you're going to talk about to me if you're going to talk about the way God thinks about stuff then what you have to be willing to do is always uh submit to the fact that the book of Isaiah gives this great perspective Isaiah 55 God's ways are higher than your ways God's thoughts are higher than your thoughts so as the heavens are higher than the earth so are God's ways and God's thoughts higher than your ways. So God doesn't agree with you. If I ever get to a point in my life where like, you know, I have this perspective and God agrees with me on that, I'm probably wrong. God never is going to agree with me because I'm a human being and I'm limited. No matter how great I become spiritually, no matter how many books I read, no matter how much time I spend in the word, I'm limited by a human perspective.

44:19 Yeah. Like there's a spiritual aspect to all of us. We're spiritual beings having a human experience. It's what Wayne W Dyer said. But our processing power so to speak is still limited by humanity. So there is a universe, a uh a place, a reality that's beyond our comprehension that God is always speaking from. Like that's the place he's speaking from. So what you're saying real quick is you're saying we see in part, we know in part because some people would be like, "Well, what about grace and what about we know that Jesus forgave our s?" Yes. You have a partial like do you understand the full mystery of the cross? Because I don't. I still get blown. I still get blown. And that's what you're saying. It's impossible to understand really how atonement works, right? And and [clears throat] so so God's not speaking to us from our reality and and he's speaking to us from like this unlimited reality that he lives in. So he's always drawing. Jesus said, "It's given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom." Right? So it's given to me to know the mysteries of the kingdom, but I could seek and you could see that you could see this spelled out the scripture. I could seek my whole life and spend my whole life trying to understand these mysteries and not not understand them.

45:34 Yeah. Right. And that's true about anything God thinks about. So whether it's money or salvation or forgiveness or the law of gravity or the law of sowing and reaping or anything like that, what we have to be willing to do, which is like the foundational aspect, like before we just get into talking about the subject of money and what the Bible really says about money is we have to be willing to say, you know what, I'm open to Yeah, good. I'm open to being wrong. I'm open to, which is the whole point of this podcast. I'm open to being wrong. I'm open to uh this this the Ricky Bobby moment of I've lived my whole life by this philosophy and I'm finding out that this is not the first or last. Yeah. If you're not first, you're last. Doesn't make sense. There's all kinds. Heck, you can do me fifth. You beat me fifth. Must I was drunk when I said it, you know? Rick. So, some people I wouldn't say they're drunk when they teach us things, but we don't often realize where our thinking comes from. And a lot of just doesn't come from an intentional place.

46:34 It doesn't come from, you know, if you the way you think about money, most likely for most people, the way you think about money, you don't think that way intentionally unless you've gone out and learned a lot on purpose. The way you think about money was just kind of handed to you by a variety of sources, right? And what what we have to the place we have to get to is the way I think about money needs to primarily come from the guy who created the universe, which is God. And scripture has a whole lot to say about it. So that's the good news. But the bad news for us is, and I quote this stat a lot, only 4% of Christians have a biblical worldview, right? So if you're a Christian, if you're not a Christian and you're listening to this, man, awesome. Uh, if you are a Christian and you're listening to this, there's a 96% chance you don't think like God. Yeah, I don't know you. I don't I don't know your story. I don't know your journey, whatever. But there's a 96% chance you're not thinking like God. And what I should be able to do is just really simply admit to myself, hey, I have these thoughts. And we all have thoughts. We all have ways that we think.

47:38 Those thoughts probably aren't God's thoughts. And so, I'm willing to search out and understand how God thinks. I want him to teach me how to think, and I'm willing to abandon my position on an issue once I realize that it's the wrong it's the wrong position. Yeah. Because I said this a second ago, the falsehood like things that are lies and things that are false are going to over time they'll all come out as false and no one will end up believing this stuff anyway. Yeah. Right. So you could spend your whole life believing a lie, living according to a lie, get to the end of your life and go, man, like I can't believe I I can't believe I live my whole life according to that. And so many people that's what they do. So how do we avoid that? We come back to being really intentional about our thinking. Yes. and we're willing to have intellectual humility which says I don't know everything. But the the challenge of that is when scripture says that knowledge puffs up but love builds up.

48:34 So we have to I I'm a person. I'm a searcher. I'm a learner. I'm always reading. I'm always learning. I'm always studying some kind of topic or concept or whatever. But I have to be really careful at not weaponizing that knowledge against people that don't know as much as me. And I have to be careful of walking through this stuff in a way that's loving not just not not just to other people but also like to myself and to the world. So I want to get into what what it means what what what does the Bible really say? So the first question we're going to ask on the next episode is does God want me to be rich? But what we need to what we need to do right now on this episode is just be willing to admit that there's probably aspects to our thinking on money, on God, on everything else that aren't correct. Because we can't ask questions if we already know the answers. Very good. So, I have to be willing to sit here and go, you know what? I don't know all the answers and I'm willing to be like a student with God and ask the question because his thinking is always higher than mine. And I'm a little bit nervous.

49:34 I wouldn't say nervous. I don't know what the right word is, but I'm a little bit whenever I feel like I fully understand something, I get a little bit concerned, right? Because I I don't feel like I'm ever going to really fully understand. When when you know people go, "Here's how God is or here's how it works." It's like, I don't know. That's how he worked that one time or that's how he worked here. That doesn't mean that's always going to be that way because he's always got a new mystery for us to walk into. All right. Well, we've uh spent the whole episode getting to the place where hopefully people are willing to admit that they're uh they may not have it all figured out. So, let's uh let's pause here and then dive in. Well, I think uh well, I think especially we're going to talk about money, but especially on money, if you're willing to take this journey with us, be willing to abandon a false belief. I'm I'm personally willing to do that. And like I tell people, I I've spent hundreds of hours, maybe thousands of hours, like researching this. I'm not saying that to be like, "Oh man, I'm so smart on money." I've gone as deep as I can possibly go at this point in my life looking at this and learning this stuff has challenged so much about what I believe that [clears throat] I think if you do this with God, if you really walk hand in hand with God through life, you have to be willing to abandon the human aspects of your thinking that just don't align with how God thinks. And if you're not willing to do that, you can't take the journey. So to take the journey, you have to go. So I'll go back to this.

51:00 Imagine that you have a map. Know some of you have never used a map before, but like I said, when you use a map, you got to know where you are on the map. That's why when you go to the mall and they show you where all the stores are, there's a little dot that says you're here. Y right. So you got to know where you are. You got to know where your thinking is. You got to know where that came from so that you can begin to make your way towards the the treasure the X that's that's written on the map. And to do that, ask yourself the question, who taught me to think the way that I think? 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.