WEBVTT 00:00:37.200 --> 00:00:39.440 Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. 00:00:39.440 --> 00:00:40.480 I am Corey J. 00:00:40.480 --> 00:00:41.360 Mahler. 00:00:41.360 --> 00:00:42.880 And I'm Wo. 00:00:43.520 --> 00:00:46.640 In today's episode of Stone Choir, we're going to be talking a 00:00:46.640 --> 00:00:50.560 little bit more about framing and talking about some issues and some 00:00:50.560 --> 00:00:54.080 things that we can do in our own lives or questions that 00:00:54.080 --> 00:00:57.600 we need to solve individually, personally in our own lives. 00:00:57.600 --> 00:01:00.560 Uh before we get into some of the specifics of what we 00:01:00.560 --> 00:01:03.360 want to talk about, we want to just speak in kind of 00:01:03.360 --> 00:01:07.600 generalities specifically about speaking in generalities. 00:01:07.840 --> 00:01:09.600 So I mean by that is this. 00:01:09.600 --> 00:01:12.400 A lot of the topics that we've discussed in the past have 00:01:12.400 --> 00:01:16.240 been big ticket items, you know, things like Christian nationalism. 00:01:16.240 --> 00:01:17.360 That's a concept. 00:01:17.360 --> 00:01:20.480 That's a big I mean, talking about an entire nation and you're 00:01:20.480 --> 00:01:21.920 talking about a religion. 00:01:21.920 --> 00:01:25.440 Those are for better or worse, ultimately sweeping generalities. 00:01:25.440 --> 00:01:28.720 You can talk about the principles involved, but it doesn't doesn't necessarily 00:01:28.720 --> 00:01:31.760 tell you the individual, okay, what do I do next? 00:01:31.760 --> 00:01:35.040 So today we're gonna take it to the other end of the 00:01:35.040 --> 00:01:37.360 scale. What do I do next? 00:01:37.360 --> 00:01:40.240 Not in a prescriptive fashion, like we're not this isn't gonna be 00:01:40.240 --> 00:01:41.600 an advice show. 00:01:41.600 --> 00:01:44.160 We just wanted to talk in general about like I like I 00:01:44.160 --> 00:01:46.880 said, some questions that do need to be answered in some of 00:01:46.880 --> 00:01:49.520 our lives, in many of our lives. 00:01:49.520 --> 00:01:54.000 To frame that, I think it's important to note the crucial distinction 00:01:54.000 --> 00:01:59.760 between strategy and tactics, or another way of thinking about it that 00:01:59.840 --> 00:02:02.800 are is the ends versus the means. 00:02:02.800 --> 00:02:07.680 So strategy and tactics are it's a distinction that is principally derived 00:02:07.680 --> 00:02:09.600 from warfare, where the strategy 00:02:10.800 --> 00:02:14.080 is the macro scale goal. 00:02:14.080 --> 00:02:18.240 What is the big ticket achievement that you want? 00:02:18.240 --> 00:02:22.800 And then the tactics are the individual things that you perform to 00:02:22.800 --> 00:02:25.280 achieve that strategic goal. 00:02:25.280 --> 00:02:30.720 You know, so for example, during the Revolutionary War in the colonies, 00:02:30.720 --> 00:02:34.000 the strategic goal of the colonies was to become independent. 00:02:34.000 --> 00:02:39.040 And the strategic goal of the king was to maintain control over 00:02:39.040 --> 00:02:40.240 his colonies. 00:02:40.240 --> 00:02:45.920 The tactics were what happened after those two strategic worldviews were fundamentally 00:02:45.920 --> 00:02:50.240 misaligned. They could have just said we're gonna part our separate ways, 00:02:50.240 --> 00:02:51.680 no harm, no foul. 00:02:51.680 --> 00:02:54.640 Instead, they shot and killed each other for a while. 00:02:55.040 --> 00:02:57.280 We're not gonna talk about you know the specifics of that, but 00:02:57.280 --> 00:03:00.640 that's just an example of the strategy is I have a goal 00:03:00.640 --> 00:03:03.440 of being no longer a colony of England. 00:03:03.440 --> 00:03:05.440 I want to be an independent state. 00:03:05.440 --> 00:03:07.120 And then the tactic is: well, 00:03:07.120 --> 00:03:09.840 do I shoot lobster backs or not? 00:03:10.320 --> 00:03:13.920 The ends that are used, or the ends that we seek and 00:03:13.920 --> 00:03:17.200 the means by which we seek them are two different things. 00:03:17.440 --> 00:03:18.320 They should be aligned. 00:03:18.320 --> 00:03:21.520 I mean, obviously you want your tactics or your your means to 00:03:21.520 --> 00:03:24.000 be aligned with what your strategic goal is. 00:03:24.000 --> 00:03:27.680 So when we do an episode on something like Christian nationalism, that's 00:03:27.680 --> 00:03:30.000 a strategic well, that's the question. 00:03:30.000 --> 00:03:33.040 Is Christian nationalism the strategic goal? 00:03:33.040 --> 00:03:34.720 And I think the answer is no. 00:03:34.720 --> 00:03:38.800 I I think that even something as big scale as that is 00:03:38.800 --> 00:03:41.840 still fundamentally the means to an end. 00:03:41.840 --> 00:03:46.000 Where for Christians the end, the ultimate end, the ultimate strategic goal 00:03:46.080 --> 00:03:50.240 should be I want a Christian world, I want a Christian nation, 00:03:50.240 --> 00:03:54.480 I want a Christian country, a Christian government, I want a Christian 00:03:54.480 --> 00:03:58.400 community with Christian laws, I want a Christian family, and I want 00:03:58.400 --> 00:04:00.080 a Christian church. 00:04:00.080 --> 00:04:04.240 So strategically, that's kind of I think where most of us are 00:04:04.240 --> 00:04:05.120 coming from. 00:04:05.120 --> 00:04:08.880 We want everything to be ordered in a godly fashion. 00:04:08.880 --> 00:04:14.240 And so something like Christian nationalism is it's not reinventing the wheel, 00:04:14.240 --> 00:04:16.800 but it's just saying, hey, this is something that used to exist 00:04:17.120 --> 00:04:20.000 for almost all of human history, and then we got rid of 00:04:20.000 --> 00:04:23.120 it. Maybe when things got worse and we got rid of it, 00:04:23.120 --> 00:04:25.280 that's a signal that we should go back to what we were 00:04:25.280 --> 00:04:29.280 doing. But the important point is that the idea of Christian nationalism 00:04:29.280 --> 00:04:31.040 itself is not the goal. 00:04:31.040 --> 00:04:32.800 It's not the end state. 00:04:32.800 --> 00:04:35.600 It is a tool, it is a means or a tactic of 00:04:35.600 --> 00:04:39.520 achieving the ultimate goal of just having a Christian nation, a Christian 00:04:39.520 --> 00:04:43.040 country, a Christian people, and on down. 00:04:43.040 --> 00:04:46.800 So the reason that we wanted to focus on this first is 00:04:47.360 --> 00:04:50.800 so many times when these various discussions come up all over the 00:04:50.800 --> 00:04:54.720 place on the right, on the Christian right in particular, everybody wants 00:04:54.720 --> 00:04:56.000 to be, well, what about? 00:04:56.000 --> 00:04:56.880 Well, what about this? 00:04:56.880 --> 00:04:57.920 Well, what about that? 00:04:57.920 --> 00:05:01.280 You say you want a Christian country, but then people are still 00:05:01.280 --> 00:05:02.400 gonna do crime. 00:05:02.400 --> 00:05:04.640 So how does that even make sense? 00:05:04.640 --> 00:05:06.080 That's nonsense. 00:05:06.080 --> 00:05:09.840 The you do the thing if it's the right thing to do. 00:05:09.840 --> 00:05:14.560 And if not everything is perfect, you have to realize that that's 00:05:14.560 --> 00:05:16.880 because Jesus hasn't come back yet. 00:05:16.880 --> 00:05:17.760 Nothing's perfect. 00:05:17.760 --> 00:05:19.520 Nothing's going to be perfect. 00:05:19.520 --> 00:05:23.680 So it's not a negating of the tactic to to say that 00:05:23.680 --> 00:05:28.240 the entire overarching goal of everything being Christian and godly hasn't been 00:05:28.240 --> 00:05:32.800 achieved. I w I want to get people thinking in terms of 00:05:33.120 --> 00:05:36.400 this one small thing that I can do in my life that's 00:05:36.400 --> 00:05:40.160 an improvement is worth doing, even if it doesn't solve all my 00:05:40.160 --> 00:05:40.800 problems. 00:05:41.200 --> 00:05:44.960 There's a real tendency on the right to think that at some 00:05:44.960 --> 00:05:48.560 point we're going to have a leader who stands up And we're 00:05:48.560 --> 00:05:52.640 going to go from the current disaster area that we see around 00:05:52.640 --> 00:06:00.160 ourselves to some sort of pristine semi-paradise here on Earth practically overnight. 00:06:00.160 --> 00:06:03.600 And that's just not the way any of this works. 00:06:03.600 --> 00:06:06.800 It's not the way that anything in life works. 00:06:06.800 --> 00:06:10.640 If you want to build a house that's done brick by brick. 00:06:10.640 --> 00:06:13.280 You have to lay the foundation first, and before you do the 00:06:13.280 --> 00:06:16.400 foundation you have to survey, you have to clear land, there are 00:06:16.400 --> 00:06:19.520 steps you have to take to do these things. 00:06:19.520 --> 00:06:25.760 You're not going to go from A to Z without going through 00:06:25.760 --> 00:06:28.480 all the points in between. 00:06:28.480 --> 00:06:32.080 And we have to come to terms with that on the right. 00:06:32.080 --> 00:06:35.280 We have to come to terms with that as Christians. 00:06:35.280 --> 00:06:38.640 What we need to be doing is the small things in our 00:06:38.640 --> 00:06:41.040 everyday lives, everything Every single time 00:06:41.920 --> 00:06:44.320 you choose to do a good work. 00:06:44.320 --> 00:06:47.040 You're making the world just a little bit better. 00:06:47.040 --> 00:06:50.960 And that ultimately is actually the end goal. 00:06:50.960 --> 00:06:56.320 Because the end goal is to set conditions under which more people 00:06:56.320 --> 00:07:01.040 choose to do the good thing in more circumstances. 00:07:01.040 --> 00:07:04.640 Because that's what it means to live in a good world, to 00:07:04.640 --> 00:07:09.840 live in a Christian society, is you have people, individuals making these 00:07:09.840 --> 00:07:14.720 good decisions, doing these good works, preferably all the time. 00:07:14.720 --> 00:07:20.320 There's no sort of abstract entity that makes everything good. 00:07:20.320 --> 00:07:20.880 You don't have 00:07:21.760 --> 00:07:27.600 a Christian nation and then that abstraction instead of the concrete individuals, 00:07:27.600 --> 00:07:28.480 families, etc. 00:07:28.800 --> 00:07:31.840 You don't have that abstraction making everything good. 00:07:31.840 --> 00:07:37.200 No, it's the individuals in their daily lives, going about their tasks 00:07:37.200 --> 00:07:40.880 that God has set before them, that's what makes society good. 00:07:40.880 --> 00:07:43.760 That's what makes things better for everyone. 00:07:43.760 --> 00:07:47.440 Yes, if you have good laws, if you have the proper infrastructure 00:07:47.440 --> 00:07:49.840 in place, it makes that stuff easier. 00:07:49.840 --> 00:07:53.120 It makes it more likely, which is, of course, the goal. 00:07:53.120 --> 00:07:58.320 But you still need individuals who are going forth and performing the 00:07:58.320 --> 00:08:03.120 good works that God prepared beforehand for us to walk in them? 00:08:03.120 --> 00:08:05.280 That's what Scripture tells us. 00:08:05.280 --> 00:08:10.960 And so we need to look at the everyday instead of always 00:08:10.960 --> 00:08:17.600 focusing on these grand overarching issues, because that's that's what the ultimately 00:08:17.680 --> 00:08:22.640 what the commandments are about, that's ultimately what Christian teaching is about. 00:08:22.640 --> 00:08:23.520 God does not need 00:08:24.480 --> 00:08:25.760 our good works. 00:08:25.760 --> 00:08:27.760 God doesn't need anything. 00:08:27.760 --> 00:08:31.040 God doesn't hunger, God doesn't thirst, now of course I'm not talking 00:08:31.040 --> 00:08:36.480 about Christ according to his humanity, I'm talking about God the divinity. 00:08:36.480 --> 00:08:39.360 So God does not need our good works. 00:08:39.360 --> 00:08:41.040 Our neighbor needs our good works. 00:08:41.040 --> 00:08:44.240 And so that is how we live out our lives as Christians 00:08:44.480 --> 00:08:46.000 is in serving our neighbors. 00:08:46.000 --> 00:08:49.120 And of course we do that first and foremost with our closest 00:08:49.120 --> 00:08:52.400 neighbors, which if you are married, that is your spouse, if you 00:08:52.400 --> 00:08:56.240 have children, that is your children, and that is your immediate family, 00:08:56.240 --> 00:08:59.520 and then your extended family, and then your nation. 00:08:59.520 --> 00:09:02.800 And ultimately, of course, yes, others as well, in so far as 00:09:02.880 --> 00:09:04.480 you are able. 00:09:04.480 --> 00:09:07.360 For most, you aren't going to be able to do much for 00:09:07.360 --> 00:09:10.320 anyone in the far flung corners of the world. 00:09:10.320 --> 00:09:13.920 But you can most certainly do something good for your neighbor who 00:09:13.920 --> 00:09:15.360 is next door. 00:09:15.360 --> 00:09:20.800 And it's that every day good work, it's the everyday decision to 00:09:20.800 --> 00:09:24.000 make things a little better than they could otherwise be. 00:09:24.000 --> 00:09:28.160 That is ultimately how we get from A through B all the 00:09:28.160 --> 00:09:28.880 way to Z. 00:09:29.360 --> 00:09:29.520 And 00:09:29.520 --> 00:09:32.000 so it's really important for people to try to get out of 00:09:32.000 --> 00:09:39.040 their heads the the automatic naysaying whenever someone suggests something that 00:09:39.040 --> 00:09:41.280 won't solve all the world's problems. 00:09:41.280 --> 00:09:45.040 Yeah, it's as grown-ups we should be able to we shouldn't be 00:09:45.040 --> 00:09:46.000 doing that to begin with. 00:09:46.000 --> 00:09:48.160 That's a completely childish approach. 00:09:48.160 --> 00:09:51.440 And yet today it seems like in a lot of discourse it's 00:09:51.440 --> 00:09:54.880 almost the only thing you're gonna hear in response when someone suggests 00:09:54.880 --> 00:09:58.560 something. You know, the the example Corey gave of of building a 00:09:58.560 --> 00:10:00.800 house is exactly the one I had in mind. 00:10:00.800 --> 00:10:04.240 You know, imagine if your strategic goal is you want to build 00:10:04.240 --> 00:10:08.000 a house and so you begin by building a kitchen. 00:10:08.000 --> 00:10:11.680 Well, you didn't lay a foundation, you didn't put up walls, you 00:10:11.680 --> 00:10:14.080 didn't put up a roof, you started with a kitchen. 00:10:14.080 --> 00:10:18.240 Now, a kitchen is an important tactical aspect of having a house. 00:10:18.240 --> 00:10:20.880 You don't have a complete house without a kitchen. 00:10:20.880 --> 00:10:25.200 But if you begin there and that's all you have, you don't 00:10:25.200 --> 00:10:27.280 really have a house. 00:10:27.280 --> 00:10:29.680 So there there are two competing things. 00:10:29.680 --> 00:10:32.880 There's the notion that yes, I want all of my ultimate goals 00:10:33.360 --> 00:10:34.560 to be in alignment. 00:10:34.560 --> 00:10:37.440 I want to have a a house with plumbing and a roof 00:10:37.440 --> 00:10:39.920 and a kitchen and all the stuff that you want. 00:10:39.920 --> 00:10:43.040 And individually you have to make those decisions one day at a 00:10:43.040 --> 00:10:44.960 time and one piece at a time. 00:10:44.960 --> 00:10:49.440 And so with when individual subjects come up, like many of the 00:10:49.440 --> 00:10:52.160 episodes that we cover, you know, we we say in a lot 00:10:52.160 --> 00:10:54.320 of these episodes, we don't think this is the entirety of the 00:10:54.320 --> 00:10:54.880 Christian life. 00:10:55.040 --> 00:10:56.160 we'll ne we'll never say that. 00:10:56.560 --> 00:11:01.440 that's not the focus of what we're doing with this podcast. 00:11:01.440 --> 00:11:07.040 However, these are all pieces of you being informed and then making 00:11:07.040 --> 00:11:08.960 decisions in your life. 00:11:08.960 --> 00:11:09.280 So 00:11:10.480 --> 00:11:13.760 the emphasis that we're placing on things that are in some cases 00:11:14.240 --> 00:11:19.520 peripheral or not very on their face important. 00:11:19.520 --> 00:11:22.720 Like for example, we did the episode on Forgotten Doctrines, we talked 00:11:22.720 --> 00:11:26.640 about head coverings, and we had the question last week about do 00:11:26.640 --> 00:11:30.400 we think that hymns that were written by women should they be 00:11:30.400 --> 00:11:32.080 removed from the hymnals? 00:11:32.080 --> 00:11:35.120 And my response was it's not in my top fifty list of 00:11:35.120 --> 00:11:36.400 things to fix. 00:11:36.400 --> 00:11:41.200 Now I think that if we discuss what God says about the 00:11:41.200 --> 00:11:46.720 role of girls in the church, in communities and the hierarchy of 00:11:46.720 --> 00:11:51.840 things, many other things that used to be done will naturally return 00:11:52.160 --> 00:11:56.560 without us getting worked up about needing to redline a hymnal and 00:11:56.560 --> 00:11:58.320 say we gotta get rid of this get rid of this page 00:11:58.400 --> 00:12:00.320 in this hymn we gotta get rid of this. 00:12:00.320 --> 00:12:01.600 That's not my concern. 00:12:01.600 --> 00:12:05.920 My concern is the strategic goal of of obeying God in whatever 00:12:05.920 --> 00:12:06.640 he says. 00:12:06.640 --> 00:12:10.640 And when he says something about a subject, let's believe that and 00:12:10.640 --> 00:12:12.480 then work our way down. 00:12:12.480 --> 00:12:16.640 So the strategy, the strategic goal is always what does God want? 00:12:16.640 --> 00:12:20.800 And then the implementation details can be more or less important. 00:12:20.800 --> 00:12:23.840 Is it more important for you to be in a church where 00:12:23.840 --> 00:12:27.040 women are not preaching from the pulpit than for you to be 00:12:27.040 --> 00:12:29.600 in a church where women have written one of the hymns? 00:12:29.600 --> 00:12:31.520 Yes. That's a much bigger problem. 00:12:32.080 --> 00:12:35.440 It doesn't mean that if one is a problem, the other can't 00:12:35.360 --> 00:12:36.560 be a problem. 00:12:36.560 --> 00:12:39.440 And so as adults, we have to be able to triage all 00:12:39.440 --> 00:12:43.120 these things and say, well, you gotta draw a line somewhere. 00:12:43.120 --> 00:12:46.880 And this is, you know, this is a particular struggle that pastors 00:12:46.880 --> 00:12:49.360 face when they go to a new congregation. 00:12:49.360 --> 00:12:54.240 Maybe the previous pastor had some bad practices that are really maybe 00:12:54.240 --> 00:12:55.680 some are over his personal lines. 00:12:55.680 --> 00:12:59.200 Yeah, they're they're contrary to the teachings of that church, and yet 00:12:59.200 --> 00:13:02.960 this man in isolation was doing it, and so the congregation's used 00:13:02.960 --> 00:13:03.760 to it. 00:13:03.760 --> 00:13:07.760 When a new pastor comes in, he has to figure that out. 00:13:07.760 --> 00:13:08.480 What do I do? 00:13:08.480 --> 00:13:10.320 Where do I draw the line? 00:13:10.320 --> 00:13:12.480 Which things can I teach through? 00:13:12.480 --> 00:13:16.960 And which things do I have to put my foot down immediately? 00:13:16.960 --> 00:13:18.960 And that's those are tactics. 00:13:18.960 --> 00:13:22.160 That that's that's a very crucial tactical decision. 00:13:22.160 --> 00:13:25.520 And so one of the reasons for for highlighting this is that 00:13:25.840 --> 00:13:28.160 there's no flow chart for this stuff. 00:13:28.160 --> 00:13:30.720 There's no list of yes, these are all the things that you 00:13:30.720 --> 00:13:33.120 must do and you can do, and then these are all the 00:13:33.120 --> 00:13:34.960 lists of things you can never do. 00:13:34.960 --> 00:13:37.680 There are some things on each of those lists, but there's also 00:13:37.680 --> 00:13:40.160 stuff in the middle that's a matter of wisdom. 00:13:40.160 --> 00:13:44.560 And for example, the question of women writing hymns. 00:13:44.560 --> 00:13:46.560 I don't think it's a good idea. 00:13:46.560 --> 00:13:50.080 I think that it's conceivable someone might convince me that it was 00:13:50.080 --> 00:13:52.640 okay. I think that I would ultimately end up on the side 00:13:52.640 --> 00:13:53.840 that it's not okay. 00:13:53.840 --> 00:13:57.520 If uh however someone comes along, say say that we have a 00:13:57.520 --> 00:14:01.680 church where we've tamped down all the abuses and we've decided it's 00:14:01.680 --> 00:14:05.040 okay to have girls writing hymns. 00:14:05.040 --> 00:14:08.560 If someone comes along and says, Why won't you let girls be 00:14:08.560 --> 00:14:11.360 pastors? They're writing hymns, that's teaching too. 00:14:11.360 --> 00:14:13.440 My response is gonna be, okay, you win. 00:14:13.440 --> 00:14:15.040 We're getting rid of the hymns too. 00:14:15.040 --> 00:14:19.520 Because although it was an indifferent matter when we hammered it out 00:14:19.520 --> 00:14:22.400 and said, well, maybe, maybe not, we'll go with it. 00:14:22.400 --> 00:14:25.680 When someone comes along and tries to use that as license for 00:14:25.680 --> 00:14:30.320 a greater abuse that makes the thing evil on its face. 00:14:30.320 --> 00:14:34.880 Even if in isolation it might be questionable, if it's going to 00:14:34.880 --> 00:14:37.520 bear evil fruit, you gotta deal with it. 00:14:37.520 --> 00:14:41.280 Because if it's begins bearing evil fruit, it's gonna keep doing that. 00:14:41.280 --> 00:14:43.520 And so that's why a lot of these things are matters of 00:14:43.520 --> 00:14:46.480 wisdom. You know, the the blow up in the last couple weeks 00:14:46.480 --> 00:14:50.960 about Corey bringing up interracial marriage that caused pastors to lose their 00:14:50.960 --> 00:14:55.840 minds. Even if it were it were permissible on its face when 00:14:55.840 --> 00:15:00.560 all the downstream results are evil, that's a sign that the fruit 00:15:00.560 --> 00:15:03.840 of the tree proves the tree is bad. 00:15:03.840 --> 00:15:07.360 You don't have to have God saying you may never do this 00:15:07.760 --> 00:15:10.640 if all of the outcomes from that thing are terrible. 00:15:10.640 --> 00:15:13.360 That's God telling you this is not a good idea. 00:15:13.360 --> 00:15:17.920 And so the hyperactive moral concerns about if this isn't a sin, 00:15:17.920 --> 00:15:20.720 I'm absolutely permitted to do it. 00:15:20.720 --> 00:15:24.160 I I don't think it's the right way of approaching things. 00:15:24.160 --> 00:15:28.240 If something is good, it's going to bear good fruit. 00:15:28.240 --> 00:15:31.600 And when something does harm, as a matter of wisdom, you just 00:15:31.600 --> 00:15:34.000 stop doing it because it's bad for you. 00:15:34.000 --> 00:15:36.640 You know, it's it's the same as talking about diet. 00:15:37.040 --> 00:15:39.840 if you eat something and it hurts your stomach every time you 00:15:39.840 --> 00:15:42.000 eat it, stop eating it. 00:15:42.000 --> 00:15:44.400 And if I say that, if and someone's like, Were you saying 00:15:44.400 --> 00:15:45.360 it's a sin to eat it? 00:15:45.360 --> 00:15:46.560 No, I'm saying it hurts you. 00:15:46.560 --> 00:15:47.280 That's stupid. 00:15:47.280 --> 00:15:48.240 Don't do that. 00:15:48.240 --> 00:15:50.960 And if you get hurt every time you do something, if the 00:15:50.960 --> 00:15:54.640 result of doing a thing is harm, then it's bad. 00:15:54.640 --> 00:15:56.560 I don't have to find a verse in the Bible that says 00:15:56.560 --> 00:15:57.760 it's bad. 00:15:57.760 --> 00:16:01.680 If it's hurting you, that's the sign from God that you're doing 00:16:01.680 --> 00:16:03.280 something you shouldn't do. 00:16:03.280 --> 00:16:06.400 So a lot of this stuff isn't going to be prescriptive from 00:16:06.400 --> 00:16:09.920 scripture. It's just what is the best approach to this thing? 00:16:09.920 --> 00:16:13.920 And if we try something in good conscience thinking it's okay and 00:16:13.920 --> 00:16:16.480 then it causes harm, back off. 00:16:16.480 --> 00:16:17.920 Admit you made a mistake. 00:16:17.920 --> 00:16:18.880 That's okay. 00:16:18.880 --> 00:16:21.360 I think it's one of the biggest problems we have today, especially 00:16:21.360 --> 00:16:27.120 as we're generations into people making these intergenerational mistakes about living our 00:16:27.120 --> 00:16:30.800 lives. If you tell someone, hey, don't do that, and the response 00:16:30.800 --> 00:16:32.640 is, well, I know a guy and he did that, are you 00:16:32.640 --> 00:16:33.520 saying he's bad? 00:16:33.520 --> 00:16:34.880 Or my parents did that? 00:16:34.880 --> 00:16:37.040 Or this is the way it's always been done here. 00:16:37.200 --> 00:16:40.720 None of those are arguments against saying that maybe something's not a 00:16:40.720 --> 00:16:42.000 good idea. 00:16:42.000 --> 00:16:47.040 Our moral calculus needs to take into account both what God has 00:16:47.040 --> 00:16:51.840 absolutely revealed and also what is just plainly obvious from from our 00:16:51.840 --> 00:16:56.800 lives. If you're doing something it's fine, it's obviously not causing harm, 00:16:56.800 --> 00:17:00.560 that's that's not a cause for concern if God doesn't say anything 00:17:00.560 --> 00:17:01.200 about it. 00:17:01.200 --> 00:17:04.960 If, on the other hand, it's up in the air, but it's 00:17:04.880 --> 00:17:09.440 causing injury and it's causing people to spread false doctrine. 00:17:09.440 --> 00:17:12.160 That's a very clear sign that you have a problem that you 00:17:12.160 --> 00:17:13.280 need to deal with. 00:17:13.280 --> 00:17:16.480 And so triaging which of those things we deal with in which 00:17:16.480 --> 00:17:20.400 order, there's no there's no solution that can just be written down 00:17:20.400 --> 00:17:21.680 and handed to someone. 00:17:21.680 --> 00:17:26.080 We need intelligent, faithful men in various positions to always be asking 00:17:26.080 --> 00:17:30.800 these questions and do not immediately leap to the defense of whatever 00:17:30.800 --> 00:17:32.160 the status quo is. 00:17:32.160 --> 00:17:34.720 The status quo is frequently bad. 00:17:34.720 --> 00:17:37.760 It's frequently evil and it's frequently harmful. 00:17:37.760 --> 00:17:40.640 And the fact that maybe we did it with a clean conscience 00:17:40.640 --> 00:17:43.120 doesn't mean that it's something we should keep doing. 00:17:43.120 --> 00:17:47.120 If the question comes up and the harm is demonstrated, maybe it's 00:17:47.120 --> 00:17:50.320 time to look at rolling some things back until we get back 00:17:50.320 --> 00:17:53.920 to where our ancestors a few generations ago were living, because they 00:17:53.920 --> 00:17:56.880 were living Christian lives and they did pretty well. 00:17:56.880 --> 00:17:57.680 They got us here. 00:17:57.920 --> 00:17:59.520 Maybe we should take that into account. 00:17:59.840 --> 00:18:03.760 I think food is a really good example when it comes to 00:18:04.080 --> 00:18:08.000 describing whether or not something is inherently sin versus whether it is 00:18:08.560 --> 00:18:12.640 sin because of external considerations. 00:18:12.640 --> 00:18:16.080 So for instance, eating cake is not a sin. 00:18:16.080 --> 00:18:17.440 You are permitted to do that. 00:18:17.440 --> 00:18:18.880 You are allowed to eat sweets. 00:18:18.880 --> 00:18:22.560 Having some sugar every now and then is not is not even 00:18:22.560 --> 00:18:25.120 bad for you, realistically, and I know that some people are going 00:18:25.120 --> 00:18:28.080 to screech at me for that, but deal with it. 00:18:28.080 --> 00:18:31.040 Having sugar every so often is not bad for you. 00:18:31.040 --> 00:18:34.240 Eating it all the time is extremely bad for you. 00:18:34.240 --> 00:18:36.560 That will eventually give you diabetes. 00:18:36.560 --> 00:18:38.640 You will lose your feet. 00:18:38.640 --> 00:18:42.480 Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should do a 00:18:42.480 --> 00:18:45.280 lot of that thing, and it also doesn't mean that you should 00:18:45.280 --> 00:18:47.280 do that thing all the time. 00:18:47.600 --> 00:18:52.480 Alternatively, just because someone can do something doesn't mean that everyone should 00:18:52.480 --> 00:18:53.120 do it. 00:18:53.120 --> 00:18:57.040 So a diabetic should not be eating chocolate cake. 00:18:57.040 --> 00:19:00.640 Someone who is not diabetic who's not overweight can have some chocolate 00:19:00.640 --> 00:19:02.960 cake, that's totally fine. 00:19:02.960 --> 00:19:06.320 Right now, the drink that I have sitting right here with me, 00:19:06.320 --> 00:19:08.240 I have cold brew and milk. 00:19:08.240 --> 00:19:12.400 That would be a recipe for disaster for actually the majority of 00:19:12.400 --> 00:19:13.760 human beings. 00:19:13.760 --> 00:19:19.280 Because most people are at least mildly lactose intolerant. 00:19:19.280 --> 00:19:22.480 I'm Northern European, I'm not lactose intolerant. 00:19:22.480 --> 00:19:25.520 I drink two thirds of a gallon of milk a day. 00:19:25.520 --> 00:19:29.440 Coffee also causes a lot of people to have digestive issues. 00:19:29.440 --> 00:19:31.600 I can drink this and be totally fine. 00:19:31.600 --> 00:19:35.040 That doesn't mean that everyone else should do it as well. 00:19:35.360 --> 00:19:39.520 The matters we are discussing are matters of wisdom, and that is 00:19:39.520 --> 00:19:42.800 something that Christians are supposed to have. 00:19:42.800 --> 00:19:47.520 In Scripture it is very clearly stated that being a fool is 00:19:47.520 --> 00:19:48.880 not a good thing. 00:19:48.880 --> 00:19:51.520 Christians are not called to be fools. 00:19:51.520 --> 00:19:56.560 Yes, you are called to be childlike in your faith when it 00:19:56.560 --> 00:19:59.280 comes to faith in God. 00:19:59.280 --> 00:20:01.200 You are to have a childlike faith. 00:20:01.200 --> 00:20:02.320 That is correct. 00:20:02.320 --> 00:20:05.440 That does not mean you are supposed to be a fool. 00:20:05.440 --> 00:20:08.640 In fact, you are supposed to be as wise as a serpent 00:20:08.800 --> 00:20:11.280 when it comes to dealing with the world. 00:20:11.280 --> 00:20:14.160 And we as Christians have let that fall by the wayside. 00:20:14.160 --> 00:20:19.200 That has been ignored in our modern context, instead, we have gone 00:20:19.200 --> 00:20:23.120 all in on the other side and attempted to find all of 00:20:23.120 --> 00:20:28.080 the little lines, all of the edges of the cliffs, saying, Well, 00:20:28.080 --> 00:20:30.400 I can come right up to this cliff and do whatever I 00:20:30.400 --> 00:20:33.760 want as long as I don't go over. 00:20:33.760 --> 00:20:37.120 The problem with going right up to the edge of the cliff 00:20:37.280 --> 00:20:40.480 as long as you don't go over is you're you're probably going 00:20:40.480 --> 00:20:41.280 to go over. 00:20:41.280 --> 00:20:43.440 You're going to trip, you're going to fall, you're going to go 00:20:43.440 --> 00:20:47.120 over. Anyone who hikes knows that you don't walk right along the 00:20:47.120 --> 00:20:49.440 edge of the cliff for a lot of reasons. 00:20:49.440 --> 00:20:53.600 One, it could give out under you, but two, you are significantly 00:20:53.600 --> 00:20:55.600 increasing the odds of going over that cliff. 00:20:55.600 --> 00:20:58.160 No, you walk back from the cliff. 00:20:58.160 --> 00:21:01.440 We should be doing the same thing in the Christian life. 00:21:01.440 --> 00:21:07.440 Your goal should not be to find the absolute furthest edge of 00:21:07.440 --> 00:21:10.240 every one of God's rules. 00:21:10.640 --> 00:21:14.720 Of every place where God has said you may do this, or 00:21:15.120 --> 00:21:18.320 conversely, because of course it's the same line, where God has said 00:21:18.480 --> 00:21:19.840 you may not do this. 00:21:19.840 --> 00:21:22.160 Don't try to f find the point where as soon as you 00:21:22.160 --> 00:21:24.640 step over that it's a violation. 00:21:24.640 --> 00:21:28.080 That's not what it means to be a Christian. 00:21:28.080 --> 00:21:32.320 No I'm not taking the rabbinical or the pharisaical approach of saying, 00:21:32.320 --> 00:21:34.560 Well, you can't do this, so you shouldn't do anything that even 00:21:34.400 --> 00:21:36.560 That even remotely looks like this. 00:21:36.560 --> 00:21:40.720 No, I'm saying, as a Christian, be wise. 00:21:40.720 --> 00:21:44.480 As a Christian, consider what you are doing. 00:21:44.480 --> 00:21:49.920 And that ties into what we're discussing with the everyday in life 00:21:50.240 --> 00:21:54.640 because those things are undertaken pursuant to wisdom. 00:21:54.640 --> 00:21:58.720 You are when you act in the present, you are planning for 00:21:58.720 --> 00:22:00.720 the future, at least you should be. 00:22:00.720 --> 00:22:02.240 Not necessarily all the time. 00:22:02.240 --> 00:22:05.760 I'm not saying that every single thing you do has to be 00:22:05.760 --> 00:22:07.840 planning for the future at all times. 00:22:07.840 --> 00:22:11.840 No. You are allowed to relax, you're allowed to have time off, 00:22:11.840 --> 00:22:15.280 in fact God tells you that you are required to do so. 00:22:15.280 --> 00:22:18.240 The Sabbath is not just for hearing the word preached. 00:22:18.240 --> 00:22:20.560 The Sabbath is also a time of rest. 00:22:20.560 --> 00:22:24.480 And I know that's a problem for Americans who are by and 00:22:24.480 --> 00:22:26.320 large workaholics. 00:22:26.320 --> 00:22:28.800 You should be resting on Sunday. 00:22:28.800 --> 00:22:30.480 You should not be working on Sunday. 00:22:30.480 --> 00:22:32.720 That's not your time to catch up with the work you didn't 00:22:32.640 --> 00:22:34.000 do during the week. 00:22:34.000 --> 00:22:39.200 But in these good works that you're undertaking, in these decisions you're 00:22:39.200 --> 00:22:42.880 making, you should be planning for the future. 00:22:42.880 --> 00:22:46.720 And we have had a few generations now who have really not 00:22:46.720 --> 00:22:47.680 done that. 00:22:47.680 --> 00:22:52.160 Instead, they have looked at the present and pursued their own desires 00:22:52.160 --> 00:22:53.520 in the present. 00:22:53.520 --> 00:22:58.560 And that's why you see old buildings that were perfectly good buildings 00:22:58.720 --> 00:23:02.800 torn down and replaced with something that was new, because it's new. 00:23:02.800 --> 00:23:06.720 You see people who clear their property of trees that were a 00:23:06.720 --> 00:23:08.640 hundred, two hundred years old. 00:23:08.640 --> 00:23:12.560 Not because they need the property in order to farm, they don't 00:23:12.560 --> 00:23:15.840 need it in order to have farmland or to have fields. 00:23:15.840 --> 00:23:18.160 No, they just they wanted a lawn. 00:23:18.480 --> 00:23:21.760 There are just endless examples of this. 00:23:21.760 --> 00:23:27.520 We see a focus on the present, this high time preference, that 00:23:27.520 --> 00:23:31.760 does not work with civilization, that is unbecoming of a Christian. 00:23:31.760 --> 00:23:35.360 As Christians, we should be planning for what we're going to pass 00:23:35.360 --> 00:23:40.400 on to children and grandchildren and great grandchildren. 00:23:40.400 --> 00:23:44.480 And that ties into something that many men do not want to 00:23:44.480 --> 00:23:50.400 hear these days Women as well, but we're addressing an audience mostly 00:23:50.400 --> 00:23:50.880 of men. 00:23:50.880 --> 00:23:54.320 Yes, we know we have quite a few female listeners as well. 00:23:54.320 --> 00:23:54.640 But 00:23:56.400 --> 00:24:02.160 as men, as human beings, we right now are somewhat of an 00:24:02.160 --> 00:24:04.800 interim generation. 00:24:04.800 --> 00:24:09.120 Those before us made a great many errors, we are paying for 00:24:09.120 --> 00:24:11.040 those errors. 00:24:11.040 --> 00:24:16.400 No matter how well we pursue our tasks, no matter how much 00:24:16.400 --> 00:24:20.480 work we put in, we will not reap the benefit of most 00:24:20.480 --> 00:24:21.840 of it. 00:24:21.840 --> 00:24:25.760 God will bless us yes, because God always blesses faithfulness. 00:24:25.760 --> 00:24:30.080 He even blesses those who are not believers if they are faithful 00:24:30.080 --> 00:24:31.280 in other ways. 00:24:31.280 --> 00:24:36.400 Mormons are incredibly blessed in many ways, despite being heretics. 00:24:36.400 --> 00:24:38.320 They're not Christians, they're pagans. 00:24:38.320 --> 00:24:43.280 They're still blessed because they still pursue profile, they still have in 00:24:43.280 --> 00:24:44.720 group preferences. 00:24:44.720 --> 00:24:48.800 God still blesses them because of these things. 00:24:48.800 --> 00:24:52.400 But just because you do what is right, what is good, does 00:24:52.400 --> 00:24:55.120 not mean that your life will suddenly be perfect. 00:24:55.120 --> 00:24:59.120 The consequences of sin are not immediately removed when you become a 00:24:59.120 --> 00:25:03.920 Christian. And that includes intergenerational consequences of sin. 00:25:03.920 --> 00:25:08.800 And so a large part of our goal, what it should be, 00:25:08.800 --> 00:25:13.680 is making a better world for the coming generations. 00:25:13.680 --> 00:25:17.600 The old proverb, of course, comes to mind that societies grow great 00:25:17.600 --> 00:25:20.080 when old men plant trees in the shade of which they know 00:25:20.080 --> 00:25:21.280 they will never rest. 00:25:21.280 --> 00:25:23.680 That's absolutely true. 00:25:23.680 --> 00:25:28.880 Because some of the things you plant, whether figuratively or literally, they 00:25:28.880 --> 00:25:32.720 may not mature for twenty, thirty, forty, a hundred years, it just 00:25:32.720 --> 00:25:36.880 depends. You may not benefit personally. 00:25:36.880 --> 00:25:39.760 If you are a ninety year old man and you plant a 00:25:39.760 --> 00:25:44.080 walnut tree, you will probably never eat walnuts off that tree. 00:25:44.080 --> 00:25:47.360 However, your grandchildren will. 00:25:47.360 --> 00:25:50.560 And that is what we need to be doing, as Christians. 00:25:50.560 --> 00:25:53.760 That is the everyday stuff that we can do in order to 00:25:53.760 --> 00:25:55.680 make a better future. 00:25:55.840 --> 00:25:59.040 Yes, it will also improve the present, but we have to have 00:25:59.040 --> 00:26:03.120 that intergenerational mindset, and that is why we keep hammering away at 00:26:03.120 --> 00:26:09.760 the point of family, immediate and extended family of nation, of groups 00:26:09.760 --> 00:26:13.360 of people as God designed them to interact with each other as 00:26:13.360 --> 00:26:15.280 opposed to the individual. 00:26:15.280 --> 00:26:18.480 Because the focus on the individual, which is what we have had 00:26:18.480 --> 00:26:23.440 for decades, has been has proven conclusively to be incredibly destructive. 00:26:23.440 --> 00:26:26.560 And so we need to have a larger focus. 00:26:26.560 --> 00:26:31.200 We need to have a focus on the bigger picture while still 00:26:31.200 --> 00:26:34.320 acting in the everyday small things. 00:26:34.480 --> 00:26:38.400 Because when you plant an apple tree, you are looking to the 00:26:38.400 --> 00:26:42.160 future, you are looking at the bigger picture, but you are taking 00:26:42.160 --> 00:26:46.480 an immediate action then and there, it seems like a small action 00:26:46.560 --> 00:26:50.880 you're planting a tree, but it really does have an effect long 00:26:51.040 --> 00:26:52.480 term. 00:26:52.800 --> 00:26:57.120 One of the questions that we get asked some, and we certainly 00:26:57.120 --> 00:26:59.760 see a lot of people talking about all over the place in 00:26:59.760 --> 00:27:04.160 the last few years is one of relocation. 00:27:04.160 --> 00:27:05.520 Where should I live? 00:27:05.520 --> 00:27:06.960 Where can I be safe? 00:27:06.960 --> 00:27:08.640 Where can I find a good church? 00:27:08.640 --> 00:27:10.080 Where can I find a job? 00:27:10.080 --> 00:27:13.760 You know, all these you know basic human questions that are nothing 00:27:13.760 --> 00:27:19.920 new to our era, but they've absolutely changed in how they're manifest 00:27:19.920 --> 00:27:25.520 in the last few generations, really since the automobile, where some Social 00:27:25.760 --> 00:27:31.200 mobility means that now you can pretty much live anywhere you want. 00:27:31.200 --> 00:27:34.160 You can uproot overnight. 00:27:34.160 --> 00:27:37.600 You can you can have been your ancestors can have been in 00:27:37.600 --> 00:27:41.120 one place for centuries and one day you just say, I'm out 00:27:41.120 --> 00:27:41.920 of here. 00:27:41.920 --> 00:27:45.040 You run a U-Haul or whatever and you can be thousands of 00:27:45.040 --> 00:27:46.960 miles away the next week. 00:27:46.960 --> 00:27:50.240 And no one would think that's particularly weird anymore. 00:27:50.240 --> 00:27:52.960 You know, it used to be that only the the black sheep 00:27:52.960 --> 00:27:55.440 of families would do that sort of stuff. 00:27:55.440 --> 00:28:00.000 Now in the in the post-college world where it's sort of assumed 00:28:00.000 --> 00:28:02.160 that you you know if you have a kid that's even remotely 00:28:02.160 --> 00:28:04.640 bright, you want to send him off to college, whether it's a 00:28:04.800 --> 00:28:06.400 boy or a girl. 00:28:06.400 --> 00:28:10.720 Now it's perfectly normal for us to just scatter our children like 00:28:10.720 --> 00:28:12.400 seeds on the wind. 00:28:12.400 --> 00:28:15.520 And there's no expectation that they would ever come home when they're 00:28:15.520 --> 00:28:20.000 done. Yeah, it's not even a rumspringer where there's a notion that 00:28:20.000 --> 00:28:23.840 they're gonna go sow their oats and then they're gonna return home. 00:28:23.840 --> 00:28:29.360 You're basically sending them off into the world in hopes of finding 00:28:29.360 --> 00:28:31.680 something better than where they came from. 00:28:31.680 --> 00:28:34.400 And that's taken as folk wisdom today. 00:28:34.400 --> 00:28:36.800 Like that's that's just normal. 00:28:36.800 --> 00:28:39.200 And so one of the things that we want to talk about 00:28:39.200 --> 00:28:44.240 in this episode is the fact that that's actually profoundly perverse the 00:28:44.320 --> 00:28:48.000 the idea that you would uproot from a place where your people 00:28:48.000 --> 00:28:50.000 have been from, wherever it is. 00:28:50.000 --> 00:28:51.120 I don't care where it is. 00:28:51.120 --> 00:28:53.600 I d like like we said in the in the episodes on 00:28:53.600 --> 00:28:56.400 race, if you're African, God bless you. 00:28:56.720 --> 00:29:00.640 I hope you be or the best African you can possibly be. 00:29:00.640 --> 00:29:03.840 If you're from a place, be the best you can be in 00:29:03.840 --> 00:29:05.840 that place. 00:29:05.840 --> 00:29:09.280 What we have happening today is that people think that the only 00:29:09.280 --> 00:29:12.800 way to be a better version of themselves is to leave everything 00:29:12.800 --> 00:29:17.040 that they've ever known behind, everything their ancestors have known behind. 00:29:17.040 --> 00:29:17.360 I 00:29:18.720 --> 00:29:22.640 a few years ago I started doing genealogy of on myself just 00:29:22.640 --> 00:29:24.320 out of curiosity. 00:29:24.320 --> 00:29:24.640 And 00:29:25.520 --> 00:29:28.160 one of the things that I discovered was that the town that 00:29:28.160 --> 00:29:32.640 I was born in was founded by my family over two centuries 00:29:32.640 --> 00:29:36.800 ago. And And virtually all of my ancestors on that side of 00:29:36.800 --> 00:29:40.400 my family had lived there for over two hundred years. 00:29:40.400 --> 00:29:42.400 And what did I do? 00:29:42.400 --> 00:29:44.560 Well, my family moved away. 00:29:44.560 --> 00:29:47.680 And in my case, I I am completely ruthless. 00:29:47.840 --> 00:29:51.760 I am I am the the most terrible example of the rootless 00:29:51.760 --> 00:29:53.280 cosmopolitan today. 00:29:53.280 --> 00:29:56.240 By the time I was 18, I had lived in seven different 00:29:56.240 --> 00:29:59.040 addresses in three different states. 00:29:59.040 --> 00:30:02.560 I'm now up to 15 addresses in six states. 00:30:02.560 --> 00:30:06.320 I have no notion of place at all. 00:30:06.480 --> 00:30:07.840 J just none. 00:30:07.840 --> 00:30:10.720 Like part of the reason that I settled where I am now 00:30:10.720 --> 00:30:12.800 was it's the only place I've ever been. 00:30:12.960 --> 00:30:14.480 I've visited most of the states. 00:30:14.480 --> 00:30:16.960 I've spent a decent amount of time in a number of 'em. 00:30:16.960 --> 00:30:19.200 Th where I am now is the only place that ever felt 00:30:19.200 --> 00:30:22.160 like home, even though it wasn't where I was from. 00:30:22.160 --> 00:30:25.840 And what I'd found out when I did genealogy was that nineteen 00:30:25.920 --> 00:30:30.000 of my ancestors actually lived right around where I live today. 00:30:30.000 --> 00:30:33.840 They all moved to where I was born over two hundred years 00:30:33.840 --> 00:30:38.160 ago. They all moved and founded the place where I came from. 00:30:38.160 --> 00:30:41.600 And so my family is from a place that I was uprooted 00:30:41.600 --> 00:30:44.080 from by my own family when I was a minor. 00:30:44.080 --> 00:30:45.600 It didn't seem abnormal. 00:30:45.600 --> 00:30:47.680 It just was like that's what people do. 00:30:47.680 --> 00:30:49.600 You move and you move and you move. 00:30:49.600 --> 00:30:53.200 And so in my case, I haven't unpacked since 2011. 00:30:53.200 --> 00:30:54.720 I've moved several times since then. 00:30:54.720 --> 00:30:59.280 I like I unpack unpack some stuff, but I don't even bother 00:30:59.280 --> 00:31:01.360 finishing moving into a place. 00:31:01.360 --> 00:31:04.000 And I I'll probably never leave where I am now. 00:31:04.000 --> 00:31:04.960 I hope not to. 00:31:04.960 --> 00:31:07.280 I I hope this is the last house I ever live in. 00:31:07.280 --> 00:31:11.520 And yet I still have zero notion of making this my own. 00:31:11.520 --> 00:31:15.040 Like it's just it's that part of what should be in every 00:31:15.040 --> 00:31:18.080 person has been completely burned out of me. 00:31:18.080 --> 00:31:21.120 So I'm not saying this is something like I want to fix 00:31:21.120 --> 00:31:21.680 in myself. 00:31:21.680 --> 00:31:22.880 It's not a confession. 00:31:22.880 --> 00:31:24.000 It's just dead. 00:31:24.320 --> 00:31:27.520 that thing that a man should feel to be in a place 00:31:27.520 --> 00:31:29.840 and say I'm he's gonna make it his own. 00:31:29.840 --> 00:31:30.960 I don't have that. 00:31:30.960 --> 00:31:34.320 And I don't have that because of my upbringing and because of 00:31:34.320 --> 00:31:35.680 my conduct after that. 00:31:35.680 --> 00:31:37.600 You know, once I was an adult, I kept doing the same 00:31:37.600 --> 00:31:39.920 thing, kept moving around like crazy. 00:31:39.920 --> 00:31:42.240 I I moved around a lot less as an adult than I 00:31:42.240 --> 00:31:46.240 did as a kid, but it really burned into me that there's 00:31:46.320 --> 00:31:48.160 there's no notion of permanence. 00:31:48.160 --> 00:31:50.880 So the reason I'm mentioning this is not to talk about myself, 00:31:50.880 --> 00:31:56.240 but to say if you are trying to decide whether you should 00:31:56.240 --> 00:31:59.840 stay where you are or if you're going to move somewhere else. 00:31:59.840 --> 00:32:03.440 I would hope that for most people, the first barrier to get 00:32:03.440 --> 00:32:05.760 past is am I leaving my family? 00:32:05.760 --> 00:32:10.480 Am I leaving behind my roots, my my actual family members who 00:32:10.480 --> 00:32:11.440 live in a place. 00:32:11.440 --> 00:32:16.480 If you have extended family somewhere, by default, you probably shouldn't leave 00:32:16.480 --> 00:32:18.320 that. Like that's 00:32:19.200 --> 00:32:21.920 as a as a as a Christian matter, you should probably stay 00:32:21.920 --> 00:32:22.400 where you're. 00:32:22.560 --> 00:32:23.520 your family is. 00:32:23.520 --> 00:32:26.720 There are obviously reasons why you may have to move. 00:32:26.720 --> 00:32:29.280 You know, if if you're a Christian, you're if you're listening to 00:32:29.280 --> 00:32:31.840 this, you almost certainly are. 00:32:31.840 --> 00:32:32.160 You 00:32:33.120 --> 00:32:35.760 may have to move away in part because your family is completely 00:32:35.760 --> 00:32:39.920 pagan. And if you're raising kids, maybe your pagan family is actually 00:32:39.920 --> 00:32:41.600 harming your own children. 00:32:41.600 --> 00:32:45.520 It may be that in spite of those familial connections, you have 00:32:45.520 --> 00:32:48.480 to make a clean break for the sake of your children. 00:32:48.480 --> 00:32:51.520 So again, we we said earlier on, this is not a matter 00:32:51.520 --> 00:32:52.720 of a flow chart. 00:32:52.720 --> 00:32:55.680 There's not a yes this, no, that. 00:32:55.680 --> 00:32:57.840 All these things are matters of wisdom. 00:32:57.840 --> 00:33:00.800 If you have family, you should probably try to stay there. 00:33:00.800 --> 00:33:03.920 If you're not able to stay there or if there are overarching 00:33:03.920 --> 00:33:08.080 reasons why everybody needs to leave, that's another matter. 00:33:08.080 --> 00:33:12.320 But I mentioned my own past just to say if you have 00:33:12.320 --> 00:33:15.440 to uproot your kids, if you have to move them somewhere else, 00:33:15.840 --> 00:33:18.560 Don't make them feel like that's normal. 00:33:18.560 --> 00:33:20.960 You know, it's one thing to like move in different houses in 00:33:20.960 --> 00:33:21.760 the same area. 00:33:21.760 --> 00:33:26.960 When you're bouncing around between entire regions, it's fundamentally destructive. 00:33:26.960 --> 00:33:29.440 And I didn't like I'm not talking about a terrible childhood. 00:33:29.440 --> 00:33:30.720 My childhood was fine. 00:33:30.720 --> 00:33:31.520 I had no idea. 00:33:31.520 --> 00:33:35.360 I really I didn't realize how messed up that was until this 00:33:35.360 --> 00:33:37.840 decade. As I started looking at that and I added up how 00:33:37.840 --> 00:33:38.640 many places I lived. 00:33:38.800 --> 00:33:39.920 Like that's screwed up. 00:33:40.080 --> 00:33:42.320 Like no one should have to live that way. 00:33:42.320 --> 00:33:43.760 I never thought it was wrong. 00:33:43.760 --> 00:33:46.160 And that's that's the reason for mentioning that. 00:33:46.160 --> 00:33:49.200 There's so much of our lives that we're like, oh, that's fine, 00:33:49.200 --> 00:33:49.760 that's normal. 00:33:49.760 --> 00:33:51.040 That's what everyone does. 00:33:51.040 --> 00:33:52.640 It shouldn't be normal. 00:33:53.040 --> 00:33:54.400 it's not normal for humans 00:33:55.520 --> 00:34:00.320 to to have 15 addresses that that it it screws you up 00:34:00.320 --> 00:34:02.720 permanently. I am I am screwed up by that. 00:34:02.720 --> 00:34:05.520 I I have part of me that's damaged that's just never gonna 00:34:05.520 --> 00:34:07.680 regrow. And it's not something I can fix. 00:34:07.680 --> 00:34:08.960 I'm I'm not worried about it. 00:34:08.960 --> 00:34:09.920 It doesn't stress me out. 00:34:09.920 --> 00:34:13.360 It's just the thing that I should have for a place. 00:34:13.360 --> 00:34:15.360 Like I I enjoy the environment here. 00:34:15.360 --> 00:34:16.080 I like being here. 00:34:16.080 --> 00:34:18.320 I like seeing the trees and I like the weather and I 00:34:18.320 --> 00:34:21.280 don't want to go anywhere, but at the same time I don't 00:34:21.200 --> 00:34:22.720 feel like I belong here. 00:34:22.720 --> 00:34:24.880 This is just kind of where I am. 00:34:24.880 --> 00:34:26.880 I wouldn't want that for anyone else. 00:34:26.880 --> 00:34:29.040 And if you have kids and you have to uproot them, I 00:34:29.040 --> 00:34:31.760 would hope that you would try to make sure that if you 00:34:31.760 --> 00:34:34.560 have to uproot your family from where they are, there are good 00:34:34.560 --> 00:34:38.080 reasons for that, make sure that you're planting new roots in a 00:34:38.080 --> 00:34:40.320 new place as a conscious matter. 00:34:40.320 --> 00:34:44.080 That it's not just something you assume will happen. 00:34:44.080 --> 00:34:46.000 You should take conscious affirmative steps 00:34:46.880 --> 00:34:50.720 to plant those roots and to tell your kids that's what you're 00:34:50.640 --> 00:34:53.440 doing, to say we're leaving something behind. 00:34:53.440 --> 00:34:54.880 We're gonna make something new. 00:34:54.880 --> 00:34:57.600 And I'm doing this so that you and your kids will have 00:34:57.600 --> 00:35:01.440 something and have a permanence that we're not able to have right 00:35:01.440 --> 00:35:02.960 in this moment. 00:35:02.960 --> 00:35:03.120 Of 00:35:03.120 --> 00:35:07.200 course there is the caveat, and we'll go ahead and bluntly state 00:35:07.200 --> 00:35:12.640 it, if you happen to live somewhere like California or New York, 00:35:12.640 --> 00:35:14.720 you should move. 00:35:14.720 --> 00:35:19.680 That is the the simple reality of the time in which we 00:35:19.680 --> 00:35:22.960 live. If you are living in one of those states, one of 00:35:22.960 --> 00:35:27.840 those areas, it is dangerous to your children and dangerous to yourself 00:35:28.000 --> 00:35:29.440 to remain there. 00:35:29.440 --> 00:35:33.600 Not just because of crime rates and things like that, but the 00:35:33.840 --> 00:35:40.320 sheer wickedness of of certain parts of the country should be avoided. 00:35:40.320 --> 00:35:44.000 Not least of all because if you have children, there is a 00:35:44.000 --> 00:35:48.080 very real risk they will take your children away from you for 00:35:48.080 --> 00:35:51.520 simply teaching them Christian truth. 00:35:51.520 --> 00:35:54.000 And so if you live in one of those places, yes, you 00:35:54.000 --> 00:35:54.800 need to move. 00:35:54.800 --> 00:36:00.400 You should have moved already, but you should most certainly move soon. 00:36:00.400 --> 00:36:01.440 I did. 00:36:01.440 --> 00:36:03.520 I am from California. 00:36:03.520 --> 00:36:07.520 I lived in California most of my life, with the exception of 00:36:07.520 --> 00:36:11.440 the time that I spent in undergrad and then abroad for a 00:36:11.440 --> 00:36:14.000 little while to get another degree. 00:36:14.000 --> 00:36:18.720 Incidentally, I did move back to where my family lived and in 00:36:18.720 --> 00:36:22.080 both cases, because I moved back from abroad to California and then 00:36:22.080 --> 00:36:24.160 I moved from California to Tennessee. 00:36:24.160 --> 00:36:26.480 And my family has long roots here. 00:36:26.480 --> 00:36:30.720 I've had family in this part of the country for centuries, maybe 00:36:30.720 --> 00:36:33.280 three hundred years, give or take. 00:36:33.280 --> 00:36:37.760 Whenever Europeans started moving to the area basically. 00:36:37.760 --> 00:36:43.200 But I left California because California is no longer a suitable place 00:36:43.200 --> 00:36:45.440 for a Christian to live. 00:36:45.440 --> 00:36:47.120 Now that's unfortunate. 00:36:47.120 --> 00:36:48.320 I like California. 00:36:48.320 --> 00:36:50.560 It is one of the most beautiful parts of the world. 00:36:50.560 --> 00:36:53.680 I've been a lot of places in this country. 00:36:53.680 --> 00:36:54.560 California has 00:36:55.440 --> 00:36:59.840 most of the different environments, most of the different experiences you can 00:36:59.840 --> 00:37:03.280 have. It is a beautiful state, and I I hate that I 00:37:03.280 --> 00:37:04.320 had to move. 00:37:04.320 --> 00:37:06.080 I'm not saying I hate where I live now. 00:37:06.080 --> 00:37:10.560 It's a little warm this time of year, but other than that. 00:37:10.560 --> 00:37:14.720 But as a Christian, I could not live there any longer. 00:37:14.720 --> 00:37:16.800 I didn't move just for political reasons. 00:37:16.800 --> 00:37:19.200 Obviously, yes, that plays into it. 00:37:19.200 --> 00:37:24.560 But as a Christian, it is not a safe place to be, 00:37:24.560 --> 00:37:28.560 particularly not a safe place for anyone who has children, whether they 00:37:28.560 --> 00:37:32.960 are your children or children of a sibling or a cousin, what 00:37:32.960 --> 00:37:34.720 have you. 00:37:35.040 --> 00:37:37.920 There are real considerations like that. 00:37:37.920 --> 00:37:43.200 But outside those considerations, outside basically having to flee, become a refugee, 00:37:43.200 --> 00:37:45.280 because that's really what you're doing if you're fleeing one of these 00:37:45.280 --> 00:37:47.280 areas, but outside that 00:37:48.160 --> 00:37:48.960 you should remain 00:37:49.840 --> 00:37:54.720 where your family lives, where your family has lived, because human beings 00:37:54.720 --> 00:37:58.720 are meant to be able to put down deep roots, to live 00:37:58.720 --> 00:38:04.480 somewhere over a course of generations, a course of centuries, you should 00:38:04.480 --> 00:38:08.560 be able to go to the local graveyard and find the tombstone 00:38:08.560 --> 00:38:13.040 for your great great grandparents and your great great great grandparents, back 00:38:13.280 --> 00:38:16.000 however many generations. 00:38:16.000 --> 00:38:19.280 That is how human beings are intended to live. 00:38:19.280 --> 00:38:22.720 That is what God in the postfall world in which death is 00:38:22.720 --> 00:38:23.440 a thing. 00:38:23.440 --> 00:38:26.320 That is how God intends for us to live. 00:38:26.320 --> 00:38:32.480 You are supposed to have a connection to not just your family, 00:38:32.480 --> 00:38:36.000 not just the members of your community, but the soil where that 00:38:36.000 --> 00:38:38.560 community is located. 00:38:38.560 --> 00:38:42.080 Man was taken from the dust and yes, of course we will 00:38:42.080 --> 00:38:45.280 return to the dust, but man is of the earth in a 00:38:45.280 --> 00:38:46.800 very real sense. 00:38:46.800 --> 00:38:51.280 And part of that is having a deep connection to a certain 00:38:51.280 --> 00:38:54.320 physical part of the world. 00:38:54.320 --> 00:38:57.120 There's no such thing as a world citizen. 00:38:57.120 --> 00:39:00.960 If you're a citizen of everywhere, you're a citizen of nowhere. 00:39:00.960 --> 00:39:06.000 And so the the rootless cosmopolitan is not the Christian goal. 00:39:06.400 --> 00:39:11.920 The Christian goal is someone who can go outside and look out 00:39:11.920 --> 00:39:15.760 at the land that his grandfather looked at and his great grandfather, 00:39:15.760 --> 00:39:18.560 and like I said, go down to the local graveyard and see 00:39:18.560 --> 00:39:21.760 the graves of his ancestors, and want the same thing for his 00:39:21.760 --> 00:39:26.880 children. That is the Christian outlook and that is what we are 00:39:26.880 --> 00:39:31.360 encouraging listeners and others to do. 00:39:31.360 --> 00:39:37.360 Do the things that make for your legacy where you live. 00:39:37.360 --> 00:39:41.120 So yes, you're going to plant the apple tree, you're going to 00:39:41.440 --> 00:39:44.800 build the house, you're going to renovate things, you're going all these 00:39:44.800 --> 00:39:49.280 little things that add up to connecting yourself to a specific place, 00:39:49.280 --> 00:39:54.000 to anchoring yourself and your family to this particular land. 00:39:54.000 --> 00:39:55.760 Do those things. 00:39:55.920 --> 00:39:58.160 Yes, they seem like small things. 00:39:58.160 --> 00:40:01.040 Planting an apple tree, which is an example I will continue to 00:40:01.040 --> 00:40:03.600 use. Planting an apple tree is a small thing. 00:40:03.600 --> 00:40:05.200 Raising chickens is a small thing. 00:40:05.200 --> 00:40:07.360 Building a barn is a relatively small thing. 00:40:07.360 --> 00:40:10.080 Smaller if you have a lot of neighbors who are willing to 00:40:10.080 --> 00:40:13.600 help. But all of it adds up. 00:40:13.600 --> 00:40:17.120 And all of these are the things that build up to something 00:40:17.120 --> 00:40:20.720 greater, and that is what we need to be doing as Christians. 00:40:20.720 --> 00:40:22.800 We are seeking to undo Undo 00:40:24.080 --> 00:40:28.640 the harm caused by the last handful of generations who ripped up 00:40:28.640 --> 00:40:34.720 roots everywhere, tore down history, and basically turned everyone into a rootless 00:40:34.720 --> 00:40:35.280 individual. 00:40:36.480 --> 00:40:38.560 That is not a Christian life. 00:40:38.560 --> 00:40:42.480 A Christian life is a life that is connected to community, connected 00:40:42.480 --> 00:40:45.680 to family, connected to the land. 00:40:45.680 --> 00:40:49.760 And that is the life we want people to start building again. 00:40:50.000 --> 00:40:54.240 And like I said, you may not succeed in having that life 00:40:54.400 --> 00:40:58.400 for yourself you will to some degree, because your efforts will be 00:40:58.400 --> 00:41:00.560 rewarded as you work. 00:41:00.560 --> 00:41:05.600 However, these things take time, and so you are building a better 00:41:05.600 --> 00:41:10.320 future for your children and your grandchildren and generations you will never 00:41:10.320 --> 00:41:13.920 meet. Because the things that you do here today 00:41:14.800 --> 00:41:19.440 may very well benefit someone who lives two hundred years from now. 00:41:19.440 --> 00:41:22.960 You may meet him if you have trained up your children in 00:41:22.960 --> 00:41:27.600 the right way, you may meet that progeny so far away from 00:41:27.600 --> 00:41:31.280 you in time, in paradise, but you will not meet him in 00:41:31.280 --> 00:41:33.360 this life. 00:41:33.360 --> 00:41:36.480 But that's fine, that is the way things are in this life, 00:41:36.480 --> 00:41:38.720 that is the way things are supposed to be. 00:41:38.720 --> 00:41:41.840 You work to benefit those who will come after you even if 00:41:41.840 --> 00:41:43.760 you will never meet them. 00:41:43.760 --> 00:41:49.360 Because the goal is not to benefit oneself. 00:41:49.360 --> 00:41:52.880 Yes, you will benefit yourself if you do these things because of 00:41:52.880 --> 00:41:57.280 course God does reward you for the good you do. 00:41:57.280 --> 00:42:02.880 However, much of that will accrue to future generations, just the same 00:42:02.880 --> 00:42:07.600 as the errors of previous generations generations have accrued to us. 00:42:07.760 --> 00:42:10.560 A few years ago I went back to where I was born 00:42:10.560 --> 00:42:15.440 and spent some time with my grandma and we rode around town, 00:42:15.440 --> 00:42:20.240 the town that my family had built over two centuries ago and 00:42:20.400 --> 00:42:22.560 it continued building up to that day. 00:42:22.560 --> 00:42:25.120 And she as we were riding around, you know, she was in 00:42:25.120 --> 00:42:27.680 the passenger seat and so she would we just roll down a 00:42:27.680 --> 00:42:31.120 random street and she would point to house after house and tell 00:42:31.120 --> 00:42:34.560 me the names of everyone who had lived there and their family 00:42:34.560 --> 00:42:38.080 histories and what they did and she just she knew everyone and 00:42:38.080 --> 00:42:39.040 she knew everything. 00:42:39.040 --> 00:42:43.120 It was it was an incredible repository of a community that to 00:42:43.120 --> 00:42:44.960 me was just completely alien. 00:42:44.960 --> 00:42:49.680 Like you said, until I did my genealogy after think maybe when 00:42:49.680 --> 00:42:53.680 I'd visit her, but like I had no notion of that place 00:42:54.000 --> 00:42:55.280 meaning anything. 00:42:55.280 --> 00:42:57.440 No place has ever meant anything to me. 00:42:57.440 --> 00:43:00.320 And that's the the reason that we're mentioning this is that that's 00:43:00.320 --> 00:43:00.960 messed up. 00:43:00.960 --> 00:43:04.800 That's not that's not how humans have lived in the past. 00:43:04.800 --> 00:43:07.600 And the fact that it's so normal, like most of you, you 00:43:07.600 --> 00:43:10.720 know, some of you listening maybe have had more than fifteen addresses 00:43:10.720 --> 00:43:11.920 and more than six states. 00:43:11.920 --> 00:43:14.480 So you think that's just normal. 00:43:14.480 --> 00:43:16.400 I agree that it is normal today. 00:43:16.400 --> 00:43:18.480 It is not normal for the human condition. 00:43:18.480 --> 00:43:20.160 It's bad for us. 00:43:20.160 --> 00:43:22.560 I'm not saying oh, you did that, you're evil. 00:43:22.960 --> 00:43:24.800 Like it was it was stupid. 00:43:24.800 --> 00:43:26.160 I I shouldn't have done it. 00:43:26.320 --> 00:43:28.240 My parents, you know, did it to me first. 00:43:28.240 --> 00:43:31.120 So like I was just along for the ride, and I just 00:43:31.280 --> 00:43:33.200 I kept up the momentum. 00:43:33.200 --> 00:43:33.520 So 00:43:35.120 --> 00:43:38.080 I think that gets back to a point I made earlier when 00:43:38.480 --> 00:43:42.720 when we talk about these things, everyone wants to say, oh, you're 00:43:42.720 --> 00:43:44.560 saying there's a sin. 00:43:44.560 --> 00:43:47.040 At some point you just have to say, who cares? 00:43:47.040 --> 00:43:50.080 Like you look at the thing and it was it was harmful. 00:43:50.080 --> 00:43:52.720 I don't have to find a Bible verse to tell me that 00:43:52.720 --> 00:43:56.320 moving fifteen times has hurt me as a person. 00:43:56.320 --> 00:43:58.480 And I did it mostly to myself. 00:43:58.480 --> 00:44:02.320 So I'm not like I wasn't it wasn't a self-inflicted injury because 00:44:02.320 --> 00:44:03.920 I didn't know I was doing harm. 00:44:03.920 --> 00:44:06.720 But just the further and further away I got from where I 00:44:06.720 --> 00:44:10.720 came from, the less any it meant to me for anyone to 00:44:10.720 --> 00:44:11.840 be from anywhere. 00:44:11.840 --> 00:44:16.640 And that is not that is not our inheritance from our ancestors 00:44:16.640 --> 00:44:19.040 beyond the past couple cent generations. 00:44:19.040 --> 00:44:24.240 Like Corey said, like really you go back to before the automobile, 00:44:24.240 --> 00:44:25.840 nobody did this. 00:44:25.840 --> 00:44:27.280 Almost no one did this. 00:44:27.280 --> 00:44:32.400 You'd have exceptions where someone may uproot from the old comp country 00:44:32.400 --> 00:44:34.080 to the new country. 00:44:34.080 --> 00:44:36.960 And that would happen in times where there was nothing. 00:44:36.960 --> 00:44:39.280 You know, most of North America was empty. 00:44:39.280 --> 00:44:44.320 So when there were waves of people coming from northwestern Europe, they 00:44:44.320 --> 00:44:47.920 came here and they moved to places where sometimes there was just 00:44:47.920 --> 00:44:51.120 nobody. And so they were basically starting from scratch. 00:44:51.120 --> 00:44:53.920 Now the difference between the Germans moving to the Midwest and starting 00:44:54.000 --> 00:44:57.280 And starting from scratch in the English moving to New England and 00:44:57.280 --> 00:45:01.120 starting from scratch, is that the Germans had the army clearing everything 00:45:01.120 --> 00:45:03.120 out for them so they had it easy. 00:45:03.120 --> 00:45:06.960 It was the people who tamed the frontier that had a harder 00:45:06.960 --> 00:45:10.480 time of doing stuff, but still they were going someplace and building 00:45:10.480 --> 00:45:12.720 something from nothing. 00:45:13.200 --> 00:45:15.680 that's been a part of human history too, and we don't neither 00:45:15.680 --> 00:45:18.000 one of us thinks that it's bad for people to move from 00:45:18.000 --> 00:45:20.800 one place to another inherent inherently. 00:45:20.800 --> 00:45:24.960 But you know, when when Cory's ancestors and my ancestors left Europe 00:45:25.120 --> 00:45:28.800 four centuries ago, they were fleeing something. 00:45:28.800 --> 00:45:32.560 And they came someplace seeking refuge from what they were fleeing. 00:45:32.560 --> 00:45:36.080 They carved something from nothing in a new place and built it 00:45:36.080 --> 00:45:37.280 and handed it to us. 00:45:37.280 --> 00:45:40.560 And one of the reasons we're talking about the notion of place 00:45:40.560 --> 00:45:45.920 is that we now just fundamentally disregard our inheritance. 00:45:45.920 --> 00:45:50.720 You know, having lived somewhere for centuries and then just thinking absolutely 00:45:50.720 --> 00:45:53.040 nothing of it, not caring in the slightest. 00:45:53.040 --> 00:45:56.480 I'd rather go off to college and make more money and forget 00:45:56.480 --> 00:45:57.840 I ever came from this place. 00:45:57.840 --> 00:45:59.200 That's normal today. 00:45:59.200 --> 00:46:01.360 That's how most people behave. 00:46:01.360 --> 00:46:02.880 That's not good. 00:46:02.880 --> 00:46:04.240 It's is not healthy. 00:46:04.240 --> 00:46:05.360 It's not natural. 00:46:05.360 --> 00:46:08.720 It leads to an alienation from your own people. 00:46:08.720 --> 00:46:11.520 And it sets a pattern for future life that's going to be 00:46:11.520 --> 00:46:12.400 even worse. 00:46:12.720 --> 00:46:15.920 And so, you know, like we said, this isn't a Bible study 00:46:15.920 --> 00:46:19.760 episode where we're gonna give you Bible verses to prove this versus 00:46:19.760 --> 00:46:22.320 that. You can just tell by looking that some of the stuff 00:46:22.320 --> 00:46:23.840 is dumb and bad. 00:46:23.840 --> 00:46:26.080 God built us for that too. 00:46:26.240 --> 00:46:29.280 You when when it hurts your hand to touch the stove, You 00:46:29.280 --> 00:46:30.640 know not to touch the stove. 00:46:30.640 --> 00:46:32.720 You don't need a Bible verse to tell you not to touch 00:46:32.720 --> 00:46:33.520 the stove. 00:46:33.520 --> 00:46:36.640 This stuff is less obvious, like I said, I didn't realize until 00:46:36.640 --> 00:46:39.040 a couple of years ago how messed up it was. 00:46:39.040 --> 00:46:42.240 But But once I realize it, I realize that I would never 00:46:42.240 --> 00:46:43.520 wish that on anyone. 00:46:43.520 --> 00:46:47.600 So to get back to the question that we're discussing here, if 00:46:47.600 --> 00:46:53.280 you're confronted with I need to relocate because my state has gone 00:46:53.280 --> 00:46:57.040 down the tubes because I live near a city and I know 00:46:57.040 --> 00:46:59.120 it's going to burn down soon and I don't want to be 00:46:59.120 --> 00:47:01.520 anywhere near it when that happens. 00:47:01.520 --> 00:47:03.440 Maybe you want to reconnect with your roots. 00:47:03.440 --> 00:47:04.960 Maybe you have moved far away. 00:47:04.960 --> 00:47:06.480 Your parents moved far away. 00:47:06.480 --> 00:47:08.640 You maybe you want to go back to where your family has 00:47:08.640 --> 00:47:09.280 always been. 00:47:09.280 --> 00:47:11.520 Not saying that's necessarily the right choice. 00:47:11.520 --> 00:47:14.560 But if that is your choice for either yourself, you know, as 00:47:14.560 --> 00:47:18.080 a single man, or if you're relocating your family because they've been 00:47:18.080 --> 00:47:21.920 uprooted and you've been doing the same sort of thing. 00:47:21.920 --> 00:47:25.280 It's okay to do that, but as Corey said, we are in 00:47:25.280 --> 00:47:27.200 some ways an intermediate generation. 00:47:27.200 --> 00:47:32.560 We're in between A mess and trying to build something stable again. 00:47:32.560 --> 00:47:36.800 And part of trying to build something stable again may mean some 00:47:36.800 --> 00:47:38.080 more instability. 00:47:38.080 --> 00:47:41.120 So it may mean that you need to move and then tell 00:47:41.120 --> 00:47:43.040 your kids, I hope you'll never move again. 00:47:43.040 --> 00:47:45.840 I'm trying to build something here so that you won't have to 00:47:45.840 --> 00:47:47.120 do what we're doing now. 00:47:47.120 --> 00:47:49.920 So that your kids will never have to pack everything up and 00:47:49.920 --> 00:47:52.880 move over and over again. 00:47:52.880 --> 00:47:55.360 And that's why it's part it's important to look at these things 00:47:56.000 --> 00:47:59.440 not only as black and white moral matters, but as matters of 00:47:59.440 --> 00:48:03.120 wisdom. Because maybe the white the wise thing for you to do 00:48:03.280 --> 00:48:06.720 is to move and then to tell your own children whom you 00:48:06.720 --> 00:48:09.280 are moving, don't move Don't move. 00:48:09.280 --> 00:48:11.600 And so that's why it's important to say it's not that I'm 00:48:11.600 --> 00:48:12.720 sinning my moving. 00:48:12.720 --> 00:48:14.000 It's sin to move. 00:48:14.000 --> 00:48:15.920 It's not sin not to move. 00:48:15.920 --> 00:48:17.120 That's not the question. 00:48:17.120 --> 00:48:19.120 The question is what's the best thing for your family? 00:48:19.120 --> 00:48:21.600 And if it's staying put, stay put. 00:48:22.240 --> 00:48:24.560 one of the factors that goes into a lot of this is 00:48:24.720 --> 00:48:27.200 is there going to be a good church home for you. 00:48:27.200 --> 00:48:30.000 It's really hard to find a good church. 00:48:30.000 --> 00:48:33.920 And you know, it's been suggested to me personally that, you know, 00:48:33.920 --> 00:48:36.480 maybe I should move somewhere where there would be a church that 00:48:36.480 --> 00:48:38.720 was more welcoming. 00:48:38.720 --> 00:48:42.240 I think one of the things that you know for for Lutherans 00:48:42.320 --> 00:48:45.680 we need to particularly deal with is the fact that our pastors 00:48:45.680 --> 00:48:47.360 have this same lifestyle. 00:48:47.360 --> 00:48:48.720 Pastors bounce around. 00:48:48.720 --> 00:48:52.640 It's normal for pastors to take calls over and over again to 00:48:52.640 --> 00:48:54.720 all different parts of the country. 00:48:54.720 --> 00:48:59.680 So why would an individual move someplace for a good church if 00:48:59.680 --> 00:49:02.480 there's no guarantee it's gonna be a good church in five years. 00:49:02.480 --> 00:49:07.040 And unless the pastor can tell you before God he's never leaving 00:49:07.040 --> 00:49:10.640 that place, personally I don't think you should even consider it. 00:49:10.640 --> 00:49:14.160 Because you shouldn't uproot your family for a church if you have 00:49:14.160 --> 00:49:17.120 no idea if it's going to be there in a few years. 00:49:17.120 --> 00:49:20.240 Now, the advantage of going someplace where there is a good church 00:49:20.240 --> 00:49:23.200 is that by joining it, you can help to perpetuate it. 00:49:23.200 --> 00:49:27.280 So it's not like it's comp you're completely helpless in these situations. 00:49:27.280 --> 00:49:27.600 But 00:49:29.280 --> 00:49:30.800 These are all factors. 00:49:30.800 --> 00:49:33.200 I don't think you should leave the state that you're in just 00:49:33.200 --> 00:49:34.480 to find a better church. 00:49:34.480 --> 00:49:36.720 I don't think that you should stay in the state that you're 00:49:36.720 --> 00:49:38.720 in just because you have family there. 00:49:38.720 --> 00:49:40.400 I think all these things are factors. 00:49:40.400 --> 00:49:41.760 They need to be weighed. 00:49:41.760 --> 00:49:45.360 There's not a yes-no Bible answer to any of this. 00:49:45.360 --> 00:49:46.400 It's wisdom. 00:49:46.400 --> 00:49:52.080 And it's also wisdom to acknowledge the choice for you may well 00:49:52.080 --> 00:49:54.160 be this isn't gonna be great. 00:49:54.160 --> 00:49:55.120 This isn't ideal. 00:49:55.200 --> 00:49:57.920 We're going someplace and we're gonna build for the future. 00:49:57.920 --> 00:50:01.280 So that my grandkids will never know any of this. 00:50:01.280 --> 00:50:03.920 I think that's I think that's where we all have to be 00:50:04.000 --> 00:50:08.160 to forget about worrying, did I sin by doing this? 00:50:08.160 --> 00:50:10.720 Not that sins in the past aren't important. 00:50:10.720 --> 00:50:14.000 If you realize you've sinned, confess, repent. 00:50:14.000 --> 00:50:19.920 But the important thing is that we build a world where future 00:50:19.920 --> 00:50:22.560 generations don't have the problems we face today. 00:50:22.560 --> 00:50:25.520 Because as Corey said, all of this that we built up to, 00:50:25.520 --> 00:50:29.360 all this rootlessness and the stupidity about how we live our lives 00:50:30.000 --> 00:50:31.920 is is what we inherited. 00:50:31.920 --> 00:50:33.520 I moved because my parents moved. 00:50:33.520 --> 00:50:34.320 I thought it was fine. 00:50:34.320 --> 00:50:35.680 I thought it was normal. 00:50:35.680 --> 00:50:39.920 Now that I realize that that was screwed up, I would tell 00:50:39.920 --> 00:50:42.640 others, don't do it unless you really have to. 00:50:42.640 --> 00:50:44.160 Don't move away from home. 00:50:44.160 --> 00:50:46.880 Don't don't go to college, frankly. 00:50:46.880 --> 00:50:49.840 I don't think most people should be going to college. 00:50:49.840 --> 00:50:53.040 And one of the main reasons is you're moving away from your 00:50:53.040 --> 00:50:55.520 family. You're moving away from your roots. 00:50:55.520 --> 00:50:58.960 Now it's perhaps a different factor, in different matter, if there's a 00:50:59.360 --> 00:51:02.800 local college that's not destructive to your soul where you can keep 00:51:02.800 --> 00:51:06.000 going to the same church and you have those family bonds. 00:51:06.000 --> 00:51:07.120 But that's rare. 00:51:07.120 --> 00:51:09.200 Most people don't have that luxury. 00:51:09.200 --> 00:51:09.520 So 00:51:11.120 --> 00:51:14.640 As matters of wisdom, we kind of need to recalibrate how we 00:51:14.640 --> 00:51:18.080 decide from the word go what we do with our lives. 00:51:18.080 --> 00:51:21.280 Cause a lot of the decisions that everyone just thought was normal 00:51:21.280 --> 00:51:24.160 a few years ago, turns out they've been really bad for us 00:51:24.160 --> 00:51:25.040 for a long time. 00:51:25.120 --> 00:51:26.720 And it's okay to say that. 00:51:26.720 --> 00:51:30.240 It's okay to say that what my parents or my grandparents did 00:51:30.240 --> 00:51:32.000 isn't the ideal thing. 00:51:32.000 --> 00:51:33.920 I think that we can do better. 00:51:33.920 --> 00:51:35.280 That's not dishonoring them. 00:51:35.280 --> 00:51:36.880 I'm not I'm not bad mouthing my parents. 00:51:36.880 --> 00:51:39.680 They were they were doing the best they could and they had 00:51:39.680 --> 00:51:41.840 reasons for it and I don't second guess those. 00:51:41.840 --> 00:51:45.680 And I'm glad for how God formed me through even those experiences 00:51:45.680 --> 00:51:49.040 that were in in retrospect painful. 00:51:49.120 --> 00:51:51.120 You know, I I like I said I didn't I didn't feel 00:51:51.120 --> 00:51:54.560 anything at the time, but looking back, I was being harmed and 00:51:54.560 --> 00:51:57.040 yet it shaped me in a way that I can now say, 00:51:57.040 --> 00:52:00.160 hey, don't let your kids turn out like me. 00:52:00.160 --> 00:52:02.400 You know, that's I think it's okay for us to be a 00:52:02.400 --> 00:52:06.160 negative lesson to other people if more people would be honest about 00:52:06.320 --> 00:52:09.680 I screwed up, I did something stupid, this was a bad idea, 00:52:09.680 --> 00:52:10.880 let me tell you about it. 00:52:10.880 --> 00:52:16.000 Not as a motivational speaker, just speaking frankly about Doing good things 00:52:16.000 --> 00:52:17.200 or doing bad things. 00:52:17.200 --> 00:52:20.720 When you can learn from someone else's painful experience, maybe you can 00:52:20.720 --> 00:52:21.840 save the hassle. 00:52:22.480 --> 00:52:24.720 That's what every parent wants for their kids. 00:52:24.720 --> 00:52:27.520 And I think as Christians, it's what we should want for each 00:52:27.520 --> 00:52:30.480 other, rather than going around saying, Oh, we're all free from sin, 00:52:30.480 --> 00:52:32.080 we can do whatever we want in Christ. 00:52:32.080 --> 00:52:33.280 Maybe say no. 00:52:33.280 --> 00:52:35.040 Here's a whole bunch of stuff you shouldn't do. 00:52:35.040 --> 00:52:36.720 I thought it was a good idea, it turns out it was 00:52:36.720 --> 00:52:37.920 a terrible idea. 00:52:37.920 --> 00:52:39.280 That's Christian too. 00:52:39.280 --> 00:52:42.160 It's a good thing to to to warn people not to be 00:52:42.160 --> 00:52:43.680 an idiot like you were. 00:52:43.680 --> 00:52:45.760 That's one of the reasons that Corey and I are here. 00:52:45.760 --> 00:52:48.320 We can tell you things that we have done that we shouldn't 00:52:48.240 --> 00:52:48.800 have done. 00:52:48.800 --> 00:52:49.680 You shouldn't do them. 00:52:49.680 --> 00:52:51.440 They're not good for you. 00:52:51.440 --> 00:52:55.920 So think about these things and and don't look to someone to 00:52:55.920 --> 00:52:58.160 be able to give you a pad answer because there's no pad 00:52:58.400 --> 00:53:00.640 answer. There's no flowchart for this. 00:53:00.640 --> 00:53:03.840 No one can tell you yes, move, don't no, don't move. 00:53:03.840 --> 00:53:04.960 You should pray. 00:53:04.960 --> 00:53:06.880 You should spend some time in prayer and thinking. 00:53:07.200 --> 00:53:09.440 You should make any decision hastily. 00:53:09.440 --> 00:53:11.200 But you should consider all of these things. 00:53:11.200 --> 00:53:15.040 Don't just consider where can I maximize my in income? 00:53:15.040 --> 00:53:18.560 Where can I, you know, go to the m most prestigious school. 00:53:18.560 --> 00:53:22.080 Think about all these other things and weigh them independently and then 00:53:22.080 --> 00:53:22.960 make a decision. 00:53:22.960 --> 00:53:24.800 Maybe you'll still decide to move away. 00:53:24.800 --> 00:53:26.400 Maybe that's the right choice. 00:53:26.400 --> 00:53:30.800 But we're just saying don't don't make these decisions in a vacuum 00:53:30.800 --> 00:53:35.440 where you only consider one variable because that sort of self-interest is 00:53:35.440 --> 00:53:38.080 the reason we got into this mess in the first place. 00:53:38.480 --> 00:53:38.560 I 00:53:38.640 --> 00:53:43.840 think I'll echo the comment that most people should probably not attend 00:53:43.840 --> 00:53:44.480 university 00:53:45.600 --> 00:53:46.800 for two reasons. 00:53:47.920 --> 00:53:51.440 One, we have pushed too many people to go to university. 00:53:51.440 --> 00:53:55.920 University used to be something that a tiny percentage of the population 00:53:55.920 --> 00:54:00.400 attended for very specific reasons, because there were certain tasks that required 00:54:01.520 --> 00:54:03.920 a lot of education in order to do them. 00:54:03.920 --> 00:54:04.880 And that's fine. 00:54:04.880 --> 00:54:08.080 That's necessary for society. 00:54:08.080 --> 00:54:11.680 We started to push too many people to go to university, and 00:54:11.680 --> 00:54:16.640 really it just puts people in horrendous depth, disconnects them from their 00:54:16.640 --> 00:54:20.720 roots, and causes a lot more problems in the case of female 00:54:20.720 --> 00:54:23.200 students, most certainly. 00:54:23.200 --> 00:54:23.840 But then 00:54:25.440 --> 00:54:29.120 second would just be I sort of listed the the second reason 00:54:29.120 --> 00:54:32.160 there. The first being really too many people are pushed to do 00:54:32.160 --> 00:54:35.360 it, the second is the consequences, and I listed some of those 00:54:35.360 --> 00:54:37.600 consequences. And 00:54:38.560 --> 00:54:43.920 universe University has been used in the last maybe thirty years as 00:54:43.920 --> 00:54:48.400 one of the wedges that has destroyed the family. 00:54:48.400 --> 00:54:53.200 And in destroying the family it has managed to destroy civilization, our 00:54:53.200 --> 00:55:00.000 society. Because when you have young men go off to university, and 00:55:00.000 --> 00:55:03.360 then they are encouraged after university to go take a high paying 00:55:03.360 --> 00:55:09.440 job wherever the job happens to be, they disconnect from their family, 00:55:09.440 --> 00:55:12.400 from the region whence they came. 00:55:12.400 --> 00:55:15.280 They lose those roots. 00:55:15.280 --> 00:55:19.680 And once they've lived for a period of time without that connection, 00:55:19.680 --> 00:55:21.280 it becomes normal. 00:55:21.280 --> 00:55:24.320 And then, well, another job opens up that pays more. 00:55:24.320 --> 00:55:28.080 So they move six thousand miles or a thousand miles or whatever 00:55:28.080 --> 00:55:29.040 it happens to be. 00:55:29.040 --> 00:55:31.680 They move across the country or across the world for the higher 00:55:31.680 --> 00:55:33.120 paying job. 00:55:33.120 --> 00:55:37.120 And so they become a rootless cosmopolitan. 00:55:37.120 --> 00:55:39.680 And that's not what it means to be a man. 00:55:39.680 --> 00:55:42.160 That's not what it means to be a human being. 00:55:42.160 --> 00:55:46.800 That's what it means to be a cog and a machine. 00:55:46.800 --> 00:55:52.640 And we want something better for our fellow men, most certainly for 00:55:52.640 --> 00:55:58.160 Christians, and part of that is not buying into the lie that 00:55:58.160 --> 00:56:02.320 life is a matter of how many degrees you collect and how 00:56:02.320 --> 00:56:05.600 much money they allow you to earn. 00:56:05.600 --> 00:56:09.760 I'm not saying that no one should attend university, because of course 00:56:09.920 --> 00:56:15.200 there are those men whom God has gifted with exceptional talent who 00:56:15.200 --> 00:56:18.080 should have the opportunity to develop that talent. 00:56:18.080 --> 00:56:20.560 Now whether or not there are any universities that are good That 00:56:20.560 --> 00:56:25.040 are good enough left at this point for developing that sort of 00:56:25.040 --> 00:56:26.640 talent that could be debated. 00:56:26.640 --> 00:56:31.120 There are some, I would say, but not a great many. 00:56:31.120 --> 00:56:34.720 But at the other end of things, you have, as I said, 00:56:34.720 --> 00:56:38.160 some who probably shouldn't have gone to university and just get saddled 00:56:38.160 --> 00:56:40.400 with a ton of debt and other problems. 00:56:40.400 --> 00:56:44.400 But you also have all of the issues that came from opening 00:56:44.400 --> 00:56:46.400 the university up to women. 00:56:46.400 --> 00:56:49.040 Now I'm not saying women shouldn't be educated, I know that's the 00:56:49.040 --> 00:56:54.240 caricaturization that people will often use against me. 00:56:54.240 --> 00:56:56.320 And that's not that's not true. 00:56:56.320 --> 00:56:58.480 I do believe women should be educated. 00:56:58.480 --> 00:56:59.840 Should women attend university? 00:56:59.840 --> 00:57:02.960 No, I'm going to go ahead and just give a blunt negative 00:57:02.960 --> 00:57:04.240 answer to that. 00:57:04.240 --> 00:57:06.480 For a number of reasons. 00:57:06.480 --> 00:57:12.720 One, university typically begins at the age of about eighteen, in the 00:57:12.720 --> 00:57:14.720 system we have now. 00:57:14.720 --> 00:57:17.680 Around that age, I'm not saying at eighteen, it should be a 00:57:17.680 --> 00:57:22.960 little later, early twenties, but around that age is when women start 00:57:22.960 --> 00:57:25.440 looking to get married. 00:57:25.440 --> 00:57:29.920 If you have young women who are going to university instead, you 00:57:29.920 --> 00:57:35.840 are removing the pool of marriage age women from a region and 00:57:35.840 --> 00:57:38.080 then concentrating them at the university. 00:57:38.080 --> 00:57:42.000 Well that causes problem for the region that now lacks women of 00:57:42.000 --> 00:57:46.720 a marriageable age, and you've also concentrated them at the university. 00:57:46.720 --> 00:57:50.480 And we all know what happens with people in their late teens, 00:57:50.480 --> 00:57:54.560 early twenties who are unsupervised in a co ed environment. 00:57:54.560 --> 00:57:57.520 It is not conducive to 00:57:58.400 --> 00:58:00.320 proper long term marriages. 00:58:00.320 --> 00:58:03.840 The short term ones are very common. 00:58:03.840 --> 00:58:06.800 But that is not how a Christian is supposed to live. 00:58:06.960 --> 00:58:11.200 And so if you have women who go off to university and 00:58:11.520 --> 00:58:15.600 sleep around, to be blunt, because that is what happens at universities 00:58:15.600 --> 00:58:19.200 today, and I'm sure it's even worse than when I was at 00:58:19.200 --> 00:58:22.240 university some years ago. 00:58:22.240 --> 00:58:27.440 When that happens, you wind up with women who are not fit 00:58:27.440 --> 00:58:29.520 to become wives. 00:58:29.520 --> 00:58:34.800 Because there are very real consequences of promiscuity, particularly for women. 00:58:34.800 --> 00:58:39.520 They lose the ability to pair bond and divorce skyrockets. 00:58:39.520 --> 00:58:41.040 You have all sorts of problems. 00:58:41.040 --> 00:58:43.760 And of course, if you are having 00:58:45.280 --> 00:58:49.120 Casual sex, you're going to wind up in an environment where birth 00:58:49.120 --> 00:58:52.400 control, so-called, is also a thing. 00:58:52.400 --> 00:58:56.880 And hormonal birth control has an entire slew of problems that come 00:58:56.880 --> 00:58:57.520 along with it. 00:58:57.520 --> 00:58:59.600 This not really the point of the episode, I've got off in 00:58:59.600 --> 00:59:03.040 the weeds a little bit, but it's worth mentioning these things. 00:59:03.040 --> 00:59:06.640 Hormonal birth control is a cancer risk for women. 00:59:06.640 --> 00:59:10.800 It disrupts the woman's cycle in such a way that she is 00:59:10.800 --> 00:59:13.680 going to be less fertile when she goes off of it, not 00:59:13.680 --> 00:59:18.000 to mention the psychological side effects, which are immense, as anyone who 00:59:18.000 --> 00:59:21.200 has dealt with women who were on birth control is well aware, 00:59:21.200 --> 00:59:24.000 and women who have been on birth control often can sense this 00:59:24.000 --> 00:59:26.480 in themselves as well. 00:59:26.480 --> 00:59:33.040 But you have this cluster, this cloud of negative consequences that attend 00:59:33.280 --> 00:59:35.760 the modern university system. 00:59:36.480 --> 00:59:40.080 And so my general recommendation, the I guess the long and the 00:59:40.080 --> 00:59:43.600 short of it, is don't go to university. 00:59:43.600 --> 00:59:50.800 Instead attend a trade school, develop a trade, an actual, real life, 00:59:50.800 --> 00:59:53.120 tangible skill. 00:59:53.120 --> 00:59:56.800 Now I'm not insulting the liberal arts, far be it from me 00:59:56.800 --> 00:59:57.680 to do that. 00:59:57.680 --> 01:00:00.640 All of my degrees are liberal arts degrees. 01:00:00.640 --> 01:00:04.000 I have not I actually took a fair number of hard science 01:00:04.000 --> 01:00:07.360 classes, but that was not my area of expertise, neither were the 01:00:07.360 --> 01:00:13.760 trades. However, with the way that things are trending in the country 01:00:13.760 --> 01:00:21.680 today, how Having a practical skill, having a trade, so woodworking 01:00:22.000 --> 01:00:22.320 or 01:00:23.920 --> 01:00:28.240 really anything that involves using your hands is going to be massively 01:00:28.240 --> 01:00:31.600 beneficial in the years to come. 01:00:31.600 --> 01:00:37.760 If the worst comes about and our society collapses, I'm not going 01:00:37.760 --> 01:00:40.880 to say what percentage odds I would put on that, I'm not 01:00:40.880 --> 01:00:46.080 in the doom and gloom camp incidentally, but if that happens, if 01:00:46.080 --> 01:00:51.040 you are a carpenter, if you are a stonemason, if you happen 01:00:51.040 --> 01:00:54.800 to be really good at figuring out irrigation systems, your skills will 01:00:54.800 --> 01:00:56.640 still be useful. 01:00:56.640 --> 01:00:58.880 I'm an attorney. 01:00:58.880 --> 01:01:03.600 My degree is going to be useless if that happens. 01:01:03.600 --> 01:01:07.600 Because I would hope that most people realize that when a society, 01:01:07.600 --> 01:01:12.160 when a civilization collapses, you no longer have courts resolving disputes and 01:01:12.160 --> 01:01:14.000 so you don't have attorneys. 01:01:14.000 --> 01:01:16.400 That is the same for most of those who have gone into 01:01:16.400 --> 01:01:18.320 the liberal arts. 01:01:18.320 --> 01:01:25.120 The liberal arts are a luxury that a functional, stable society can 01:01:25.120 --> 01:01:34.000 afford. The trades are a practical matter that human life requires. 01:01:34.000 --> 01:01:38.240 And so if you're just banking on the odds, today it is 01:01:38.240 --> 01:01:41.920 probably safer to go into the trades. 01:01:41.920 --> 01:01:47.040 Because even if things go really well, even if we turn things 01:01:47.040 --> 01:01:53.840 around and our society becomes stable again, the trades are still necessary. 01:01:53.840 --> 01:01:55.200 They are still good. 01:01:55.200 --> 01:01:57.520 They will still allow you to build a decent life 01:01:59.360 --> 01:02:05.040 And so as a as a purely practical recommendation, for most men, 01:02:05.040 --> 01:02:09.040 probably consider these more practical courses in life. 01:02:09.040 --> 01:02:14.160 Those who are going to pursue the liberal arts, you know who 01:02:14.160 --> 01:02:14.800 you are. 01:02:14.800 --> 01:02:18.880 I don't have to tell you you're an exception, you know it. 01:02:18.880 --> 01:02:21.680 And so this is one of those issues that is a matter 01:02:21.680 --> 01:02:23.520 of wisdom. 01:02:23.520 --> 01:02:27.600 What Which path you pick in life is not something for which 01:02:27.600 --> 01:02:28.960 we can give you a flow chart. 01:02:28.960 --> 01:02:34.800 We're not going to say start here if you have XIQ go 01:02:34.800 --> 01:02:39.040 left, if it's Y go right, and then follow the flowchart and 01:02:39.040 --> 01:02:41.040 it tells you exactly what you're supposed to do. 01:02:41.040 --> 01:02:43.120 That's not how life works. 01:02:43.120 --> 01:02:45.520 Life is never that neat and clean. 01:02:45.520 --> 01:02:48.240 And so we are not going to give you a flow chart 01:02:48.240 --> 01:02:51.200 for any of this in this episode or really any other when 01:02:51.200 --> 01:02:55.920 it comes to these sorts of issues, and yes, some listeners, some 01:02:55.920 --> 01:02:59.840 men are going to very strongly dislike that. 01:02:59.840 --> 01:03:02.240 But life is messy. 01:03:02.240 --> 01:03:05.280 There are things that are unpredictable. 01:03:05.280 --> 01:03:10.160 There are questions that don't have an absolutely certain answer. 01:03:10.160 --> 01:03:12.960 These things are left up to human wisdom. 01:03:12.960 --> 01:03:16.720 And that ties into the issue that Woe has touched on a 01:03:16.720 --> 01:03:21.200 number of times so far, there will not always be a verse 01:03:21.200 --> 01:03:25.760 in Scripture that directly addresses the problem you are having. 01:03:25.760 --> 01:03:28.400 Because that's not the purpose of Scripture. 01:03:28.400 --> 01:03:30.560 The purpose of Scripture is to tell you 01:03:31.600 --> 01:03:37.360 God's will generally for your life, for humanity, to tell you his 01:03:37.520 --> 01:03:40.720 law, and to tell you the gospel. 01:03:40.720 --> 01:03:42.160 That's the purpose of Scripture. 01:03:42.160 --> 01:03:45.440 Yes, you can draw a lot of lessons out of Scripture by 01:03:45.440 --> 01:03:50.080 reading it, by understanding the context of Scripture, by getting the overall 01:03:50.080 --> 01:03:51.840 theme, the story. 01:03:51.840 --> 01:03:54.880 There are things you can draw out that aren't there word for 01:03:54.960 --> 01:03:55.040 word 01:03:55.920 --> 01:04:00.080 absolutely but there are a great many things that are not in 01:04:00.080 --> 01:04:03.200 Scripture that are nevertheless true. 01:04:03.200 --> 01:04:06.960 Because God has revealed Himself not only in His Word, but also 01:04:06.960 --> 01:04:08.480 in His creation. 01:04:08.720 --> 01:04:12.480 And when we are talking about wisdom for things like this, we 01:04:12.480 --> 01:04:17.040 are largely talking about what is revealed in creation. 01:04:17.040 --> 01:04:21.600 Yes, there is still that wisdom in Scripture, particularly in the aptly 01:04:21.600 --> 01:04:22.640 named wisdom books. 01:04:22.960 --> 01:04:25.120 You should read those, go read Proverbs. 01:04:25.120 --> 01:04:26.880 I guess that's the assignment for this week. 01:04:26.880 --> 01:04:29.760 Last week it was Job, this week it's Proverbs. 01:04:29.760 --> 01:04:36.000 But just because something is not specifically word for word addressed in 01:04:36.000 --> 01:04:41.120 scripture does not mean it is totally free. 01:04:41.120 --> 01:04:44.480 Does not mean it is something where Christians can just decide whatever 01:04:44.480 --> 01:04:46.160 they want, believe whatever they want. 01:04:46.160 --> 01:04:52.400 No, there is still such a thing as natural revelation, natural wisdom. 01:04:52.400 --> 01:04:55.760 God didn't just give you the Bible, he didn't just give you 01:04:55.760 --> 01:04:58.400 scripture. He also gave you a mind. 01:04:58.400 --> 01:05:01.280 He also gave you other men with whom you can discuss the 01:05:01.280 --> 01:05:02.320 these ideas. 01:05:02.320 --> 01:05:06.160 Iron sharpens iron not just with regard to Scripture, but also with 01:05:06.160 --> 01:05:12.160 regard to natural revelation, to the greater world, to creation. 01:05:12.160 --> 01:05:17.040 And so as Christians Christians, yes, we need to spend time in 01:05:17.040 --> 01:05:19.760 the Scriptures, we need to spend more time in the Scriptures than 01:05:19.760 --> 01:05:22.320 we do on average, most certainly. 01:05:22.320 --> 01:05:25.200 But we also need to spend time thinking about these other issues, 01:05:25.200 --> 01:05:29.360 discussing them with other men And pursuing the path of wisdom with 01:05:29.360 --> 01:05:33.360 regard to our lives as well as our faith. 01:05:33.360 --> 01:05:38.240 Because we have so many today, particularly pastors, who 01:05:39.120 --> 01:05:43.200 well the adversary pastors anyway, who will argue that, well, that's not 01:05:43.200 --> 01:05:45.040 in scripture. 01:05:45.040 --> 01:05:48.160 Okay, that's not an argument. 01:05:48.160 --> 01:05:53.040 If you say that something that is not in scripture is absolutely 01:05:53.040 --> 01:05:56.480 categorically prohibited by God, you better be able to mount a very 01:05:56.480 --> 01:05:58.560 strong argument. 01:05:58.560 --> 01:06:01.760 But if you say that something that is not in Scripture is 01:06:01.760 --> 01:06:04.320 unwise, that's a different matter. 01:06:04.560 --> 01:06:07.120 That's a s that's a different burden of proof. 01:06:07.120 --> 01:06:10.400 Yes, you should still be able to defend the position, but it's 01:06:10.400 --> 01:06:12.960 not something where you have to say, look, this is a categorical 01:06:12.960 --> 01:06:17.360 prohibition. No, because the argument that is being advanced is that this 01:06:17.360 --> 01:06:19.920 thing is unwise. 01:06:19.920 --> 01:06:23.680 So to give an example that is perhaps silly, but probably one 01:06:23.840 --> 01:06:27.120 that at least one person listening right now has learned the hard 01:06:27.120 --> 01:06:31.360 way. Scripture does not say Do not eat an entire jar of 01:06:31.360 --> 01:06:37.600 pickles. Anyone who has eaten an entire jar of pickles can tell 01:06:37.600 --> 01:06:41.760 you that eating an entire jar of pickles is a deeply unwise 01:06:41.760 --> 01:06:42.640 thing to do. 01:06:43.040 --> 01:06:46.640 you will probably regret it for several hours. 01:06:46.640 --> 01:06:48.320 Don't do that. 01:06:48.320 --> 01:06:51.040 Scripture doesn't tell you not to do it. 01:06:51.040 --> 01:06:55.200 It's arguably not a sin to do it, it's deeply stupid. 01:06:55.200 --> 01:06:57.600 It is a matter of wisdom. 01:06:57.600 --> 01:07:03.360 And so there are matters of wisdom that are outside what is 01:07:03.360 --> 01:07:07.280 contained explicitly in Scripture. 01:07:07.280 --> 01:07:12.480 As Christians, we are called upon to act wise, both with regard 01:07:12.480 --> 01:07:15.840 to our faith, the kingdom of the right hand, and with regard 01:07:15.840 --> 01:07:18.240 to the world, the kingdom of the left hand. 01:07:18.320 --> 01:07:22.880 On the subject of flowcharts, I think the reason that 01:07:23.920 --> 01:07:28.640 questions of you know for a young man who's looking at going 01:07:28.640 --> 01:07:31.840 off to college or entering the workforce or he's at that point 01:07:31.840 --> 01:07:34.160 in his life where he has to figure out what's next. 01:07:34.320 --> 01:07:37.200 I think part of the reason that that seems like such an 01:07:37.200 --> 01:07:42.240 open ended question is that we've lost the family and community ties 01:07:42.560 --> 01:07:45.520 to make a lot of those outcomes more obvious. 01:07:45.600 --> 01:07:48.640 So how many of your churches have a job board up where 01:07:48.640 --> 01:07:54.080 people can advertise whatever positions are open for people who work in 01:07:54.080 --> 01:07:58.080 the in the in the congregation who have employment opportunities even they're 01:07:58.080 --> 01:08:01.200 either in their own businesses or places where they work my guess 01:08:01.200 --> 01:08:03.680 is probably virtually none of them. 01:08:03.680 --> 01:08:05.600 Now, think about why that is. 01:08:05.840 --> 01:08:07.920 Isn't that the easiest thing in the world? 01:08:07.920 --> 01:08:13.680 I mean, what better place for an employer to find prospective employees 01:08:13.840 --> 01:08:17.680 than their own church or even just a neighboring church. 01:08:17.680 --> 01:08:22.720 If someone is regularly attending church, if they're a faithful Christian, they're 01:08:22.720 --> 01:08:27.840 probably more likely to not steal, they're probably more likely to show 01:08:27.840 --> 01:08:28.720 up on time. 01:08:28.720 --> 01:08:33.200 They're all manner of things that employees, employers naturally want in their 01:08:33.200 --> 01:08:38.640 employees, that tend to be fulfilled simply by virtue of someone being 01:08:38.640 --> 01:08:41.200 a church attending Christian. 01:08:41.200 --> 01:08:44.320 And yet in almost none of our churches do I think most 01:08:44.320 --> 01:08:48.080 of most of us even know what the other people do. 01:08:48.080 --> 01:08:51.040 You may know some, but I'm sure that there are people in 01:08:51.040 --> 01:08:55.600 your congregations who are employers, they should be hiring from in the 01:08:55.600 --> 01:08:57.360 congregation first. 01:08:57.360 --> 01:08:59.200 That is that is their community. 01:08:59.200 --> 01:09:00.720 That's your community. 01:09:00.720 --> 01:09:03.520 So on the question of, oh, I'm 17, I don't know what 01:09:03.520 --> 01:09:04.400 I'm gonna do. 01:09:04.400 --> 01:09:06.960 Well, if your church was a sort of community 01:09:07.840 --> 01:09:12.560 where it was just open knowledge that you know this guy has 01:09:12.560 --> 01:09:17.840 a warehouse, this person has a factory, this person has an office, 01:09:17.840 --> 01:09:19.360 they're always going to be hiring. 01:09:19.360 --> 01:09:20.720 They're always going to need good people. 01:09:20.720 --> 01:09:22.000 They're going to need new people. 01:09:22.000 --> 01:09:24.240 Maybe temporarily, maybe permanently. 01:09:24.240 --> 01:09:29.760 There should be a natural pipeline from your church life to your 01:09:29.760 --> 01:09:30.880 real life. 01:09:30.880 --> 01:09:35.440 Now, saying that doesn't turn your church into some sort of den 01:09:35.440 --> 01:09:36.240 of iniquity. 01:09:36.240 --> 01:09:38.640 It's not turning it into a place for the money changers. 01:09:38.640 --> 01:09:42.320 We're not talking about corrupting the divine service. 01:09:42.320 --> 01:09:45.040 We're just saying, hey, the other The other hundred and sixty odd 01:09:45.120 --> 01:09:48.640 hours that these people are living the rest of their lives, maybe 01:09:48.640 --> 01:09:50.800 we should be a part of those too. 01:09:50.800 --> 01:09:55.600 And the fact that our uprootedness and our isolation has extended to 01:09:55.600 --> 01:09:58.080 the point that by and large we don't even know what the 01:09:58.080 --> 01:10:00.800 other people in our churches do. 01:10:00.800 --> 01:10:02.160 It's bizarre. 01:10:02.800 --> 01:10:04.240 it's it's stupid. 01:10:04.240 --> 01:10:07.040 And yet it's one of the easiest problems in the world to 01:10:07.040 --> 01:10:13.760 solve. And so I I raise the question just to suggest if 01:10:13.760 --> 01:10:16.720 your if your church doesn't have a job board, you know, if 01:10:16.800 --> 01:10:19.680 if it's something that the elders or the pastor and others would 01:10:19.680 --> 01:10:21.600 support, go for it. 01:10:21.600 --> 01:10:25.360 You know, just make make it something that just in a small 01:10:25.360 --> 01:10:29.200 way, maybe your congregation can be more than just a place for 01:10:29.200 --> 01:10:30.960 worship and potlucks. 01:10:30.960 --> 01:10:34.320 Because there's more to the Christian life than being at church and 01:10:34.320 --> 01:10:35.440 even just socializing. 01:10:35.760 --> 01:10:36.800 We have to work. 01:10:36.800 --> 01:10:40.800 You know, another question is, how many of the businesses that your 01:10:41.120 --> 01:10:46.160 church members own or work at do you patronize? 01:10:46.160 --> 01:10:47.920 They have goods and services. 01:10:47.920 --> 01:10:49.040 Do you buy them? 01:10:49.120 --> 01:10:53.760 When you're doing that sort of thing, you're keeping your money in 01:10:53.760 --> 01:10:55.040 the family. 01:10:55.040 --> 01:10:57.840 You're giving it to other Christians that you know are going to 01:10:57.840 --> 01:11:02.000 spend it on things that is in alignment with your morality. 01:11:02.000 --> 01:11:03.200 It's helping them. 01:11:03.200 --> 01:11:06.800 It's helping your neighbor and it's helping your brother in Christ. 01:11:06.800 --> 01:11:10.240 That's just a naturally good thing that you can do for free. 01:11:10.240 --> 01:11:13.200 Like the this this is something that costs you nothing. 01:11:13.200 --> 01:11:16.240 It's something that doesn't require a lifestyle change. 01:11:16.240 --> 01:11:19.280 We're not talking have about having to move across the country. 01:11:19.280 --> 01:11:22.560 Literally just find out what the other people at church are doing 01:11:22.880 --> 01:11:25.120 and offer to pitch in. 01:11:25.120 --> 01:11:27.520 Offer to hire someone at church. 01:11:27.520 --> 01:11:32.960 Uh you know, the only possible downsides or the y are the 01:11:32.960 --> 01:11:38.000 you could realize that somebody maybe has some problems spiritually. 01:11:38.000 --> 01:11:40.880 You know, they attend church, but maybe it turns out they have 01:11:40.880 --> 01:11:42.240 a drug problem or something. 01:11:42.400 --> 01:11:45.200 As an employer, maybe you'd be concerned to say, Oh well that's 01:11:45.120 --> 01:11:47.120 that's bad, I don't want drug abusers. 01:11:47.120 --> 01:11:51.200 As a Christian, you should think thank God I'm maybe able to 01:11:51.200 --> 01:11:54.480 help intervene in this brother's life in a way that can push 01:11:54.880 --> 01:11:56.720 him in the right direction. 01:11:56.720 --> 01:12:02.240 So even the negative downsides that might occur from having business relations 01:12:02.560 --> 01:12:07.200 with your church family, I think if you're if you're approaching them 01:12:07.200 --> 01:12:11.840 as a Christian, those downsides can very easily become the upside of 01:12:11.840 --> 01:12:15.920 you being a positive Christian influence in their lives or them in 01:12:15.920 --> 01:12:16.640 your lives. 01:12:16.640 --> 01:12:19.440 Maybe you're the employer and it turns out you're not a very 01:12:19.440 --> 01:12:20.560 good employer. 01:12:20.560 --> 01:12:23.680 And if you hired someone from church who knew that you went 01:12:23.680 --> 01:12:26.960 to the same church and you're at the same communion rail every 01:12:26.960 --> 01:12:30.080 week, maybe that would be your incentive as the employer to be 01:12:30.080 --> 01:12:31.360 a better employer. 01:12:31.360 --> 01:12:38.080 Like these upsides accrue naturally to us living as a community together. 01:12:38.080 --> 01:12:40.640 So that's why I began at the beginning of this episode about 01:12:40.640 --> 01:12:43.600 talking about not everything needs to be big ticket. 01:12:43.600 --> 01:12:46.560 Not everything needs to be pie in the sky, huge 01:12:47.600 --> 01:12:52.960 theological weighty issues or these massive macro things that require big brains 01:12:52.960 --> 01:12:54.080 to talk about it. 01:12:54.080 --> 01:12:56.400 Maybe it's as simple as a job board. 01:12:56.560 --> 01:12:57.840 That was the other part of the intro. 01:12:57.760 --> 01:13:00.400 is that is a job board gonna fix our problems? 01:13:00.400 --> 01:13:03.840 No. This country has profound problems. 01:13:03.840 --> 01:13:06.800 They go far beyond any single thing. 01:13:06.800 --> 01:13:10.080 And that's why I think the kitchen analogy is apt. 01:13:10.080 --> 01:13:14.400 Is a job board at your church the roof over the house? 01:13:14.400 --> 01:13:18.640 No. You know, but it's it's a working refrigerator. 01:13:18.640 --> 01:13:21.280 You know, it's it's something that should be there though it's when 01:13:21.280 --> 01:13:23.120 it's missing, you're hurting. 01:13:23.120 --> 01:13:26.480 And so big or small, all these pieces can be part of 01:13:26.480 --> 01:13:29.600 the a normal Christian life that's always existed. 01:13:29.600 --> 01:13:32.160 You know, in the past we didn't have to have job boards 01:13:32.240 --> 01:13:37.200 because that was just the the the abstraction of the employer the 01:13:37.600 --> 01:13:41.280 abstrap the abstraction of employer employee hadn't been invented yet. 01:13:41.280 --> 01:13:44.000 Like that's that's a fairly new notion. 01:13:44.000 --> 01:13:47.920 You had someone who owned a factory or owned a a field 01:13:48.080 --> 01:13:49.520 and you worked in the field. 01:13:49.520 --> 01:13:51.520 You're a hand for that person. 01:13:51.680 --> 01:13:57.440 And so those those natural relationships that flowed from society and from 01:13:57.440 --> 01:14:00.960 civilization also manifested in the church. 01:14:00.960 --> 01:14:01.280 And 01:14:02.560 --> 01:14:06.000 while the church maybe it isn't natural nexus for this sort of 01:14:06.000 --> 01:14:10.560 thing, when we're talking about beat bootstrapping a Christian civilization in a 01:14:10.560 --> 01:14:12.800 lot of ways, it's a good place to start. 01:14:12.800 --> 01:14:16.160 It's not necessarily the only place, you know, you're you're if you're 01:14:16.080 --> 01:14:20.000 an employer, you should have something at your place of employment pointing 01:14:20.000 --> 01:14:21.200 back to your church. 01:14:21.200 --> 01:14:22.720 That's a good thing too. 01:14:22.720 --> 01:14:26.160 And if that's illegal in your state, maybe that's an indication that 01:14:26.160 --> 01:14:29.680 you should look at changing the laws and perhaps you should be 01:14:29.680 --> 01:14:31.280 in a different state. 01:14:31.280 --> 01:14:36.560 But see, all these things individually may not change the world, but 01:14:36.560 --> 01:14:38.720 they can make your life a little bit better. 01:14:38.720 --> 01:14:40.240 And they're cheap and easy to do. 01:14:40.240 --> 01:14:42.640 And once you once you realize them, it's like, well, that's obvious. 01:14:42.640 --> 01:14:47.200 Why wouldn't I be hiring Christians in my own congregation or for 01:14:47.280 --> 01:14:48.240 neighboring congregation? 01:14:48.240 --> 01:14:49.760 You know, make it a network. 01:14:50.000 --> 01:14:54.000 if you got a dozen churches within 20 miles, have a network 01:14:54.000 --> 01:14:58.880 of you know job postings or whatever else, make those connections within 01:14:58.880 --> 01:15:03.280 your faith community or you know, just neighboring Christian churches. 01:15:03.280 --> 01:15:06.080 And to say this isn't to say we want to corrupt the 01:15:06.080 --> 01:15:09.120 church and turn it into something secular or something about buddy. 01:15:09.120 --> 01:15:10.480 That's not the point at all. 01:15:10.480 --> 01:15:13.360 The point is that we're Christians living in the world. 01:15:13.360 --> 01:15:15.280 We've got to do these things anyway. 01:15:15.280 --> 01:15:16.800 You need a roof over your head. 01:15:16.800 --> 01:15:19.200 You need someone to come work on your stuff when there's something 01:15:19.200 --> 01:15:20.800 that breaks you can't fix. 01:15:20.800 --> 01:15:24.160 You need to buy things, you need to sell things. 01:15:24.160 --> 01:15:28.640 There's nothing wrong with preferring to do that with your own Christian 01:15:28.640 --> 01:15:31.360 brothers. That's a good and normal thing. 01:15:31.360 --> 01:15:36.400 And the more desirable that sort of community becomes, the greater the 01:15:36.400 --> 01:15:38.720 reason there is for someone to be a part of it, even 01:15:38.720 --> 01:15:42.480 if they don't understand that the ultimate value proposition of church has 01:15:42.480 --> 01:15:43.840 nothing to do with your belly. 01:15:43.840 --> 01:15:46.400 It has to do with your soul. 01:15:46.480 --> 01:15:50.400 There are all different reasons why people will come into a community. 01:15:50.400 --> 01:15:55.360 And the faith of the Christian is ultimately rooted in Christ's sacrifice. 01:15:55.360 --> 01:15:57.680 We're not taking anything away from that. 01:15:57.680 --> 01:16:00.880 But there are other things that are beneficial in the Christian life. 01:16:00.880 --> 01:16:03.280 And we And we should embrace them and we should be proud 01:16:03.280 --> 01:16:05.840 of them and we should share them with each other. 01:16:05.840 --> 01:16:08.800 So, you know, job boards and things like that, it's a very 01:16:08.800 --> 01:16:13.680 small thing, but not doing it seems foolish, and doing it seems 01:16:13.680 --> 01:16:18.000 cheap and easy, and the upsides are so great that I think 01:16:18.000 --> 01:16:23.360 that if these small things were to start happening more broadly, it 01:16:23.360 --> 01:16:25.840 would just naturally accumulate inertia. 01:16:26.080 --> 01:16:31.680 we would gain momentum from just doing small decent things for our 01:16:31.680 --> 01:16:33.840 neighbors and for our brothers in Christ. 01:16:33.840 --> 01:16:37.440 That should be the goal of every Christian every day. 01:16:37.440 --> 01:16:40.400 And so we're mentioning some of these things just to kind of 01:16:40.400 --> 01:16:43.200 get people to break out of the rut of the bad habits 01:16:43.200 --> 01:16:46.400 of not hiring people at church or not talking about hey, there's 01:16:46.320 --> 01:16:49.680 a job opening, I think you might be good for it. 01:16:49.680 --> 01:16:51.040 It's as simple as 01:16:51.040 --> 01:16:51.840 that. 01:16:52.000 --> 01:16:55.920 Before we started recording today, we while we were trying to isolate 01:16:55.920 --> 01:17:00.720 an audio gremlin, we were discussing that really a lot of this 01:17:00.720 --> 01:17:05.600 is a feedback loop, and in a very real way, trying to 01:17:05.600 --> 01:17:10.960 use the church in order to build a Christian society is a 01:17:10.960 --> 01:17:13.920 very difficult proposition. 01:17:13.920 --> 01:17:19.040 Because under proper conditions, how these things work is you have Christian 01:17:19.040 --> 01:17:24.240 families serving as the basis of a Christian community that set that 01:17:24.240 --> 01:17:28.880 then sets up a Christian church and it's a feedback loop. 01:17:28.880 --> 01:17:31.200 And that's how things are supposed to work. 01:17:31.840 --> 01:17:34.240 But that's not what we have today. 01:17:34.240 --> 01:17:38.720 Today we are living as Christians in a pagan country. 01:17:38.720 --> 01:17:41.840 The United States is pagan. 01:17:41.840 --> 01:17:45.040 Realistically at this point, there isn't a Christian country left on earth. 01:17:45.040 --> 01:17:46.640 They're all pagan. 01:17:46.640 --> 01:17:50.240 Some are better than others, some are significantly worse than others. 01:17:50.240 --> 01:17:53.840 The US is not the worst one, yet it is trending that 01:17:53.840 --> 01:17:58.000 way, but we are living as Christians in a pagan community. 01:17:58.000 --> 01:18:00.960 And so in a very real way, we have to set up 01:18:01.600 --> 01:18:07.200 a parallel society, a parallel community, where we can help our fellow 01:18:07.200 --> 01:18:12.560 Christians and start building up these institutions, start building up the community, 01:18:12.560 --> 01:18:15.600 that we need to support each other. 01:18:15.600 --> 01:18:20.480 Over time, that can influence the wider culture in a positive way, 01:18:20.480 --> 01:18:23.760 or if things go sideways, it can serve as a basis for 01:18:23.760 --> 01:18:26.720 surviving what comes after that. 01:18:26.720 --> 01:18:27.040 But 01:18:28.480 --> 01:18:32.320 how many hours a week are you really at church? 01:18:32.320 --> 01:18:35.680 If you go to one service and the Bible study, and you 01:18:35.680 --> 01:18:38.320 should go to the Bible study, and if your pastor doesn't have 01:18:38.320 --> 01:18:41.360 a Bible study, pester him he should have a Bible study. 01:18:41.360 --> 01:18:43.440 But if you do both of those things, you're at church for 01:18:43.440 --> 01:18:46.320 maybe three, three and a half hours. 01:18:46.320 --> 01:18:48.720 If you have a longer service maybe four. 01:18:49.200 --> 01:18:54.240 Okay. There are a hundred and sixty eight hours in the week. 01:18:54.240 --> 01:18:56.080 What are you doing with the rest of your time? 01:18:56.080 --> 01:18:58.640 Yes, a lot of that is spent sleeping and eating. 01:18:58.640 --> 01:19:01.280 But that's still a lot of hours when you're awake and not 01:19:01.280 --> 01:19:02.560 at church. 01:19:02.560 --> 01:19:05.120 There is more to life than just church. 01:19:05.120 --> 01:19:09.600 As a Christian, your entire life is supposed to be Christian. 01:19:09.600 --> 01:19:12.640 Part of that is going to be how you interact with others 01:19:12.640 --> 01:19:14.240 in your daily life. 01:19:14.240 --> 01:19:18.240 If you are interacting with other Christians in your daily life, it 01:19:18.240 --> 01:19:22.320 is going to be easier for you and for those other Christians 01:19:22.400 --> 01:19:26.800 to behave as a Christian in your daily life. 01:19:26.800 --> 01:19:31.040 It is in fact easier to be a Christian in interactions with 01:19:31.040 --> 01:19:35.280 another Christian than it is to be a Christian in interactions with 01:19:35.280 --> 01:19:39.760 a potentially hostile in our environment pagan. 01:19:39.760 --> 01:19:43.280 And And you should be helping your fellow Christians. 01:19:43.280 --> 01:19:46.720 As was mentioned, you should patronize Christian businesses. 01:19:46.720 --> 01:19:50.400 I'm not saying patronize some large corporation that vaguely claims to be 01:19:50.400 --> 01:19:53.040 Christian and almost certainly isn't if you look closely. 01:19:53.040 --> 01:19:57.520 I'm saying the mom and pop shop down the street, run by 01:19:57.520 --> 01:20:01.120 people you know at church or from the next church over. 01:20:01.120 --> 01:20:03.200 Maybe shop there. 01:20:03.200 --> 01:20:04.000 You know what? 01:20:04.000 --> 01:20:07.120 Sometimes it will cost you a little more because of economies of 01:20:07.120 --> 01:20:07.760 scale. 01:20:08.640 --> 01:20:12.960 But if you pay five, ten, fifteen percent more even. 01:20:12.960 --> 01:20:17.280 You are benefiting other Christians, you are keeping that within your community. 01:20:17.280 --> 01:20:21.200 It will benefit everyone in your Christian community. 01:20:21.200 --> 01:20:26.320 If you go and patronize instead the alternative giant big box store, 01:20:26.320 --> 01:20:30.480 whatever it happens to be, you're sending that money out of your 01:20:30.480 --> 01:20:34.160 community. You are not benefiting your fellow Christian. 01:20:34.160 --> 01:20:37.600 And quite frankly, you're probably not doing your Christian duty to behave 01:20:37.600 --> 01:20:39.760 as a Christian in your daily life. 01:20:39.760 --> 01:20:44.720 I'm not saying they're always or that there are never cases where 01:20:44.720 --> 01:20:47.840 you can't go to the big box store because of course there 01:20:47.840 --> 01:20:50.720 are going to be things that are carried there that are not 01:20:50.720 --> 01:20:53.120 carried to the mom and pop shop. 01:20:53.120 --> 01:20:55.360 That's just the reality. 01:20:55.360 --> 01:21:00.000 But when you have the option to aid a fellow Christian, to 01:21:00.000 --> 01:21:05.280 patronize his business, to hire his son, to have your son work 01:21:05.280 --> 01:21:08.160 for him, whatever it happens to be, you should be doing that 01:21:08.160 --> 01:21:09.040 as a Christian. 01:21:09.040 --> 01:21:12.160 That is part of building up a Christian community, part of building 01:21:12.160 --> 01:21:15.120 up those relationships Relationships. 01:21:15.120 --> 01:21:18.560 And those relationships are extremely important in life. 01:21:18.560 --> 01:21:23.040 And it will be more than just business relationships, because it may 01:21:23.040 --> 01:21:27.120 be that you That you patronize this store for ten years. 01:21:27.120 --> 01:21:29.280 And then when your son is looking for a wife, well it 01:21:29.280 --> 01:21:32.880 just so happens the owners of that store have a daughter. 01:21:32.880 --> 01:21:36.000 That is how human life is supposed to work. 01:21:36.000 --> 01:21:39.280 That is how these relationships are formed and maintained, how they are 01:21:39.280 --> 01:21:41.840 built up over generations over time. 01:21:41.840 --> 01:21:44.400 This is how you build a community. 01:21:44.400 --> 01:21:46.960 These are all very practical things that you can do in your 01:21:46.960 --> 01:21:51.920 everyday life, but they matter almost more than anything else. 01:21:53.120 --> 01:21:58.320 Because it is the sum of these interactions that builds an actual 01:21:58.640 --> 01:22:01.520 life that is worth living. 01:22:01.520 --> 01:22:05.440 We're not saying that these things are more important than the gospel. 01:22:05.440 --> 01:22:06.720 That's not the point. 01:22:06.720 --> 01:22:09.600 We'll get accused of it anyway, even if we explicitly say that's 01:22:09.600 --> 01:22:11.360 not what we're saying. 01:22:11.360 --> 01:22:14.800 We are discussing the and then what? 01:22:14.800 --> 01:22:17.440 Because that's always what we're discussing on this podcast. 01:22:17.440 --> 01:22:21.040 Yes, sometimes we touch on the core of the Christian faith, the 01:22:21.040 --> 01:22:24.320 core theology, and undoubtedly we'll do more episodes on that in the 01:22:24.320 --> 01:22:28.720 future. But in so many of these episodes, we are touching on 01:22:28.720 --> 01:22:29.440 what you are supposed to do 01:22:30.320 --> 01:22:32.640 as a Christian. 01:22:32.640 --> 01:22:35.920 Not what you are supposed to do to become a Christian, not 01:22:35.920 --> 01:22:39.920 what it means to be in the instant that you convert a 01:22:39.920 --> 01:22:41.840 Christian. That's not what we're saying. 01:22:41.840 --> 01:22:47.200 We are saying you're a Christian, great, now live like one. 01:22:47.200 --> 01:22:50.000 What does it mean to live like a Christian? 01:22:50.000 --> 01:22:53.680 And that is why those who to go into some actual theology 01:22:53.680 --> 01:22:56.080 for a minute here, and that is why those who read James 01:22:56.080 --> 01:23:00.240 or anywhere in Scripture where it starts to talk about works tend 01:23:00.320 --> 01:23:04.480 to get things entirely wrong when they don't understand the framing. 01:23:05.600 --> 01:23:10.160 When Scripture tells you that you must have works, when Scripture tells 01:23:10.160 --> 01:23:13.120 you that Christians will have good works, that a real faith is 01:23:13.120 --> 01:23:16.160 a living faith that produces good works, because of course faith is 01:23:16.160 --> 01:23:19.600 often compared to a tree that produces fruit, and so a living 01:23:19.600 --> 01:23:22.640 and healthy tree will produce fruit. 01:23:22.640 --> 01:23:27.680 A sickly tree, a dead tree, does not produce fruit. 01:23:27.680 --> 01:23:32.800 But those parts of Scripture are written for Christians. 01:23:32.800 --> 01:23:36.560 They are not written for those who are not Christian. 01:23:36.560 --> 01:23:39.200 You are not saved by your works. 01:23:39.200 --> 01:23:42.000 Works are not part of justification. 01:23:42.000 --> 01:23:47.920 Justification is by grace through faith, period. 01:23:47.920 --> 01:23:51.280 Your works contribute nothing. 01:23:51.280 --> 01:23:55.760 But as a Christian, you must have those works. 01:23:55.760 --> 01:23:59.280 As a Christian, those works will flow from your faith if you 01:23:59.280 --> 01:24:01.200 have a living faith. 01:24:01.200 --> 01:24:04.560 And that is what we are discussing in these episodes. 01:24:04.560 --> 01:24:08.560 In the episodes where we touch on Christian wisdom, where we touch 01:24:08.560 --> 01:24:11.680 on the world, how Christians are to interact with the world, how 01:24:11.680 --> 01:24:14.000 you are to live your life. 01:24:14.000 --> 01:24:19.680 Because as a Christian, as a healthy tree, you should be producing 01:24:19.680 --> 01:24:24.080 these fruits, these good works, you should be doing certain things, conducting 01:24:24.080 --> 01:24:26.000 your life in a certain way. 01:24:26.320 --> 01:24:30.800 Again, your works will not save you. 01:24:30.800 --> 01:24:31.120 But 01:24:32.080 --> 01:24:36.880 your faith, as a living faith, will produce these works, and your 01:24:36.880 --> 01:24:39.120 neighbor does need them. 01:24:39.120 --> 01:24:39.360 And 01:24:39.360 --> 01:24:43.120 your neighbor will also notice that you are doing these things. 01:24:43.120 --> 01:24:47.040 Maybe not at first, maybe not always, but imagine the impact on 01:24:47.040 --> 01:24:51.040 a local business, a small business, if everyone at church at your 01:24:51.040 --> 01:24:55.600 congregation decided that they were going to deliberately focus on patronizing them. 01:24:55.600 --> 01:24:57.840 I'm not saying this is necessarily a realistic thing, but just think 01:24:57.840 --> 01:25:02.480 about the impact if suddenly all the members of your congregation started 01:25:02.480 --> 01:25:04.800 buying at the one hardware store. 01:25:04.800 --> 01:25:07.840 Maybe it's a hardware store where you know the guy didn't have 01:25:07.840 --> 01:25:11.280 a church home and suddenly he got a bunch of regular customers 01:25:11.280 --> 01:25:14.960 who were all very nice and very honest and you know intelligent 01:25:14.960 --> 01:25:17.680 people and knew what they were doing and they were in there 01:25:17.680 --> 01:25:19.040 all the time talking to him. 01:25:20.160 --> 01:25:23.600 You're going to not only be a more visible aspect of the 01:25:23.600 --> 01:25:28.080 community as a congregation, but it's going to be easier for you 01:25:28.080 --> 01:25:28.400 to 01:25:29.360 --> 01:25:32.320 share the buck gospel with that person at some point. 01:25:32.320 --> 01:25:36.960 You know, it's when we are when we're Christians in the world, 01:25:36.960 --> 01:25:41.280 it doesn't mean wearing team colors out in public, but your conduct 01:25:41.280 --> 01:25:45.760 and your demeanor does come across and people will notice. 01:25:45.840 --> 01:25:50.000 There are people who will notice that there's something different about someone. 01:25:50.000 --> 01:25:52.960 And you know, if they say something, maybe that's your opening to 01:25:52.960 --> 01:25:55.120 say, oh, you you think I'm weird? 01:25:55.280 --> 01:25:56.400 Let me tell you why. 01:25:56.400 --> 01:25:58.480 Let me tell you about Jesus. 01:25:58.480 --> 01:26:00.000 He's who made me weird. 01:26:00.000 --> 01:26:02.880 Yeah, it's uh you don't know what uh what doors God is 01:26:02.880 --> 01:26:07.360 gonna open for you, but by being visible present members in your 01:26:07.360 --> 01:26:10.800 own community, by working with each other, you know, it's something that 01:26:11.440 --> 01:26:15.120 it's something on on Gab that Andrew Torbus talked about a lot 01:26:15.120 --> 01:26:16.640 with the parallel economy. 01:26:16.640 --> 01:26:20.160 He's basically talking in large part about the same sort of thing, 01:26:20.160 --> 01:26:22.880 not only of keeping it in the family, but of making a 01:26:22.880 --> 01:26:26.960 a visible aspect of your witness that that you are a Christian 01:26:27.280 --> 01:26:31.680 and that you exist outside of church, that you do other stuff, 01:26:31.680 --> 01:26:34.800 you have a business and to sort of hang your shingle out 01:26:35.200 --> 01:26:38.560 and say to other Christians, hey, you know, we're here. 01:26:38.560 --> 01:26:41.360 If you'd like to patronize us, we'd love to have you. 01:26:41.360 --> 01:26:47.360 And that while it's not a primary evangel evangelistic tool, if you 01:26:47.360 --> 01:26:52.320 are an honest tradesperson and you are Christian about it, that is 01:26:52.320 --> 01:26:53.760 a witness for Christ. 01:26:53.760 --> 01:26:58.080 Even if you never say anything about the gospel per se, simply 01:26:58.080 --> 01:27:02.240 by living a virtuous life and saying you're a Christian, Tells the 01:27:02.240 --> 01:27:06.480 people around you that there's something to that and you will absolutely 01:27:06.480 --> 01:27:08.480 be asked questions as a result. 01:27:08.480 --> 01:27:08.800 So 01:27:10.000 --> 01:27:14.240 this isn't just about material gain and it's not about some particular 01:27:14.240 --> 01:27:18.000 rote set of things that's going to revolutionize the world. 01:27:18.000 --> 01:27:18.800 It's just 01:27:19.760 --> 01:27:22.480 these easy things that we can do benefit us. 01:27:22.480 --> 01:27:26.560 They benefit our neighbors and our brothers in Christ in the immediate 01:27:26.560 --> 01:27:28.640 community and and further out. 01:27:28.640 --> 01:27:33.440 And there's no downside apart from someone knowing you're Christian and not 01:27:33.440 --> 01:27:34.640 liking you for it. 01:27:34.640 --> 01:27:39.040 And frankly, we're to the point where that's you know, if if 01:27:39.040 --> 01:27:42.960 if there's no evidence that you're a Christian and it becomes illegal, 01:27:42.960 --> 01:27:44.560 that's probably a bad thing. 01:27:44.560 --> 01:27:48.400 You know, maybe maybe if being a Christian is so undesirable and 01:27:48.400 --> 01:27:52.800 and socially unacceptable, if you're skating by and you're not being reviled, 01:27:52.800 --> 01:27:54.960 it's At some point that's going to be a sign that there's 01:27:54.960 --> 01:27:56.960 actually something wrong with your faith. 01:27:56.960 --> 01:28:00.480 We may not be to that point yet, but we're awfully close. 01:28:00.480 --> 01:28:04.560 And so there's a lot in our lives that we can do 01:28:04.800 --> 01:28:07.280 in small ways to simply 01:28:08.720 --> 01:28:11.760 be faithful stewards of the gifts that God has given us. 01:28:11.760 --> 01:28:14.560 You know, we're stewards of the money that we have, of the 01:28:14.800 --> 01:28:19.280 property that we have, of the skills and talents that we have. 01:28:19.280 --> 01:28:23.040 And as we use each of those in our local communities, it's 01:28:22.960 --> 01:28:26.880 a testimony to everyone around of the sort of person that you 01:28:26.880 --> 01:28:30.880 are. And if there's any public connection of you as that person 01:28:31.040 --> 01:28:34.160 to your church, that can only be a good thing. 01:28:34.160 --> 01:28:35.760 And so these are these are hard things. 01:28:35.760 --> 01:28:38.240 And I'm you know, some of these as I say them, I'm 01:28:38.240 --> 01:28:40.000 I'm certainly a hypocrite in my own life. 01:28:40.000 --> 01:28:42.320 I'm not talking about, oh, I've got this nailed. 01:28:42.320 --> 01:28:44.080 I'm I'm doing a really good job. 01:28:44.080 --> 01:28:45.760 I fail at most of these things. 01:28:46.160 --> 01:28:47.760 So this is not 01:28:49.200 --> 01:28:51.680 this is not a show and tell. 01:28:51.680 --> 01:28:55.600 It's just saying to myself as much as to everyone anyone else. 01:28:55.600 --> 01:28:58.960 Let's do a better job about these things because it's it's important. 01:28:59.600 --> 01:29:03.840 Not it's not as important as salvation, but how is someone who 01:29:03.840 --> 01:29:07.520 has no reason to to talk to you or to listen to 01:29:07.520 --> 01:29:12.400 you going to have their heart opened by you being present and, 01:29:12.400 --> 01:29:15.440 you know, maybe you just make an offhand comment, not even realizing 01:29:15.440 --> 01:29:19.520 it, that reveals that you're a Christian and they start asking questions 01:29:19.680 --> 01:29:23.920 because they've been judging you all along based on your conduct. 01:29:23.840 --> 01:29:26.800 And I think that's one of the things that Christians don't appreciate 01:29:26.800 --> 01:29:32.240 fully is that we always bear silent witness and people will make 01:29:32.240 --> 01:29:34.560 judgments without saying anything. 01:29:34.560 --> 01:29:37.280 And then one day they may come to you and say, I've 01:29:37.280 --> 01:29:40.240 been watching, I've been listening, I've been thinking about this, I want 01:29:40.240 --> 01:29:41.440 to talk to you more about it. 01:29:41.440 --> 01:29:43.680 And to you it's completely out of the blue. 01:29:43.680 --> 01:29:46.560 But to them it's been something that they've been pondering for a 01:29:46.560 --> 01:29:49.360 while. And so all the moments where you don't think you're doing 01:29:49.840 --> 01:29:54.240 anything for Jesus, you are, uh you know, for better or worse, 01:29:54.240 --> 01:29:58.800 if if you're publicly a Christian, if if you're a if you 01:29:58.800 --> 01:30:02.560 do things that are that are not obviously Christian, that testifies to 01:30:02.880 --> 01:30:05.760 them too, and they may never ask you any questions because they 01:30:05.760 --> 01:30:09.040 look at you and say that guy's clearly a hypocrite. 01:30:09.040 --> 01:30:11.920 I'm not gonna I'm not gonna take what he says about something 01:30:11.920 --> 01:30:15.760 seriously when I'm I'm not sure what I think about it. 01:30:15.760 --> 01:30:18.800 But if you do live your life in a manner that reflects 01:30:18.800 --> 01:30:23.040 well on the church, they will come to you someday and ask 01:30:23.040 --> 01:30:26.560 you something, and that's the opportunity for you to use the words 01:30:26.560 --> 01:30:29.120 that God will give you and has already given you to bear 01:30:29.120 --> 01:30:29.920 witness to him. 01:30:30.000 --> 01:30:31.440 It doesn't have to be fancy. 01:30:31.440 --> 01:30:34.240 You know, maybe it's as simple as come to church with me 01:30:34.240 --> 01:30:36.000 and learn where I learn this stuff. 01:30:36.000 --> 01:30:37.280 It can be that easy. 01:30:37.280 --> 01:30:39.360 And that may be all it takes. 01:30:39.360 --> 01:30:43.280 But we only get there by doing all the hard work before 01:30:43.440 --> 01:30:44.960 when we didn't even know it was hard work. 01:30:45.360 --> 01:30:48.240 We were just living our lives, but living it in a way 01:30:48.240 --> 01:30:52.800 that is Christian and in a way that people can recognize as 01:30:52.800 --> 01:30:57.680 Christian. Once you get that down, it's it's a habit. 01:30:57.680 --> 01:31:00.400 You you're gonna form habits no matter what, whether it's a good 01:31:00.400 --> 01:31:01.920 habit or a bad habit. 01:31:01.920 --> 01:31:06.960 If you form the habit of being open about your faith, you 01:31:06.960 --> 01:31:09.760 know, where it where it makes sense, where it seems plausible to 01:31:09.760 --> 01:31:12.640 do it, you open doors. 01:31:12.640 --> 01:31:15.520 God opens doors and God will use those things. 01:31:15.520 --> 01:31:18.880 And frankly, if you know if if being openly Christian means that 01:31:18.880 --> 01:31:22.320 you're persecuted, maybe that's what your faith needs. 01:31:22.320 --> 01:31:24.800 Maybe that's what someone else needs to witness. 01:31:24.800 --> 01:31:28.480 Maybe they need to see you say I'm a Christian in the 01:31:28.480 --> 01:31:33.920 most meek way possible and get beaten up for it, verbally or 01:31:33.920 --> 01:31:40.560 otherwise, and how you bear witness through your receiving that hatred, maybe 01:31:40.560 --> 01:31:44.480 the testimony of your faith that someone else who's watching they would 01:31:44.480 --> 01:31:46.160 have never taken it seriously until you 01:31:47.120 --> 01:31:49.040 had something bad happen to you. 01:31:49.040 --> 01:31:52.080 And when they see it and then see how you respond, some 01:31:52.080 --> 01:31:54.800 people might be scared off, but others would be intrigued. 01:31:54.800 --> 01:31:57.760 I mean, we know that from the martyrs, that when they went 01:31:57.760 --> 01:32:02.640 to their martyrdom joyfully, that was a testimony to those witnesses to 01:32:02.640 --> 01:32:04.880 say there's something going on here. 01:32:04.880 --> 01:32:09.040 This isn't just a crowd not liking this group of outcasts. 01:32:09.040 --> 01:32:11.600 So you never know how God's going to use what you're doing 01:32:11.600 --> 01:32:16.000 in your life, which is why it's important just try to keep 01:32:16.000 --> 01:32:21.280 things straight, keep things simple, keep things focused on godly things, on 01:32:21.280 --> 01:32:25.680 living a godly life in a way that's conspicuously not of this 01:32:25.680 --> 01:32:30.720 world. As this world gets worse and worse, just being a mediocre 01:32:30.720 --> 01:32:33.440 Christian is going to stand out more and more. 01:32:33.440 --> 01:32:36.640 So if you're trying to skate by by hiding your light under 01:32:36.640 --> 01:32:40.880 a bushel and by not not making it obvious that you are 01:32:40.880 --> 01:32:45.600 one of those God fearers, it's not going to matter pretty soon 01:32:45.840 --> 01:32:49.920 because if you're not on hormone blockers and you don't have brightly 01:32:49.920 --> 01:32:54.080 colored hair in any one of these other markers, you're going to 01:32:54.080 --> 01:32:56.160 stand out and people are going to say, What's wrong with that 01:32:56.160 --> 01:33:00.400 guy? So there's no hiding on on the time scale we're talking 01:33:00.400 --> 01:33:01.040 about here. 01:33:01.040 --> 01:33:02.800 You may as well get in the habit of now and just 01:33:02.800 --> 01:33:07.440 being comfortable in your skin as a Christian, in all the hours 01:33:07.440 --> 01:33:08.880 that you're given every week. 01:33:08.880 --> 01:33:12.560 And then when the opportunity comes to testify, you know, as God 01:33:12.560 --> 01:33:16.240 would want you to about what he's given you, it'll be easy. 01:33:16.240 --> 01:33:19.120 And God will open those doors and he'll give you the words. 01:33:19.120 --> 01:33:22.880 And so you don't need to worry about whether it works. 01:33:22.880 --> 01:33:23.760 And that's the point. 01:33:23.760 --> 01:33:27.520 We're this is not stuff that either works or doesn't work. 01:33:27.520 --> 01:33:29.440 It's just it's a good thing to do. 01:33:29.440 --> 01:33:32.160 And it And it will bear fruit where God chooses. 01:33:32.160 --> 01:33:33.520 That's all we have to worry about. 01:33:33.520 --> 01:33:35.280 Just doing what God says. 01:33:35.280 --> 01:33:38.960 And the good stuff will come according to his gracious will. 01:33:38.960 --> 01:33:40.720 It's not something we produce. 01:33:40.720 --> 01:33:44.000 It's just what is produced through us. 01:33:44.000 --> 01:33:44.400 And so And 01:33:44.400 --> 01:33:48.320 so I think we'll end this episode with a quick note that 01:33:48.320 --> 01:33:51.840 I think and perhaps it'll be ironic it may go longer than 01:33:51.840 --> 01:33:55.360 quick, but I think this is something that many men need to 01:33:55.360 --> 01:33:57.280 hear, and women need to hear it as well, but in a 01:33:57.280 --> 01:33:58.160 slightly different way. 01:33:58.160 --> 01:34:03.440 So I am deliberately, intentionally addressing the men in the audience with 01:34:03.440 --> 01:34:06.400 this specific point. 01:34:06.400 --> 01:34:11.840 And I would turn your attention back to the curse in Genesis. 01:34:11.840 --> 01:34:14.800 We are told that by the sweat of your brow you will 01:34:14.800 --> 01:34:18.320 eat bread, and that the earth will bring forth thorns and thistles 01:34:18.480 --> 01:34:21.200 that will no longer be easy, and so part of life 01:34:22.240 --> 01:34:24.000 is going to be suffering. 01:34:24.000 --> 01:34:25.680 It is going to be struggle. 01:34:25.680 --> 01:34:28.320 It is going to be challenge. 01:34:28.320 --> 01:34:32.400 Most of the things in life that are worth doing are not 01:34:32.400 --> 01:34:33.840 going to be easy. 01:34:35.120 --> 01:34:39.360 Now there are some things that are worth doing that are easy. 01:34:39.360 --> 01:34:42.640 Laying on the beach in the sun, worth doing from time to 01:34:42.640 --> 01:34:45.120 time, fairly easy to do. 01:34:45.120 --> 01:34:47.760 However, you had to work to get into a position to be 01:34:47.760 --> 01:34:52.240 able to do that, and that was probably not easy. 01:34:52.240 --> 01:34:54.960 But most of the other things in life are not going to 01:34:54.960 --> 01:34:56.000 be easy. 01:34:56.000 --> 01:34:59.440 Raising children is very hard. 01:34:59.440 --> 01:35:03.200 Building a marriage, and a marriage like a house is built piece 01:35:03.200 --> 01:35:06.160 by piece over a long period of time. 01:35:06.160 --> 01:35:09.360 Building a marriage is hard work. 01:35:09.360 --> 01:35:13.920 Because building any human relationship is going to be hard work. 01:35:15.040 --> 01:35:20.080 And this is related to a concept that military philosophers have called 01:35:20.080 --> 01:35:23.280 friction, Klauswitz, for instance, used that. 01:35:23.280 --> 01:35:28.080 And really, it's the idea that things on paper or in your 01:35:28.720 --> 01:35:29.360 head 01:35:30.240 --> 01:35:33.920 are always going to seem easier than they end up being in 01:35:33.920 --> 01:35:39.600 reality. An example of this, a famous quote, I don't think we 01:35:39.600 --> 01:35:42.480 even know who was the first man to speak it, no plan 01:35:42.720 --> 01:35:45.360 survives contact with the enemy. 01:35:45.360 --> 01:35:50.080 Or the perhaps less eloquent version of which many marines are fond 01:35:50.320 --> 01:35:51.680 embrace the suck 01:35:52.880 --> 01:35:56.560 and that is part of what we have to do, particularly as 01:35:56.560 --> 01:36:01.120 an interim generation, but also just as men more generally. 01:36:01.120 --> 01:36:03.680 Life is going to have a great many challenges. 01:36:03.680 --> 01:36:07.680 Many of the things that are worth doing are going to involve 01:36:08.480 --> 01:36:14.880 suffering, pain, a great deal of effort, and sometimes seemingly not a 01:36:14.880 --> 01:36:16.160 great reward. 01:36:16.160 --> 01:36:18.560 Now God is watching. 01:36:18.560 --> 01:36:21.840 Just like when you give to charity, if you do it and 01:36:21.840 --> 01:36:24.560 no one sees, your father in heaven still sees. 01:36:24.560 --> 01:36:28.240 The same thing is true when you put in those extra hours, 01:36:28.240 --> 01:36:30.640 when you put in the hard work, even if no one else 01:36:30.640 --> 01:36:33.760 seems to know what you did. 01:36:33.760 --> 01:36:36.800 And that is part of what it means to be a man. 01:36:36.800 --> 01:36:39.600 You are going to need to put in that hard work. 01:36:39.600 --> 01:36:44.480 You are going to need to endure that suffering, that struggle. 01:36:45.040 --> 01:36:47.760 Because that is your duty. 01:36:48.080 --> 01:36:49.840 so you don't have a choice. 01:36:49.840 --> 01:36:53.360 I mean of course you do, because there's always the option to 01:36:53.360 --> 01:36:57.200 be derelict in your duty, to neglect what you need to do. 01:36:57.280 --> 01:37:00.800 One of the great examples of this is physical fitness. 01:37:00.800 --> 01:37:04.320 As a man, you should be working out women should as well, 01:37:04.320 --> 01:37:09.200 of course, wives should stay fit for their husbands, and for their 01:37:09.200 --> 01:37:11.840 own health, and so they can take care of their children. 01:37:11.840 --> 01:37:14.880 But men, one of the things you need to be doing is 01:37:14.880 --> 01:37:22.160 exercise. And of course, that's going to involve effort, sweat, pain, suffering. 01:37:22.160 --> 01:37:23.360 And it should, that's a good thing. 01:37:24.160 --> 01:37:26.240 Part of what it means to be a man. 01:37:26.240 --> 01:37:30.960 But the alternative is just as much suffering and pain. 01:37:30.960 --> 01:37:35.120 Being obese is not going to be a good life. 01:37:35.120 --> 01:37:37.840 You're going to suffer one way or the other. 01:37:37.840 --> 01:37:40.640 Whether you want it to be in the gym or sitting on 01:37:40.640 --> 01:37:44.320 the couch as your gut slowly expands, that's up to you. 01:37:44.320 --> 01:37:49.120 But as a man you should choose the former. 01:37:49.120 --> 01:37:53.840 And so that is the message I want the listeners to take 01:37:53.840 --> 01:37:55.600 to heart. 01:37:55.600 --> 01:37:58.560 Many of the things you are going to need to do in 01:37:58.560 --> 01:37:59.200 life 01:38:00.320 --> 01:38:02.080 are going to be hard. 01:38:02.080 --> 01:38:04.960 They are going to involve suffering. 01:38:04.960 --> 01:38:07.280 But you need to push through. 01:38:07.280 --> 01:38:09.360 That is particularly true 01:38:10.320 --> 01:38:14.720 for our generation, in the the grander sense, not dividing it into 01:38:14.720 --> 01:38:17.360 the little cohorts. 01:38:17.360 --> 01:38:23.280 Our generation that has to rebuild the infrastructure, the foundation, everything that 01:38:23.280 --> 01:38:26.880 has been torn down by preceding generations. 01:38:26.880 --> 01:38:31.120 There is going to be a lot of work and relatively little 01:38:31.120 --> 01:38:33.200 reward in some cases. 01:38:33.200 --> 01:38:39.200 But again, God sees everything we do. 01:38:39.200 --> 01:38:41.200 He sees when you get up and go to the gym and 01:38:41.200 --> 01:38:42.240 work out. 01:38:42.240 --> 01:38:44.320 He also sees when you sit on the couch and do nothing 01:38:44.320 --> 01:38:47.040 and eat an entire bag of potato chips. 01:38:47.040 --> 01:38:48.720 God sees everything. 01:38:48.720 --> 01:38:52.320 He is going to see the time and the effort and the 01:38:52.320 --> 01:38:55.520 suffering that you put in to be To build a better world 01:38:55.520 --> 01:38:59.280 for the next generation and the generation after that. 01:38:59.280 --> 01:39:02.640 And he's going to see if you don't do those things. 01:39:02.640 --> 01:39:07.600 And so as Christian men, it is our duty to do what 01:39:07.600 --> 01:39:11.280 God has given us that needs to be done. 01:39:11.280 --> 01:39:13.680 We don't have to be perfect. 01:39:13.680 --> 01:39:17.360 We don't even have to succeed in everything we try. 01:39:17.360 --> 01:39:21.360 We may very well not win, ultimately. 01:39:21.360 --> 01:39:24.160 I personally think that we will. 01:39:24.160 --> 01:39:26.800 But that is not guaranteed. 01:39:26.800 --> 01:39:30.160 But the good news is that is not what God requires of 01:39:30.160 --> 01:39:33.600 us. What God requires of us is to do what we can 01:39:34.480 --> 01:39:37.680 with what He has given us in the time that He has 01:39:37.680 --> 01:39:40.480 given us to do it. 01:39:40.480 --> 01:39:42.640 And so is men. 01:39:42.640 --> 01:39:46.240 We need to get out there and do the work, do what 01:39:46.240 --> 01:39:47.600 needs to be done. 01:39:47.600 --> 01:39:52.800 Whether it's planting an apple tree, raising some chickens, building a barn, 01:39:52.800 --> 01:39:56.000 teaching a child how to use a bow and arrow, whatever it 01:39:56.000 --> 01:39:58.720 happens to be, all of these things that men are supposed to 01:39:58.720 --> 01:40:02.320 do in their lives do them. 01:40:02.320 --> 01:40:06.720 Get off the couch, get up, and go and do the things 01:40:06.720 --> 01:40:11.200 that God has enabled you to do in this life. 01:40:11.200 --> 01:40:17.680 Ultimately Ultimately it is not a matter of succeeding in everything we 01:40:17.680 --> 01:40:23.200 do. It is mounting the attempt. 01:40:23.200 --> 01:40:24.800 When it comes to 01:40:25.840 --> 01:40:30.240 the small the smaller things in life teaching a child to shoot 01:40:30.240 --> 01:40:34.000 a gun, perhaps, teaching a child to use a bow and arrow, 01:40:34.000 --> 01:40:36.240 teaching a child a language. 01:40:36.240 --> 01:40:40.240 To a very real degree, we do have some control, a great 01:40:40.240 --> 01:40:42.960 deal of control really, over the outcome. 01:40:42.960 --> 01:40:48.800 If we put in sufficient effort in a sufficiently skilled and effective 01:40:48.800 --> 01:40:51.600 way, the outcome more or less follows. 01:40:51.600 --> 01:40:55.680 When it comes to the grander things, the outcome is out of 01:40:55.680 --> 01:40:57.200 our hands. 01:40:57.200 --> 01:41:01.680 Whether or not the United States, perhaps not as the United States, 01:41:01.680 --> 01:41:04.320 but as a political entity, whether or not it exists in a 01:41:04.320 --> 01:41:06.960 hundred years is not in our hands. 01:41:06.960 --> 01:41:08.720 It's in God's hands. 01:41:08.720 --> 01:41:14.320 That's the division we have in mind throughout this entire episode, so 01:41:14.320 --> 01:41:17.680 if you need to go and listen again, or think back on 01:41:17.680 --> 01:41:20.000 what we've discussed. 01:41:20.000 --> 01:41:24.080 We are talking about those everyday things where the outcome really is 01:41:24.080 --> 01:41:25.920 in your hands. 01:41:25.920 --> 01:41:30.800 If you set about to plant a bunch of apple trees, you 01:41:30.800 --> 01:41:31.680 will end up with apples. 01:41:32.560 --> 01:41:36.080 God will give the rain, He has promised to do that. 01:41:36.080 --> 01:41:40.320 So you will get the result if you put in the work. 01:41:40.320 --> 01:41:45.440 At the other end, there are a great many political problems. 01:41:45.440 --> 01:41:49.840 There are great many grand problems that we face. 01:41:49.840 --> 01:41:53.120 There are no guarantees for the outcome. 01:41:53.120 --> 01:41:54.640 God will see to that. 01:41:54.640 --> 01:41:57.840 We will have to put an effort toward those things of course, 01:41:57.840 --> 01:42:00.080 but God will see to the outcome. 01:42:00.080 --> 01:42:02.800 What we need to do, where we need to focus in our 01:42:02.800 --> 01:42:07.280 daily lives, these day to day tasks, are the smaller things over 01:42:07.280 --> 01:42:09.280 which we actually do have a great deal of 01:42:10.160 --> 01:42:13.600 control. You can choose where you shop. 01:42:13.600 --> 01:42:15.760 You can choose how you spend your time. 01:42:15.760 --> 01:42:18.160 You can choose if you exercise or sit on the couch. 01:42:18.160 --> 01:42:21.360 You can choose if you plant trees or uproot trees. 01:42:21.360 --> 01:42:24.000 These are things within your control. 01:42:24.000 --> 01:42:27.760 So do what you can with what you have been given in 01:42:27.760 --> 01:42:31.280 the time God has given you to do them.