If, if we had a bucket, how would you know whether it was full of copper, silver, gold or poop? Well, um you could weigh it, but there are going to be relative ratios where the weight would be the same, depending on the volume and the material. You could look at it and that's a good way of testing it
. Also. Poop ha happens to have a certain smell to it whereas the other ones don't. But let's say that the bucket had a lid on it. Well, you, you would have to open the lid to find out what's inside. So here's a question for you. If you happen to have a bucket full of poop, what would you have to do
before you? What would you have to undo do before you put silver copper or gold into it? So if it's literally full of poop, there's no space. But you know, even if there's just some poop in it, you probably don't want to mingle your gold, silver copper or really anything with that poo. So you have to
dump it out and then you really have to scrub that right. Where is he going with this. If I gave you the choice between an empty bucket and a bucket of poo, unless you're some kind of fertilizer person, um, you probably want the empty bucket no matter what you're gonna do with it. And an empty bucket
is full of opportunity and choices, uh, because you can put whatever you want in it. Right. And if it's, if it's a brand new bucket, it's clean, you could even put food in it, right? If it's a poo bucket, you probably don't want to do that, you really have to be, you'd have to have a lot of confidence
in your cleaning protocol. Um So when we talk about innocence is, is an innocent person an empty bucket or a bucket of poo or a bucket of copper or a bucket of silver or a bucket of gold. Well, what do you mean by innocent? So what most people mean is a sealed bucket? Let me explain. We don't actually
know what we're worth as people. One reason we don't is because we harbor this false idea that humans are intrinsically value valuable. When in reality, our value is completely denominated in the fact that we're created in the image of God. It just as a natural man is an enemy to God. It has been and
will be forever and ever until he yields to the holy ghost, a rearranging of that principle would be something like the natural or by nature. Humans are only as valuable are only valuable to the extent that they've become like God. Human beings are only valuable to the extent they've become like God
. And so this idea that our value comes as we yield to the Holy Ghost is correct and good. And it's great for emphasizing certain facets of that idea. But one thing it's not so great at is emphasizing or even revealing the idea that you have to actually search for more information about God and choose
to live that way. There are more explicit, explicit connections that could be made between those thoughts, but I'm not going to do that right now. So a person's value is not intrinsic. There are two components to it. One is potential value and that we're all created with the potential to become more
like God. Every person who's born has the ability to become more like God. But the other more important component of that is what you're doing about it and how far along you've come. So the more persons like uh the more valuable they are. So that's, that's uh nice and uncomfortable for many people. So
let's just keep going and adding to the stack. So which of the buckets is more valuable? Um An empty bucket is much more valuable than one full of poop. We've established that. What about a bucket full of copper versus a bucket full of silver? You might say it depends because a bucket full of copper
compared to like a flake of silver has much more value and the same thing for silver and gold. But this is where we have to sort of tip our hand a little bit. And in this analogy, this is a symbolic gold, silver and copper and poop. Um all those things have a real component obviously. But when we think
about the Kingdom of God and what it helps us understand about reality, there are categories of being and in the scriptures, they're described symbolically with gold, silver and copper. You will find these threads everywhere. I'm not getting into it right now. But I will make the connection that uh in
the vocabulary of some people, they refer to these things as uh the, the stars, copper, the moon, silver and the sun, gold or uh some people also think about this in terms of the, the words celestial, terrestrial and celestial, respectively. So in that categorization or that uh ontology, gold, any amount
of gold is greater than any amount of silver and any amount of silver is greater than any amount of copper and any amount of copper is greater than an empty bucket, asterisks. And there's, there's some fine print there that I'll get to. Hopefully, and you cannot have any copper, any silver or any gold
in a bucket that has any poop. So the least degree of sin cannot be tolerated in the presence of God. All right. So let's let's dive a little deeper when people say innocent, they might be talking about an empty bucket, but they also might be talking about a bucket full of poop that has a lid on it.
Or they might be talking about a bucket with some amount of copper or some amount of silver or some amount of gold. And these are obviously not equivalent things. So if you have a bucket with a lid on it to someone who doesn't know what's inside, it's clean, it's not gonna smell. So how are they gonna
know that what's inside isn't very good? What if it's your bucket? You still might not know what's inside of it. We don't actually know who we are except to the extent that we've become like God, this is a very important and very deep idea. You only know who you are to the extent that you've become like
God rather than going into that. I'm just going to continue. I'll talk about that some other time. If you only know a little bit about God, you could have a bucket full of poop, you could be a bucket full of poop with a lid on really tight and think that you're innocent and in one respect you are because
you don't know what's inside and we're not accountable for what we don't know. But the question arises, do you have the ability to know? Because if you do, then you are accountable, even if you don't look inside, if someone gives you one of those, uh, you know, those little bucket lid lifters and you
don't use it. It's on you. It's like if someone gives you a suitcase at the airport and it's got something terrorist oriented in it and, and you take it, if you got arrested, the, the police probably wouldn't care that it wasn't yours originally or you didn't know what was inside of it. They're gonna
say, well, you have the bag, didn't you look inside of it? You shouldn't have taken a bag from someone without looking inside of it. So, um, let's suppose that. Well, ok, let's pause there and let me ask you a serious question. Who do you know who doesn't have a lid lifter or who has used it completely
? Who do you know who has peered into all the dark corners of their own soul and fixed everything they found wrong. You can reread John chapter three for some context on that. But I'll tell you, you're gonna have a really hard time finding someone like that and we could sort of end the conversation there
, but let's keep going. So if you don't have a lid lifter, you're not responsible for what's inside the bucket. Ok. So then why isn't it a huge blessing to not have a lid lifter? Why shouldn't we just throw them all away? Well, because poop isn't worth as much as copper or silver or gold. We're here
to open the bucket and see what's inside and then to replace it with the best stuff we can find and all of those things are available here and this life is the only time and place you can change it. This life is the only time and place you can change it. What I'm talking about here are huge, eternal
, big old fat questions and issues. But the way God designed creation, it's holographic. You should look that up on Wikipedia. If you don't understand what I mean, or if you think I'm talking about Star Trek, the pieces, the components of creation of reality as we know it, they are, they are uh self
similar, but at different resolutions, they are like each other but not exactly the same. Um This, this extended analogy that I'm using, it applies to the big things, but it also applies to the little things and that's how it is with any principle from God. So it's the answer to the big questions, but
it's also the answer to the tiny little things that no one thinks about and everything in between. And so sometimes it helps to go from the big stuff to the little stuff. When we're trying to explain things, sometimes it helps to go from the little stuff to the big stuff and sometimes it's not so much
a question of big or little, but it's familiarity and so we can use things like money or dating or some other thing, kids and parents and families or work something that we have experience in and that we're fluent in to draw out these ideas and it becomes easier to talk about and think about. So in your
own life, there are the big buckets, but there's, they're the little buckets too. So think about ways that you avoid the revelation of what's in the bucket. Think of the, the lid lifters that are all over the place in your life, these indications that maybe there's something more inside of you or outside
of you that you're not fully familiar with. And what would the benefit be of opening it up and seeing what's inside? It might be gold, it might be gold in there and that wouldn't that be great, but it's probably poop and so you need to deal with that, right? Ok. Let's get back to this idea of innocence
. So suppose you're truly talking about an empty bucket. No. How do you go before we get there? How do you go from a poop bucket to an empty bucket? You can clean it out, you can wash it out. You might be thinking he's about to talk to us about repentance. Yes, that's always a safe assumption with me
. But because everything I say is about repentance, it's just showing you something from a different facet and connecting something else to it. But, but the poop bucket. Yeah. Anyway, uh but here's where the analogy breaks down and it's in a really important way. When you empty out a bucket, you have
a, an empty bucket, right? When you repent, are you an empty bucket? So it's easy and usually useful to use an analogy of like erasing a chalkboard. And we have this phrase clean slate. We talk about a clean slate when you repent of your sins, but it's not really a clean slate, not in the true sense
. And let me explain myself. I've probably used that phrase a bunch of times and I'm sure I'll use it again. A child is innocent in a vacuous sense. They do not have the capacity to make rational judgments and therefore they're not accountable for those judgments or what decisions those judgments would
yield. So a person who repents by definition, they have to have the capacity for rational judgment. Otherwise they have not sinned. And if you haven't sinned, you don't need to repent. There's nothing to be forgiven of. So if you have need of repentance, then you won't have a blank slate because you'll
never be innocent in the sense that a child is innocent, you will be accountable for everything you already understand. Very important. This is why repentance is not saying you're sorry, it's fixing yourself. It's aligning yourself to what you know, that's how you say you're sorry, but it's not saying
it's not asking God to please forgive you of your sins. It's fixing your life because if you don't, you can ask and you can get that in the very next second. You're gonna sing again and you'll be right back where you were only worse, only worse. Because every time you're forgiven of sins, you're increasing
the, you're increasing what it takes to be forgiven, what it takes from you to be forgiven. So that's very important. Ok, so we can talk about emptying the bucket. But actually there's, there's really no such thing because when you are forgiven of sins, you still carry accountability for all, you know
, to this date as of right now, you're, you're responsible, you're accountable to be the best person. You can be given everything, you know, and if you're not there, you have not been forgiven of your sins because guaranteed you've already sinned again in ways, you know, because you're not doing your
best and that's a sin. So, um, moving on. So now that you've got an empty bucket, what do you do with it? Well, you put stuff in it. What are you gonna put in it the best stuff you can find? So, let's suppose. And, and this is, uh this is true. It a long time ago when the Europeans first got here to
the United States, there were actually copper deposits, especially around Michigan, right on the ground. And they were, they were uh so large and the, the ore was so pure that there were literally huge chunks of copper sitting on the ground and So the, the Indians, they took advantage of this, they had
a massive copper trade. But, um, obviously today you can't find something like that because if it's that easy to find it's been used. But back to our example, suppose you have copper all over the place on the ground. Well, it makes total sense to pick it up and put it in the bucket, doesn't it? So, um
, that would be the fulfillment of the best you can do under certain conditions. What are those conditions? Well, maybe you don't know about silver or gold, right? And again, we're talking about this uh the symbolic silver, gold or s or copper or poop that's subject to the rules that I shared. You can't
have different substances in your, in your bucket at the same time, you can have different quantities, but it's all got to be the same thing, same class of thing. So, same class of treasure. Um Anyway, I, I was just thinking of some really ridiculous septic company names like uh toilet treasures. Um
There's one around here called Sweet Pea and it's like a vegetable pea icon, but obviously it's a pun. So, um anyway, uh so I didn't get my sleep last night. This is two nights in a row when that happens. My, my brain goes extra wide. Uh and the puns just fire nonstop. So um back to the buckets, uh if
you didn't know about silver or gold, you'd grab up some copper, right? But what if you did know about it? Well, then that would not be the ideal thing unless you had some reason to believe you were never gonna get your hands on any silver or any gold. Because remember under these rules, any amount of
silver is better than any amount of copper and any amount of gold, any amount of silver. So um a scriptural support for that is uh in Psalms. I'd rather be a porter in the house of God than dwell in the tents of I can't remember if it's right. Uh wickedness or I think it's wickedness. But, but that,
that scripture doesn't make a whole ton of sense unless you understand that tense. It, it's basically uh the palaces, the palaces of the world. So it is in fact better to be a servant in God's house than a king in the world anyway. So back to the buckets. Um So if you gather up copper, under certain
situations, that still be the best that you can do, but not under most right, not under most under most, it'd be better to keep your bucket empty. Why? Because if you expect to see some silver and you can't have them both and you can't get the silver when it appears. If your buckets full of copper, then
you're going to have to keep your bucket empty. And this is the asterisk. I said we'd get to um and then the same thing goes for gold. So you hold out for the best that you have reasonable expectation to see. All right, how far do we want to go with this? Is this pretty much good for this video? I'm
trying to think they've been processing a whole pile of thoughts for like eight hours on this. So um I'm just trying to skim off the ones that I can share with you right? This second with certain circumstances in mind. Ok. So I told you that a whole lot of different situations in your life would be applications
of this because the holographic nature of reality. Um So what's one, what's one example of this? Um Oh yeah, I was gonna do that. Yeah. Yeah. OK. Well, before we go there. So um in the story Superman, he's got X ray vision and so he'd be able to see in the bucket to see if it was poop without having
to open it. And there are people with freakishly strong senses of smell. Uh I saw some research that showed that they could train dogs to actually sniff certain kinds of cancer from a drop of blood. That's, that's peer reviewed. Um I'm not making this up, but some people have freakish senses of smell
too and what we don't even, I shouldn't say we what some people don't even notice really bothers them, really bothers them and they're not just being annoying. It's, it's legitimate distress upon them. So um, if you're a superman or you have a super nose, at least there might be a sealed bucket that
everyone else is fine with. But you will see that thing, you'll, you'll get close to it and you'll say, man, that's full of poop. Now, we are talking about how you're innocent if you don't know what's inside, as long as you don't have the means of opening it. Well, there's another dimension of it. If
someone who has reasonable evidence of the ability to know, tells you there's poop in there, then you're now accountable for fixing that even though the bucket still sealed. So maybe what you do now is you go find a, a bucket lifter and before you didn't have sufficient reason to do that. So if an angel
comes out of heaven and says, man, you're jacked up then. So this angel is David Goggins or something. And he says, man, you're jacked up, here's how you're gonna fix yourself. Then all of a sudden you're not innocent anymore. When, when the unnamed angel visited Paul and when he was Saul and said, look
, these people you've been persecuting. Um I'm sorry, like I said, I'm very tired when the lord visited Saul, not an angel. He said, you're persecuting me and you need to stop. This isn't good. You think this is good but it's not good. Knock it off and Paul's like, oh jeez, ok. And uh it's right there
in the in the text that's verse 20. No. Um, he says, ok, and then he goes, and he lives up to everything he knows now, including the new stuff, right? Like I said, you're accountable for, for everything you, you could know that you have reasonable ability to know. But when you repent, you have to live
up to all, you know, so far it's not enough to just say, can you forgive me? You have to actually change and become the ideal as far as you understand it to be. So, um this happens all the time where maybe the messenger is not in uh the Lord himself, but an actual angel or a mortal being who may or may
not even know that they're doing the Lord's work and frequently, very frequently it's creation itself, right? So if you think you're strong enough and then all of a sudden you get a flat tire and you can't get the tire off your car. You've just revealed a problem that you didn't know about before. You've
revealed a bucket of poop. Now, this can clash with how we've been using this analogy so far because um you're probably not thinking the inability to change a tire is going to keep you out of heaven. But, and I don't want you to take that too far. But the point is uh because because all of this needs
to be mashed into a prioritization, you can't be the best at all. Things under all circumstances. Um, this is, this is a caveat city, I shouldn't have said anything I just said in the last minute or so because I can't say it clearly and I'm just gonna confuse people. Um, let's go back to Paul and strike
the rest from the record for now if you do me the favor. Yeah, that's best for now. Um, ok. But applications where do I wanna go with this? So if you or someone you love um has taken the following drugs. Um If, if you are someone you love, if, if, if you affirm their faults, if you condone what is less
than best? If you tell them that they're innocent when they're not, what damage are you actually doing? You're telling them they're a bucket of gold when they're a bucket of poop. Now, what problems could that cause? Well, recently, uh there's a guy running for president here and he got in trouble. Well
, not trouble. He said it on purpose and it had mixed response, but he said we should not, uh we should not a firm mental illness. That's what he said. And um this is in reference to particular ideas that a whole lot of people don't think are mental illness. And so a scuttle emerged from that, but we
can zoom out on that a little bit because it's actually a wonderful principle for a whole lot of ideas. It turns out that celebrating things that aren't so good is a really bad idea. So the scriptures, the scriptures refer to this as calling evil good. And then there's the inverse of that, which is calling
good evil. It turns out that getting your valuation of things more accurate is super important. But all that aside, there are follow on ideas or related ideas this that are more on point with what we're talking about. So what's the damage you do when you call something that's vacuous? Good. So when you
call an empty bucket, the same as a bucket of gold, what's the damage done there? So a person who is an empty bucket who thinks that they're a bucket of gold is going to be incredibly entitled. And, and that being said, most people who come to mind when I mentioned empty buckets, there are actually buckets
of poop with lids on them that haven't been taken off yet. And the more like God, the observer is the more obvious that will be. So that's important to know. So we have the problem of calling an empty bucket something that's full of gold. We have the problem of calling a bucket full of poop, an empty
bucket. Are there any other problems to talk about here? So I said that the medals are classes of or categories of treasure. What does that entail? So it's how you feel, it's what you have and it's what you don't have in a good way, what you're free of what you're, what you're free of what you have power
over what you have access to how you feel and how you don't feel. It's what you want, it's what you don't want all of those things. And, um, if you find yourself in a situation where you have an idea of what copper is or silver is or gold is and you want that and you don't have that again in the big
things and in the little things, if there's anything in your life where you say, you know, I'm not happy with this, I think there's something better out there. You should seek God and open your eyes, ears and whatever other senses you have to what he's placed on this earth to through which He is likely
to show you or give you or lead you to what you're asking and you should ask him for something better, something better might include a better idea of what it is. You should be seeking, but more often than not, he's already placed the next step towards what we've asked right in front of our blind eyes
and we're probably stepping on it. We're probably stepping right in it or we've walked past it and we need to turn around and grab that. So, um on a not so meta level, the topic of asking and receiving is intricately explored in a book I wrote called Through Faith. There are even pictures and um for
some unbeknownst reason um, a whole lot of people that watch this channel have not actually read that book. So I highly encourage you to go do that. We talked about the, the lifter. It's sufficient reason to believe that there's something more out there basically. Um Pretty much any video you watch on
this channel is more than sufficient reason to go read that book. And yeah, it's a real shame that for a lot of people, it's not enough reason. Um because whatever it is they want in life, everything good comes through faith. And if we don't understand that idea and we don't live it again. This is very
meta because this is a book about the process. And if you haven't read it, you failed to exercise faith, which is the whole reason you need to read the book. But um I hope you find reason to go and do that because it is really sad to look around and see just how frequently everything someone says they
want is right in front of their face, the path to it. The first step is literally the next step they could take, but they're looking everywhere else on the planet except where they need to look and all of the reasons have been given to them. And uh they're still puzzled and frustrated and in many cases
doubting God and complaining to him and why me and or which is not as bad but equally detrimental ineffectual, I should say uh living these false ideas about waiting on the Lord and maybe it's just God's timing. He just wants to make me wait. There's no such thing. There is another phrase we use for
convenience sometimes in correct ways, in space, correct ways, but most often in incorrect no space ways. Everything God does is based on cause and effect. If you don't have what you want, it's because you haven't paid the price. That's it. There are some things that require the decisions of other people
. So how can you know if it's one or the other, if you're anxious, stressed, unhappy, it's not anyone else's, you're not waiting on other people. The problem is still with you, with you. One of the greatest blessings of the gospel is that it not only shows us God, no, not only shows us how to get what
we want. He also gives us the tools to deal with the inaction of other people when that is required when their actions are required so that we're not robbed of joy because of the faults of others. So that's a key to know if you're on track or not. And while there are still things that you can do, you
should focus on that instead of worrying about anyone else. It is insane how often people really say they really want something and yet they're not doing the things that they could do to change, to move closer to that something and they they base 100% of their angst on what other people are or are not
doing. And you could go through many examples of this if you want something, go get it. If you have reached the point where you don't know what else you can try. That's a wonderful time to pray and ask God and you could use a form like the following. I've been true and faithful to everything. What more
can I do? Send me something else, send me someone else and he will. Every time, every time he probably already did, he probably already did. You missed it. You might still be able to turn around and, and grab it and that might be the answer to the prayer. Oh, hey, remember this turn around. Think about