What Is Truth?

Studio open and podcast-website woes

A host opens live from the Pathway Studios in Johnston proper, then confesses he broke the podcast feed while trying to reorient the show website toward podcasting, spending three work hours fixing it. He notes the site is slow and videos have not been posted in months, and says the show will keep coming as one long-form conversation rather than being chopped into short bits.

This is my truth: the hospital electrician story

• Why does it seem so hard to find truth?

A host recounts a conversation with a coworker who used the phrase "this is my truth" during a talk about management styles. The coworker gave the example of a facilities head accused of being a lazy electrician because lobby lights were off, when they were on daylight sensors. The hosts draw the distinction between lacking information (fixable, as in the lights) and perceiving the same facts differently (his blue-green paint disagreement with his wife).

Confirmation bias, unread articles, and the mower fuel filter

The conversation turns to confirmation bias: people share articles they never read because the headline affirms what they believed. A host admits he stopped reading a search result halfway because it said he was right, and another admits buying a fuel filter, carburetor, spark plugs, and fuel lines for a mower when the real problem was a clogged gas-tank pickup tube.

Jesus and Pilate: What is truth?

A host reads the back half of the Jesus-Pilate exchange in John 18: "my kingdom is not of this world," "I was born for this, to testify to the truth," and Pilate's reply "What is truth?" The hosts note Pilate is not merely disbelieving; he is asking how he could even know what is true, and discuss how Christian truth claims often feel intangible or unvalidatable.

Feelings are real but passing, like the high-school crush

A host argues that feelings are real but are perceptions, not permanent objective reality, using the high-school crush that felt world-ending and was forgotten two weeks later. Applied to faith: the felt distance from God in a dry season was never actually there. Putting all stock in passing perceptions is the root problem.

Dan on marriage expectations and the offense-as-perception principle

• Are many marriage problems rooted in misdirected truth, perception, and opinion?

A host asks Dan, addressed by name, whether many marriage problems come from misdirected truth, perception, and opinion. Dan answers that differing expectations and how people interpret whether they were met are at the heart of it. The hosts add the principle that being offended is a perception question: never answer "I was offended" with "I said nothing offensive," and distinguish perception issues from checkable objective realities like a bank statement.

Fact vs. opinion with the girls in the room

• How do you know if something is a fact or an opinion?

The kids in the studio weigh in on fact vs. opinion. Ella, invited to the microphone, distinguishes opinion (how you thought about it, like Emma calling the fair great) from truth, and a host helps with the framing: two people should not reach different conclusions about an objective fact. A room participant notes creation debates bog down into semantic arguments, leading into the next chapter.

Moving definitions: we have agreed to call it blue

The hosts argue that shifting definitions make truth harder to communicate, not harder to know: society agreed long ago to call the color blue, and when people move words around, conversations burn time on semantics instead of on whether we care what is true. A host says this is what has happened with gender language, turning an objective reality into a perception question.

We look for things that make us right, from the Declaration to the dog

• How do we get better at interacting with the notion of truth day to day?

"We don't look for truth. We look for things that make us right," a participant says, joking that the Declaration of Independence promises the pursuit of happiness, not truth. A host suggests stopping adjectives, which sparks bits about drywall estimates, the world's sweetest dog, and the world's-greatest-dad shirt bought at Goodwill. A host says our communication style of holding every word like a court of law makes life harder.

Mr. SmartMike's amp clamp: look at what is actually happening

Leila poses the maintenance-man hypothetical: a factory worker keeps blowing up his generator and calls "Mr. SmartMike," who clamps the amps and says it is drawing too many, while the manufacturer says it should handle it. The hosts land on critical thinking: look at what is actually happening (hot windings, tripping breaker). A host applies it to Jesus: he has watched God be faithful over forty years and seen unchangeable lives changed, so he deals in observable fruit rather than perception. A participant notes everyone gets forced to instantly defend opinions they barely hold.

By their fruit: following Jesus has to actually work

"You can tell a tree by its fruit," a host says: if following Jesus had not produced fruit over his lifetime, he would have bailed, but it has been "fantastic," full of joy, grace, forgiveness, and love. Christianity does not invite you to make more of yourself ("I must decrease"), and the top two commandments do not even include you. The punchline: evangelism is not a pyramid scheme; there is nothing in it for him, it is entirely for the other person's benefit.

Questions over arguments: your job is to be a revealer

Asking questions, the hosts say, is what narrows perception issues down to objective reality, and it is the point of the advice portion of the show. A host tells of a Christian arguing to win against a nonbeliever and losing handily: even if you win the argument, you have left the man thinking God is a jerk. The posture should be Paul's: lose everything, just want people to know Jesus. The hosts coin the superhero name "Apocalypse" for the believer: your job is revelation, revealing God's realities by life and words.

Pick your own pharaoh: America, free thought, and the persecuted church

• Is restricted freedom the reason Jesus is flourishing in countries like China?

Chris is invited to speak and asks whether restricted freedom in places like China is why Jesus is flourishing there. The hosts develop the "pick your own pharaoh" image: America gives you the option to choose what enslaves you, and a societal value of free thought can become stubbornness toward God's thought. Everyone has free will; the question is the consequence of exercising it, and comfort and wealth carry the risk of becoming your own god when you stop being reminded of who made the world.

Loki, the Tower of Babel, and Ella finds the lost watch

A participant reads the Disney+ Loki show as a picture of people taking what God did, saying "we did this," while it is all fake, and a host connects it to the Tower of Babel: humanity deciding it can take God's place, producing only "Mike-sized fruit." Then a host tells how a lost Epic watch turned up through his cousin Grace at church, and Ella recounts finding it herself while cleaning the purple room as an obedient child: a small answered prayer, "soaked in Jesus everywhere," and a reminder that God is down to the hair-counting level of care.

Complaint line, Grace opinions, and the hankles debate

A host plugs the Bob Eisenlauer complaint line at (515) 517-0085 for anyone offended by things the girls said. A riff on "hankles" (a host's portmanteau of hackles and ankles) sparks a goofy debate over what a hackle is, then the host pivots: "let's do the advice on this thing."

Dear LFTP: the promised antiques that went to the brother-in-law

• How do we reconcile feeling used when promised family antiques were given to the brother-in-law?

The Dear LFTP letter: before marriage, a woman and her husband heard stories that the eldest son would inherit the antiques; after long weekends working on the in-laws' honey-do list, the parents gave every piece to the brother-in-law. She asks whether she is out of bounds feeling defrauded and no longer wants to be around them. The hosts separate two issues: the work was not only for the goods, and feeling disappointed is justified, but parting company over the missing bonus is wrong thinking. Mike, addressed by name, reads the Secular answer: ask politely, put promises in writing, and be less at their beck and call. The hosts reject the Secular posture: help because you want to, with no secret motivation.

Outro: thanks to the Foose Girls and the benediction

The host thanks the Foose Girls for hanging out, plugs the older Foose ladies' podcast "Vintage Trouble on the Devil" and Dan's Pathway Church sermon podcast (currently through Revelation's first three chapters), jokes about the world's-greatest-dad shirt again, and closes with the benediction "be faithful in the means; God will handle the ends."