Joshua Keith Craft

0:52 Okay. So, the book. So yeah, he talks about how who who Dan Dan uh Dan Sullivan he talks about and Who Not How he talks about how uh entrepreneurs spend their life thinking about how to do something. So, they have this idea. They're like, "How can I do it?" And that's actually a sign that you need to have a who in your life. Like, you need to have an alignment, a person that you're working with. Because when you have the right person, all you have to figure out is the relationship and they know how to do everything or they they're going to figure out how to do everything because they're good at that. It's like with this stuff with the podcast with Joel, it's like, um, well, how do you want to do this? I don't know. You tell me cuz I because you're on my team, right? It's like you're on my team now. And because you're on my team, I trust I trust you to decide how how something happens because you know way more about that than me and what's going to resonate, right? It's like us doing the podcast together is uh import. It's important to me because you're gonna be able to go, okay, here's how that can, right? All this high-minded philosophy stuff or whatever it is that I'm thinking about can actually resonate with a person who's just a listener and you're going to help me figure out uh how to reach a certain audience and all this stuff that I I don't even uh I could learn that, right? Like I could go, you know, okay, well, how do I want to do this? How do I do that? Or it's like I could just go, hey, like how do you think we should do it? and you know everything about this.

2:19 Well, that's an interesting thought. So, here we are. First episode of The Dialog podcast. Why not start with some just dialogue? We're just starting with random dialogue. That's how we're going to start. That's great. I I like I like that idea for starting. We're we're we we just started recording and uh I mean, welcome to The Dialog. Welcome to the podcast, everybody. There you go. Glad that you're here. That's the intro that the people wanted. You know, we spent some time setting up. We're in my office today. It's not like a perfect environment, but dude, there's been way way way worse environments. All right, man. So, where we do conversations? What? Why start a podcast, man? And first of all, who are you? Cuz like you're assuming that everybody knows you. Like, you're Josh Craft. I'm Nick Surface. Like, tell why? Like, what what's brought you here, man? To where you're like, "Okay, I want to have a podcast." Cuz for those out there that don't know Josh, you're not the kind of guy that's like, "Hey, everybody should listen to me. People should hear what I think." No, that's not you at all. I think that's a long story, but I, you know, and you said I was going to talk a long time, but I, you know, it's my podcast. I can do what I want, I guess. But like, you know, for me, I I've spent a lot of time in my life just learning how to like learning how to live. I think uh I've had great mentors. I have a great dad. I've had great coaches throughout my life. And I think a lot of people the dynamic and the issue that they have, you know, the Bible says in Ephesians 2 that we're uh we're God's masterpiece and we're created for good works a long time ago. Like so God God created good works for us to do a long time ago. I know you and Garrett talk about that on The Impossible Life. That's something that really resonates with both me and Garrett.

3:48 So I want to learn how to live in a way that I master like the art of living because God calls living an art. And so um I've spent a lot of time in my life wanting to learn how to do that just because I want to uh have a healthy life. I want to have a great life. I want to be successful. I want to also have the right definition of success. Yeah. And I think the problem that a lot of people have is they, you know, I think everybody wants to be happy. Yeah. That's what they feel is the lack of Yeah. None of us really ever, you know, if you think about this, none of us ever really think we we never really consider whether or not happiness is a worthy goal. Like everyone wants to be happy. We just assume that that's a good goal. And it is. You know, it's like there's this thing within us that pursues happiness. Like the Declaration of Independence says, yeah, we have the right to pursue it and it's given the rights given to us by God. So I think everybody wants to be happy and a lot of people end up unhappy even though they want to be happy and it's because of how they define happiness and how they define success.

4:51 And you know the world is so advanced like we've we've you know over the past couple thousand years like we've advanced technology, we've advanced medicine, we've advanced so many different aspects of the human experience. But the thing we haven't advanced in is our ability to answer those kind of questions. Well, we're actually like anxiety and mental uh mental health is alltime high. All time high. And here we are in the easiest time to live. We have we have we're in the easiest time to live. We have more access to uh you know people that had anxiety and depression 100 years ago didn't have medicine that you could take. I mean all kinds of stuff like that or they couldn't just go on chat GPT and like you know find a bunch of information. Yeah. Or or treat you know like a lot of people do treat chat GPT or AI as their therapist. Right. You know it's so fascinating. But like you're saying, the problem still there, right? Yeah. So there's still these problems of like meaning and purpose and really big questions that we continue to ask. So we think that as humans we're more advanced than people that lived 2,000 years ago, right?

5:51 Right. Um but the reality is we're really not in terms of our approach to life. Right. We're still asking the same questions that uh philosophers asked 2,000 years ago. We're asking questions that Jesus answered. we're a lot a lot of different stuff like that and so um I don't I don't think these question a lot of people live life as if these questions don't have answers um I think that on a on a level that they do but there's a really interesting quote that I love by Søren Kierkegaard he said that life is not a problem to be solved it's a reality to be experienced and uh then then Dune so Frank Herbert quotes that in the book Dune which I really love the book Dune But um in the book Dune, he quotes it and he he goes on this he goes on this kind of little tangent about how life is a journey and all this different stuff. And so you when we start to see our life as problems to be solved like this the you know I got to fix this, I got to fix this, I got to fix this. We think that there's uh just this point that we have to get to that we'll finally be happy.

6:57 And really the pursuit of happiness is a lifelong thing. when you look at philosophy and what all these all these really wise people have said and uh so anyway that's the kind of the that's a really philosophical background for a philosophical no I want to I want to dive into this of like is happiness a worthwhile pursuit because so obviously this is episode one we've given no background about you Josh is a pastor at Elevate Life Church I'm a pastor you're an author coach I'm a coach I do a lot of I'm kind of like a utility player in life I have a great family I work with my dad I help him with a lot of stuff. I have the privilege to um travel and speak and do all these things that I never thought I would do. I guess to we'll get back to what you were going to say, but to kind of like intro right now that we're 10 minutes in or Yeah. Well, no, but it's people are going to hear that. So, what I'll say about you Josh is I think a lot of people think of philosophy as like a time and period. Yeah. Right. Like, oh, there there was a period of time where philosophy was really big just like there was that period where industrialization blew up and like it's still around. like industrialization's around but I think for a lot of people philosophy is kind of something they studied almost like they studied history like the the civil war like it happened now the world's different right that's exactly it was for a period whereas it's like no people are living their philosophy and this is something that you've been really big on you know you wrote your book The Way to Live where you you kind of lay out what it is to actually have a worldview and a philosophy and it's interesting because since you've done that I've noticed that more people talk about biblical worldview um and so this podcast really for you is just is about exploring you you you've plug in the gap capture, but would you say it's like philosophy in the modern day and how you kind of work that into your life to how to live?

8:33 Yeah. And that's kind of what I was getting at was the um these we're still asking the same questions even though we've advanced a lot as a society, right? Um questions about meaning and purpose and what's the right way to live and what's the right way to vote and approach politics and how do you how do you approach all these different uh situations and circumstances that human beings just run into, right? And um people have been having these conversations for a really long time. Yeah. And uh I have this thought process. I'm not like an academic philosopher. I have a film degree. Uh and uh I I I've ended up doing most of my life at this point. I'm 38 years old. At this point, most of my life is uh thinking, speaking, and writing, right? So that's most of what I do. I never saw myself doing that. Uh but as I learned stuff I was like those are the doors that just kind of open for me. And so one of the things that I've learned and seen in my life is uh Musonius Rufus who is a stoic philosopher. He said this is my favorite definition of philosophy. He said philosophy is nothing more uh than to search out by reason what is right and proper and by deeds to put it into practice. Right? So what that means is every day of our life we make decisions and all of those decisions that we make are made uh with some kind of criteria.

9:57 There's there's something inside of us. Some people can identify it, some people can't, but there's something inside of us that uh is the impetus, the generating force behind decisions that we make. Okay, that's called a philosophy. So your philosophy is just your criteria for making decisions every day. Right? So if you make a bad decision, it's not just, oh, bad because some external person said it was bad. When you make a bad decision, you're making a decision that's rooted in a bad approach to life, a bad way of thinking, a bad way of being, a bad way of doing. And we'll talk about all that stuff a lot a lot more like as we go on the podcast. But I want to help people develop a uh a winning philosophy of life. I want to help people develop a because everyone I you know again this goes with that belief but everyone's a philosopher. So everyone's a philosopher because everyone makes decisions every day right so all of us are making decisions our life is filled with with decisions you know from from what we getting out of bed in the morning what we wear what we eat all all of all of kind of the sum total of life if you think about it is all the decisions that you make.

11:06 Yeah. Um, and so if if the outcome of my life is if the result of my life is the is the product of the decisions that I make, then the question for me is how do I make sure that I'm making good decisions? So then that that seems like a simple question. Right. Right. But the problem with that question is uh the the word good because how do you know what's actually good? Yeah. Right. We live in a we live in a a culture where in terms of the western world where now more than ever good is this subjective thing. It's like who's what is who gets to define what good is is is what's good for one person good for another person. And so um we think that this is like a new thing. We think this is a new thing that's happened where like the rise of subjective truth in culture and we have to get back to objective truth and you know people that are Christian uh like us are very focused on getting things to back to align with God's word and align with the truth of the Bible.

12:06 Well again we're not the first people to try to do this. So, if you go all the way back to the ancient world, and we'll talk about this more in different episodes, but there's people that were called sophists that were like Instagram influencers, uh, or modern day, well, not even Instagram, modern day social media influencers that would just say things that sounded true, right? And their goal was to get people on their side because in in a democracy like Athens, right, uh, everything was based on how everybody voted. So, if you could get everybody on your side, it didn't matter if you were right or wrong, you would win, right? Because you got them to vote with you. This is like celebrities coming out and saying like, "Hi, I'm insert your favorite celebrity. You should vote for this politician." Like, yeah, it happens. It still happens today. Or buy this product, right? Or you look at someone who has 10 million followers and they say, "Here's how I live my life." And you go, "Oh, well, that's that's I guess a good way to live your life because you have that many followers, right?

13:01 It's like a level of authority now that's recognized." So in the ancient world, so in the modern world we we call it social media. In the ancient world, this was called rhetoric. So the uh a sophist like one of the biggest things that mattered in the in the the citystate of Athens was a person's ability to speak convincingly. Like so they would get up in front of a bunch of people and they would try to argue for their position. Right? So that was actually a a not even a subject in school. It was something you could go be trained in to become a better politician. Right. So, a sophist was someone who was gifted and skilled in the art of rhetoric and they would teach you how to have convincing arguments. Wow. Right. And it didn't matter to them whether what they were saying was true because the goal was not truth. The goal was winning.

13:52 It's like campaign strategist for politicians. No. It's like campaign strategist or anything or social media strategist or anything that we could point to. I mean, it's it's what marketing is, right? It's it's not about whether or not the product or the service is good for you or actually helpful for you. It's we need to get you to buy this. Right. Right. So, let's hope that's not always true. Like there there are some you know there are still some morality. There's morality in there. But yeah. Well, for for you there is for sure. But I think that you know generally these things are tools is what I'm saying. No, you're right. Yeah. So So um your definition of goodness has to come from somewhere. So when you go go back to what we're saying, we're getting like really philosophical, but to go back to what is that the point of the podcast? I think we're doing what we're supposed to. Yeah. To go back to what we were saying. So, okay, you're probably listening to this going, "Yeah, you know, I'd love to make good decisions. I think I'm making good decisions."

14:44 Well, how many of us have experienced the phenomenon where we go make a what we think in the moment is a good decision and then later on it's like, "Oh, wow. That actually just totally blew my whole situation up." Yeah. And do you think people link those though, Josh? I'm not trying to be single. I think a lot of times people like, "Man, I don't know why this is happening." And if you have the if you actually have the cause and effect relationship where you can look back and look at the chain of events. I did this one time with like I think there was some party I chose to go to randomly because I was bored and my friend wanted this thing. I'm like, "All right, cool. I'll go with you." Well, I went with him. Then he met this group of girls. I wasn't even with him, but then because he met this group of girls and helped them out because they were in a bad situation, like, "Oh, we should hang out again. I go along." That was like my first long-term girlfriend. somebody that I was like joined to for a time that was not like did not lead me to great decisions. I'll just say that and like you when we're done you're kind of like oh whatever that's your age and you throw it away but but how many different things were you being like what's remarkable about humans is we're always being conditioned right it's not like we just kind of go well I'm going to completely forget that experience and it'll never shade anything going forward if we're not like if we don't have the wherewithal to actually understand how our brains work and how we make decisions which is what you're talking about we're going to bring all our past experiences and it's like we're gradually coloring coloring the glasses we're wearing differently to the point that one day we're just like man the world's red. It's like, no, it's not.

16:03 You You've colored your glasses. It's crazy. Yeah. And people, you know, it's like you're saying, I mean, most people never stop to consider like I think one of the things that's true that's like a universal truth is in any situation, the most intentional person wins. So the person who lives with the most intention will win. Right. Right. So if you want to have a great marriage, be super intentional. Even if you're wrong, e well um you'll win. I'm not saying it's good, right? So like if a person like if a if a you know to use the negative thing, if a person comes in and they're super intentional and they manipulate a situation out of their intention, they're going to win. Right. Right. Everyone else who's just kind of showing up and going with the flow, they could maybe win, but they're not being intentional. Yeah.

16:53 So winning is kind of this agnostic idea. But when you live your life with intention, yeah, what you're saying is, I have a goal and I want to get to that goal, so I'm going to make decisions that get me closer to that rather than further away. So if a person never establishes a goal, then there's then intentionality is impossible for them, right? So like back to what you're saying, um, most people never consider that because uh I mean look at the world that we live in. Most people don't set goals for anything, much less a a huge goal, like the goal for your life, right? You like I I I write that in The Way to Live , but I talk a lot about this when I talk to people, like if you could set a goal for your life, what would it be? Like not a goal for the next 5 years, not a goal for the next 10 years, but if if there was an outcome to your whole life, what would that what would that outcome look like? And most people never consider that kind of question. I didn't I didn't come up with that question.

17:58 That's a question philosophers ask. But most people never consider that question. So then of course they're not considering the decisions they're making every day. Like they're not going uh you know is this like so a person in in your situation, right? They don't really have they're just kind of hanging with their friends doing their thing, right? They run into somebody. They have natural chemistry with them. They're like, "Oh, I think this is good because I vibe with you." Right. Right. If maybe if you and I don't, you know, I've never heard you tell that story, but like if you would have been like, "Okay, I have core values. I have a certain way of living. I have a certain approach to life." And you would have gone, even if you were still hanging out with your friends, you would have gone and met that girl and gone, "Yeah, that she doesn't really fit with my intention, right?" You know what my core value was? Is she hot? Like that was my core value. That's not a bad one, you know, to start.

18:48 I mean, but that was the only one, bro. That was the problem and that's why this did not go the way it should have been. Man, it was and like honestly it's funny now because praise God like I've been, you know, God's taken me from You've had a totally different life. You've been on a great journey. I have. I had a great journey and I am still on a great journey. But but like man, that's that's kind of You're right, man. I I had no decision-making criteria, but yet we make decisions. Yeah. And and you you have to I mean you have to your life is decisions. You you're every from the time you're a child. It's not even like one day you turn 18 and you gain decision-making power. From the time you're a kid, you make decisions about everything. And um and so one of the things I've noticed, one of the things that people like uh Socrates and Plato and Aristotle and Buddha and Confucius and all these different people, one of the things they noticed as well was that people didn't consider that kind of stuff. M like uh Socrates was famous for quoting the the there was a temple of Apollo that everyone in Greece would go to and they would consult the oracle at Delphi who was like spoke for the gods right and so there was an inscription this is a well-known story about Socrates but there was an inscription on the temple that said know thyself and so people would ask Socrates questions and he would tell them I can't answer that question because I don't fully know myself yet so Socrates kind main you know people that don't read Socrates or don't know a lot about Socrates life think that he went around teaching people stuff like lecturing like like we imagine a philosopher do today he just asked people a bunch of questions and he asked people questions because he didn't know the answers to them right and he would say all I know on this is like a paraphrase but all I know is that I know nothing right and so the goal of you know at least for Socrates his own personal pursuit is to get to know himself really well right which is um the reason why we're doing this podcast like it's called The Dialog and there's this concept in ancient Greek thought this guy named Heraclitus kind of a precursor to what what philosophers became he uh identified this concept called the logos that the universe was governed by reason and logic right and you could tap into it right okay so it was very mystical uh ancient Greece and so by the time you get to Socrates which is uh a while after Heraclitus uh there's this thing that Plato especially talks about in his writings called dialogues and dialectics and he uses all these different terms so they created this word called a dialogue and the we we we see dialogue as conversation like it's just people having conversation dialogue has a certain meaning in our culture today dia means means through in Greek and then log comes from the word logosm M so what they believed was that when when people would Socrates especially demonstrated this when people would sit so if there was a question we need to answer when people sit and reason together it's not just them and they're sharing ideas there's also like a third partner in that discussion that shows up and and an answer and we've all seen this I'm just describing this in a really philosophical way we've all seen this happen in our life where we sit down with a friend talk about a problem that we have neither one of us have the solution but then somehow in the conversation we arrive on something that neither one of us thought about before that philosophers would call that a product of the dialogue I love that so through the logos so through our reasoning like through us reasoning we also access like this universal concept called the logos now obviously uh we're Christians right so it's not just this like manifesting mystical new age idea of this rational universe that's governed by the logos.

22:44 Uh God, what I what I believe is that and this is why I mean when we sit down with our friends, you know, we talk about things. When we go to talk to people that help us process through things, humans are like storytelling animals. We really are, right? We spend we spend life like, you know, I'll ask you a question, you'll respond with a story. You ask me a question, I'll respond with a story. It's like, hey, why are we doing this podcast? let me tell you the story of my whole life. Right? All that stuff. So, we're storytelling animals and one of those one of the reasons why we're that way is because we're always trying to to uh give reasons for why we've made the decisions that we've made or why we're in the situation that we're in, right? And so, we have reasons. We have reasoning. So when we sit down with people who uh maybe are wiser than us, maybe not, we sit down with people that disagree with us. We sit down with people that share have different definitions than us. What that does is that opens up this kind of So there's a, you know, if we're both talking about a problem. There's a solution that you have. Yeah.

23:45 And there's a solution that I have. But there's also a third solution out there that's not really a combination of both of our solutions. It's something that would only come as a product of that conversation. Very interesting. Right. Yeah. And so that's what I believe uh conversations with uh intentional conversations can be like stuff like this and I really appreciate you wanting to do this podcast with me cuz I because me and you have really great conversations and stuff and I think you're you're uh uh the philosophical word is interlocutor. You're you're a really great interlocutor. You're a really great Thanks, man. conversational partner. I'm going to change my LinkedIn bio now. Interlocutor. Interlocutor. Thanks, man. Um, you're great at drawing that out of people. Like, I think you're really great at at having very meaningful conversations and um when we have those at in our life, we arrive on uh an answer that didn't Yeah. That's what's so fascinating. We we've experienced this like cuz for those that maybe come directly to you, I have a podcast with your best friend Garrett called The Impossible Life and we've been going for four years and we've had you on there multiple times and you and I have tackled issues before and that's why I'm excited to have you explain that to people because so many times people come in and they're fixed and what we have in our culture now is like everybody wants to be like here let me tell you why my side's right and you're wrong and this is what's called social media and um and like there's no consequences now. I can throw stones at you and like you're never going to we're not going to have to ever face each other.

25:13 And idiots are given platforms. Yeah. Like like a person who has an account. Yeah. Like you think it you know there was a time in history where people who didn't have influence were not a part of the conversation. Yeah. It was like you can't get in this room. Yeah. There's no way you can be a part of this. Now we've created a world where the lowest quality thinker can can can be a part can shift the the dynamic of a conversation by just throwing a grenade, right? I'm just going to throw a hand grenade comment. It's wild. That's that's the wild west of social media in in this. And then for so many people that becomes Yeah. Then then for so many people because they don't control themselves very well, that becomes the conversation where now like we're we're wholeheartedly responding to a person who's a troll. At at best they're a troll. At best they're a troll. At worst they're just they're just they have a 50 IQ. Like Yeah. You're But that's the thing.

26:08 You're imagining what this person looks like based off some avatar and a few pictures if they're if they have a public profile. But but what I love so like you and I have experienced this before where we've tackled topics and it's like let's just explore it. And I remember like when we came to the end of it I had this weird sense of peace where I was like man that was so wonderful because that's not where I thought we were going to go but it was definitely the right place to end up. And I remember when we finished pressing record I was like man that was awesome. And so what we're doing on this podcast because I mean you talked about like what makes you so wonderful Josh is you like there's a great scripture in Ecclesiastes that said there's nothing new under the sun right and so like you saying this right now about I had never heard that about the people uh the sofas right and so you see the echoes of of history because like you said humanity is still asking the same questions and tackling the same problems. So on this podcast what you're going to get from Josh in particular is you're going to bring the echoes of history and be like look here's how we got to where we are.

27:02 One of the most brilliant things I ever heard you teach was when you explained why railroad tracks are the same size worldwide that they are now. And it goes back to how wide the Roman carts were, that they built the Roman road a certain way because of the ruts that were in there. And that's a very poor uh I'm doing a very disservice of that message and I don't think you need to recap it, but I just remember I was like, you just took something from like literally thousands of years ago and explained why we all have a certain length of track. Yeah. was why it was why uh is ultimately why the rocket boosters on on rockets are the are a certain size which is wild and it's all the way back to the width of chariot wheels in ancient Rome which is crazy and so so that's what so you you're brilliant and you bring that in and uh we happen to really love each other and be very close friends so that helps we have a good relationship to to go through here so people can expect we're going to tackle big questions hopefully we're going to help people think about why they do what they do and show them things that might be influencing their thinking that are unaware of or maybe introduce some things that they should. One of the things that you're really hot on is the joy of being wrong, which I think is like wild. I I don't think I've ever said it that way, but but but it really is. That's like But you you you think I I think I think that and Socrates talked about this, but if if a person is proved wrong, they've they're the one that's been served by that conversation.

28:21 Yeah. Because they were wrong. Right. So, you've lived your life with a wrong belief and now you've now it's been discovered that you're wrong and so now you can fix it and you can get better. So, I guess the joy of being wrong is a good the joy of being wrong. Yeah. Well, I am looking forward to what lies ahead of us. Well, I think yeah, for for us, man, I mean, I'll say this kind of there's there's some rules, okay, to to what we're doing here. And um we'll we'll talk about this especially, I think, once we build this podcast and because I I don't want to like just be controversial and stuff. No, but we'll have hopefully like the dream is to have controversial people on here who I who me and you completely disagree with. Yeah. But um that's a hard thing to do like especially in the modern world. Yeah. Because people don't want to be compromising and and um it's not about it's not just about being a compromising person, but it's about a few things. So the first thing is that when we talk about stuff, we're going to say what we believe and we're going to really we're going to say what we believe, but that also has to be attached to h us living out that belief. What I what I don't what no one wants to deal with is a world where uh it's just a bunch of theoretical information, right?

29:33 You know, it's like it's like whether it's the fat guy in the gym who's lecturing people on how to work out or whatever. No one really wants to be that person, right? And so if a person like for us, you know, I know you and you know me, when we sit here and talk about what we believe and what we think about things, there's a conviction attached to that because we're living based on it. Like when I sit here and I say that um all truth is God's truth, for instance, and and that's what Augustine said, even when it's found in pagan literature, I live that out in my life, right? That's not just like a theoretical truth that I hold on to. The second thing is uh and this is maybe great for people to great rules for people to have in the way that they live their life which is uh you got to want the truth not to win. And we live in a culture where people don't want the truth, they want to win. Hang on. You you said that very fast. So people have to want the truth, not just want to win.

30:27 Yeah, cuz you said that people have to want the truth not to win. I'm like, wait a minute, don't we want the truth to win? But what you're saying is like you have Yeah. You can't just want to win. the truth more than they want to win. There you go. That's so like like people have always asked me, you know, I guess people see me as an intellectual. They see me as having a lot of different knowledge like you should go debate. You should go to these you should go do this stuff and debate with people. You should debate with atheists. You should debate with these different people. It's like that's I don't agree with personally I don't agree with the idea of doing a debate because we what what what you're doing when you have a debate is you're both have permanent positions that you're entrenched in and you're just fighting to see who wins right that day. Like when you watch, you know, Christians verse verse atheist debate on YouTube or whatever. No one walks away and goes, you know, I think you've talked me into it. I mean, there are people that do. I guess I can't say nobody, but it's not the norm, especially in today's society. It's not the norm for sure. And that's where like the joy of being wrong comes in because if you're if you're discussing things earnestly, I think one of the things that comes with discussing things earnestly is the willingness to be like, I don't really know everything.

31:37 I'm willing to be wrong. Like I was having a discussion with a guy recently on my on my website. I'm writing a bunch of stuff right now about the prosperity gospel and uh what the Bible really says about prosperity and I'm trying to access the truth. So this guy uh who I'm friends with gets in this discussion with me about uh how I'm wrong about my interpretation of this particular passage in the Bible. And it's like I'm not wrong but you're I'm not wrong neither is your interpretation. Both of these things are just interpretations. The inherent nature of an interpretation is it's just what you think, right? So what people think is that their interpretation is the truth. Not that they're not really seeking the truth. They're just seeking an interpretation they agree with. And there's so much in life that's really honestly in the gray area. And so what we can't do is cling so hard to traditions and interpretations that we miss what the actual truth is. Because a lot of what we think, you know, I always quote Mark Twain. He said, "Yeah, uh, it ain't what you know for sure that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so."

32:43 Yeah. And if you're willing to be wrong, like if you're willing to say, and for me, the way that looks in a conversation is being willing to say, "Well, here's what I here's here's what I think to the best of my ability. Here's what I know up to this point, but I'm willing to be wrong. I don't know everything." I think that opens up like really interesting stuff, right? The the third thing is we got to be o open and honest about what we really do believe. We can't hide behind other things or try to deflect. Um, fourth thing is uh we've got to be we can't be so committed to our beliefs that we consider an attack on on the belief as an attack on ourselves, right? You know, so these are these are things I'm more giving like as practical approaches to having great conversations with people. Uh there and that's the joy of being the joy of being wrong is in here. So we must be happier in being wrong than being right. And then the the the next thing the last thing is um which I think is the most important thing that we're exploring on this podcast is that we always have to embrace the fact that there are limits to what we know.

33:43 Like we can't fully know everything. We can't ascertain all knowledge. What we can do is know more. And today I know things to the best of my ability, but if I continue to pursue getting better, tomorrow I'll know more. But I'm not gonna know everything at any point. It's like I'm committing to this journey not of to go back to what Kierkegaard said, not of solving the problem of life. I'm committing to this journey of living in this reality and trying to understand, you know, my place within it. Yeah. Well, man, uh I have so many things I'm looking forward to talking about and being wrong about and exploring with you. I think for now, um I hopefully we've whet people's appetite of what this is going to be about. Hopefully, if you don't like that, then don't come back. But if you do like that, then come back. Maybe. Yeah, maybe come back. Sorry. That's It's okay. All right. Well, here's to If you don't like that, just try again.

34:37 Just try again. Here's to being wrong. We'll see you soon. All right. 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.