0:00:00 - 0:00:24 It's been a while since I made one of these janky videos with his shiny light on my head. Um Although I don't know if it's been a while on the actual uh publication of videos because I cue those things up and I have some, you know, three months out. Anyway, today is September 28th, 2023. Um I just had 0:00:24 - 0:00:48 an email exchange with Jared, my friend Jared and uh I say his name like you might know it, he's got his own channel. Um Anyway, I know some of, you know, of him. Um and it queued up a bunch of things in my mind. He got me fired up. So I'm just gonna make a quick video while I'm waiting for my workout 0:00:47 - 0:01:09 . I'm late. Actually, I had a nice exhausting morning. It's a good thing to run full speed and uh kind of slumped over my cherry her when the email came through and um it got me fired up. So where to start? I was out uh in town the other day, I'm doing a few projects at my house that require me to go 0:01:09 - 0:01:30 into town um and break my Hermitage uh so I work from home and so I, I don't go out much and my wife does the grocery grocery shopping. So, pretty much the only time I go to town is when I have to go to the accountant for my business or um I need something for a home improvement project. And so um I've 0:01:30 - 0:01:50 been needing to go and get a bunch of stuff for home improvement stuff and projects and uh I was following my rule of always take a kid with me so I can maximize the time I have with my Children and uh expose them to life situations and try to use everything as a teaching moment. And so we're driving 0:01:49 - 0:02:08 and there were, I don't know, something like three street preachers with these signs that said stuff like believe Jesus and they were on the side of a really busy, not quite highway but, but a really busy strip uh you know, two lanes in either direction with just tons of traffic and they were standing 0:02:08 - 0:02:29 not on a corner or anything where with, where a stoplight was, but like where the traffic was driving through full speed. And so this created a, a good conversation point with my son. He may have even asked about them. I don't remember but the elements I remember from this conversation are we, I, I mentioned 0:02:29 - 0:02:50 how, um I asked him, I said, how many people do you think are gonna change their lives? Because of what they're doing. And the answer is none. Right. 00 people are gonna see that and say, oh, let me, let me go ahead and change my life. I mean, I've heard all this a billion times but just seeing somebody 0:02:49 - 0:03:07 with a sign with three words on it or two words on it or whatever. Oh, that's it. That's, that's all I needed. Thank goodness that these people came around because that's all I needed. That's all I was waiting on to change my life. Of course, that's not the case. It's ridiculous. So, in all things, we 0:03:07 - 0:03:27 ought to ask ourselves, why are we doing what we're doing? And, and then what are we doing is this, is this the best, what to answer the why? And also is it the best why we could have? That's, that's a big one. But in this case, it was the what that was off if you want to preach the gospel, that is pretty 0:03:27 - 0:03:47 much the worst way you could do it. So the same amount of time, the same amount of effort, they could have made an enormously greater difference doing it in a more, uh effective way. And so, uh, what would be more effective? Well, how about actually interacting with people? Like I mentioned, if they 0:03:47 - 0:04:08 were on a street corner or sidewalk, people actually walked on not next to basically a highway, then they could actually interact with people. There are places you can do this. I mean, we went to Mount Rushmore a few weeks ago or at some point during the summer it saw a kind of a blur and they have a 0:04:08 - 0:04:25 , um, what did they call it? A prescribed free speech zone, which is really ridiculous. It's last time I checked this in America and every square inch ought to be that. But, uh, at least they have a place. Sure. Ok. And there's sure enough there was a Jehovah's witness guy sitting there with no one talking 0:04:25 - 0:04:43 to him, right with his pamphlets and stuff under a little shade umbrella. He was really comfortable. It looked like he hadn't done anything the whole time he was there. And, um, you know that, but that's a step up because then at least people could talk to you without, I don't know, pulling over their 0:04:42 - 0:05:03 car across traffic and walking. You see what I mean? I could just dwell on the minutia of this. But, ok, that's a step up. Um, ok, what's, what's another way you could do? It is knock on doors and a lot of us have had experience with this. That's almost completely a waste of time too because who are 0:05:03 - 0:05:24 you gonna find? Well, first off, hardly anyone's gonna answer their door. But the people that are there, unless you're doing it at like 7 to 830 at night, which then people are gonna be really mad at you because they wanna relax. They don't wanna talk religion. The people who are home are crazy or unemployed 0:05:23 - 0:05:43 or something, they're just not doing much with their lives. Well, I guess nowadays it would be a little different because people work from home more frequently. But, um, anyway, odds are, it's still not a very effective way to go. So, what's the problem here? The problem is that one way of categorizing 0:05:42 - 0:06:14 sales, which sales in general is just if you're not, if you're not uh manipulating people, good sales are when you're trying to find people who need what you have to give. So you can do that by throwing a dart at a dartboard and just randomly um accosting people or you can go to the places where those 0:06:14 - 0:06:34 kinds of people are so you can profile them. You can think. Hm, if someone had a need that I could help fill, where would I find those people? And if you can't find them, you could raise a flag that calls them and, and you should actually, you should do both. Like every single company has a website because 0:06:34 - 0:07:00 people are gonna Google things or they, they buy Google ads and uh put in keywords of what it is they have to offer so that when people are looking for it, they see them, right? That's great. So you can use that same approach. Um So, you know, I, I am not a popular person and in spite of my best efforts 0:06:59 - 0:07:23 to offend, I still get maybe 250 views on average right now on these videos. So, um if a nobody who is highly offensive can get 250 views on youtube, imagine what these guys could get if, instead of wasting seven hours or where, however long they were out there on the street with signs that they paid 0:07:23 - 0:07:45 for that nobody cares about. Uh, they would just make a video offering something. right? And then, you know, it takes time and I'm, I'm minimizing the cost because if you check, there's, I have hundreds of videos on here and that this, that wasn't, um, that's not my uh only intervention. And so, um there's 0:07:44 - 0:08:08 been a lot of work to get to this point. But, um, anyway, the point is they were totally wasting their time. Ok. So what does this come down to sincerity? They weren't actually doing what made the most sense, given what they said they wanted to do and it should have been abundantly obvious to any person 0:08:07 - 0:08:31 no matter, I mean, uh of any kind of uh intelligence whatsoever. So, uh that's point number one. And now this brings to mind uh point number two, which is what Jared brought to my attention. There was an article. No, I'm sorry, before I get there. Yeah, we'll do this. It'll be a nice little sandwich 0:08:31 - 0:08:52 with the main point being what I'll tell you right now. So, um I told my son, I said the best way to preach the gospel is to actually live as Jesus would in your place. That's first and foremost. Number one, if you don't do that, very little is going to matter point number two is after you, you reconcile 0:08:51 - 0:09:18 to that and you're doing that. Look for people who have needs that. What you know about Jesus might help with, they package everything, you know, to, um the way I think of this is like a query into a database. Um query everything that you know about Jesus and every experience that you've had and every 0:09:18 - 0:09:45 scripture, all everything you know, for the minimal set of what answers there need. No, the way this is gonna work is it will always have a chunk that invites them beyond what they recognize they need. But you have to package it in terms of what they believe they need. So God calls us, I'm gonna make 0:09:45 - 0:10:12 a much longer argument about this. God calls us to what he has through what we think we need and that's the way it works. Ok? Now you can, you could spend the rest of your life perfecting the ability to package truth, package will say package organized and package subsets of truth. You can spend the 0:10:12 - 0:10:33 rest of your life doing that, meaning it, it will absorb as much effort and refinement as you want to put into it. On the one hand, on the other hand, every single person on this planet can do that to some extent. Right. This second, right. This second your entire life you're doing this and you don't 0:10:33 - 0:10:58 even realize it. So you can just pick up all that experience and just use it right away and you'll be somewhere on that spectrum of, of uh ability is not the best word, but we'll say efficacy. Ok. I really apologize for this light. Um OK, I can see how it's, it's dimming and everything and that's really 0:10:58 - 0:11:22 annoying. Um, okay, now the transition to another illustration of this. So Jared emailed me a news story of a guy who got arrested actually a couple of hours from here, which in Montana mileage, that's right next door in some small town. And, uh, basically he was crossing the country with a couple of 0:11:22 - 0:11:40 people and they were doing this like walk along the highway with a cross and a flag thing. And, um, I, I've probably already said enough about the dudes with the signs that you can imagine what I may say about that guy and the efficacy of what he was doing. But there's a bigger picture here. That's very 0:11:40 - 0:12:07 important. Um, long story short, what happened was there was an altercation where a gentleman felt like these folks were harming his business in some way. Um, and he just went ballistic on them and, um, the preacher guy happened to have a gun with him and he pulled it on the attacking fella and tried 0:12:06 - 0:12:28 to resolve the situation. And long story short now he's in jail and it really looks like there's some dodgy stuff going on with the good old boys, small town sheriff. And, um, it's kind of crazy that this happened nearly a year ago and he's still awaiting trial as far as I know from the maybe eight minutes 0:12:28 - 0:12:54 I spent Googling. So, um, here's some applications which I find extremely interesting because this seems like a random situation. And yet because of the laws of cause and effect, it turns out that you can see a lot of principles in play no matter where you look. And this story actually illustrates a 0:12:54 - 0:13:22 whole lot of very important things. Um uh just covering a subset of those. It's interesting that, that in the interviews, um this preacher gentleman, I should know his name. Um He, he keeps, he kept mentioning how the belligerent fellow um was using all kinds of terrible language. And in his description 0:13:21 - 0:13:42 of the event, he equated the offense of that with the danger of the violent, physically violent motions that the guy made. Um So like he reached in his truck, he was threatening him and they reached in his truck and whatever, that's what caused the preacher to pull the gun because he thought the guy 0:13:42 - 0:14:11 was gonna pull a gun, which in Montana is not an unlikely situation. Um Pretty much everyone is armed. But uh um it's interesting that in his valuation of things. The offense of a man threatening his life was, was pretty similar to the offense of a man cussing. Now, what's interesting about this to me 0:14:11 - 0:14:49 is that most Christians approach that equivalency. And it's a symptom of a greater, uh, distortion of value within modern Christianity. I'm reminded of the quote, I'm gonna butcher it if I try to reproduce it. But, um, the idea is, uh, in, in God's ranking of attributes of holiness, not cussing is really 0:14:49 - 0:15:16 low on the list. That's, there's a million things that matter more than that. Now, uh I choose not to curse. Um, it's mostly a self-discipline decision because I've, I'm persuaded that if I were to lean on cuss words to express myself, I it's, uh it's intellectual laziness and um it's hard enough to 0:15:16 - 0:15:47 stay sharp. I don't want to choose to be lazy mentally, right? And I know that there's harm that comes by that in terms of uh the, the less, the less articulate you are, the uh greater, the thinking um you require out of other people. And so that, that's kind of long winded ironically. But the, the point 0:15:47 - 0:16:22 is, um I learned, uh uh uh I had many instances to learn and um to learn and jeez I've amounted many reasons to believe in the, in, in a very II I, this is so ironic. I was flubbing over words while talking about um being articulate the importance of being articulate. Well, here you, here, here you are 0:16:21 - 0:16:43 . This is a tremendous example, right? Of why it's so important. Um No, as an academic in writing dozens of peer reviewed articles, um you know, there's a, there's an approval process and what you're publishing on hopefully are the ideas that you're trying to convey and the more you require the reviewer 0:16:43 - 0:17:06 to think about what you're saying, in other words, to uh think about it's not their best way of saying it, but to decode what you're saying, to understand what you're saying rather than to. Um So, so the, the reviewer's effort is commingled between understanding what the heck you're trying to say and 0:17:05 - 0:17:29 uh validating the, the truthfulness of what you're trying to say, that's their effort gets split between those things. And so if you really believe that what you're saying is true, you want all of their effort on that side of the equation, you don't want to waste any of it on them trying to understand 0:17:28 - 0:17:47 you because the likelihood is high that then they will falsely misunderstand the truthfulness of what you're saying and it happens all the time. And so uh because people have limited resources, you want them to focus all of their thinking on the value they're going to extract out of what you're communicating 0:17:46 - 0:18:16 rather than parsing through what you're saying. That's not the point, right? So, um now backtracking, how did we get on to articulacy? Uh Fantastic. I have no idea. Hm. Anyway. Ok. May, will come back to me. So, the, the preacher guy, um, was really worked up about this guy, the, the other guy's language 0:18:15 - 0:18:38 and the thing is, is if you have an incorrect prioritization of value, you're going to apportion your effort incorrectly and instead of incorrectly, maybe it's more, it's better to say ineffectively ineffectively. Meaning at the end of the day, remember we're talking about why you're doing what you're 0:18:38 - 0:18:58 doing. If your valuation is, is prioritizing correctly, you are not going to accomplish the things that you feel are most important. At the end of the day, I think this preacher would say I'm trying to preach the gospel and I want people to turn to Jesus. I think thats a safe assumption. But the way 0:18:57 - 0:19:19 he was doing it was way, way less effective than what he could have done and what he should have known. Honestly, let me give you some more examples. So I've told people before and maybe this is why there's so few comments on the channel these days. Um Please disagree with me but bring reasons because 0:19:19 - 0:19:50 if you don't have sufficient reasons, I don't want to waste my time hearing someone's opinion about something, right? Because I have thought about it a lot and I do have reasons for whatever I say. Um So, so, um, uh man, a lot of mind blanks today. This isn't good. So, um, this guy getting so worked 0:19:50 - 0:20:10 up about foul language. Um and doing what he did, at least that, you know, the pie chart of why he did what he did a big chunk of it was because he cussed at me and he was mad at me. It's like, ok, well, at the end of the day now that, you know, he's facing up to 20 years in prison because his valuation 0:20:09 - 0:20:30 structure was, was jacked up. Um because he chose to battle this dude. Uh when, when the greater portion of what the guy was doing wrong was that he was cussing at him, you know, what did he do? Ok. So now let's talk about the other chunk of that, which is that there was a physical threat. In fact, the 0:20:30 - 0:20:49 preacher claims the guy jumped him. Uh So he eventually he put away his gun and then the guy jumped him. Ok? So this, this comes down to um like 11 important point here is if you're gonna pull a gun on someone, you know, they, they teach in the military, you never, you never point a gun at someone until 0:20:49 - 0:21:08 your intent is to shoot them, right? And you never put your finger on the trigger, trigger until you're ready to do that. And this is dr drilled in your head front to back. And it's one thing that I think is spot on that the military teaches. Ok? So you should not pull a weapon on someone unless you 0:21:08 - 0:21:28 feel like you need to kill them for justified reasons, right? Self defense is, is a good reason. Um, so he put the gun away while there's still obviously a threat. And so he wasn't fully committed. He was trying to de escalate the situation, which is great. But, um, then essentially you should not pull 0:21:28 - 0:21:45 a gun on someone until you're ready to pull the trigger. I know there's a time and place for, for the threat, but, and I'm not an attorney and I don't know all the laws of places and I'm not giving legal advice. But, um, I, I think I would be enormously hesitant to point a gun at someone until I was 0:21:45 - 0:22:12 ready to fire the trigger. Pull the trigger to fire the weapon. Um, so what does this have to do with anything? So, going back to the comments beyond the reasons I ask people, um, that, um, to be prepared for pushback if they make a comment and most people don't want pushback, especially not from someone 0:22:11 - 0:22:37 who's thought about something much more than they have, which tends to be the case, right? So, with, with my videos. So, um, this guy pulled the, pulled the gun, he was not prepared to, to pull the trigger. It seems, and then he put it back and the guy kicked his butt and this is a case of, um, little 0:22:36 - 0:22:58 things or specific things in this case because this wasn't little specific things telling a very big story about you. And 11 thing I've said on the channel is be careful what you say because um if you realized how much about your deepest darkest faults and, and their secrets because you know about them 0:22:58 - 0:23:17 , but you try to hide them from other people and yourself. Um If you knew how much of your deepest darkest secrets you were revealing with just saying a few little things you would never open your mouth. And it seems that that's one piece of advice people have actually accepted from me. Uh, due to the 0:23:16 - 0:00:00 , the dropping off of the comments, which I'm fine with, by the way, I don't mind, it saves me time. But, um, this preacher, um, he wasn't ready to pull the trigger, he put the gun away. Um, he, he basically did everything wrong. You could possibly do wrong in this situation. Now, let's, let's talk. 0:00:00 - 0:23:59 He, he was preaching the gospel ineffectively. He was defending himself ineffectively. He was, um, incorrectly valuing the cussing versus the physical threat. Um, he stopped short, not just, he didn't shoot the guy, obviously, but he didn't get in his car and leave before he put the gun away. You know 0:23:59 - 0:24:17 , he didn't get to a safe spot before he deescalated. He was like, oh, I guess I'm just gonna back off here, which tells me he probably felt like he was responding overly angry. And, uh, you know, this is the internet jury, I guess. But it, it's very, whatever the truth might be about the situation is 0:24:17 - 0:24:42 not so relevant as applications we can make to our own lives. That's the important part. So, um, he showed a lot about his strategy for life and its inadequacy frankly. Ok. This is a guy who had traveled over 5000 miles hiking across in a support team. Um, and who knows what expense that his congregation 0:24:41 - 0:25:10 was paying because he was a missionary. And if the sum total of his effort is probably he helped nobody. Zero people be a better person. And now he's charged with this crime and he might go to jail for 20 years. And so like, what the heck are you doing right at the end of the day? Ok. So, um, now let's 0:25:10 - 0:25:29 talk about his gun. See the list goes on and on when something is based on principles. And you, you say this little thing that you think is isolated and you think because of your delusion and, and that's not meant to be a knock when you intentionally act against the truth as you know, it, your understanding 0:25:28 - 0:25:53 becomes uh diminished and you actually can't notice how obvious things that you do. Are you think you're getting away with it when it's blatantly obvious to people unless they're bigger liars than you. Right. So, um, so you make this little comment or you do this little thing and you don't realize that 0:25:53 - 0:26:13 in the eyes of someone who's not blinded by delusion who does live according to the truth. As far as they see it, they can see all these things about you. So many of the weird exchanges with prophets in the scriptures where some prophet comes out of nowhere and accurately pins someone with something 0:26:13 - 0:26:37 that they couldn't possibly have known, except God told them actually, their context clues out the wazoo and it is as obvious to a person who knows in many cases, uh, as it would be if God told them, that's a crazy thought. And incidentally that's connected to one way of prophesying, but I won't get 0:26:37 - 0:26:59 into that, which is to model the world and um, make accurate predictions about the future based on that anyway. So, um, I'll, I'll talk a lot more about that at some other time. It doesn't matter right now. So, I, I mean, at this time in the world it doesn't matter. Uh, you, you all have bigger fish 0:26:59 - 0:27:21 to fry at the moment. So, um, the final thing I'm gonna talk about is this guy's gun. So he was carrying a two shot pistol, some small little pea shooter. And that's what he pulled on the dude. Now, I don't know if you've ever shot a pistol, but, um, they're not easy to shoot accurately. A rifle is much 0:27:21 - 0:27:43 easier to shoot accurately, especially at a distance. Um So the rule of thumb with a pistol is always pack as many rounds as you can. And so some people prefer something like a nine millimeter and AAA gun type that will handle, will, will carry a lot of rounds because then you can just keep pulling that 0:27:43 - 0:28:04 trigger until whatever it is you're shooting stops moving. And like I said, you don't shoot once you shoot to kill, that's what you do. You don't shoot someone unless you, you want or something, unless you have decided that ending its life is what you need to do. So, um, there's that, he said the reason 0:28:04 - 0:28:28 he had a pistol was because he was going through animal country and yes, the, the part of the country he was in has grizzly bears and black bears and basically anything, any animal remaining in the United States that could kill people lives in Montana. So in abundance, mountain lions, even like badgers 0:28:27 - 0:28:52 , you wouldn't want to face a badger or Wolverines, whatever. Um, so, uh, but his weap, so he was facing a threat and he had prepared for this threat, but he prepared with it with a, with a two bullet, small bullet gun. That's ridiculous. I wouldn't, I would never shoot anything with that. Um, so if 0:28:52 - 0:29:13 you're, because if you're going to engage, if someone shot me with a pea shooter, unless they're really lucky, I would still kill them before I died. Even if all I had was my bare hands, right? If we're in some kind of mortal combat situation, right. Um, that, that's, that's not gonna work and, and as 0:29:13 - 0:29:35 far as bears go, you can put an entire magazine into a grizzly and it could still kill you before you die before it dies. I'm sorry, you could, you could instantaneously remove its heart and it will still remain alive long enough to, to, uh, charge you at, I forget if they run 60 miles an hour, some 0:29:34 - 0:29:58 insane to charge you from 50 ft away. Totally kill you before it drops over dead, right? So, shooting bullets at it is not really gonna help you. And that's, that's why they actually say bring bear spray in instead because, um, if you shoot a grizzly, it, it will not stop until it, it tries to kill it 0:29:58 - 0:30:23 until it's dead or it has killed you. But if you bear spray a grizzly, maybe it'll change its mind. So, um, anyway, um, so, so it's just another example of inadequacy where you really are smart enough to figure this out, bro, because you can Google what pistol for bears and you'll get answers like whatever's 0:30:22 - 0:30:45 uh, least pointy. So it'll hurt less when it shoves it up your rear end because it won't care that you're shooting it. Um, no, but it'll say something like really big bullets, right? And lots of them, not too little bullets. Ok. That's enough on that. Ok. So, um, the, let's see, there was something else 0:30:45 - 0:31:12 I wanted to say before I I round this out. Um I'm gonna remember as soon as I hit stop, I'm just checking this email. Um It's worth mentioning that this is yet another example of uh situations but that normal people will dismiss as, oh, that could never happen to me. I don't do things like so everyone's 0:31:11 - 0:31:28 gonna look at this and say, OK, all facts considered. It's still really absurd that the dude is um I don't think he's presently in jail, but he's been charged with something and he could go to jail for 20 years and he has to wait a whole year to find out the outcome and who knows how many tens of thousands 0:31:28 - 0:31:47 of dollars he's gonna spend on legal fees and all that stress during that year of not knowing what's gonna happen for what? Because he pulled a gun in self defense at the end of the day, uh, whatever the wisdom of that was, it seems a little over the top for him to be facing the charges. He is. So, um 0:31:47 - 0:32:06 , my message to you, which I've repeated very often is do not underestimate the, the. So don't look at the specific cause of what you think triggered all this. Look at everything that happened after that because the stuff on the trigger side of the equation, I promise you that some version of that is 0:32:06 - 0:32:26 coming for you. So at the end of the day, you might look at this and say well, I don't carry crosses cross country. Um, but that's not actually what triggered it, what triggered it was, there was a guy that got really mad at a person and if you've been watching the news, you should or just, you know 0:32:26 - 0:32:48 , you're live, you should realize how many people are getting angry for dumb reasons. Today. You can't base your expectation of intensity of anger in another person on what would be a reasonable cause of that anger because the world is filling with people who are super angry over dumb things. OK. Point 0:32:47 - 0:33:10 point eight, hopefully you're with me on that. So given the fact that the presence of a person who's super angry at you is basically a roll of the dice with uh decreasing numbers of sides over time, meaning the probability of landing on whatever it is that that makes them really angry is rising quickly 0:33:10 - 0:33:31 . Given that how important it is to pay attention to the legal system because that's your defense, right? Well, guess what we have example, after example, after example, where either that's bypassed entirely because it's a trial by media and you're now guilty until proven otherwise. But by the way, the 0:33:31 - 0:33:53 accusations could be from 20 years ago, in which case, there will be zero evidence to defend yourself with at this point. So when the charging people are no longer held to the burden of evidence, but the defense still is, you're in trouble whether you're specifically in trouble yet or not, you will be 0:33:53 - 0:34:22 ok. And then if you do get a trial, what we have is the fact that the juries are made up of people who are taken from the general public. And increasingly what we see is those people are incapable of reason and unwilling to, uh, live by the principle of innocent until proven guilty. They, as they do 0:34:21 - 0:34:46 everything in their lives, they decide the trial based on their emotions, not reason, not fact, not evidence but emotion. OK. So then, then in between those two things, there's the role of the law enforcement officers. So in this case, we have an example and there are plenty of these where the law enforcement 0:34:46 - 0:35:10 officers refuse to uphold the law and are very quick to exercise bias. And I'm trying to put that gently. OK? So in this case, it has every mark of a good old boys and this is, oh, we know, I don't remember what that guy's name is. Um, he's a respected member of the community and we don't like your kind 0:35:09 - 0:35:31 , you know, that kind of thing. So, um that happens a lot. OK? And the point is is that all these checks and balances, it's like I, I've told you many times the foundation has been removed that there's the color of all these protections of law, but there's no actual effect anymore. It's all gone. It's 0:35:31 - 0:35:57 not diminishing, it's already gone, it's already gone. OK? So that's something that should concern everyone. Now, I think that's all the things I wanted to say about this. Um Yep. So, in everything you do, not just efforts to preach the gospel, think about why you're doing it. And if what you're doing 0:35:57 - 0:36:20 is the best way to accomplish it. God's given you a brain, you should use it. He's given you eyes, you should look, he's giving you ears, you should listen and actively inquire, not just through explicit prayer, tell me the right thing, but use your brain to actively inquire and, and investigate life 0:36:20 - 0:00:00 and cause and effect. And if what you're doing is the most effective thing you could do to accomplish the purposes that you've stated. Now in all of that, no one's telling you what your purposes should be. They don't need to, to say what I've said. I'm just saying, given what you say you care about. 0:00:00 - 0:37:08 Are you doing the best things to accomplish that? The sad answer for almost everyone is no. And that is why if you read John chapter three, the Lord says we're all condemned already. We begin our functional lives. So I mean, when you come to accountability, we're making your own choices in sin because 0:37:07 - 0:37:39 we immediately go off course of what we say is important and we continue that way until we repent and we begin to live without sin, we turn completely to God. They turning completely to what we understand to be good. So please exit that pathway of regret and misery and whatever it is that you say is 0:37:38 - 0:38:02 important, live your life that way. It's, it's a, a crazy message to have to say. Although it's, it's, it's, it, uh, has been needed since the dawn of time, but it's an even crazier thing for people to find a fence with. But it just, hey, it turns out that if you say something's important, you ought 0:00:00 - 0:00:24 It's been a while since I made one of these janky videos with his shiny light on my head. Um Although I don't know if it's been a while on the actual uh publication of videos because I cue those things up and I have some, you know, three months out. Anyway, today is September 28th, 2023. Um I just had 0:00:24 - 0:00:48 an email exchange with Jared, my friend Jared and uh I say his name like you might know it, he's got his own channel. Um Anyway, I know some of, you know, of him. Um and it queued up a bunch of things in my mind. He got me fired up. So I'm just gonna make a quick video while I'm waiting for my workout 0:00:47 - 0:01:09 . I'm late. Actually, I had a nice exhausting morning. It's a good thing to run full speed and uh kind of slumped over my cherry her when the email came through and um it got me fired up. So where to start? I was out uh in town the other day, I'm doing a few projects at my house that require me to go 0:01:09 - 0:01:30 into town um and break my Hermitage uh so I work from home and so I, I don't go out much and my wife does the grocery grocery shopping. So, pretty much the only time I go to town is when I have to go to the accountant for my business or um I need something for a home improvement project. And so um I've 0:01:30 - 0:01:50 been needing to go and get a bunch of stuff for home improvement stuff and projects and uh I was following my rule of always take a kid with me so I can maximize the time I have with my Children and uh expose them to life situations and try to use everything as a teaching moment. And so we're driving 0:01:49 - 0:02:08 and there were, I don't know, something like three street preachers with these signs that said stuff like believe Jesus and they were on the side of a really busy, not quite highway but, but a really busy strip uh you know, two lanes in either direction with just tons of traffic and they were standing 0:02:08 - 0:02:29 not on a corner or anything where with, where a stoplight was, but like where the traffic was driving through full speed. And so this created a, a good conversation point with my son. He may have even asked about them. I don't remember but the elements I remember from this conversation are we, I, I mentioned 0:02:29 - 0:02:50 how, um I asked him, I said, how many people do you think are gonna change their lives? Because of what they're doing. And the answer is none. Right. 00 people are gonna see that and say, oh, let me, let me go ahead and change my life. I mean, I've heard all this a billion times but just seeing somebody 0:02:49 - 0:03:07 with a sign with three words on it or two words on it or whatever. Oh, that's it. That's, that's all I needed. Thank goodness that these people came around because that's all I needed. That's all I was waiting on to change my life. Of course, that's not the case. It's ridiculous. So, in all things, we 0:03:07 - 0:03:27 ought to ask ourselves, why are we doing what we're doing? And, and then what are we doing is this, is this the best, what to answer the why? And also is it the best why we could have? That's, that's a big one. But in this case, it was the what that was off if you want to preach the gospel, that is pretty 0:03:27 - 0:03:47 much the worst way you could do it. So the same amount of time, the same amount of effort, they could have made an enormously greater difference doing it in a more, uh effective way. And so, uh, what would be more effective? Well, how about actually interacting with people? Like I mentioned, if they 0:03:47 - 0:04:08 were on a street corner or sidewalk, people actually walked on not next to basically a highway, then they could actually interact with people. There are places you can do this. I mean, we went to Mount Rushmore a few weeks ago or at some point during the summer it saw a kind of a blur and they have a 0:04:08 - 0:04:25 , um, what did they call it? A prescribed free speech zone, which is really ridiculous. It's last time I checked this in America and every square inch ought to be that. But, uh, at least they have a place. Sure. Ok. And there's sure enough there was a Jehovah's witness guy sitting there with no one talking 0:04:25 - 0:04:43 to him, right with his pamphlets and stuff under a little shade umbrella. He was really comfortable. It looked like he hadn't done anything the whole time he was there. And, um, you know that, but that's a step up because then at least people could talk to you without, I don't know, pulling over their 0:04:42 - 0:05:03 car across traffic and walking. You see what I mean? I could just dwell on the minutia of this. But, ok, that's a step up. Um, ok, what's, what's another way you could do? It is knock on doors and a lot of us have had experience with this. That's almost completely a waste of time too because who are 0:05:03 - 0:05:24 you gonna find? Well, first off, hardly anyone's gonna answer their door. But the people that are there, unless you're doing it at like 7 to 830 at night, which then people are gonna be really mad at you because they wanna relax. They don't wanna talk religion. The people who are home are crazy or unemployed 0:05:23 - 0:05:43 or something, they're just not doing much with their lives. Well, I guess nowadays it would be a little different because people work from home more frequently. But, um, anyway, odds are, it's still not a very effective way to go. So, what's the problem here? The problem is that one way of categorizing 0:05:42 - 0:06:14 sales, which sales in general is just if you're not, if you're not uh manipulating people, good sales are when you're trying to find people who need what you have to give. So you can do that by throwing a dart at a dartboard and just randomly um accosting people or you can go to the places where those 0:06:14 - 0:06:34 kinds of people are so you can profile them. You can think. Hm, if someone had a need that I could help fill, where would I find those people? And if you can't find them, you could raise a flag that calls them and, and you should actually, you should do both. Like every single company has a website because 0:06:34 - 0:07:00 people are gonna Google things or they, they buy Google ads and uh put in keywords of what it is they have to offer so that when people are looking for it, they see them, right? That's great. So you can use that same approach. Um So, you know, I, I am not a popular person and in spite of my best efforts 0:06:59 - 0:07:23 to offend, I still get maybe 250 views on average right now on these videos. So, um if a nobody who is highly offensive can get 250 views on youtube, imagine what these guys could get if, instead of wasting seven hours or where, however long they were out there on the street with signs that they paid 0:07:23 - 0:07:45 for that nobody cares about. Uh, they would just make a video offering something. right? And then, you know, it takes time and I'm, I'm minimizing the cost because if you check, there's, I have hundreds of videos on here and that this, that wasn't, um, that's not my uh only intervention. And so, um there's 0:07:44 - 0:08:08 been a lot of work to get to this point. But, um, anyway, the point is they were totally wasting their time. Ok. So what does this come down to sincerity? They weren't actually doing what made the most sense, given what they said they wanted to do and it should have been abundantly obvious to any person 0:08:07 - 0:08:31 no matter, I mean, uh of any kind of uh intelligence whatsoever. So, uh that's point number one. And now this brings to mind uh point number two, which is what Jared brought to my attention. There was an article. No, I'm sorry, before I get there. Yeah, we'll do this. It'll be a nice little sandwich 0:08:31 - 0:08:52 with the main point being what I'll tell you right now. So, um I told my son, I said the best way to preach the gospel is to actually live as Jesus would in your place. That's first and foremost. Number one, if you don't do that, very little is going to matter point number two is after you, you reconcile 0:08:51 - 0:09:18 to that and you're doing that. Look for people who have needs that. What you know about Jesus might help with, they package everything, you know, to, um the way I think of this is like a query into a database. Um query everything that you know about Jesus and every experience that you've had and every 0:09:18 - 0:09:45 scripture, all everything you know, for the minimal set of what answers there need. No, the way this is gonna work is it will always have a chunk that invites them beyond what they recognize they need. But you have to package it in terms of what they believe they need. So God calls us, I'm gonna make 0:09:45 - 0:10:12 a much longer argument about this. God calls us to what he has through what we think we need and that's the way it works. Ok? Now you can, you could spend the rest of your life perfecting the ability to package truth, package will say package organized and package subsets of truth. You can spend the 0:10:12 - 0:10:33 rest of your life doing that, meaning it, it will absorb as much effort and refinement as you want to put into it. On the one hand, on the other hand, every single person on this planet can do that to some extent. Right. This second, right. This second your entire life you're doing this and you don't 0:10:33 - 0:10:58 even realize it. So you can just pick up all that experience and just use it right away and you'll be somewhere on that spectrum of, of uh ability is not the best word, but we'll say efficacy. Ok. I really apologize for this light. Um OK, I can see how it's, it's dimming and everything and that's really 0:10:58 - 0:11:22 annoying. Um, okay, now the transition to another illustration of this. So Jared emailed me a news story of a guy who got arrested actually a couple of hours from here, which in Montana mileage, that's right next door in some small town. And, uh, basically he was crossing the country with a couple of 0:11:22 - 0:11:40 people and they were doing this like walk along the highway with a cross and a flag thing. And, um, I, I've probably already said enough about the dudes with the signs that you can imagine what I may say about that guy and the efficacy of what he was doing. But there's a bigger picture here. That's very 0:11:40 - 0:12:07 important. Um, long story short, what happened was there was an altercation where a gentleman felt like these folks were harming his business in some way. Um, and he just went ballistic on them and, um, the preacher guy happened to have a gun with him and he pulled it on the attacking fella and tried 0:12:06 - 0:12:28 to resolve the situation. And long story short now he's in jail and it really looks like there's some dodgy stuff going on with the good old boys, small town sheriff. And, um, it's kind of crazy that this happened nearly a year ago and he's still awaiting trial as far as I know from the maybe eight minutes 0:12:28 - 0:12:54 I spent Googling. So, um, here's some applications which I find extremely interesting because this seems like a random situation. And yet because of the laws of cause and effect, it turns out that you can see a lot of principles in play no matter where you look. And this story actually illustrates a 0:12:54 - 0:13:22 whole lot of very important things. Um uh just covering a subset of those. It's interesting that, that in the interviews, um this preacher gentleman, I should know his name. Um He, he keeps, he kept mentioning how the belligerent fellow um was using all kinds of terrible language. And in his description 0:13:21 - 0:13:42 of the event, he equated the offense of that with the danger of the violent, physically violent motions that the guy made. Um So like he reached in his truck, he was threatening him and they reached in his truck and whatever, that's what caused the preacher to pull the gun because he thought the guy 0:13:42 - 0:14:11 was gonna pull a gun, which in Montana is not an unlikely situation. Um Pretty much everyone is armed. But uh um it's interesting that in his valuation of things. The offense of a man threatening his life was, was pretty similar to the offense of a man cussing. Now, what's interesting about this to me 0:14:11 - 0:14:49 is that most Christians approach that equivalency. And it's a symptom of a greater, uh, distortion of value within modern Christianity. I'm reminded of the quote, I'm gonna butcher it if I try to reproduce it. But, um, the idea is, uh, in, in God's ranking of attributes of holiness, not cussing is really 0:14:49 - 0:15:16 low on the list. That's, there's a million things that matter more than that. Now, uh I choose not to curse. Um, it's mostly a self-discipline decision because I've, I'm persuaded that if I were to lean on cuss words to express myself, I it's, uh it's intellectual laziness and um it's hard enough to 0:15:16 - 0:15:47 stay sharp. I don't want to choose to be lazy mentally, right? And I know that there's harm that comes by that in terms of uh the, the less, the less articulate you are, the uh greater, the thinking um you require out of other people. And so that, that's kind of long winded ironically. But the, the point 0:15:47 - 0:16:22 is, um I learned, uh uh uh I had many instances to learn and um to learn and jeez I've amounted many reasons to believe in the, in, in a very II I, this is so ironic. I was flubbing over words while talking about um being articulate the importance of being articulate. Well, here you, here, here you are 0:16:21 - 0:16:43 . This is a tremendous example, right? Of why it's so important. Um No, as an academic in writing dozens of peer reviewed articles, um you know, there's a, there's an approval process and what you're publishing on hopefully are the ideas that you're trying to convey and the more you require the reviewer 0:16:43 - 0:17:06 to think about what you're saying, in other words, to uh think about it's not their best way of saying it, but to decode what you're saying, to understand what you're saying rather than to. Um So, so the, the reviewer's effort is commingled between understanding what the heck you're trying to say and 0:17:05 - 0:17:29 uh validating the, the truthfulness of what you're trying to say, that's their effort gets split between those things. And so if you really believe that what you're saying is true, you want all of their effort on that side of the equation, you don't want to waste any of it on them trying to understand 0:17:28 - 0:17:47 you because the likelihood is high that then they will falsely misunderstand the truthfulness of what you're saying and it happens all the time. And so uh because people have limited resources, you want them to focus all of their thinking on the value they're going to extract out of what you're communicating 0:17:46 - 0:18:16 rather than parsing through what you're saying. That's not the point, right? So, um now backtracking, how did we get on to articulacy? Uh Fantastic. I have no idea. Hm. Anyway. Ok. May, will come back to me. So, the, the preacher guy, um, was really worked up about this guy, the, the other guy's language 0:18:15 - 0:18:38 and the thing is, is if you have an incorrect prioritization of value, you're going to apportion your effort incorrectly and instead of incorrectly, maybe it's more, it's better to say ineffectively ineffectively. Meaning at the end of the day, remember we're talking about why you're doing what you're 0:18:38 - 0:18:58 doing. If your valuation is, is prioritizing correctly, you are not going to accomplish the things that you feel are most important. At the end of the day, I think this preacher would say I'm trying to preach the gospel and I want people to turn to Jesus. I think thats a safe assumption. But the way 0:18:57 - 0:19:19 he was doing it was way, way less effective than what he could have done and what he should have known. Honestly, let me give you some more examples. So I've told people before and maybe this is why there's so few comments on the channel these days. Um Please disagree with me but bring reasons because 0:19:19 - 0:19:50 if you don't have sufficient reasons, I don't want to waste my time hearing someone's opinion about something, right? Because I have thought about it a lot and I do have reasons for whatever I say. Um So, so, um, uh man, a lot of mind blanks today. This isn't good. So, um, this guy getting so worked 0:19:50 - 0:20:10 up about foul language. Um and doing what he did, at least that, you know, the pie chart of why he did what he did a big chunk of it was because he cussed at me and he was mad at me. It's like, ok, well, at the end of the day now that, you know, he's facing up to 20 years in prison because his valuation 0:20:09 - 0:20:30 structure was, was jacked up. Um because he chose to battle this dude. Uh when, when the greater portion of what the guy was doing wrong was that he was cussing at him, you know, what did he do? Ok. So now let's talk about the other chunk of that, which is that there was a physical threat. In fact, the 0:20:30 - 0:20:49 preacher claims the guy jumped him. Uh So he eventually he put away his gun and then the guy jumped him. Ok? So this, this comes down to um like 11 important point here is if you're gonna pull a gun on someone, you know, they, they teach in the military, you never, you never point a gun at someone until 0:20:49 - 0:21:08 your intent is to shoot them, right? And you never put your finger on the trigger, trigger until you're ready to do that. And this is dr drilled in your head front to back. And it's one thing that I think is spot on that the military teaches. Ok? So you should not pull a weapon on someone unless you 0:21:08 - 0:21:28 feel like you need to kill them for justified reasons, right? Self defense is, is a good reason. Um, so he put the gun away while there's still obviously a threat. And so he wasn't fully committed. He was trying to de escalate the situation, which is great. But, um, then essentially you should not pull 0:21:28 - 0:21:45 a gun on someone until you're ready to pull the trigger. I know there's a time and place for, for the threat, but, and I'm not an attorney and I don't know all the laws of places and I'm not giving legal advice. But, um, I, I think I would be enormously hesitant to point a gun at someone until I was 0:21:45 - 0:22:12 ready to fire the trigger. Pull the trigger to fire the weapon. Um, so what does this have to do with anything? So, going back to the comments beyond the reasons I ask people, um, that, um, to be prepared for pushback if they make a comment and most people don't want pushback, especially not from someone 0:22:11 - 0:22:37 who's thought about something much more than they have, which tends to be the case, right? So, with, with my videos. So, um, this guy pulled the, pulled the gun, he was not prepared to, to pull the trigger. It seems, and then he put it back and the guy kicked his butt and this is a case of, um, little 0:22:36 - 0:22:58 things or specific things in this case because this wasn't little specific things telling a very big story about you. And 11 thing I've said on the channel is be careful what you say because um if you realized how much about your deepest darkest faults and, and their secrets because you know about them 0:22:58 - 0:23:17 , but you try to hide them from other people and yourself. Um If you knew how much of your deepest darkest secrets you were revealing with just saying a few little things you would never open your mouth. And it seems that that's one piece of advice people have actually accepted from me. Uh, due to the 0:23:16 - 0:00:00 , the dropping off of the comments, which I'm fine with, by the way, I don't mind, it saves me time. But, um, this preacher, um, he wasn't ready to pull the trigger, he put the gun away. Um, he, he basically did everything wrong. You could possibly do wrong in this situation. Now, let's, let's talk. 0:00:00 - 0:23:59 He, he was preaching the gospel ineffectively. He was defending himself ineffectively. He was, um, incorrectly valuing the cussing versus the physical threat. Um, he stopped short, not just, he didn't shoot the guy, obviously, but he didn't get in his car and leave before he put the gun away. You know 0:23:59 - 0:24:17 , he didn't get to a safe spot before he deescalated. He was like, oh, I guess I'm just gonna back off here, which tells me he probably felt like he was responding overly angry. And, uh, you know, this is the internet jury, I guess. But it, it's very, whatever the truth might be about the situation is 0:24:17 - 0:24:42 not so relevant as applications we can make to our own lives. That's the important part. So, um, he showed a lot about his strategy for life and its inadequacy frankly. Ok. This is a guy who had traveled over 5000 miles hiking across in a support team. Um, and who knows what expense that his congregation 0:24:41 - 0:25:10 was paying because he was a missionary. And if the sum total of his effort is probably he helped nobody. Zero people be a better person. And now he's charged with this crime and he might go to jail for 20 years. And so like, what the heck are you doing right at the end of the day? Ok. So, um, now let's 0:25:10 - 0:25:29 talk about his gun. See the list goes on and on when something is based on principles. And you, you say this little thing that you think is isolated and you think because of your delusion and, and that's not meant to be a knock when you intentionally act against the truth as you know, it, your understanding 0:25:28 - 0:25:53 becomes uh diminished and you actually can't notice how obvious things that you do. Are you think you're getting away with it when it's blatantly obvious to people unless they're bigger liars than you. Right. So, um, so you make this little comment or you do this little thing and you don't realize that 0:25:53 - 0:26:13 in the eyes of someone who's not blinded by delusion who does live according to the truth. As far as they see it, they can see all these things about you. So many of the weird exchanges with prophets in the scriptures where some prophet comes out of nowhere and accurately pins someone with something 0:26:13 - 0:26:37 that they couldn't possibly have known, except God told them actually, their context clues out the wazoo and it is as obvious to a person who knows in many cases, uh, as it would be if God told them, that's a crazy thought. And incidentally that's connected to one way of prophesying, but I won't get 0:26:37 - 0:26:59 into that, which is to model the world and um, make accurate predictions about the future based on that anyway. So, um, I'll, I'll talk a lot more about that at some other time. It doesn't matter right now. So, I, I mean, at this time in the world it doesn't matter. Uh, you, you all have bigger fish 0:26:59 - 0:27:21 to fry at the moment. So, um, the final thing I'm gonna talk about is this guy's gun. So he was carrying a two shot pistol, some small little pea shooter. And that's what he pulled on the dude. Now, I don't know if you've ever shot a pistol, but, um, they're not easy to shoot accurately. A rifle is much 0:27:21 - 0:27:43 easier to shoot accurately, especially at a distance. Um So the rule of thumb with a pistol is always pack as many rounds as you can. And so some people prefer something like a nine millimeter and AAA gun type that will handle, will, will carry a lot of rounds because then you can just keep pulling that 0:27:43 - 0:28:04 trigger until whatever it is you're shooting stops moving. And like I said, you don't shoot once you shoot to kill, that's what you do. You don't shoot someone unless you, you want or something, unless you have decided that ending its life is what you need to do. So, um, there's that, he said the reason 0:28:04 - 0:28:28 he had a pistol was because he was going through animal country and yes, the, the part of the country he was in has grizzly bears and black bears and basically anything, any animal remaining in the United States that could kill people lives in Montana. So in abundance, mountain lions, even like badgers 0:28:27 - 0:28:52 , you wouldn't want to face a badger or Wolverines, whatever. Um, so, uh, but his weap, so he was facing a threat and he had prepared for this threat, but he prepared with it with a, with a two bullet, small bullet gun. That's ridiculous. I wouldn't, I would never shoot anything with that. Um, so if 0:28:52 - 0:29:13 you're, because if you're going to engage, if someone shot me with a pea shooter, unless they're really lucky, I would still kill them before I died. Even if all I had was my bare hands, right? If we're in some kind of mortal combat situation, right. Um, that, that's, that's not gonna work and, and as 0:29:13 - 0:29:35 far as bears go, you can put an entire magazine into a grizzly and it could still kill you before you die before it dies. I'm sorry, you could, you could instantaneously remove its heart and it will still remain alive long enough to, to, uh, charge you at, I forget if they run 60 miles an hour, some 0:29:34 - 0:29:58 insane to charge you from 50 ft away. Totally kill you before it drops over dead, right? So, shooting bullets at it is not really gonna help you. And that's, that's why they actually say bring bear spray in instead because, um, if you shoot a grizzly, it, it will not stop until it, it tries to kill it 0:29:58 - 0:30:23 until it's dead or it has killed you. But if you bear spray a grizzly, maybe it'll change its mind. So, um, anyway, um, so, so it's just another example of inadequacy where you really are smart enough to figure this out, bro, because you can Google what pistol for bears and you'll get answers like whatever's 0:30:22 - 0:30:45 uh, least pointy. So it'll hurt less when it shoves it up your rear end because it won't care that you're shooting it. Um, no, but it'll say something like really big bullets, right? And lots of them, not too little bullets. Ok. That's enough on that. Ok. So, um, the, let's see, there was something else 0:30:45 - 0:31:12 I wanted to say before I I round this out. Um I'm gonna remember as soon as I hit stop, I'm just checking this email. Um It's worth mentioning that this is yet another example of uh situations but that normal people will dismiss as, oh, that could never happen to me. I don't do things like so everyone's 0:31:11 - 0:31:28 gonna look at this and say, OK, all facts considered. It's still really absurd that the dude is um I don't think he's presently in jail, but he's been charged with something and he could go to jail for 20 years and he has to wait a whole year to find out the outcome and who knows how many tens of thousands 0:31:28 - 0:31:47 of dollars he's gonna spend on legal fees and all that stress during that year of not knowing what's gonna happen for what? Because he pulled a gun in self defense at the end of the day, uh, whatever the wisdom of that was, it seems a little over the top for him to be facing the charges. He is. So, um 0:31:47 - 0:32:06 , my message to you, which I've repeated very often is do not underestimate the, the. So don't look at the specific cause of what you think triggered all this. Look at everything that happened after that because the stuff on the trigger side of the equation, I promise you that some version of that is 0:32:06 - 0:32:26 coming for you. So at the end of the day, you might look at this and say well, I don't carry crosses cross country. Um, but that's not actually what triggered it, what triggered it was, there was a guy that got really mad at a person and if you've been watching the news, you should or just, you know 0:32:26 - 0:32:48 , you're live, you should realize how many people are getting angry for dumb reasons. Today. You can't base your expectation of intensity of anger in another person on what would be a reasonable cause of that anger because the world is filling with people who are super angry over dumb things. OK. Point 0:32:47 - 0:33:10 point eight, hopefully you're with me on that. So given the fact that the presence of a person who's super angry at you is basically a roll of the dice with uh decreasing numbers of sides over time, meaning the probability of landing on whatever it is that that makes them really angry is rising quickly 0:33:10 - 0:33:31 . Given that how important it is to pay attention to the legal system because that's your defense, right? Well, guess what we have example, after example, after example, where either that's bypassed entirely because it's a trial by media and you're now guilty until proven otherwise. But by the way, the 0:33:31 - 0:33:53 accusations could be from 20 years ago, in which case, there will be zero evidence to defend yourself with at this point. So when the charging people are no longer held to the burden of evidence, but the defense still is, you're in trouble whether you're specifically in trouble yet or not, you will be 0:33:53 - 0:34:22 ok. And then if you do get a trial, what we have is the fact that the juries are made up of people who are taken from the general public. And increasingly what we see is those people are incapable of reason and unwilling to, uh, live by the principle of innocent until proven guilty. They, as they do 0:34:21 - 0:34:46 everything in their lives, they decide the trial based on their emotions, not reason, not fact, not evidence but emotion. OK. So then, then in between those two things, there's the role of the law enforcement officers. So in this case, we have an example and there are plenty of these where the law enforcement 0:34:46 - 0:35:10 officers refuse to uphold the law and are very quick to exercise bias. And I'm trying to put that gently. OK? So in this case, it has every mark of a good old boys and this is, oh, we know, I don't remember what that guy's name is. Um, he's a respected member of the community and we don't like your kind 0:35:09 - 0:35:31 , you know, that kind of thing. So, um that happens a lot. OK? And the point is is that all these checks and balances, it's like I, I've told you many times the foundation has been removed that there's the color of all these protections of law, but there's no actual effect anymore. It's all gone. It's 0:35:31 - 0:35:57 not diminishing, it's already gone, it's already gone. OK? So that's something that should concern everyone. Now, I think that's all the things I wanted to say about this. Um Yep. So, in everything you do, not just efforts to preach the gospel, think about why you're doing it. And if what you're doing 0:35:57 - 0:36:20 is the best way to accomplish it. God's given you a brain, you should use it. He's given you eyes, you should look, he's giving you ears, you should listen and actively inquire, not just through explicit prayer, tell me the right thing, but use your brain to actively inquire and, and investigate life 0:36:20 - 0:00:00 and cause and effect. And if what you're doing is the most effective thing you could do to accomplish the purposes that you've stated. Now in all of that, no one's telling you what your purposes should be. They don't need to, to say what I've said. I'm just saying, given what you say you care about. 0:00:00 - 0:37:08 Are you doing the best things to accomplish that? The sad answer for almost everyone is no. And that is why if you read John chapter three, the Lord says we're all condemned already. We begin our functional lives. So I mean, when you come to accountability, we're making your own choices in sin because 0:37:07 - 0:37:39 we immediately go off course of what we say is important and we continue that way until we repent and we begin to live without sin, we turn completely to God. They turning completely to what we understand to be good. So please exit that pathway of regret and misery and whatever it is that you say is 0:37:38 - 0:38:02 important, live your life that way. It's, it's a, a crazy message to have to say. Although it's, it's, it's, it, uh, has been needed since the dawn of time, but it's an even crazier thing for people to find a fence with. But it just, hey, it turns out that if you say something's important, you ought 0:38:02 - 0:38:11 to live your life that way. And if you're not willing to, maybe you should change what you say you think is important. It's really that simple. Take care.