Sweat the Small Stuff

0:37 Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. I am Corey J. Mahler. And I'm Wo. In today's episode of Stone Choir, we're going to be talking a little bit more about framing and talking about some issues and some things that we can do in our own lives or questions that we need to solve individually, personally in our own lives. Uh before we get into some of the specifics of what we want to talk about, we want to just speak in kind of generalities specifically about speaking in generalities. So I mean by that is this. A lot of the topics that we've discussed in the past have been big ticket items, you know, things like Christian nationalism. That's a concept. That's a big I mean, talking about an entire nation and you're

1:20 talking about a religion. Those are for better or worse, ultimately sweeping generalities. You can talk about the principles involved, but it doesn't doesn't necessarily tell you the individual, okay, what do I do next? So today we're gonna take it to the other end of the scale. What do I do next? Not in a prescriptive fashion, like we're not this isn't gonna be an advice show. We just wanted to talk in general about like I like I said, some questions that do need to be answered in some of our lives, in many of our lives. To frame that, I think it's important to note the crucial distinction between strategy and tactics, or another way of thinking about it that are is the ends versus the means.

2:02 So strategy and tactics are it's a distinction that is principally derived from warfare, where the strategy is the macro scale goal. What is the big ticket achievement that you want? And then the tactics are the individual things that you perform to achieve that strategic goal. You know, so for example, during the Revolutionary War in the colonies, the strategic goal of the colonies was to become independent. And the strategic goal of the king was to maintain control over his colonies. The tactics were what happened after those two strategic worldviews were fundamentally misaligned. They could have just said we're gonna part our separate ways, no harm, no foul. Instead, they shot and killed each other for a while.

2:55 We're not gonna talk about you know the specifics of that, but that's just an example of the strategy is I have a goal of being no longer a colony of England. I want to be an independent state. And then the tactic is: well, do I shoot lobster backs or not? The ends that are used, or the ends that we seek and the means by which we seek them are two different things. They should be aligned. I mean, obviously you want your tactics or your your means to be aligned with what your strategic goal is. So when we do an episode on something like Christian nationalism, that's a strategic well, that's the question. Is Christian nationalism the strategic goal? And I think the answer is no. I I think that even something as big scale as that is

3:38 still fundamentally the means to an end. Where for Christians the end, the ultimate end, the ultimate strategic goal should be I want a Christian world, I want a Christian nation, I want a Christian country, a Christian government, I want a Christian community with Christian laws, I want a Christian family, and I want a Christian church. So strategically, that's kind of I think where most of us are coming from. We want everything to be ordered in a godly fashion. And so something like Christian nationalism is it's not reinventing the wheel, but it's just saying, hey, this is something that used to exist for almost all of human history, and then we got rid of it. Maybe when things got worse and we got rid of it,

4:23 that's a signal that we should go back to what we were doing. But the important point is that the idea of Christian nationalism itself is not the goal. It's not the end state. It is a tool, it is a means or a tactic of achieving the ultimate goal of just having a Christian nation, a Christian country, a Christian people, and on down. So the reason that we wanted to focus on this first is so many times when these various discussions come up all over the place on the right, on the Christian right in particular, everybody wants to be, well, what about? Well, what about this? Well, what about that? You say you want a Christian country, but then people are still gonna do crime. So how does that even make sense?

5:04 That's nonsense. The you do the thing if it's the right thing to do. And if not everything is perfect, you have to realize that that's because Jesus hasn't come back yet. Nothing's perfect. Nothing's going to be perfect. So it's not a negating of the tactic to to say that the entire overarching goal of everything being Christian and godly hasn't been achieved. I w I want to get people thinking in terms of this one small thing that I can do in my life that's an improvement is worth doing, even if it doesn't solve all my problems. There's a real tendency on the right to think that at some point we're going to have a leader who stands up And we're going to go from the current disaster area that we see around

5:52 ourselves to some sort of pristine semi-paradise here on Earth practically overnight. And that's just not the way any of this works. It's not the way that anything in life works. If you want to build a house that's done brick by brick. You have to lay the foundation first, and before you do the foundation you have to survey, you have to clear land, there are steps you have to take to do these things. You're not going to go from A to Z without going through all the points in between. And we have to come to terms with that on the right. We have to come to terms with that as Christians. What we need to be doing is the small things in our everyday lives, everything Every single time you choose to do a good work.

6:44 You're making the world just a little bit better. And that ultimately is actually the end goal. Because the end goal is to set conditions under which more people choose to do the good thing in more circumstances. Because that's what it means to live in a good world, to live in a Christian society, is you have people, individuals making these good decisions, doing these good works, preferably all the time. There's no sort of abstract entity that makes everything good. You don't have a Christian nation and then that abstraction instead of the concrete individuals, families, etc. You don't have that abstraction making everything good. No, it's the individuals in their daily lives, going about their tasks

7:37 that God has set before them, that's what makes society good. That's what makes things better for everyone. Yes, if you have good laws, if you have the proper infrastructure in place, it makes that stuff easier. It makes it more likely, which is, of course, the goal. But you still need individuals who are going forth and performing the good works that God prepared beforehand for us to walk in them? That's what Scripture tells us. And so we need to look at the everyday instead of always focusing on these grand overarching issues, because that's that's what the ultimately what the commandments are about, that's ultimately what Christian teaching is about. God does not need our good works. God doesn't need anything.

8:27 God doesn't hunger, God doesn't thirst, now of course I'm not talking about Christ according to his humanity, I'm talking about God the divinity. So God does not need our good works. Our neighbor needs our good works. And so that is how we live out our lives as Christians is in serving our neighbors. And of course we do that first and foremost with our closest neighbors, which if you are married, that is your spouse, if you have children, that is your children, and that is your immediate family, and then your extended family, and then your nation. And ultimately, of course, yes, others as well, in so far as you are able. For most, you aren't going to be able to do much for anyone in the far flung corners of the world.

9:10 But you can most certainly do something good for your neighbor who is next door. And it's that every day good work, it's the everyday decision to make things a little better than they could otherwise be. That is ultimately how we get from A through B all the way to Z. And so it's really important for people to try to get out of their heads the the automatic naysaying whenever someone suggests something that won't solve all the world's problems. Yeah, it's as grown-ups we should be able to we shouldn't be doing that to begin with. That's a completely childish approach. And yet today it seems like in a lot of discourse it's almost the only thing you're gonna hear in response when someone suggests

9:54 something. You know, the the example Corey gave of of building a house is exactly the one I had in mind. You know, imagine if your strategic goal is you want to build a house and so you begin by building a kitchen. Well, you didn't lay a foundation, you didn't put up walls, you didn't put up a roof, you started with a kitchen. Now, a kitchen is an important tactical aspect of having a house. You don't have a complete house without a kitchen. But if you begin there and that's all you have, you don't really have a house. So there there are two competing things. There's the notion that yes, I want all of my ultimate goals to be in alignment. I want to have a a house with plumbing and a roof and a kitchen and all the stuff that you want.

10:39 And individually you have to make those decisions one day at a time and one piece at a time. And so with when individual subjects come up, like many of the episodes that we cover, you know, we we say in a lot of these episodes, we don't think this is the entirety of the Christian life. we'll ne we'll never say that. that's not the focus of what we're doing with this podcast. However, these are all pieces of you being informed and then making decisions in your life. So the emphasis that we're placing on things that are in some cases peripheral or not very on their face important. Like for example, we did the episode on Forgotten Doctrines, we talked about head coverings, and we had the question last week about do

11:26 we think that hymns that were written by women should they be removed from the hymnals? And my response was it's not in my top fifty list of things to fix. Now I think that if we discuss what God says about the role of girls in the church, in communities and the hierarchy of things, many other things that used to be done will naturally return without us getting worked up about needing to redline a hymnal and say we gotta get rid of this get rid of this page in this hymn we gotta get rid of this. That's not my concern. My concern is the strategic goal of of obeying God in whatever he says. And when he says something about a subject, let's believe that and then work our way down. So the strategy, the strategic goal is always what does God want?

12:16 And then the implementation details can be more or less important. Is it more important for you to be in a church where women are not preaching from the pulpit than for you to be in a church where women have written one of the hymns? Yes. That's a much bigger problem. It doesn't mean that if one is a problem, the other can't be a problem. And so as adults, we have to be able to triage all these things and say, well, you gotta draw a line somewhere. And this is, you know, this is a particular struggle that pastors face when they go to a new congregation. Maybe the previous pastor had some bad practices that are really maybe some are over his personal lines. Yeah, they're they're contrary to the teachings of that church, and yet

12:59 this man in isolation was doing it, and so the congregation's used to it. When a new pastor comes in, he has to figure that out. What do I do? Where do I draw the line? Which things can I teach through? And which things do I have to put my foot down immediately? And that's those are tactics. That that's that's a very crucial tactical decision. And so one of the reasons for for highlighting this is that there's no flow chart for this stuff. There's no list of yes, these are all the things that you must do and you can do, and then these are all the lists of things you can never do. There are some things on each of those lists, but there's also stuff in the middle that's a matter of wisdom. And for example, the question of women writing hymns.

13:44 I don't think it's a good idea. I think that it's conceivable someone might convince me that it was okay. I think that I would ultimately end up on the side that it's not okay. If uh however someone comes along, say say that we have a church where we've tamped down all the abuses and we've decided it's okay to have girls writing hymns. If someone comes along and says, Why won't you let girls be pastors? They're writing hymns, that's teaching too. My response is gonna be, okay, you win. We're getting rid of the hymns too. Because although it was an indifferent matter when we hammered it out and said, well, maybe, maybe not, we'll go with it. When someone comes along and tries to use that as license for

14:25 a greater abuse that makes the thing evil on its face. Even if in isolation it might be questionable, if it's going to bear evil fruit, you gotta deal with it. Because if it's begins bearing evil fruit, it's gonna keep doing that. And so that's why a lot of these things are matters of wisdom. You know, the the blow up in the last couple weeks about Corey bringing up interracial marriage that caused pastors to lose their minds. Even if it were it were permissible on its face when all the downstream results are evil, that's a sign that the fruit of the tree proves the tree is bad. You don't have to have God saying you may never do this if all of the outcomes from that thing are terrible. That's God telling you this is not a good idea.

15:13 And so the hyperactive moral concerns about if this isn't a sin, I'm absolutely permitted to do it. I I don't think it's the right way of approaching things. If something is good, it's going to bear good fruit. And when something does harm, as a matter of wisdom, you just stop doing it because it's bad for you. You know, it's it's the same as talking about diet. if you eat something and it hurts your stomach every time you eat it, stop eating it. And if I say that, if and someone's like, Were you saying it's a sin to eat it? No, I'm saying it hurts you. That's stupid. Don't do that. And if you get hurt every time you do something, if the result of doing a thing is harm, then it's bad. I don't have to find a verse in the Bible that says

15:56 it's bad. If it's hurting you, that's the sign from God that you're doing something you shouldn't do. So a lot of this stuff isn't going to be prescriptive from scripture. It's just what is the best approach to this thing? And if we try something in good conscience thinking it's okay and then it causes harm, back off. Admit you made a mistake. That's okay. I think it's one of the biggest problems we have today, especially as we're generations into people making these intergenerational mistakes about living our lives. If you tell someone, hey, don't do that, and the response is, well, I know a guy and he did that, are you saying he's bad? Or my parents did that? Or this is the way it's always been done here.

16:37 None of those are arguments against saying that maybe something's not a good idea. Our moral calculus needs to take into account both what God has absolutely revealed and also what is just plainly obvious from from our lives. If you're doing something it's fine, it's obviously not causing harm, that's that's not a cause for concern if God doesn't say anything about it. If, on the other hand, it's up in the air, but it's causing injury and it's causing people to spread false doctrine. That's a very clear sign that you have a problem that you need to deal with. And so triaging which of those things we deal with in which order, there's no there's no solution that can just be written down and handed to someone.

17:21 We need intelligent, faithful men in various positions to always be asking these questions and do not immediately leap to the defense of whatever the status quo is. The status quo is frequently bad. It's frequently evil and it's frequently harmful. And the fact that maybe we did it with a clean conscience doesn't mean that it's something we should keep doing. If the question comes up and the harm is demonstrated, maybe it's time to look at rolling some things back until we get back to where our ancestors a few generations ago were living, because they were living Christian lives and they did pretty well. They got us here. Maybe we should take that into account. I think food is a really good example when it comes to

18:04 describing whether or not something is inherently sin versus whether it is sin because of external considerations. So for instance, eating cake is not a sin. You are permitted to do that. You are allowed to eat sweets. Having some sugar every now and then is not is not even bad for you, realistically, and I know that some people are going to screech at me for that, but deal with it. Having sugar every so often is not bad for you. Eating it all the time is extremely bad for you. That will eventually give you diabetes. You will lose your feet. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should do a lot of that thing, and it also doesn't mean that you should do that thing all the time. Alternatively, just because someone can do something doesn't mean that everyone should

18:52 do it. So a diabetic should not be eating chocolate cake. Someone who is not diabetic who's not overweight can have some chocolate cake, that's totally fine. Right now, the drink that I have sitting right here with me, I have cold brew and milk. That would be a recipe for disaster for actually the majority of human beings. Because most people are at least mildly lactose intolerant. I'm Northern European, I'm not lactose intolerant. I drink two thirds of a gallon of milk a day. Coffee also causes a lot of people to have digestive issues. I can drink this and be totally fine. That doesn't mean that everyone else should do it as well. The matters we are discussing are matters of wisdom, and that is

19:39 something that Christians are supposed to have. In Scripture it is very clearly stated that being a fool is not a good thing. Christians are not called to be fools. Yes, you are called to be childlike in your faith when it comes to faith in God. You are to have a childlike faith. That is correct. That does not mean you are supposed to be a fool. In fact, you are supposed to be as wise as a serpent when it comes to dealing with the world. And we as Christians have let that fall by the wayside. That has been ignored in our modern context, instead, we have gone all in on the other side and attempted to find all of the little lines, all of the edges of the cliffs, saying, Well, I can come right up to this cliff and do whatever I

20:30 want as long as I don't go over. The problem with going right up to the edge of the cliff as long as you don't go over is you're you're probably going to go over. You're going to trip, you're going to fall, you're going to go over. Anyone who hikes knows that you don't walk right along the edge of the cliff for a lot of reasons. One, it could give out under you, but two, you are significantly increasing the odds of going over that cliff. No, you walk back from the cliff. We should be doing the same thing in the Christian life. Your goal should not be to find the absolute furthest edge of every one of God's rules. Of every place where God has said you may do this, or conversely, because of course it's the same line, where God has said

21:18 you may not do this. Don't try to f find the point where as soon as you step over that it's a violation. That's not what it means to be a Christian. No I'm not taking the rabbinical or the pharisaical approach of saying, Well, you can't do this, so you shouldn't do anything that even That even remotely looks like this. No, I'm saying, as a Christian, be wise. As a Christian, consider what you are doing. And that ties into what we're discussing with the everyday in life because those things are undertaken pursuant to wisdom. You are when you act in the present, you are planning for the future, at least you should be. Not necessarily all the time. I'm not saying that every single thing you do has to be

22:05 planning for the future at all times. No. You are allowed to relax, you're allowed to have time off, in fact God tells you that you are required to do so. The Sabbath is not just for hearing the word preached. The Sabbath is also a time of rest. And I know that's a problem for Americans who are by and large workaholics. You should be resting on Sunday. You should not be working on Sunday. That's not your time to catch up with the work you didn't do during the week. But in these good works that you're undertaking, in these decisions you're making, you should be planning for the future. And we have had a few generations now who have really not done that. Instead, they have looked at the present and pursued their own desires

22:52 in the present. And that's why you see old buildings that were perfectly good buildings torn down and replaced with something that was new, because it's new. You see people who clear their property of trees that were a hundred, two hundred years old. Not because they need the property in order to farm, they don't need it in order to have farmland or to have fields. No, they just they wanted a lawn. There are just endless examples of this. We see a focus on the present, this high time preference, that does not work with civilization, that is unbecoming of a Christian. As Christians, we should be planning for what we're going to pass on to children and grandchildren and great grandchildren. And that ties into something that many men do not want to

23:44 hear these days Women as well, but we're addressing an audience mostly of men. Yes, we know we have quite a few female listeners as well. But as men, as human beings, we right now are somewhat of an interim generation. Those before us made a great many errors, we are paying for those errors. No matter how well we pursue our tasks, no matter how much work we put in, we will not reap the benefit of most of it. God will bless us yes, because God always blesses faithfulness. He even blesses those who are not believers if they are faithful in other ways. Mormons are incredibly blessed in many ways, despite being heretics. They're not Christians, they're pagans. They're still blessed because they still pursue profile, they still have in

24:43 group preferences. God still blesses them because of these things. But just because you do what is right, what is good, does not mean that your life will suddenly be perfect. The consequences of sin are not immediately removed when you become a Christian. And that includes intergenerational consequences of sin. And so a large part of our goal, what it should be, is making a better world for the coming generations. The old proverb, of course, comes to mind that societies grow great when old men plant trees in the shade of which they know they will never rest. That's absolutely true. Because some of the things you plant, whether figuratively or literally, they may not mature for twenty, thirty, forty, a hundred years, it just

25:32 depends. You may not benefit personally. If you are a ninety year old man and you plant a walnut tree, you will probably never eat walnuts off that tree. However, your grandchildren will. And that is what we need to be doing, as Christians. That is the everyday stuff that we can do in order to make a better future. Yes, it will also improve the present, but we have to have that intergenerational mindset, and that is why we keep hammering away at the point of family, immediate and extended family of nation, of groups of people as God designed them to interact with each other as opposed to the individual. Because the focus on the individual, which is what we have had for decades, has been has proven conclusively to be incredibly destructive.

26:23 And so we need to have a larger focus. We need to have a focus on the bigger picture while still acting in the everyday small things. Because when you plant an apple tree, you are looking to the future, you are looking at the bigger picture, but you are taking an immediate action then and there, it seems like a small action you're planting a tree, but it really does have an effect long term. One of the questions that we get asked some, and we certainly see a lot of people talking about all over the place in the last few years is one of relocation. Where should I live? Where can I be safe? Where can I find a good church? Where can I find a job? You know, all these you know basic human questions that are nothing

27:13 new to our era, but they've absolutely changed in how they're manifest in the last few generations, really since the automobile, where some Social mobility means that now you can pretty much live anywhere you want. You can uproot overnight. You can you can have been your ancestors can have been in one place for centuries and one day you just say, I'm out of here. You run a U-Haul or whatever and you can be thousands of miles away the next week. And no one would think that's particularly weird anymore. You know, it used to be that only the the black sheep of families would do that sort of stuff. Now in the in the post-college world where it's sort of assumed that you you know if you have a kid that's even remotely

28:02 bright, you want to send him off to college, whether it's a boy or a girl. Now it's perfectly normal for us to just scatter our children like seeds on the wind. And there's no expectation that they would ever come home when they're done. Yeah, it's not even a rumspringer where there's a notion that they're gonna go sow their oats and then they're gonna return home. You're basically sending them off into the world in hopes of finding something better than where they came from. And that's taken as folk wisdom today. Like that's that's just normal. And so one of the things that we want to talk about in this episode is the fact that that's actually profoundly perverse the the idea that you would uproot from a place where your people

28:48 have been from, wherever it is. I don't care where it is. I d like like we said in the in the episodes on race, if you're African, God bless you. I hope you be or the best African you can possibly be. If you're from a place, be the best you can be in that place. What we have happening today is that people think that the only way to be a better version of themselves is to leave everything that they've ever known behind, everything their ancestors have known behind. I a few years ago I started doing genealogy of on myself just out of curiosity. And one of the things that I discovered was that the town that I was born in was founded by my family over two centuries ago. And And virtually all of my ancestors on that side of

29:36 my family had lived there for over two hundred years. And what did I do? Well, my family moved away. And in my case, I I am completely ruthless. I am I am the the most terrible example of the rootless cosmopolitan today. By the time I was 18, I had lived in seven different addresses in three different states. I'm now up to 15 addresses in six states. I have no notion of place at all. J just none. Like part of the reason that I settled where I am now was it's the only place I've ever been. I've visited most of the states. I've spent a decent amount of time in a number of 'em. Th where I am now is the only place that ever felt like home, even though it wasn't where I was from. And what I'd found out when I did genealogy was that nineteen

30:25 of my ancestors actually lived right around where I live today. They all moved to where I was born over two hundred years ago. They all moved and founded the place where I came from. And so my family is from a place that I was uprooted from by my own family when I was a minor. It didn't seem abnormal. It just was like that's what people do. You move and you move and you move. And so in my case, I haven't unpacked since 2011. I've moved several times since then. I like I unpack unpack some stuff, but I don't even bother finishing moving into a place. And I I'll probably never leave where I am now. I hope not to. I I hope this is the last house I ever live in. And yet I still have zero notion of making this my own.

31:11 Like it's just it's that part of what should be in every person has been completely burned out of me. So I'm not saying this is something like I want to fix in myself. It's not a confession. It's just dead. that thing that a man should feel to be in a place and say I'm he's gonna make it his own. I don't have that. And I don't have that because of my upbringing and because of my conduct after that. You know, once I was an adult, I kept doing the same thing, kept moving around like crazy. I I moved around a lot less as an adult than I did as a kid, but it really burned into me that there's there's no notion of permanence. So the reason I'm mentioning this is not to talk about myself, but to say if you are trying to decide whether you should

31:56 stay where you are or if you're going to move somewhere else. I would hope that for most people, the first barrier to get past is am I leaving my family? Am I leaving behind my roots, my my actual family members who live in a place. If you have extended family somewhere, by default, you probably shouldn't leave that. Like that's as a as a as a Christian matter, you should probably stay where you're. your family is. There are obviously reasons why you may have to move. You know, if if you're a Christian, you're if you're listening to this, you almost certainly are. You may have to move away in part because your family is completely pagan. And if you're raising kids, maybe your pagan family is actually

32:39 harming your own children. It may be that in spite of those familial connections, you have to make a clean break for the sake of your children. So again, we we said earlier on, this is not a matter of a flow chart. There's not a yes this, no, that. All these things are matters of wisdom. If you have family, you should probably try to stay there. If you're not able to stay there or if there are overarching reasons why everybody needs to leave, that's another matter. But I mentioned my own past just to say if you have to uproot your kids, if you have to move them somewhere else, Don't make them feel like that's normal. You know, it's one thing to like move in different houses in the same area.

33:21 When you're bouncing around between entire regions, it's fundamentally destructive. And I didn't like I'm not talking about a terrible childhood. My childhood was fine. I had no idea. I really I didn't realize how messed up that was until this decade. As I started looking at that and I added up how many places I lived. Like that's screwed up. Like no one should have to live that way. I never thought it was wrong. And that's that's the reason for mentioning that. There's so much of our lives that we're like, oh, that's fine, that's normal. That's what everyone does. It shouldn't be normal. it's not normal for humans to to have 15 addresses that that it it screws you up permanently. I am I am screwed up by that.

34:02 I I have part of me that's damaged that's just never gonna regrow. And it's not something I can fix. I'm I'm not worried about it. It doesn't stress me out. It's just the thing that I should have for a place. Like I I enjoy the environment here. I like being here. I like seeing the trees and I like the weather and I don't want to go anywhere, but at the same time I don't feel like I belong here. This is just kind of where I am. I wouldn't want that for anyone else. And if you have kids and you have to uproot them, I would hope that you would try to make sure that if you have to uproot your family from where they are, there are good reasons for that, make sure that you're planting new roots in a

34:38 new place as a conscious matter. That it's not just something you assume will happen. You should take conscious affirmative steps to plant those roots and to tell your kids that's what you're doing, to say we're leaving something behind. We're gonna make something new. And I'm doing this so that you and your kids will have something and have a permanence that we're not able to have right in this moment. Of course there is the caveat, and we'll go ahead and bluntly state it, if you happen to live somewhere like California or New York, you should move. That is the the simple reality of the time in which we live. If you are living in one of those states, one of those areas, it is dangerous to your children and dangerous to yourself

35:28 to remain there. Not just because of crime rates and things like that, but the sheer wickedness of of certain parts of the country should be avoided. Not least of all because if you have children, there is a very real risk they will take your children away from you for simply teaching them Christian truth. And so if you live in one of those places, yes, you need to move. You should have moved already, but you should most certainly move soon. I did. I am from California. I lived in California most of my life, with the exception of the time that I spent in undergrad and then abroad for a little while to get another degree. Incidentally, I did move back to where my family lived and in both cases, because I moved back from abroad to California and then

36:22 I moved from California to Tennessee. And my family has long roots here. I've had family in this part of the country for centuries, maybe three hundred years, give or take. Whenever Europeans started moving to the area basically. But I left California because California is no longer a suitable place for a Christian to live. Now that's unfortunate. I like California. It is one of the most beautiful parts of the world. I've been a lot of places in this country. California has most of the different environments, most of the different experiences you can have. It is a beautiful state, and I I hate that I had to move. I'm not saying I hate where I live now. It's a little warm this time of year, but other than that.

37:10 But as a Christian, I could not live there any longer. I didn't move just for political reasons. Obviously, yes, that plays into it. But as a Christian, it is not a safe place to be, particularly not a safe place for anyone who has children, whether they are your children or children of a sibling or a cousin, what have you. There are real considerations like that. But outside those considerations, outside basically having to flee, become a refugee, because that's really what you're doing if you're fleeing one of these areas, but outside that you should remain where your family lives, where your family has lived, because human beings are meant to be able to put down deep roots, to live somewhere over a course of generations, a course of centuries, you should

38:04 be able to go to the local graveyard and find the tombstone for your great great grandparents and your great great great grandparents, back however many generations. That is how human beings are intended to live. That is what God in the postfall world in which death is a thing. That is how God intends for us to live. You are supposed to have a connection to not just your family, not just the members of your community, but the soil where that community is located. Man was taken from the dust and yes, of course we will return to the dust, but man is of the earth in a very real sense. And part of that is having a deep connection to a certain physical part of the world. There's no such thing as a world citizen.

38:57 If you're a citizen of everywhere, you're a citizen of nowhere. And so the the rootless cosmopolitan is not the Christian goal. The Christian goal is someone who can go outside and look out at the land that his grandfather looked at and his great grandfather, and like I said, go down to the local graveyard and see the graves of his ancestors, and want the same thing for his children. That is the Christian outlook and that is what we are encouraging listeners and others to do. Do the things that make for your legacy where you live. So yes, you're going to plant the apple tree, you're going to build the house, you're going to renovate things, you're going all these little things that add up to connecting yourself to a specific place,

39:49 to anchoring yourself and your family to this particular land. Do those things. Yes, they seem like small things. Planting an apple tree, which is an example I will continue to use. Planting an apple tree is a small thing. Raising chickens is a small thing. Building a barn is a relatively small thing. Smaller if you have a lot of neighbors who are willing to help. But all of it adds up. And all of these are the things that build up to something greater, and that is what we need to be doing as Christians. We are seeking to undo Undo the harm caused by the last handful of generations who ripped up roots everywhere, tore down history, and basically turned everyone into a rootless individual. That is not a Christian life.

40:38 A Christian life is a life that is connected to community, connected to family, connected to the land. And that is the life we want people to start building again. And like I said, you may not succeed in having that life for yourself you will to some degree, because your efforts will be rewarded as you work. However, these things take time, and so you are building a better future for your children and your grandchildren and generations you will never meet. Because the things that you do here today may very well benefit someone who lives two hundred years from now. You may meet him if you have trained up your children in the right way, you may meet that progeny so far away from you in time, in paradise, but you will not meet him in

41:31 this life. But that's fine, that is the way things are in this life, that is the way things are supposed to be. You work to benefit those who will come after you even if you will never meet them. Because the goal is not to benefit oneself. Yes, you will benefit yourself if you do these things because of course God does reward you for the good you do. However, much of that will accrue to future generations, just the same as the errors of previous generations generations have accrued to us. A few years ago I went back to where I was born and spent some time with my grandma and we rode around town, the town that my family had built over two centuries ago and it continued building up to that day.

42:22 And she as we were riding around, you know, she was in the passenger seat and so she would we just roll down a random street and she would point to house after house and tell me the names of everyone who had lived there and their family histories and what they did and she just she knew everyone and she knew everything. It was it was an incredible repository of a community that to me was just completely alien. Like you said, until I did my genealogy after think maybe when I'd visit her, but like I had no notion of that place meaning anything. No place has ever meant anything to me. And that's the the reason that we're mentioning this is that that's messed up. That's not that's not how humans have lived in the past.

43:04 And the fact that it's so normal, like most of you, you know, some of you listening maybe have had more than fifteen addresses and more than six states. So you think that's just normal. I agree that it is normal today. It is not normal for the human condition. It's bad for us. I'm not saying oh, you did that, you're evil. Like it was it was stupid. I I shouldn't have done it. My parents, you know, did it to me first. So like I was just along for the ride, and I just I kept up the momentum. So I think that gets back to a point I made earlier when when we talk about these things, everyone wants to say, oh, you're saying there's a sin. At some point you just have to say, who cares? Like you look at the thing and it was it was harmful.

43:50 I don't have to find a Bible verse to tell me that moving fifteen times has hurt me as a person. And I did it mostly to myself. So I'm not like I wasn't it wasn't a self-inflicted injury because I didn't know I was doing harm. But just the further and further away I got from where I came from, the less any it meant to me for anyone to be from anywhere. And that is not that is not our inheritance from our ancestors beyond the past couple cent generations. Like Corey said, like really you go back to before the automobile, nobody did this. Almost no one did this. You'd have exceptions where someone may uproot from the old comp country to the new country. And that would happen in times where there was nothing.

44:36 You know, most of North America was empty. So when there were waves of people coming from northwestern Europe, they came here and they moved to places where sometimes there was just nobody. And so they were basically starting from scratch. Now the difference between the Germans moving to the Midwest and starting And starting from scratch in the English moving to New England and starting from scratch, is that the Germans had the army clearing everything out for them so they had it easy. It was the people who tamed the frontier that had a harder time of doing stuff, but still they were going someplace and building something from nothing. that's been a part of human history too, and we don't neither

45:15 one of us thinks that it's bad for people to move from one place to another inherent inherently. But you know, when when Cory's ancestors and my ancestors left Europe four centuries ago, they were fleeing something. And they came someplace seeking refuge from what they were fleeing. They carved something from nothing in a new place and built it and handed it to us. And one of the reasons we're talking about the notion of place is that we now just fundamentally disregard our inheritance. You know, having lived somewhere for centuries and then just thinking absolutely nothing of it, not caring in the slightest. I'd rather go off to college and make more money and forget I ever came from this place.

45:57 That's normal today. That's how most people behave. That's not good. It's is not healthy. It's not natural. It leads to an alienation from your own people. And it sets a pattern for future life that's going to be even worse. And so, you know, like we said, this isn't a Bible study episode where we're gonna give you Bible verses to prove this versus that. You can just tell by looking that some of the stuff is dumb and bad. God built us for that too. You when when it hurts your hand to touch the stove, You know not to touch the stove. You don't need a Bible verse to tell you not to touch the stove. This stuff is less obvious, like I said, I didn't realize until a couple of years ago how messed up it was.

46:39 But But once I realize it, I realize that I would never wish that on anyone. So to get back to the question that we're discussing here, if you're confronted with I need to relocate because my state has gone down the tubes because I live near a city and I know it's going to burn down soon and I don't want to be anywhere near it when that happens. Maybe you want to reconnect with your roots. Maybe you have moved far away. Your parents moved far away. You maybe you want to go back to where your family has always been. Not saying that's necessarily the right choice. But if that is your choice for either yourself, you know, as a single man, or if you're relocating your family because they've been

47:18 uprooted and you've been doing the same sort of thing. It's okay to do that, but as Corey said, we are in some ways an intermediate generation. We're in between A mess and trying to build something stable again. And part of trying to build something stable again may mean some more instability. So it may mean that you need to move and then tell your kids, I hope you'll never move again. I'm trying to build something here so that you won't have to do what we're doing now. So that your kids will never have to pack everything up and move over and over again. And that's why it's part it's important to look at these things not only as black and white moral matters, but as matters of wisdom. Because maybe the white the wise thing for you to do

48:03 is to move and then to tell your own children whom you are moving, don't move Don't move. And so that's why it's important to say it's not that I'm sinning my moving. It's sin to move. It's not sin not to move. That's not the question. The question is what's the best thing for your family? And if it's staying put, stay put. one of the factors that goes into a lot of this is is there going to be a good church home for you. It's really hard to find a good church. And you know, it's been suggested to me personally that, you know, maybe I should move somewhere where there would be a church that was more welcoming. I think one of the things that you know for for Lutherans we need to particularly deal with is the fact that our pastors

48:45 have this same lifestyle. Pastors bounce around. It's normal for pastors to take calls over and over again to all different parts of the country. So why would an individual move someplace for a good church if there's no guarantee it's gonna be a good church in five years. And unless the pastor can tell you before God he's never leaving that place, personally I don't think you should even consider it. Because you shouldn't uproot your family for a church if you have no idea if it's going to be there in a few years. Now, the advantage of going someplace where there is a good church is that by joining it, you can help to perpetuate it. So it's not like it's comp you're completely helpless in these situations.

49:27 But These are all factors. I don't think you should leave the state that you're in just to find a better church. I don't think that you should stay in the state that you're in just because you have family there. I think all these things are factors. They need to be weighed. There's not a yes-no Bible answer to any of this. It's wisdom. And it's also wisdom to acknowledge the choice for you may well be this isn't gonna be great. This isn't ideal. We're going someplace and we're gonna build for the future. So that my grandkids will never know any of this. I think that's I think that's where we all have to be to forget about worrying, did I sin by doing this? Not that sins in the past aren't important.

50:10 If you realize you've sinned, confess, repent. But the important thing is that we build a world where future generations don't have the problems we face today. Because as Corey said, all of this that we built up to, all this rootlessness and the stupidity about how we live our lives is is what we inherited. I moved because my parents moved. I thought it was fine. I thought it was normal. Now that I realize that that was screwed up, I would tell others, don't do it unless you really have to. Don't move away from home. Don't don't go to college, frankly. I don't think most people should be going to college. And one of the main reasons is you're moving away from your family. You're moving away from your roots.

50:55 Now it's perhaps a different factor, in different matter, if there's a local college that's not destructive to your soul where you can keep going to the same church and you have those family bonds. But that's rare. Most people don't have that luxury. So As matters of wisdom, we kind of need to recalibrate how we decide from the word go what we do with our lives. Cause a lot of the decisions that everyone just thought was normal a few years ago, turns out they've been really bad for us for a long time. And it's okay to say that. It's okay to say that what my parents or my grandparents did isn't the ideal thing. I think that we can do better. That's not dishonoring them. I'm not I'm not bad mouthing my parents.

51:36 They were they were doing the best they could and they had reasons for it and I don't second guess those. And I'm glad for how God formed me through even those experiences that were in in retrospect painful. You know, I I like I said I didn't I didn't feel anything at the time, but looking back, I was being harmed and yet it shaped me in a way that I can now say, hey, don't let your kids turn out like me. You know, that's I think it's okay for us to be a negative lesson to other people if more people would be honest about I screwed up, I did something stupid, this was a bad idea, let me tell you about it. Not as a motivational speaker, just speaking frankly about Doing good things or doing bad things.

52:17 When you can learn from someone else's painful experience, maybe you can save the hassle. That's what every parent wants for their kids. And I think as Christians, it's what we should want for each other, rather than going around saying, Oh, we're all free from sin, we can do whatever we want in Christ. Maybe say no. Here's a whole bunch of stuff you shouldn't do. I thought it was a good idea, it turns out it was a terrible idea. That's Christian too. It's a good thing to to to warn people not to be an idiot like you were. That's one of the reasons that Corey and I are here. We can tell you things that we have done that we shouldn't have done. You shouldn't do them. They're not good for you.

52:51 So think about these things and and don't look to someone to be able to give you a pad answer because there's no pad answer. There's no flowchart for this. No one can tell you yes, move, don't no, don't move. You should pray. You should spend some time in prayer and thinking. You should make any decision hastily. But you should consider all of these things. Don't just consider where can I maximize my in income? Where can I, you know, go to the m most prestigious school. Think about all these other things and weigh them independently and then make a decision. Maybe you'll still decide to move away. Maybe that's the right choice. But we're just saying don't don't make these decisions in a vacuum

53:30 where you only consider one variable because that sort of self-interest is the reason we got into this mess in the first place. I think I'll echo the comment that most people should probably not attend university for two reasons. One, we have pushed too many people to go to university. University used to be something that a tiny percentage of the population attended for very specific reasons, because there were certain tasks that required a lot of education in order to do them. And that's fine. That's necessary for society. We started to push too many people to go to university, and really it just puts people in horrendous depth, disconnects them from their roots, and causes a lot more problems in the case of female

54:20 students, most certainly. But then second would just be I sort of listed the the second reason there. The first being really too many people are pushed to do it, the second is the consequences, and I listed some of those consequences. And universe University has been used in the last maybe thirty years as one of the wedges that has destroyed the family. And in destroying the family it has managed to destroy civilization, our society. Because when you have young men go off to university, and then they are encouraged after university to go take a high paying job wherever the job happens to be, they disconnect from their family, from the region whence they came. They lose those roots. And once they've lived for a period of time without that connection,

55:19 it becomes normal. And then, well, another job opens up that pays more. So they move six thousand miles or a thousand miles or whatever it happens to be. They move across the country or across the world for the higher paying job. And so they become a rootless cosmopolitan. And that's not what it means to be a man. That's not what it means to be a human being. That's what it means to be a cog and a machine. And we want something better for our fellow men, most certainly for Christians, and part of that is not buying into the lie that life is a matter of how many degrees you collect and how much money they allow you to earn. I'm not saying that no one should attend university, because of course

56:09 there are those men whom God has gifted with exceptional talent who should have the opportunity to develop that talent. Now whether or not there are any universities that are good That are good enough left at this point for developing that sort of talent that could be debated. There are some, I would say, but not a great many. But at the other end of things, you have, as I said, some who probably shouldn't have gone to university and just get saddled with a ton of debt and other problems. But you also have all of the issues that came from opening the university up to women. Now I'm not saying women shouldn't be educated, I know that's the caricaturization that people will often use against me.

56:54 And that's not that's not true. I do believe women should be educated. Should women attend university? No, I'm going to go ahead and just give a blunt negative answer to that. For a number of reasons. One, university typically begins at the age of about eighteen, in the system we have now. Around that age, I'm not saying at eighteen, it should be a little later, early twenties, but around that age is when women start looking to get married. If you have young women who are going to university instead, you are removing the pool of marriage age women from a region and then concentrating them at the university. Well that causes problem for the region that now lacks women of a marriageable age, and you've also concentrated them at the university.

57:46 And we all know what happens with people in their late teens, early twenties who are unsupervised in a co ed environment. It is not conducive to proper long term marriages. The short term ones are very common. But that is not how a Christian is supposed to live. And so if you have women who go off to university and sleep around, to be blunt, because that is what happens at universities today, and I'm sure it's even worse than when I was at university some years ago. When that happens, you wind up with women who are not fit to become wives. Because there are very real consequences of promiscuity, particularly for women. They lose the ability to pair bond and divorce skyrockets. You have all sorts of problems.

58:41 And of course, if you are having Casual sex, you're going to wind up in an environment where birth control, so-called, is also a thing. And hormonal birth control has an entire slew of problems that come along with it. This not really the point of the episode, I've got off in the weeds a little bit, but it's worth mentioning these things. Hormonal birth control is a cancer risk for women. It disrupts the woman's cycle in such a way that she is going to be less fertile when she goes off of it, not to mention the psychological side effects, which are immense, as anyone who has dealt with women who were on birth control is well aware, and women who have been on birth control often can sense this

59:24 in themselves as well. But you have this cluster, this cloud of negative consequences that attend the modern university system. And so my general recommendation, the I guess the long and the short of it, is don't go to university. Instead attend a trade school, develop a trade, an actual, real life, tangible skill. Now I'm not insulting the liberal arts, far be it from me to do that. All of my degrees are liberal arts degrees. I have not I actually took a fair number of hard science classes, but that was not my area of expertise, neither were the trades. However, with the way that things are trending in the country today, how Having a practical skill, having a trade, so woodworking or really anything that involves using your hands is going to be massively

1:00:28 beneficial in the years to come. If the worst comes about and our society collapses, I'm not going to say what percentage odds I would put on that, I'm not in the doom and gloom camp incidentally, but if that happens, if you are a carpenter, if you are a stonemason, if you happen to be really good at figuring out irrigation systems, your skills will still be useful. I'm an attorney. My degree is going to be useless if that happens. Because I would hope that most people realize that when a society, when a civilization collapses, you no longer have courts resolving disputes and so you don't have attorneys. That is the same for most of those who have gone into the liberal arts. The liberal arts are a luxury that a functional, stable society can

1:01:25 afford. The trades are a practical matter that human life requires. And so if you're just banking on the odds, today it is probably safer to go into the trades. Because even if things go really well, even if we turn things around and our society becomes stable again, the trades are still necessary. They are still good. They will still allow you to build a decent life And so as a as a purely practical recommendation, for most men, probably consider these more practical courses in life. Those who are going to pursue the liberal arts, you know who you are. I don't have to tell you you're an exception, you know it. And so this is one of those issues that is a matter of wisdom. What Which path you pick in life is not something for which

1:02:27 we can give you a flow chart. We're not going to say start here if you have XIQ go left, if it's Y go right, and then follow the flowchart and it tells you exactly what you're supposed to do. That's not how life works. Life is never that neat and clean. And so we are not going to give you a flow chart for any of this in this episode or really any other when it comes to these sorts of issues, and yes, some listeners, some men are going to very strongly dislike that. But life is messy. There are things that are unpredictable. There are questions that don't have an absolutely certain answer. These things are left up to human wisdom. And that ties into the issue that Woe has touched on a number of times so far, there will not always be a verse

1:03:21 in Scripture that directly addresses the problem you are having. Because that's not the purpose of Scripture. The purpose of Scripture is to tell you God's will generally for your life, for humanity, to tell you his law, and to tell you the gospel. That's the purpose of Scripture. Yes, you can draw a lot of lessons out of Scripture by reading it, by understanding the context of Scripture, by getting the overall theme, the story. There are things you can draw out that aren't there word for word absolutely but there are a great many things that are not in Scripture that are nevertheless true. Because God has revealed Himself not only in His Word, but also in His creation. And when we are talking about wisdom for things like this, we

1:04:12 are largely talking about what is revealed in creation. Yes, there is still that wisdom in Scripture, particularly in the aptly named wisdom books. You should read those, go read Proverbs. I guess that's the assignment for this week. Last week it was Job, this week it's Proverbs. But just because something is not specifically word for word addressed in scripture does not mean it is totally free. Does not mean it is something where Christians can just decide whatever they want, believe whatever they want. No, there is still such a thing as natural revelation, natural wisdom. God didn't just give you the Bible, he didn't just give you scripture. He also gave you a mind. He also gave you other men with whom you can discuss the

1:05:01 these ideas. Iron sharpens iron not just with regard to Scripture, but also with regard to natural revelation, to the greater world, to creation. And so as Christians Christians, yes, we need to spend time in the Scriptures, we need to spend more time in the Scriptures than we do on average, most certainly. But we also need to spend time thinking about these other issues, discussing them with other men And pursuing the path of wisdom with regard to our lives as well as our faith. Because we have so many today, particularly pastors, who well the adversary pastors anyway, who will argue that, well, that's not in scripture. Okay, that's not an argument. If you say that something that is not in scripture is absolutely

1:05:53 categorically prohibited by God, you better be able to mount a very strong argument. But if you say that something that is not in Scripture is unwise, that's a different matter. That's a s that's a different burden of proof. Yes, you should still be able to defend the position, but it's not something where you have to say, look, this is a categorical prohibition. No, because the argument that is being advanced is that this thing is unwise. So to give an example that is perhaps silly, but probably one that at least one person listening right now has learned the hard way. Scripture does not say Do not eat an entire jar of pickles. Anyone who has eaten an entire jar of pickles can tell you that eating an entire jar of pickles is a deeply unwise

1:06:41 thing to do. you will probably regret it for several hours. Don't do that. Scripture doesn't tell you not to do it. It's arguably not a sin to do it, it's deeply stupid. It is a matter of wisdom. And so there are matters of wisdom that are outside what is contained explicitly in Scripture. As Christians, we are called upon to act wise, both with regard to our faith, the kingdom of the right hand, and with regard to the world, the kingdom of the left hand. On the subject of flowcharts, I think the reason that questions of you know for a young man who's looking at going off to college or entering the workforce or he's at that point in his life where he has to figure out what's next. I think part of the reason that that seems like such an

1:07:37 open ended question is that we've lost the family and community ties to make a lot of those outcomes more obvious. So how many of your churches have a job board up where people can advertise whatever positions are open for people who work in the in the in the congregation who have employment opportunities even they're either in their own businesses or places where they work my guess is probably virtually none of them. Now, think about why that is. Isn't that the easiest thing in the world? I mean, what better place for an employer to find prospective employees than their own church or even just a neighboring church. If someone is regularly attending church, if they're a faithful Christian, they're

1:08:22 probably more likely to not steal, they're probably more likely to show up on time. They're all manner of things that employees, employers naturally want in their employees, that tend to be fulfilled simply by virtue of someone being a church attending Christian. And yet in almost none of our churches do I think most of most of us even know what the other people do. You may know some, but I'm sure that there are people in your congregations who are employers, they should be hiring from in the congregation first. That is that is their community. That's your community. So on the question of, oh, I'm 17, I don't know what I'm gonna do. Well, if your church was a sort of community where it was just open knowledge that you know this guy has

1:09:12 a warehouse, this person has a factory, this person has an office, they're always going to be hiring. They're always going to need good people. They're going to need new people. Maybe temporarily, maybe permanently. There should be a natural pipeline from your church life to your real life. Now, saying that doesn't turn your church into some sort of den of iniquity. It's not turning it into a place for the money changers. We're not talking about corrupting the divine service. We're just saying, hey, the other The other hundred and sixty odd hours that these people are living the rest of their lives, maybe we should be a part of those too. And the fact that our uprootedness and our isolation has extended to

1:09:55 the point that by and large we don't even know what the other people in our churches do. It's bizarre. it's it's stupid. And yet it's one of the easiest problems in the world to solve. And so I I raise the question just to suggest if your if your church doesn't have a job board, you know, if if it's something that the elders or the pastor and others would support, go for it. You know, just make make it something that just in a small way, maybe your congregation can be more than just a place for worship and potlucks. Because there's more to the Christian life than being at church and even just socializing. We have to work. You know, another question is, how many of the businesses that your church members own or work at do you patronize?

1:10:46 They have goods and services. Do you buy them? When you're doing that sort of thing, you're keeping your money in the family. You're giving it to other Christians that you know are going to spend it on things that is in alignment with your morality. It's helping them. It's helping your neighbor and it's helping your brother in Christ. That's just a naturally good thing that you can do for free. Like the this this is something that costs you nothing. It's something that doesn't require a lifestyle change. We're not talking have about having to move across the country. Literally just find out what the other people at church are doing and offer to pitch in. Offer to hire someone at church. Uh you know, the only possible downsides or the y are the

1:11:32 you could realize that somebody maybe has some problems spiritually. You know, they attend church, but maybe it turns out they have a drug problem or something. As an employer, maybe you'd be concerned to say, Oh well that's that's bad, I don't want drug abusers. As a Christian, you should think thank God I'm maybe able to help intervene in this brother's life in a way that can push him in the right direction. So even the negative downsides that might occur from having business relations with your church family, I think if you're if you're approaching them as a Christian, those downsides can very easily become the upside of you being a positive Christian influence in their lives or them in your lives.

1:12:16 Maybe you're the employer and it turns out you're not a very good employer. And if you hired someone from church who knew that you went to the same church and you're at the same communion rail every week, maybe that would be your incentive as the employer to be a better employer. Like these upsides accrue naturally to us living as a community together. So that's why I began at the beginning of this episode about talking about not everything needs to be big ticket. Not everything needs to be pie in the sky, huge theological weighty issues or these massive macro things that require big brains to talk about it. Maybe it's as simple as a job board. That was the other part of the intro. is that is a job board gonna fix our problems?

1:13:00 No. This country has profound problems. They go far beyond any single thing. And that's why I think the kitchen analogy is apt. Is a job board at your church the roof over the house? No. You know, but it's it's a working refrigerator. You know, it's it's something that should be there though it's when it's missing, you're hurting. And so big or small, all these pieces can be part of the a normal Christian life that's always existed. You know, in the past we didn't have to have job boards because that was just the the the abstraction of the employer the abstrap the abstraction of employer employee hadn't been invented yet. Like that's that's a fairly new notion. You had someone who owned a factory or owned a a field

1:13:48 and you worked in the field. You're a hand for that person. And so those those natural relationships that flowed from society and from civilization also manifested in the church. And while the church maybe it isn't natural nexus for this sort of thing, when we're talking about beat bootstrapping a Christian civilization in a lot of ways, it's a good place to start. It's not necessarily the only place, you know, you're you're if you're an employer, you should have something at your place of employment pointing back to your church. That's a good thing too. And if that's illegal in your state, maybe that's an indication that you should look at changing the laws and perhaps you should be in a different state.

1:14:31 But see, all these things individually may not change the world, but they can make your life a little bit better. And they're cheap and easy to do. And once you once you realize them, it's like, well, that's obvious. Why wouldn't I be hiring Christians in my own congregation or for neighboring congregation? You know, make it a network. if you got a dozen churches within 20 miles, have a network of you know job postings or whatever else, make those connections within your faith community or you know, just neighboring Christian churches. And to say this isn't to say we want to corrupt the church and turn it into something secular or something about buddy. That's not the point at all. The point is that we're Christians living in the world.

1:15:13 We've got to do these things anyway. You need a roof over your head. You need someone to come work on your stuff when there's something that breaks you can't fix. You need to buy things, you need to sell things. There's nothing wrong with preferring to do that with your own Christian brothers. That's a good and normal thing. And the more desirable that sort of community becomes, the greater the reason there is for someone to be a part of it, even if they don't understand that the ultimate value proposition of church has nothing to do with your belly. It has to do with your soul. There are all different reasons why people will come into a community. And the faith of the Christian is ultimately rooted in Christ's sacrifice.

1:15:55 We're not taking anything away from that. But there are other things that are beneficial in the Christian life. And we And we should embrace them and we should be proud of them and we should share them with each other. So, you know, job boards and things like that, it's a very small thing, but not doing it seems foolish, and doing it seems cheap and easy, and the upsides are so great that I think that if these small things were to start happening more broadly, it would just naturally accumulate inertia. we would gain momentum from just doing small decent things for our neighbors and for our brothers in Christ. That should be the goal of every Christian every day. And so we're mentioning some of these things just to kind of

1:16:40 get people to break out of the rut of the bad habits of not hiring people at church or not talking about hey, there's a job opening, I think you might be good for it. It's as simple as that. Before we started recording today, we while we were trying to isolate an audio gremlin, we were discussing that really a lot of this is a feedback loop, and in a very real way, trying to use the church in order to build a Christian society is a very difficult proposition. Because under proper conditions, how these things work is you have Christian families serving as the basis of a Christian community that set that then sets up a Christian church and it's a feedback loop. And that's how things are supposed to work.

1:17:31 But that's not what we have today. Today we are living as Christians in a pagan country. The United States is pagan. Realistically at this point, there isn't a Christian country left on earth. They're all pagan. Some are better than others, some are significantly worse than others. The US is not the worst one, yet it is trending that way, but we are living as Christians in a pagan community. And so in a very real way, we have to set up a parallel society, a parallel community, where we can help our fellow Christians and start building up these institutions, start building up the community, that we need to support each other. Over time, that can influence the wider culture in a positive way,

1:18:20 or if things go sideways, it can serve as a basis for surviving what comes after that. But how many hours a week are you really at church? If you go to one service and the Bible study, and you should go to the Bible study, and if your pastor doesn't have a Bible study, pester him he should have a Bible study. But if you do both of those things, you're at church for maybe three, three and a half hours. If you have a longer service maybe four. Okay. There are a hundred and sixty eight hours in the week. What are you doing with the rest of your time? Yes, a lot of that is spent sleeping and eating. But that's still a lot of hours when you're awake and not at church. There is more to life than just church.

1:19:05 As a Christian, your entire life is supposed to be Christian. Part of that is going to be how you interact with others in your daily life. If you are interacting with other Christians in your daily life, it is going to be easier for you and for those other Christians to behave as a Christian in your daily life. It is in fact easier to be a Christian in interactions with another Christian than it is to be a Christian in interactions with a potentially hostile in our environment pagan. And And you should be helping your fellow Christians. As was mentioned, you should patronize Christian businesses. I'm not saying patronize some large corporation that vaguely claims to be Christian and almost certainly isn't if you look closely.

1:19:53 I'm saying the mom and pop shop down the street, run by people you know at church or from the next church over. Maybe shop there. You know what? Sometimes it will cost you a little more because of economies of scale. But if you pay five, ten, fifteen percent more even. You are benefiting other Christians, you are keeping that within your community. It will benefit everyone in your Christian community. If you go and patronize instead the alternative giant big box store, whatever it happens to be, you're sending that money out of your community. You are not benefiting your fellow Christian. And quite frankly, you're probably not doing your Christian duty to behave as a Christian in your daily life.

1:20:39 I'm not saying they're always or that there are never cases where you can't go to the big box store because of course there are going to be things that are carried there that are not carried to the mom and pop shop. That's just the reality. But when you have the option to aid a fellow Christian, to patronize his business, to hire his son, to have your son work for him, whatever it happens to be, you should be doing that as a Christian. That is part of building up a Christian community, part of building up those relationships Relationships. And those relationships are extremely important in life. And it will be more than just business relationships, because it may be that you That you patronize this store for ten years.

1:21:27 And then when your son is looking for a wife, well it just so happens the owners of that store have a daughter. That is how human life is supposed to work. That is how these relationships are formed and maintained, how they are built up over generations over time. This is how you build a community. These are all very practical things that you can do in your everyday life, but they matter almost more than anything else. Because it is the sum of these interactions that builds an actual life that is worth living. We're not saying that these things are more important than the gospel. That's not the point. We'll get accused of it anyway, even if we explicitly say that's not what we're saying. We are discussing the and then what?

1:22:14 Because that's always what we're discussing on this podcast. Yes, sometimes we touch on the core of the Christian faith, the core theology, and undoubtedly we'll do more episodes on that in the future. But in so many of these episodes, we are touching on what you are supposed to do as a Christian. Not what you are supposed to do to become a Christian, not what it means to be in the instant that you convert a Christian. That's not what we're saying. We are saying you're a Christian, great, now live like one. What does it mean to live like a Christian? And that is why those who to go into some actual theology for a minute here, and that is why those who read James or anywhere in Scripture where it starts to talk about works tend

1:23:00 to get things entirely wrong when they don't understand the framing. When Scripture tells you that you must have works, when Scripture tells you that Christians will have good works, that a real faith is a living faith that produces good works, because of course faith is often compared to a tree that produces fruit, and so a living and healthy tree will produce fruit. A sickly tree, a dead tree, does not produce fruit. But those parts of Scripture are written for Christians. They are not written for those who are not Christian. You are not saved by your works. Works are not part of justification. Justification is by grace through faith, period. Your works contribute nothing. But as a Christian, you must have those works.

1:23:55 As a Christian, those works will flow from your faith if you have a living faith. And that is what we are discussing in these episodes. In the episodes where we touch on Christian wisdom, where we touch on the world, how Christians are to interact with the world, how you are to live your life. Because as a Christian, as a healthy tree, you should be producing these fruits, these good works, you should be doing certain things, conducting your life in a certain way. Again, your works will not save you. But your faith, as a living faith, will produce these works, and your neighbor does need them. And your neighbor will also notice that you are doing these things. Maybe not at first, maybe not always, but imagine the impact on

1:24:47 a local business, a small business, if everyone at church at your congregation decided that they were going to deliberately focus on patronizing them. I'm not saying this is necessarily a realistic thing, but just think about the impact if suddenly all the members of your congregation started buying at the one hardware store. Maybe it's a hardware store where you know the guy didn't have a church home and suddenly he got a bunch of regular customers who were all very nice and very honest and you know intelligent people and knew what they were doing and they were in there all the time talking to him. You're going to not only be a more visible aspect of the community as a congregation, but it's going to be easier for you

1:25:28 to share the buck gospel with that person at some point. You know, it's when we are when we're Christians in the world, it doesn't mean wearing team colors out in public, but your conduct and your demeanor does come across and people will notice. There are people who will notice that there's something different about someone. And you know, if they say something, maybe that's your opening to say, oh, you you think I'm weird? Let me tell you why. Let me tell you about Jesus. He's who made me weird. Yeah, it's uh you don't know what uh what doors God is gonna open for you, but by being visible present members in your own community, by working with each other, you know, it's something that it's something on on Gab that Andrew Torbus talked about a lot

1:26:15 with the parallel economy. He's basically talking in large part about the same sort of thing, not only of keeping it in the family, but of making a a visible aspect of your witness that that you are a Christian and that you exist outside of church, that you do other stuff, you have a business and to sort of hang your shingle out and say to other Christians, hey, you know, we're here. If you'd like to patronize us, we'd love to have you. And that while it's not a primary evangel evangelistic tool, if you are an honest tradesperson and you are Christian about it, that is a witness for Christ. Even if you never say anything about the gospel per se, simply by living a virtuous life and saying you're a Christian, Tells the

1:27:02 people around you that there's something to that and you will absolutely be asked questions as a result. So this isn't just about material gain and it's not about some particular rote set of things that's going to revolutionize the world. It's just these easy things that we can do benefit us. They benefit our neighbors and our brothers in Christ in the immediate community and and further out. And there's no downside apart from someone knowing you're Christian and not liking you for it. And frankly, we're to the point where that's you know, if if if there's no evidence that you're a Christian and it becomes illegal, that's probably a bad thing. You know, maybe maybe if being a Christian is so undesirable and

1:27:48 and socially unacceptable, if you're skating by and you're not being reviled, it's At some point that's going to be a sign that there's actually something wrong with your faith. We may not be to that point yet, but we're awfully close. And so there's a lot in our lives that we can do in small ways to simply be faithful stewards of the gifts that God has given us. You know, we're stewards of the money that we have, of the property that we have, of the skills and talents that we have. And as we use each of those in our local communities, it's a testimony to everyone around of the sort of person that you are. And if there's any public connection of you as that person to your church, that can only be a good thing.

1:28:34 And so these are these are hard things. And I'm you know, some of these as I say them, I'm I'm certainly a hypocrite in my own life. I'm not talking about, oh, I've got this nailed. I'm I'm doing a really good job. I fail at most of these things. So this is not this is not a show and tell. It's just saying to myself as much as to everyone anyone else. Let's do a better job about these things because it's it's important. Not it's not as important as salvation, but how is someone who has no reason to to talk to you or to listen to you going to have their heart opened by you being present and, you know, maybe you just make an offhand comment, not even realizing it, that reveals that you're a Christian and they start asking questions

1:29:19 because they've been judging you all along based on your conduct. And I think that's one of the things that Christians don't appreciate fully is that we always bear silent witness and people will make judgments without saying anything. And then one day they may come to you and say, I've been watching, I've been listening, I've been thinking about this, I want to talk to you more about it. And to you it's completely out of the blue. But to them it's been something that they've been pondering for a while. And so all the moments where you don't think you're doing anything for Jesus, you are, uh you know, for better or worse, if if you're publicly a Christian, if if you're a if you do things that are that are not obviously Christian, that testifies to

1:30:02 them too, and they may never ask you any questions because they look at you and say that guy's clearly a hypocrite. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna take what he says about something seriously when I'm I'm not sure what I think about it. But if you do live your life in a manner that reflects well on the church, they will come to you someday and ask you something, and that's the opportunity for you to use the words that God will give you and has already given you to bear witness to him. It doesn't have to be fancy. You know, maybe it's as simple as come to church with me and learn where I learn this stuff. It can be that easy. And that may be all it takes. But we only get there by doing all the hard work before

1:30:43 when we didn't even know it was hard work. We were just living our lives, but living it in a way that is Christian and in a way that people can recognize as Christian. Once you get that down, it's it's a habit. You you're gonna form habits no matter what, whether it's a good habit or a bad habit. If you form the habit of being open about your faith, you know, where it where it makes sense, where it seems plausible to do it, you open doors. God opens doors and God will use those things. And frankly, if you know if if being openly Christian means that you're persecuted, maybe that's what your faith needs. Maybe that's what someone else needs to witness. Maybe they need to see you say I'm a Christian in the

1:31:28 most meek way possible and get beaten up for it, verbally or otherwise, and how you bear witness through your receiving that hatred, maybe the testimony of your faith that someone else who's watching they would have never taken it seriously until you had something bad happen to you. And when they see it and then see how you respond, some people might be scared off, but others would be intrigued. I mean, we know that from the martyrs, that when they went to their martyrdom joyfully, that was a testimony to those witnesses to say there's something going on here. This isn't just a crowd not liking this group of outcasts. So you never know how God's going to use what you're doing in your life, which is why it's important just try to keep

1:32:16 things straight, keep things simple, keep things focused on godly things, on living a godly life in a way that's conspicuously not of this world. As this world gets worse and worse, just being a mediocre Christian is going to stand out more and more. So if you're trying to skate by by hiding your light under a bushel and by not not making it obvious that you are one of those God fearers, it's not going to matter pretty soon because if you're not on hormone blockers and you don't have brightly colored hair in any one of these other markers, you're going to stand out and people are going to say, What's wrong with that guy? So there's no hiding on on the time scale we're talking about here. You may as well get in the habit of now and just

1:33:02 being comfortable in your skin as a Christian, in all the hours that you're given every week. And then when the opportunity comes to testify, you know, as God would want you to about what he's given you, it'll be easy. And God will open those doors and he'll give you the words. And so you don't need to worry about whether it works. And that's the point. We're this is not stuff that either works or doesn't work. It's just it's a good thing to do. And it And it will bear fruit where God chooses. That's all we have to worry about. Just doing what God says. And the good stuff will come according to his gracious will. It's not something we produce. It's just what is produced through us. And so And

1:33:44 so I think we'll end this episode with a quick note that I think and perhaps it'll be ironic it may go longer than quick, but I think this is something that many men need to hear, and women need to hear it as well, but in a slightly different way. So I am deliberately, intentionally addressing the men in the audience with this specific point. And I would turn your attention back to the curse in Genesis. We are told that by the sweat of your brow you will eat bread, and that the earth will bring forth thorns and thistles that will no longer be easy, and so part of life is going to be suffering. It is going to be struggle. It is going to be challenge. Most of the things in life that are worth doing are not

1:34:32 going to be easy. Now there are some things that are worth doing that are easy. Laying on the beach in the sun, worth doing from time to time, fairly easy to do. However, you had to work to get into a position to be able to do that, and that was probably not easy. But most of the other things in life are not going to be easy. Raising children is very hard. Building a marriage, and a marriage like a house is built piece by piece over a long period of time. Building a marriage is hard work. Because building any human relationship is going to be hard work. And this is related to a concept that military philosophers have called friction, Klauswitz, for instance, used that. And really, it's the idea that things on paper or in your

1:35:28 head are always going to seem easier than they end up being in reality. An example of this, a famous quote, I don't think we even know who was the first man to speak it, no plan survives contact with the enemy. Or the perhaps less eloquent version of which many marines are fond embrace the suck and that is part of what we have to do, particularly as an interim generation, but also just as men more generally. Life is going to have a great many challenges. Many of the things that are worth doing are going to involve suffering, pain, a great deal of effort, and sometimes seemingly not a great reward. Now God is watching. Just like when you give to charity, if you do it and no one sees, your father in heaven still sees.

1:36:24 The same thing is true when you put in those extra hours, when you put in the hard work, even if no one else seems to know what you did. And that is part of what it means to be a man. You are going to need to put in that hard work. You are going to need to endure that suffering, that struggle. Because that is your duty. so you don't have a choice. I mean of course you do, because there's always the option to be derelict in your duty, to neglect what you need to do. One of the great examples of this is physical fitness. As a man, you should be working out women should as well, of course, wives should stay fit for their husbands, and for their own health, and so they can take care of their children.

1:37:11 But men, one of the things you need to be doing is exercise. And of course, that's going to involve effort, sweat, pain, suffering. And it should, that's a good thing. Part of what it means to be a man. But the alternative is just as much suffering and pain. Being obese is not going to be a good life. You're going to suffer one way or the other. Whether you want it to be in the gym or sitting on the couch as your gut slowly expands, that's up to you. But as a man you should choose the former. And so that is the message I want the listeners to take to heart. Many of the things you are going to need to do in life are going to be hard. They are going to involve suffering. But you need to push through.

1:38:07 That is particularly true for our generation, in the the grander sense, not dividing it into the little cohorts. Our generation that has to rebuild the infrastructure, the foundation, everything that has been torn down by preceding generations. There is going to be a lot of work and relatively little reward in some cases. But again, God sees everything we do. He sees when you get up and go to the gym and work out. He also sees when you sit on the couch and do nothing and eat an entire bag of potato chips. God sees everything. He is going to see the time and the effort and the suffering that you put in to be To build a better world for the next generation and the generation after that. And he's going to see if you don't do those things.

1:39:02 And so as Christian men, it is our duty to do what God has given us that needs to be done. We don't have to be perfect. We don't even have to succeed in everything we try. We may very well not win, ultimately. I personally think that we will. But that is not guaranteed. But the good news is that is not what God requires of us. What God requires of us is to do what we can with what He has given us in the time that He has given us to do it. And so is men. We need to get out there and do the work, do what needs to be done. Whether it's planting an apple tree, raising some chickens, building a barn, teaching a child how to use a bow and arrow, whatever it happens to be, all of these things that men are supposed to

1:39:58 do in their lives do them. Get off the couch, get up, and go and do the things that God has enabled you to do in this life. Ultimately Ultimately it is not a matter of succeeding in everything we do. It is mounting the attempt. When it comes to the small the smaller things in life teaching a child to shoot a gun, perhaps, teaching a child to use a bow and arrow, teaching a child a language. To a very real degree, we do have some control, a great deal of control really, over the outcome. If we put in sufficient effort in a sufficiently skilled and effective way, the outcome more or less follows. When it comes to the grander things, the outcome is out of our hands. Whether or not the United States, perhaps not as the United States,

1:41:01 but as a political entity, whether or not it exists in a hundred years is not in our hands. It's in God's hands. That's the division we have in mind throughout this entire episode, so if you need to go and listen again, or think back on what we've discussed. We are talking about those everyday things where the outcome really is in your hands. If you set about to plant a bunch of apple trees, you will end up with apples. God will give the rain, He has promised to do that. So you will get the result if you put in the work. At the other end, there are a great many political problems. There are great many grand problems that we face. There are no guarantees for the outcome. God will see to that.

1:41:54 We will have to put an effort toward those things of course, but God will see to the outcome. What we need to do, where we need to focus in our daily lives, these day to day tasks, are the smaller things over which we actually do have a great deal of control. You can choose where you shop. You can choose how you spend your time. You can choose if you exercise or sit on the couch. You can choose if you plant trees or uproot trees. These are things within your control. So do what you can with what you have been given in the time God has given you to do them.