Ever feel like your faith, your business, and who you’re becoming… don’t quite line up anymore?

That’s where this conversation goes.

Curt Kempton and Melody Edwards sit down with Josh Latimer for Part 2—and instead of clean answers, they follow the tension. The result is a conversation that moves through belief, doubt, identity, and what happens when long-held frameworks start to shift.

This is about answering what feels true and what doesn’t anymore.

For anyone who’s felt that quiet disconnect between what they were taught and what they’re actually experiencing… this one will feel familiar.

What They Talk About:

• Why Curt can't stand "fake it till you make it" and Josh's alternative: holding the pose
• The moment business trophies start gathering dust, and what it means for identity and growth
• Melody's fierce struggle with inherited faith, especially when her core values collide with evangelical politics
• Josh's "God as good dad" framework and why he puts religion itself on the chopping block
• Parenting through spiritual evolution.. how Josh talks about faith and shame with his kids (very unfiltered)
• The story of Uncle Roger, the lovable career criminal, and what it reveals about judgment, grace, and cosmic "grading on a curve"
• Why entrepreneurial paths aren't for everyone and Josh's Home Improvement marathon as parenting philosophy
• Riffing on economics: business as a garden vs. a pie, why value multiplies, and how real wealth is created collaboratively

Key Takeaways:

• You can outgrow your religious programming without tossing out the concept of a loving creator.
• Business (done well) is about serving people, not extracting value—it’s a messy, generative web, not a zero-sum game.
• There’s deep power (and pain) in living with uncertainty, wrestling with faith, and giving yourself permission to change your mind.
• The roles we play in work, faith, and family aren’t interchangeable; your gifts matter exactly as they are.

Timestamps:

• 00:00: Why Josh can't stand religion and how Jesus fits in
• 01:44: The problem with "fake it till you make it" and the cost of certainty
• 09:23: God as good dad—Josh’s first principles
• 17:07: Sin, shame, and how Josh handles messy kid conversations
• 25:05: Are entrepreneurs born or made? The athlete/engineer/artist tribe
• 31:15: Wrestling with belief systems and finding spiritual freedom
• 41:57: Serving people, not money, and reframing economic value

(And yes, they planned to talk more about business and marketing. But they didn’t!)

I think the fruit of all religious systems is rotten. So I'm more of, like, on a war with religion, not with God. And the thing that's unique, singularly unique about Jesus is that he did not talk about religion. He did not create a religion, he did not endorse. You got to read, like, the actual words Jesus said. He didn't even do that. He didn't come to start a religion. His thing is anti religion, basically.

Welcome to the Sole Proprietor Podcast. I'm Curt Kempton.

And I'm Melody Edwards.

Each week, we dive into the ethical questions that keep entrepreneurs awake at night.

Whether you're building your own company or exploring life's big questions, you are welcome here.

One of the things that you've said in the past that I just keep remembering over and over again, you haven't used this phrase yet today, but it's just a thing I've done. You know, you talk about, like, I did this really hard thing. I'm working really hard on this project. I'm working hard on this software, this marketing launch or getting married or whatever. Like, it just at some point. It's funny how no matter how big and insurmountable it seemed into the future, once you've done it, it's just the thing you've done. Like, yeah, you know, you look at the big trophy on the wall or. And like, that was a ton of training and work and whatever.

You got the trophy and the moment's over. And then it's like, that's just the thing I've done. Like, it gathers dust and it's just a thing. But it's that when you talk about that latency, it's like, if you are constantly putting trophies on the wall, if you're constantly leveling up your marriage, that marriage isn't just the thing you've done. It's like the thing I am, the person I am, the way I am, the life I've built, and then all those things that have become normal, kind of like you're talking about, you're speaking. Which leads me to a question that you've talked about. Holding the pose. And I want to.

If we could just circle the plane to land and pause strip here. I really do resent. Fake it till you make it. I really do. I don't know why it's always sat wrong with me. I hate it. But holding the pose. The moment you said it, I was like, yes.

And I also tried faking it till I made it slash holding the pose, but it was really faking it. Till I made it in my religious belief, I felt like I committed something to my wife. I believe this. I did believe it. I can't change my mind on it anymore. And if I was holding the pose, it was torture. But if, but it turned into faking it till I made it where I would sit through church and I'd be just having constant disagreements. I would be reading the Bible, be like, that's bull crap.

I don't believe in that. God, I hate you, stupid. Like, I wouldn't worship you. You're a freaking egomaniac, you know, jerk. And I think it's important that as you talk about holding the pose, I was raised, and I know you talked about how you were raised. I think it could be similar that the truth I have. I pity everyone else in the world who doesn't have it. Maybe not subject to me, but they certainly aren't playing on the same 3D chess board that I'm on.

And they don't have all the things that they need. And I'm just so much more blessed and lucky and hashtag know it all. And it was kind of the unfolding of like, holy cow. I'm meeting a lot of really great people from a lot of different walks of life who worship a lot of different gods, who have a lot of different beliefs than me, who aren't worse off than I am, who have ethics that I didn't think they possibly could have because only I, you know, had that. And it was interesting to talk to Bobby, who also came from a Pentecostal background as an atheist.

Did he really?

He was a pastor, wasn't he?

Yeah, well, it was like the second

in command, second pastor, you know, the assistant pastor.

But he now has taken that, that to atheism, which we had a, I think a fantastic conversation about that. You know, your story has taken you, I think, in a different path. But for me, the idea of I have to be certain, I already said, I know it. I'm not allowed to change my mind in this. Or I'm a flip flopper, faker, you know, But I can't hold this inside anymore. I can't because it's not true. These things aren't true anymore. Or for me and what God's given me.

If I knock and he's going to open, if I ask and I'm going to receive, why am I getting these answers for me that are flying in the face of what I'm supposed to originally believe? And so I think that it's important as we go into the Business side that we understand a little bit about sort of your journey. Like, does God love you? Is he indifferent to you? Is he your bro? Does he expect something of you? Like, where are you at on that? And how has that evolved?

And before you go into that, you have kids and we evolve, so we teach our kids things. But you have a very close family culture that you've developed. I would like to know how that's affected your life too, if that makes sense.

Yeah, I'm a quote nerd. You know what quotes are? It's like dense wisdom. It's like a storage device of a bigger thing that it's encapsulated in a small thing, you know? But there's a quote that says, no man can enter the same river twice because he's not the same man, and it's not the same river. And parenting is like that because my kids were all technically raised by a different Josh. Right. Maverick is actually sitting across the room over there. He's on staff at our company, is an unbelievable video editor, and he's 19, and he was raised, I mean, by a very different version than my youngest daughter, Judah, who's 8 years old. Not only is my parenting style different, and, you know, we're always more paranoid with our first kid, but I just know more stuff.

I have more battle scar, everything, right? When it comes to the God thing, a lot of people that I know that had a lot of religious programming, like Bobby, they correct hard, they throw the baby out the bathwater. Right? And I get why. Because it's literally traumatizing to go through what both of you have went through and what we're talking about right now. I think people like Curt, that will fake it till they make it as long as possible, until they're about to have literally a heart attack. Because the stress gets to that point is actually just evidence of Curt's love for his family. Because when you make a faith decision or a major change, there's a lattice work attached to it that is super complicated. It's not like, oh, I got a new information, updated my algorithm. It's not that because it's who you're going to disappoint.

This is another success principle. It's like, who would you disappoint by succeeding? That's a question I use when I do high ticket consulting. Some people just start crying right from that. You know, they're so Anyway. But the lattice work is like, especially if you're in a cult, it's like you lose all of your friends, all of Your family. Jehovah's Witnesses are especially dark, in my opinion, because we're really hardcore on the excommunication part of it. Whereas, like, LDS depends and not really as much, you know, although there's still consequences. It's not like.

Like, if you're a Jehovah's Witness and you walk away, your own mother will not acknowledge you at the grocery store. That is insane. And so people just stay in. Right.

Actually, just to add to that, I kind of thought that's how my life would be as a Mormon, you know, member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I thought that would happen to me when I can't. And I just couldn't take any more than I did. You know what's happened? I have a lot better conversations in Sunday school. Like, I'll just raise my hand and go, that's not true.

And then we just go on.

So anyway, I guess I'm just saying that, yeah, there is a spectrum. I was afraid that if I questioned anything that something really bad was going to happen, like Jehovah's Witness.

That's a good point too. Yeah. Because therapy calls it catastrophizing, where it's like, there's this last work and there's real implications of this decision, but then we catastropize, so we make it, like, even worse than it probably will be. That's what I mean. It's like a rat's nest, complications to even entertain this. This is what, like, my father in law, like, I personally don't believe that we actually landed on the moon in the 1960s. Okay. I don't.

That's one of my conspiracies. But I don't care if we did or if we didn't. I'm not like, sure, you know, I'm just like, I don't think we did. You know, my father in law just visited us here. He was a little kid that, like, watched Neil Armstrong on tv, which, by the way, how do they stream video and the 60s from. It's impossible. But anyway, the kids all watch on tv. It's like port of his core identity as a human, right? So, like, him undoing that belief is like a complete collapse of like a whole section of his life, right? And because his subconscious knows that he'll start freaking out if you even entertain the sentence of like, I don't know about that moon landing.

He's like, what do you. What do you mean? You know, because of the past of it even, like, it's not even worth the Cognitive load and the glucose we'd burn in our brain to even go down that road because it's so bad. So you pick your battles. But for me, I went back to like, kind of like how I do look at businesses when I'm helping people is like what I try to do is go to like first principles, you know, basic stuff, basics. We gotta go to the simple parts first. And it's like, who is God? Who am I, what have I been given? What am I supposed to do with it? Like those are the four pillars that I started thinking about. It's like for me, I didn't have to say is there a God? Because the logic part of my brain, I think atheism is an extremely faith based belief system that's completely nuts when I look at the evidence. I think agnostic makes perfect logical sense for lots of reasons.

But when you say there is no God is a factual statement, that's really weird. I mean, every watch has a watchmaker. Consciousness can't be explained. Even the word universe by the way, means one spoken verse, which is hilarious because atheists believe in the universe and science. It's like, well, do you know universe means spoken word of God. I'm just saying see myself out. But anyway, what I'm saying is what's the nature of God? Like, is he good? Is he a dad? Is he distant? Is he just like, whatever, does he have 700 different planets? And we're like the side quest, like, I don't know, are there aliens? We don't have time to go through the all of it. But like the conclusion that I'm at now of which I've psychotically wrestled with for many years, is that God is a good dad.

That's a conclusion I've arrived at. Not because I want it to be true. I'm very careful about believing things because I want it to be true. I don't want anything to do with what I. I want to believe what is true based on the evidence I have. I will yield. By the way, nowhere in the Bible does it say surrender to God because you surrender to enemies. It's not even a concept that's biblical.

But you yield to truth, right? If two plus two actually equals five, cool. But I'm not going to do it unless I know that that really does and show me, right? But anyway, so the inclusion of that God is a good dad in ways beyond what you could possibly imagine. He's not only a good dad, he is like the best freaking dad ever, okay? Like in ways you can't comprehend. And most people didn't even have a great earthly father. So we don't even know what it means to have a good father. So that's who God is. And then who am I? Well, I'm made in his image. Myron always says God made us to make stuff and created us to create stuff.

Melody can't help herself. She makes stuff. If you ever watched her music video, it's insane.

Yeah, I love that video so much.

So she can't not create. All of us create and we create and we create and we create. And so, like, I've been given certain things. I'm really bad at tons of things, really good at a few things, and I'm good at them for a reason. Because I was made on purpose for a purpose. I think it's absolutely true. I also believe that the Bible is not a book about religion. The word Bible is not in the Bible because it was compiled afterwards, you know, 60 different authors, 66 books, 40 different authors, 1500 years.

And then there's different canons of Bibles. The Ethiopian Bible is 88 books. Our Bible has 66 books. The Catholic Bible is like 70 something books. My point is, is the Bible is not the word of God. Jesus is the word of God. And the Bible says that Jesus is the word of God. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God and the Word became flesh.

Jesus is the Logos, is the Greek word. He is the word of God. But people refer to the book, the compilation of books that everybody argues about, that the Scripture is the word of God. Jesus Christ is the word of God. Okay, stick with me. I'll land the plane here. I know this is the. Is this okay? Can I keep going for a sec?

This is what we live for. Yeah.

So God's a good dad. The Bible's not the word of God. Jesus is the word of God. This is very, very big distinction. Because Christians will argue about the same verse, reading the same words, coming to two different conclusions on the same words, right? And then they argue passive aggressive. And they're like, well, for me, brother, I just choose to agree with the plain reading of Scripture. And then the other guy's like, oh, well, for me, I just agree to do the plain reading of Scripture and they're talking about the same sentence, but they just come into there with words. There's what the words say and then there's what the words are saying.

And they're not the same thing.

Yeah.

Yes, Right. If you've been married for more than five minutes. You know that there's what your wife is, and then there's what she's saying.

And what I say is, me and my husband both speak American English, but he speaks male American English and I speak female American English. And never the two seem to meet.

Yeah. So it's like, okay, if God is a good dad and Jesus is real, and is the word of God meaning, like, he is this spoken? If you look at string theory, like all matter and energy and quarks and quantum mechanic particles and subatomic particles, everything's held together as far as we can tell so far by vibrations, okay? Which is like a voice. So Jesus, anyway, everything was made by him, through him, held together through him. Everything's about Jesus. Always was about Jesus. But here's the big kicker. Jesus didn't come and die on the cross. He didn't do it because God needed him to do it.

He did it because we needed him to do it. You see, what's the first thing that happened in the garden is they did a naughty. And they ran away and hid. God went to them. He's like, yo, where'd you go? And they're like, you know, covering up their wiener with a leaf. And they're like, right, right. And whether it's metaphorical or whatever, this is very powerful. God never, ever, ever left us.

We've always left God. The Bible is really. It's very spiritual book. It's not a normal book. I mean, the Bible predicts crucifixion 800 years before it was invented. There's prophetic links between it. There's weird stuff in the Bible. It's a very, very powerful, serious book.

But anyway, the Bible is basically. This is why it gradually goes from, like, the most archaic, and then it gets better and better and better and better and better gradually to the person of Jesus Christ. And Jesus is the most full, complete picture of the nature of God that we could possibly have. Right? And here's the thing. You either agree with Jesus or you agree with the Bible, but you can't agree with both because they don't agree with each other. Okay? So what's happening is man is their interpretation. Like, God's there. He's like, come back.

And we're like, no, we have to, like, kill goats so that our crops get rain. And. And they're like, trying to figure it out, but they're doing the best they can. Just like my parents smoking cigarettes, trying to go to church. And so there's this story arc of people trying like, we know that there's pieces of us that are dark, that there's separation. Or we believe the lie that there's separation. I don't believe there is separation anymore. But we believe there's a separation and that we're orphans and there's all this stuff and we have to earn it back.

And all these denominations are just different blueprints and checklists on how to work your way into the cool kids club. And we don't have to. Jesus came to set back, AKA restore, which. What does restore mean? If a book falls off that shelf behind Melody and she puts it back where it originally was, she's restored the book. Right? The garden was the perfect place of pleasure. That's what the actual garden, the word in Hebrew means. It's a protected place of pleasure. That was God's original intent for mankind.

We left and started doing weird shit. Jesus in this whole story arc of humanity is restoring to God's original intent. And we can have that right now. Even Bobby Walker, even if he has a different label, because God is love. He just is. And so there's. Then there's all the religious other things. And what do we do with hell? And what do we do with sin? And the word sin means to be without sharing.

Hamar Dia. I've done a lot of stuff on this. I mean, this is important to me, okay? To be without Sharon. Sin means to act like an orphan who's not in the family. The Bible is not a book about religion. It didn't start a religion. The religious peoples who killed Jesus in the first place. The book is a story about a king in a kingdom and the colonization of a foreign land is how Myron puts it.

That's what I believe. So I teach my kids. Like, I'm very careful about shame programming. You know, I have three boys. You know, boys like to look at boobies on the Internet and touch their wiener. Like, that's happens. That's a part of male life. Okay, because that's kind of awesome, but it's also bad, right? And no one talks about it candidly.

Like this.

This is how I've always talked to my children. Like, you jerk off that. What are you doing? The thing I'm very clear and candid to make it not weird from a very young age. So when they do something that's like, not the best for them, we talk about it. But I don't induce shame because shame is different than guilt. Shame is evil and pointless and you should never have it. Shame says that I am wrong Something's wrong with me. Guilt says that thing I did is wrong, and those aren't the same thing.

And churches do a really bad job of delineating these two ideas. And so the story of the prodigal son makes this point. There's. There's lots of it, right? But it's like God is on a rescue mission for us, right? And we're trying to make our way to God and the front door has been open the whole time, but we don't believe it's true. We think that we have to murder something for it to be true. And we don't. Because let me ask you this, you. I know the biggest contradiction of all is to think about, did Jesus die for our sins to pay our sins off? Or did God forgive us our sins? Because how can you be forgiven and paid back at the same time?

Yeah, that's a great point.

How did Jesus pay a ransom? And there's poetic language in the New Testament. It talks about, you know, he died as a ransom for many and all this stuff. A ransom to who? Did God need payment? Do you really think that a super entity that is outside of time and space, okay, needs to create his Lego pieces called universe and then his little Lego pieces called Milky Way, and then the. Even literally Lego pieces called Earth and all the matter and it's a little playground that this super entity that did this, he's like, hey, you little tiny Lego piece, chop the head off the other Lego piece, you little piece of shit. Like, you're never going to hang out with me outside of time unless you chop off the. Like, that doesn't make sense. Like, it's weird. It's like so low level, it's so limited.

God, it is love. Jesus is the physical embodiment of God and everything's about him and always been about Him. You can see Jesus in every single book of the Bible from the beginning to the end.

Why do you think Christians get it wrong right now, Josh? Because this is the core reason I would say that I have trouble with belief, is that my identity is based on what I was taught. Like, my whole identity has been built on this.

I know I'm still working a lot of it myself. Because it's like part of your spirit resonates with what I just said. Because it's true. Oh, yeah. But then you're like, well, I know I want it to be true, but that doesn't mean it is true.

I want it to be true. However, I've never in my whole life felt the thing that I've seen a lot of people feel, and maybe it's because I'm a feelings person. I have felt like I've faked it till I've been making it, you know what I mean, my whole life. And really, and I'll be very candid, I've talked about this a lot, and I know that I'm not alone. I really had a lot of respect for the evangelical faith for Christians in general. Still, even though I didn't know what I believed, I felt that that was a melody problem. I was struggling with it, but I was still trying to be in the faith. And it was Trump that did it for me.

This man was the embodiment of everything that I had been taught to not put my faith in, not believe in. And it feels so to my core, that is the thing. Like, the people who taught me my values, my moral beliefs have turned to. Towards a man that I don't see has any of the things. And I've heard all the things. I've heard all the reasons why it's okay, baby Christian, and God has a plan and all the things. It doesn't resonate with me because to me, it's black and white. This is how I view it, that it's like a false prophet or.

I don't even know if that's the right word.

One thing I've studied the last, like, year and a half, a lot more, is actually the early church. Because, you know how if you make a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy, things can get weird? Or you play the game of telephone in first grade and it's fun. We still play that right now, by the way. We make up our own weird games. You should ask me about what Is My Name? That's a weird game that we play. But anyway, the early church, what did the first original people think was true after they just hung out with Jesus? Even outside of scripture, there's like, all these writers and, like, really, really old Christians, and most of them were, like, Christian mystics. And that doesn't mean they did, like, witchcraft in the forest and like. No, the meaning of that word's changed over time.

But they just sat in contemplation. They felt the presence of God. They were pretty much pacifists. They were very. It was just peace and love and the whole thing, you know, and it was super different than mainstream modern American Christian evangelicalism. This is a whole product line that was. So far, it was very simple. And they didn't believe in the Rapture.

Or none of that stuff. The Left behind series, like all that crap.

Oh, that got in my head for sure when I was a kid.

The rapture wasn't even a thing until the 1800s and a little girl had a dream and then it got into the John William Darby's version of the Bible and it ended up. It wound up in Bible schools in a Commentary Bible and Commentary Bibles are really interesting because it's the Bible with a chunk at the bottom that's telling you what you think it's supposed. What it meant. Tells you what it meant.

What someone says, what woman said.

Yeah, but I just go to Commandments, Josh. Like commandments, the most basic of things. Like those are the things I look to. And maybe I'm not even remembering all the commandments properly, but I know I'm not supposed to murder people. Maybe sleep with my neighbor's wife might be one or something like that.

That was really bad back then because they'd stone you, right?

Lying, cheating, all those kinds of things. The values that are whole like the framework of my brain. And then when I say like integrity, ethics, values. These are my worst. I'm joking when I say it, but it also holds me back in a way.

Yeah. I mean my uncle Roger, my dad's brother, he's passed away now, but he was like a career criminal his whole life and we loved him. He's the most lovable career criminal you've ever met. Train wreck. I mean my dad is a. I love Josh. Really hard worker. My dad never was late to work.

We'd go to work sick. Like he'd always never made excuse if he mowed the lawn. He mowed it. Correct. I used to get in trouble because I put the garbage bag in the garbage can. If I didn't do it correct, I had to take it out and put it in correct. Everything was the right way to do things. There's a wrong way to do things.

And there's kind of like this cool, kind of like honor I have for him being like that. But it's also like a form of slavery to his own self to be like that.

Yes.

Agreed to his brother was a total opposite. And I was thinking one day because towards the end of his life he died young. He was like just turned 60. But he was in prison. He broke out of prison one time, came to our house. It was crazy. I got stories he's been stabbed, he's a drug addict, he crazy life, mostly drug related problems. But I remember one time he quit smoking cigarettes for like a Week, which is, like, impossible.

And he did it because he was trying to read the Bible. And, like, he did that. And I was thinking about how God has to grade on some sort of curve. I don't even think there's a grade. I think he's just a member of the family, like I am. But what I'm saying is if there's like, a way to rank the hearts of humanity, it has to be. The only logical way you could do that is with the context over, like, the raw material the person was working with, you know, the backstory and circumstance, you know, like someone with this IQ and this understanding. It's not the same thing.

Or Jesus said, the widow that gave a nickel gave more than everybody else relative, right? Because she gave a bigger percentage of what she could give than the other. And so I'm thinking about this, and I'm like, what if him doing that for a week was more units of God honoring units than Billy Graham's whole ministry? And I'm not saying it was. What I'm saying is it could be because, like, everybody's in a different spot, right? And, like, we don't have full understanding of everybody's life. Like, we talk for an hour and we have, like, basic. We don't understand each other, really. We couldn't. It's impossible. I just think about that.

So with the Trump stuff, with all this stuff, I don't know. I mean, my friend Mandy says that everybody's doing the best they can with what they got. And when she first told me that, I was like, no, they're not. That's stupid. She's like, Josh. And she's a very high level mindset coach. Actually, I brought her in. One of the trainings of warplane insiders you were in.

She was trained by Tony Robbins for 10 years. She's in Russell Brunson's. She's the coach for Russell Brunson's 250,000.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Baller, dude. And she's like, josh, you're wrong. And then we talked about it, and it's like, well, technically, everyone is doing the best they can with what they think is true right now, who they think they are, what they think is going to happen next, what they think that it's all the framing, the architecture and the. The scaffolding of their reference point. You know what I'm saying?

I do.

If it's not 100% true, because it's usually true, that's still really meaningful. Because when you see someone act a fool, it's like, well, they're doing the best they can with what they got. They don't know stuff. No one told them the stuff.

Can I ask one question that's very important before you say what you're going to say, Curt, because it kind of goes into this because I think a lot of entrepreneurs believe this, and I don't. Do you think that anyone can be like us or like you? Do you think that. Oh, if you just thought better or did. You know, I believe. Personally, I don't think that's true. Or else everybody. I mean.

Leading the witness.

Sorry, go ahead.

Well, I was going to clarify the way you worded it.

And I mean, like, entrepreneurial li. Not spiritually or whatever.

They can do the tasks that we do and. But their soul will die as they do them. Maybe a better way to ask it, unless you correct me, is, is everybody supposed to be a business owner, entrepreneur? Is everybody supposed to have extra resources and be wealthier? Is everybody supposed to. And I think, absolutely not. That doesn't even make sense. Not only that, they couldn't. They shouldn't. Let me tell you what I can't do.

I can't. I mean, I can, but I can't. Soul sucker 9,000. My soul would die. I would die. I can't sit in a jungle and get bit by mosquitoes all day while I bottle feed an orphan. I can't. But I can build the orphanage and I can buy the plane tickets and I can buy the baby formula and all this stuff.

So, like, humans are designed to be interdependent. I was talking to my daughter last night about this, okay. Because we have existential conversations, and my daughter Finley and I have been watching Home Improve Improvement reruns for months. And we're on season eight. We just started last night. There's eight seasons, like, 25 episodes a season. We've watched every single one. I bought her a Binford Tools shirt, if you remember.

I do. I do.

And then. But I also work in, like, deep conversations and identity things and tell them who they. I speak life into my kids. Right. Anyway, I said, finley. And this is a super oversimplification, but she's 10. I'm like, on Earth. I said, there's artists, there's engineers, and there's athletes.

And then I explained what I meant by that, and I'm like, you know, and the artists think that the engineers are so boring and not that important because they think only art's important. And the engineers think that the athletes and the jocks and the meatheads and the artists are just stupid because that's the only thing that's important. And each archetype of person thinks that their type is, like, the correct one. They're just missing the whole point. I said, let me ask you a question, Finley. If there's an attack on the village, who's the most important group of people? She's like, the athletes. I'm like, yeah, because all the nerds are getting wrecked, right? The artists are going to be floofing around with their swirly things and they're all dead. They're all dead, right? So we type a alpha male.

Like, there's situational needs, right? And I said, well, what if there's an earthquake and their main bridge breaks and their school collapses? Who's the most important people? What's the engineers? It's the nerds. It's the science. It's the math. It's the dorks. They're not dorks now, are they? Because they're the bridge builders, right? And then, like, what would happen if no artists were in a society? And she immediately knew. She's like, it'd be terrible. Be dark, it'd be depressing. There's no music, there's no TV shows, there's no comedy.

There's no escape.

There's no beauty. Yeah.

No esthetics. There's houses, but there's no homes. Like, oh, my God, each group of these people are so important. You can't imagine. Like, it's deeper than you think. Entrepreneurs, I can argue, are some of the most important people in the world. It doesn't make them better than another category of a thing. The only reason I say that is because if no one will leave the tribe and look over the mountain ridge, be like, what's over there? Which, AKA, that's an entrepreneur.

And then all the status quo. Like, why do you need to do that? Just let it go. And you're like, I can't help it. I have to look over there. And then, because we go over there, that's where all growth and innovation comes, because of the vision of an entrepreneur. All of it. And it's like, well, no, the government does. It's like, no, it doesn't.

Like, they steal ideas from entrepreneurs. So I told Finley, we don't have entrepreneurs. There's no air conditioning. There's no cars, there's no ice cream. There's nothing. Yeah.

Computers or any of the things. Yeah, yeah.

Like in, like, the pursuit of self interest, which sounds bad. There's payoff for it, you know, Honeybees, get honey to serve themself, and if they didn't do that thing, all the life on earth would collapse. And so God made it like this. It's this weird interwoven thing. And it's like by me becoming wealthy, all I'm doing is making people wealthy. I just talked to Tommy Mello on the cell phone a couple weeks ago. People don't know he's a billionaire now. But when he did his first big liquidity event, when he got hundreds of millions of dollars, he called me.

You know what he told me when he called me? Said, Josh, 28 people just became millionaires because he is obsessed with his team. And he's like, add crazy maniac. And I get it, he's not everybody's cup of tea. But he truly. I know him personally. He's really. That's awesome. Those people probably wouldn't have become millionaires if they weren't attached underneath the vision of Tommy Miller.

Right? He let them build a solar system inside the universe. His vision. How cool is that? So can anybody be that they shouldn't? There's different roles, there's different. I need an earlobe. It's not like, can an earlobe be a big toe? It's like, it wouldn't be a very good big toe, but I still want it to be an earlobe. You know, it's like, it's like, what's more important? Depends if I'm laying down and listening to music or if I'm walking.

Yeah, yeah, that's a great answer. I appreciate that. Go ahead, Curt.

I appreciate everything that's been said. I don't see a way of being able to make this a two parter in the without some pretty serious surgery. So I'm just going to keep going, making it work. In the question that I asked you about your sort of like, spiritual journey, one of the things that is obvious to me is that you're sure. You know, we talked about how certainty, that last 1% is like a thousand percent. And I think that this is gonna be a loaded question, but, like, it sounds like you're pretty certain that Jesus is the right God. As I've been studying about Hindus who believe that they keep coming back and trying over and over and over again until they get it right. And that the karma that they induce in this life could be served up in this life, but it also could be served up in future lives.

As I learned about the Jews, who are like, really not precious about anything, they're willing to throw it all at the wall. And if it doesn't stick, it doesn't stick. And like, where, you know, if Jesus isn't our savior, like, our religions in trouble, like, our whole theology is. As I look at Muslims and I see the way that they're really wrapped up in Allah, like, Allah's gotta be the right God. He doesn't particularly care that much about you, but he's gonna reward you if you're submissive enough. So obviously oversimplified everything there.

Not really. I think that's accurate. Ish. Yeah.

There's a lot of segments just within Christianity and the fragmentation you've already talked about. My question is on that certainty level that the Bible is a true scriptural text, that Jesus is you and I slightly differentiate between God and Jesus as far as, like that. But as far as Jesus being the correct savior of the world, the universe, in my belief and I think yours as well, all worlds that God has ever created. Where are you at uncertainty for that? Like, percentage wise? Just to use the same analogy you're using later, where do you fall there?

As I answer that, to set up the answer for that, I think the difference between studying different religious systems and trying to study macro truth dots. So, like, what I mean is when you study like Hinduism or. I took my son to Japan last year because when my kids turned 13, we do this epic trip and stuff and they have all kinds of stuff. We went to, like, these crazy temples. It's just the history. It's just mind blowing, right? But that's still a religious lattice work. The Hindus, if you're familiar with India, they have a caste system and that is a derivative of the religious frameworks that they use. Because reincarnation means, like, the poor people were just been super big douchebags in their last life and stuff.

So, like, what I'm saying is, like, I think the fruit of all religious systems is rotten. So I'm more of like on a war with religion, not with God. And the thing that that's unique, singularly unique about Jesus is that he did not talk about religion. He did not create a religion. He did not endorse. You got to read, like, the actual words Jesus said. He didn't even do that. He didn't come to start a religion.

His thing is anti religion, basically. And his beef was with religion and the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and all these people who we called, you know, snakes and vipers. And I don't actually view the study of Jesus Christ as studying religion. Okay. So the truth dot thing is Like a higher. It's kind of like a more of a first principle then. So it's like, you got to start with, like, what's the probability that there's some sort of origin to us existing? Are we a digital simulation that aliens made us? Even if we are, that means there's a creator and we're a creation. And so the conclusion that came to with that is like, we're definitely a creation made by a creator.

Every watch has a watchmaker. You wouldn't find a pocket watch in the Sahara Desert and be like, that's crazy. Over billions of years. How the sand turned into that. Like, it just doesn't happen. Right? The simplest protein is like 110amino acids all lined up in an exact particular order. If the 89th one is in the 61st one spot, it doesn't work. It's not a protein.

And a protein isn't even life. It's the building blocks of life. So, like, the amount of design is so impossible. Even the 23 and a half degree tilt on the Earth, the distance from the Earth to the Moon, if it's a little bit closer, there's no life on Earth, It's a little bit farther away, there's no life on Earth. When you study all that, I think they're called geochromometers or something. When you study all that, it's like, there's definitely an intelligent designer. So my certainty that is 100%, with the caveat that I am fully aware I could be 100% sure of something and still be wrong.

I know that just to honor Bobby Walker and the conversation we had with him. It's very important, like, where I'm with you on that. Like, I feel like I could say I'm a hundred percent sure that there's a God, whether he thinks of me as a dog or an equal or.

Or it's just a really smart alien and we're a digital simulation, then that's. Oh, God.

But on that particular front, I'm with you. Bobby did say something I think is very important and is that, like, I don't get to choose what I'm convinced of. I can surround myself with things that might convince me one direction or another. But what I'm convinced of and therefore believe, I'm not, like, trying to not have belief. I feel like this is one of those things where I just know the things I know that have convinced me without any doubt that there is a Creator. And I think that that's worth, like, sort of like putting in parentheses that, like, okay, the Jews believe that. The Muslims believe that, you know, whichever God you believe in. I think that we could categorize everybody I just asked about earlier into, like, do you believe you have a creator first? And we probably all would, within some sort of small percentage, all be 100% certain that that's got to be the case.

100% certain, based on what we know so far and our capability to cognitive process what we know so far. Yes. Yeah, I agree. But that's like step one. And then it's like, okay. And then where all the arguments happen or religions get built is on what's the nature of that God. And so how do you figure that out? Well, part of it's like, metaphysical. Part of it's logical.

Part of it's lots of things. I mean, I know certain things. I know that love is a real thing. I know that hate isn't a thing. It's the absence of a thing. I know that heat is a real thing. Cold is just a word to describe the absence of heat. So it's like, love is a real thing.

I felt it. I have children in my flawed, super screwed up, totally imperfect version of me. The love I feel is real. You know, and so then I start thinking about, like, frequency and quantum and all this stuff. Then there's like. Then there's circumstantial, anecdotal, personal evidence that means something to me, that means nothing to you, but that doesn't mean it's not worth a lot to me. So there's like, counters. I've had things that have happened.

I've had prophetic stuff spoken over my life in ways that you can't even imagine. And I'm not even prepared to, like, reveal that yet. But I have hundreds of videos of prophetic words spoken over me going back years and years and years that have come true. Like, that's related. I'm excited for my current business venture because it's leading towards the revelation of that and, like, telling people God is real and he's not mad at you. Like, I think Bobby Walker is fine. I think he's perfectly safe. And I think he has a loving father.

And I think God has a plan for his life. There's no strings attached to that at all. If he keeps being exactly like he is and that's it, and he gets hit by a bus, that's still true. So I don't have any expectations on other people. I don't have anything. I just maybe an incomplete, bad answer, but that's where I'm at with why I believe that. And so I don't think Jesus is part of a religious system. And I'm viewing other religious systems or denominations as studying religious systems, which is like a lower order thing than.

So what you're saying you're spiritual but not religious? No, I'm just kidding. I'm kidding.

Weird, New Agey loaded word. But Yeah. I mean, C.S. lewis said you don't have a spirit. You are a spirit, you have a body. So I believe that. And I believe, like, I don't think eternity is lots of time. Eternity is the absence of time.

I don't think we're going to sit on clouds and tell God how awesome he is. He doesn't need that. He's our dad. He's like clapping and cheering for us as we scrape our knee. He's rooting right. And I think the whole point of the Bible is Jesus. And the Bible wasn't designed to be a religious book. It's just, it's not.

The Bible's a book about kingdom. Jesus, what he talked about the whole time was kingdom, kingdom, kingdom, kingdom, kingdom. And it's like, what does that mean? He's like, the kingdom of God is near, which means within you. The kingdom of God is at hand, which means within you. And he'd switch between kingdom of heaven, kingdom of God. But he's talking about this king. What does that mean? Well, then you do a study on that and that's really fascinating. It's like, well, all kingdoms have a king.

They have like bylaws, they have an economic system, kingdoms have ambassadors, they have all these things, you know, and it's like, if we're part of a kingdom and the king is our dad, what does that mean? And why are we here? And we're like. And there's. Jesus used a lot of parables about like, you go into a foreign land and you send your ambassador and then they beat the crap out of them, send them back. And like, you know what I'm talking about. There's something there. Like, I'm not 100% certain on the final conclusion of that, but it's like heating up, you know, Like, I'm extremely persuaded towards kingdom theology, if you want to call it that, which is like, I was put here to serve people. You're supposed to serve people, use money. People flip it.

And they serve money and use people. And it's just an inversion. You just flip it, we're all good and that's what we're here to do. You ever Watch that video, Curt, where it's like how to make a pencil and you realize, like, how insanely complicated.

Yeah. How it's made. I think I saw that, actually.

Well, it's like it can't exist unless, like, 30 different specialists exist, you know, because you have the graphite and then the wood and the paint, and then the chemical that makes the paint yellow, that's another guy. And then you got, like, the little metal part and the rubber and the rubber tree cutter down there. It's so crazy. That's what earth is. And business is the embodiment of serving each other. That's what it's supposed to be. So there's perversions of it, and there's like, liars and thieves and stuff, but that's not what it really is. And the economy isn't a pie.

You see, poverty programming teaches us that for us to win, someone has to lose. For Melody to sign up a 2k a month customer, or whatever you charge. I'm not. I'm just making that up. But 2750, okay, three grand. So someone gives you three grand a month, you're like, oh, no, they don't have three grand now. But I do. But I feel dirty because I took it from them.

That's a misunderstanding of how economics even work.

And luckily, I do not think like that.

What actually happens is they give you $3,000, and you give them $12,500 worth of value that they get to quantify and decide. But it's also concrete, too, Right. Because of the time they say, then they make money doing this other thing. And all that is. That's. It's even more than that. So it's like, you know, business is like the economy is a garden, not a pie. Meaning consumption equals production.

Like, when you eat an apple off a tree, you're not like, oh, no, I screwed over the tree. No, what you did is you created 12 new trees because there's seeds in the apple, and that's how business is. Right? And so there's another quote that says you can count the number of apples on a tree, but you can't count the number of apples in a seed. So your products and your services and the time you save and the money you make for other people or just the encouragement you give people, or if you're a coach or a mentor, a trainer or a consultant, like, there's intangible value spilling all over the place when I serve people, even outside of the quantifiable parts. And it's always done in a Way where what they get is way more than what I get. And that's correct. That's what value creation is, is. If I have this, I'm like, do you want it? You're like, no, it's like, okay, you don't see value in it.

But if I go to Melody, hey, do you want this? It costs a dollar. It cost me five cents, but to you it's worth more than the dollar in your pocket. That's why you bought it. Right. And so you autonomously, as a free willed person, did that. I think that's awesome.

Okay.

Because I do want to actually get into the whole marketing and the value transfer and everything. But the question I have is we're both 100% certain that we're not atheists. And like, that's not even like a creeping discussion for you and me, John.

I'm also not an atheist. I refuse to be known as an atheist.

So, yeah, so Melody is also not. But as far as picking the right God to, you know, religion aside, but to sort of like use as the path to the Creator or the Creator himself, where's your certainty level on that? If you could quantify it and if you can't, that's okay to just say so. I'm not trying to push it to the point of like being weird about it, but I, for me, the struggle of I know that there's a God and I hope I'm worshiping him in the way that he wants to be and that I'm worshiping the right God and praying to the right God.

I want you to imagine everything you're asking me right now as if your daughter was asking her friend about her relationship with you and how crazy that would sound. I hope that I'm serving my dad in the right way, that he wants me. I don't want to screw it up. And so this is why, like, when you go to first principles, like, is God a good dad or not? If he is, the implications of that are so far reaching, it's beyond what we could even record in six hours here. It's something to contemplate.

Okay?

You don't need to pick the right God. God picked you. You were hand stitched in your mother's womb. The Bible says that before the foundations of the world, God created good works for you to do. What does that mean? What it means is that the stuff he has you here to do, he made before he made you. And so you have a intrinsic purpose. And you know that you do. And you've always had you are the embodiment of like, love and compassion.

Curt, you and Melody are like a match made in heaven, now that I think about it, because it's so real how much you care for your staff, your customers, your family, all this stuff. Not only that, like on a business perspective, you go slower than you could have because you're trying to do it good. You want to do it good and like. But at the same time, you guys are living in a prison that you constructed all by yourself. Not. No, no, there is a prison constructed. But now that you're autonomous adults, like, you can walk out. It's.

The door's not locked is what I'm saying. You are good. You're in. You're God's son. This is something that's almost impossible to believe quickly when you come out of religious programming. And I'm still like, is that really true? But it is. And the big catch all test for this to anybody that listens to this this far, you maniacs. How the heck did you listen to this conversation this long? You should get a hobby.

No, I'm just kidding. Is talk to Jesus. That's it. That's like the whole litmus test of the thing. And the thing is the way we approach God, when we believe that we're not gonna hear from him, we won't. You know, the power of human agreement is like the eighth wonder of the world. There's a lot of science to back this up too. But if you've already pre decided, Curt, that if you pick the wrong God, you're screwed.

You can't even talk to dad correctly in the first place. And so because of that agreement, it's like a block, you know what I'm saying? You gotta talk to God like your 4 year old daughter used to talk to you and he'll talk back. And you have to not only Jesus said, ask and believe and it will be. So the thing is, people don't believe. They do. 62% believe. They do. 81% believe.

Believe. It's already been done. Jesus said, who would ask their dad for a fish and he'd give them a snake? You're not going to like ask God the wrong question and then he's like, like whips you. It's not a thing that a good dad ever does. It's not even a thought. It doesn't make sense. And we know that as imperfect dads, right? It's like obviously, right? It's so simple. That's what pisses people off about it, I think.

And the people get Most angry about this line of thinking are the religious people. And they're not just angry because of the lattice work being those people wouldn't even listen to this conversation. They'd be like, oh, false teaching, I got to run. Like, oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. But the people that are like listening to like prove us wrong, Those are the people that have a lot of self righteousness. And like, I have already picked the right way and I have seven gold stars on my report card and I'm only one gold star away from getting to the super upgraded suite in heaven, right? That's what's scary to me. Not the Bobby Walker is not the people wrestling with their faith, that's normal. That's like the fathers of the faith, right? Like he who wrestled with God, Jacob, you know, broke his hip.

The weird Old Testament story with the guy that broke his. He's wrestling with God. That's what you're doing. That's what we're supposed to do. Did you do that when you're a kid? Like, I don't teach my kids what to believe. I teach my kids how to think. I teach them the nature of God, not the exact details of sub point section 3 that I can't know. I'm like, I know he's a good dad.

I know you were made on purpose for a purpose. I know you have talents and abilities that were designed 100% to serve other people, not yourself. And I also know that if you do a good job serving those other people, really great things in abundance will flow back to you because that's just how the garden of the economy works.

Did he answer your question, Curt?

Well, actually, ironically, did he break the question? I think he ironically did answer my question. Even though the analytical version of Curt's like, just say the freaking number. I think what's really cool about it is that that's where I landed.

I landed with.

I am uncertain if Jesus is the only way truth in life anymore. Where I was raised to believe. You know, you talk about the prison I'm in. You know, two people that I love a lot. You know, my parents, they sort of set my reality really young. And I believe that there's some really hard and fast rules here that need to be followed in order to please God. And not just please him, but to. I mean, where I think the LDS tradition maybe gets it a bit wrong is that even though there's nothing explicitly saying that you have to earn God's love, it is truly hard to get through the teachings of that church and not Think that you're earning something, you know? Yeah, God is love, charity never fails.

Like, all of these things are taught to you that God is the perfect God, that'll never. You'll never lose your relationship with God. But if you don't come help the brothers move everybody on Saturday with the new move in, you know, and it's

like, okay, are you even saved?

Yeah. So it's like we teach this, you know, there's a higher law, and if you don't figure it out by societally being a part of this. So my point is, is that the freedom for me in that wrestle, it was a painful wrestle. I broke more than a hip. I broke every bone in my body in this wrestle. It was really hard. Not to the point of ptsd, but like, there's some serious, like scarring on me from this wrestling match of what I thought I believed and what I'm actually seeing and then what I'm feeling. And like those anecdotal things where you normally even a data, you'd have to throw it out of data.

God's made it really clear I'm not going to give you the data. There is going to be a lot of soft anecdotal evidence through this wrestle that I'm going to put you through, because we're not going to prove anything through data explicitly. However, I have this, like, scientific law that you can see that gravity basically always will work until you do something to bend it. Right? And you want to feel weightlessness. There's a couple ways to do that, right? You will die when cancer gets in your body unless you learn a couple other things that you can apply to that. And then. So my point is that in Josh's answer, one of the things that I think is really critical is that if you do believe that there is a God and you do understand that he is wanting you to seek him out and that he'll be there, but he's not going to make himself viscerally known in the sense of like maybe the other flesh and blood that's all around you. And there is going to be a big requirement of faith that Just talk to him and stop putting more things in between you and that percentage of certainty that you need to have that that's the right one.

Guess what if you're asking the creator of the universe what's right and you're putting in their faith in that creator of the universe and doing the best you can with it, My experience has been stop getting so dogmatic about what someone else's Experience has been whether it was 2000 years before Jesus was born or whether it was a hundred years after he died and it got canonized. Instead of putting a ton of stock in that and letting that be your guidance of your experience, maybe give it the weight that it deserves, maybe like C.S. lewis, but maybe also put a lot more credence into your own experiences and just let your good dad, as you say, be a good dad. So I thought that was actually really insightful. For me, it definitely lines up with sort of how I got through my wrestling match.

I was just going to give myself props for holding on in this whole conversation, as I always do. Curt always likes to go deep into spirituality, and I like to go deep into business. And we kind of like, try to push and pull together. But I feel like one of the good things about the way that I was brought up is I can hear all of this. I can feel it. And it's helpful, I think, for my journey in just hearing other people's experiences with this, knowing that it's not just, I believe this and that's the way it is.

Yeah.

Because that's what the exterior of a lot of people.

Well, it's safe. It's safe to log on to a dogma and just put it on the shelf and be like, okay, cool, check that box. Now I can go do stuff within the container I'm in. It's simpler. It's less complex. It's less cognitive work. There's almost like ignorance really is bliss. It really is.

I think so.

It is. Man, it'd be nice to be super dumb for a while, you know?

Well, guys, first of all, we have to have you come back because I have so many business questions, like, so many. And I'm mad that we didn't get to them because you were going to change the world. My world of my brain.

Well, I think he's already, like, just shown a little bit of the iceberg, just for the listeners, like, some of the stuff he's talked about as far as integrity and selling and how the, you know, we just scratched service on integrity of selling. And just a minute ago, he was talking about sort of what your purposes in this life are and how we fit together as entrepreneurs and society and I. E. Engineers and artists and athletes. And then actually, that really fits into, again, at the risk of going deep again. But the way I view heaven and the way that I think is the LDS tradition being that there's not like this stark one or zero binary thing. It's like heaven is Going to be ruled and run by people with certain sets of skills. And Josh talked about this, is that in business, you'll find that you can be just a regular, totally vanilla dude with one really good skill set or two really good skill sets and just blow the world apart with that.

There's so much to, like, dig into that from an entrepreneurial perspective.

Yeah. Will you come back, Josh?

Yeah, let's do it. Yeah, we'll schedule it right away and

make it happen, because we're really going to have a big debate the next time. Like, we're not going to be nice to you like we were this time. The thing Curt and I do every week is we try to have a disagreement. It's very frustrating. We always end up in the same spot of agreement almost.

Do you actually, like, go after it or do you just out?

We try. We really try. There have been times. Are we nice about it, Curt?

I feel like I think we're cordial about it. Yeah, I think we're cordial about it.

But, I mean, we try to have a debate.

There's no steamrolling going on around here.

Very disappointing. Yeah. All we want is a good debate.

Okay, let's do it.

Yeah. This was awesome because I did get so much out of these two hours, and it was great to reconnect with you. And I've always been impressed with your brain and how deep and wide it goes. Like, it's everywhere.

Ashley's actually made several comments about his sexy brain. I love Ashley's look.

She didn't marry me, I can tell you that.

Our next episode should be with Ashley.

We need women guests. I am saying that because I like it to be pretty equal.

Yeah, let's do it. Whatever you guys want.

Awesome. Yeah. Thank you so much. This was incredible, and I appreciate you, Josh.

We love you, bro.

We do.

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