00:02:40.480Let me issue and control a nation's money,
00:02:44.420and I care not who writes the laws.0.94
00:02:47.200What we do know is that the Rothschilds excelled where Christians have not.0.92
00:02:54.060Why is it that Christians, in the last 150 years, have excelled at being conquered?0.94
00:03:00.500Why is it that once-proud Christian institutions like denominations, hospitals, universities, and countries are now in the hands of pagans?0.80
00:03:10.660Why did the Christians hand these institutions over without a fight?
00:08:31.740It's really funny because growing up, the people that you think of being rich, like I thought people that had Nickelodeon were loaded because we had antennas on our TV.
00:08:41.380And come to find out, like, actually people that had cable back then were not wealthy.
00:08:45.480They were actually poor because they put their money into cable.0.98
00:08:52.520No, so wealth, that's just one way I think of it is being able to cover your expenses through non-salaried income.0.99
00:08:58.200So with all of your other sources of income that you have.
00:09:00.800The other thing is that I think of assets. Assets are one of the things that wealthy people have that poor people do not have. They have a lot of assets. And that becomes really important when you know that we're in an inflationary economy because assets go up in value with inflation. And so it is a hedge. It's the best savings account you can have in an inflationary economy.
00:09:24.540What would be an example, Dan, of assets? I mean, besides my gold grill in my mouth,
00:09:29.120besides that. Yeah. So one of the most obvious assets are like rental properties,
00:09:34.600commercial and residential. But like a single family rental home is an asset that you are
00:09:42.120renting, you are getting rental income from. It's also appreciating in value with inflation.
00:09:47.380Yeah. So that's one. The other thing is like businesses. So owning businesses,
00:09:51.720owning stocks bonds especially like dividend bearing stocks which i'm i'm just gonna let
00:09:58.460you know those are way too boring for me at this point but that would be if you had a ton of money
00:10:03.180and you had a bunch of dividends that were paid out seven percent by the way dividends are not
00:10:08.880taxed up to eighty thousand dollars a year so tax free money get to an accountant though that
00:10:16.160or a tax accountant to make sure that that's actually true i don't have that much income in
00:10:20.700dividends. And the other thing I would put in that bucket would be skills. I think a very skilled
00:10:27.080man is a wealthy man. He might not have tapped it in the traditional sense to say like, oh,
00:10:34.540that dude's rich. But those people that have honed skills, I think are wealthy in a different
00:10:41.680way. When we talk about money, just simply, I would just say buying power, the ability to buy.
00:10:47.480Yeah. And people – this is counterintuitive, I think, in an inflationary world. People think, why would you want money? And that sounds dumb because you're like, well, aren't we talking about wealth and space? Some people say like you should hold $0 at all times because of inflation. It's actually a mistake because money is optionality. Liquid cash.
00:11:06.320What does that mean? What does optionality mean?
00:11:08.580Optionality means that I can react to different conditions in the market.
00:11:13.940If I have cash and there's a 40% downturn, I can go buy things for 40% off.
00:14:16.440I said, listen, you know, I grew up in the young, restless, and reformed.
00:14:19.440And it was don't waste your life, which translated to, like, don't own property, get rid of it, do missions overseas, be poor, love the fact that, like, Jesus, you don't have a house.
00:14:28.700And really what happened was the Marxists took that, and they were like, yeah, so when Bill Gates says you'll own nothing and be happy, you're like Jesus.
00:14:38.720And so you fall into this ditch of, like, all property.
00:14:41.620I've had people on Twitter tell me property ownership is unchristian, which is interesting because if you look at things like Westminster Confession and what they wrote about theft, you know, the flip side of theft is you're protecting property rights.
00:15:03.800And then there's, I think, actually a much smaller ditch, but it does happen in Christian camps, which is health, wealth, and prosperity.
00:15:10.220So there definitely are crazy Kenneth Copeland people who are saying, you know, pray to God and he'll give you the Cadillac.
00:15:17.400God wants you to be wealthy, Joel Austin, people like this.
00:15:19.980And they are very influential in America.
00:15:22.020So I think when you stack those two things up, a lot of people in between will say, well, at best, I should sort of detest wealth, not really want it, and not really think too much about, like, you know, building wealth, multigenerational homes.0.57
00:15:37.980And Dan, I think especially that's turned most American Christians into consumers.0.62
00:15:43.180And consumers are not people, correct me if I'm wrong, they're not people that think about assets in particular.0.88
00:15:50.880For the project of this season to be successful, the project of seeing a new Christendom built,
00:15:55.860there will need to be thousands and thousands of Christian men and women who are equipped to stand for the truth of Scripture
00:16:01.440against the errors of both the liberal church and the pagan culture.
00:16:06.760This is one reason we're so glad to be partnering with our sponsor for this season,
00:21:04.940And I think what we need to recover is, you know, pastors ought to be telling their men, hey, yeah, go righteously make a lot of money and find different ways to invest it in the kingdom.
00:21:14.660And here's what I think a lot of people will miss.
00:21:17.640A tithe is part of the investment in the kingdom, but so might be starting a media company.
00:21:21.980So might be starting a business that can be run and can profit people by, say, like truth telling.
00:21:27.580right it doesn't all have to be missions and tithe yeah so maybe i actually like that it's
00:21:34.320almost like you know how some people um the the way that they taught about something like sex
00:21:39.480again sex is a good one to help us understand money because i think it helps us to see how
00:21:44.500the idolatry of money is working in a way that is more intuitive to us people have wrongly taught
00:21:49.920things like you know sex is dirty and gross so save it for the one you love they've done the
00:21:55.560same thing with money. They're like, money is evil and bad, so give it all to us, says the church.0.94
00:22:00.460They're like, there's some kind of error. And I think to focus this in on this first question
00:22:06.940here, that the errors really run in two directions. There is a ditch on one side of the road that is
00:22:12.540like an ascetical ditch, and there's a ditch on the other side of the road that you mentioned
00:22:16.740that's like the prosperity theology ditch. So let's talk through those two, starting with the
00:22:22.840ascetic ditch. We've circled around it. Where do we see this? What does it look like and how does
00:22:29.200it get wealth, money, and space wrong, this ascetical ditch? Yeah, it's actually interesting
00:22:35.160that Eric brought up Marxism because you can see how that fits so well with the ascetic
00:22:40.980teachings of the church because we automatically have suspicions of wealthy people, don't we?
00:22:46.640I mean, you just expect that if somebody has wealth, that they've received that wealth through unjust gains.
00:22:55.080Yeah, they must have stolen it from someone.
00:22:56.580They've stolen it from someone or they've used people in order to get that or taken advantage of people to get those things.
00:23:03.200And so you can see how that then the idea that, well, I don't have a lot of that, so then therefore I am more righteous would be some sort of pietistic, you know, warm, fuzzy feeling that you'd get by being able to justify why you actually suck at making money.
00:23:21.300You know, but the ascetics that essentially when we say that, we're saying people that historically through different movements have denied pleasure in some form or another.
00:23:32.620So you see this a lot. You know, you mentioned sex, like they would abstain from sex, even as far as like foods that tasted good.
00:23:39.660They would eat dried foods or paste, you know, essentially.
00:23:42.360And they would take vows of poverty, things like that.
00:23:45.640And so you can see how some teachings in the pietistic movement
00:23:51.000would definitely emphasize not having things
00:23:53.780and not taking pleasure in the things of the world
00:23:56.800and denying the things of the world in this specific way would be righteous.
00:24:04.380Well, I was even thinking as you were talking about that, C.S. Lewis,
00:24:07.780so he made a lot of money off the Narnia books,
00:24:10.600but in his biography we're told that he gave away like 100% of the profits.
00:24:15.060And so when he died, what he left to his kid was like a jacket, a pair of slacks and like $32.
00:24:22.800But that was in the book, at least it was kind of portrayed as like, that's the really Christian thing to do is die with nothing and pass on nothing.
00:24:30.080Well, then you, then you, the problem is then you read the Proverbs and it's like, well, actually the godly thing to do is leave an inheritance to your children.
00:24:38.160Um, so again, it plays into that ascetic, you know, sort of the, you know, like a monk, you know, we should all die with nothing having never tasted pleasure and we should buy into the Puritan notion that, uh, you know, somewhere someone is enjoying themselves, the nagging suspicion that someone is doing that.
00:24:53.820Yeah. So, I mean, in the same way that the ascetic is making an error where it's like just like God did not give the good gift of sex for the sake of these ruinous pursuits of pornography, fornication, adultery, but to bless his people with fruitfulness, pleasure, joy, children, you know, those gifts.
00:25:16.120He doesn't give people money for the sake or, and money, like when you say money, like, well,0.87
00:25:21.120God didn't give money directly. God made a world that was full of wealth. I mean,
00:25:25.240the garden was full of gold. God intended for it to be used as money, like from the beginning.
00:25:30.180He didn't give his people money for the sake of the ruinous pursuits of self-sufficiency,
00:25:36.340idolatry, greed, materialism, but he gave those good gifts so that people could enjoy his creation,
00:25:44.760love their neighbors, build communities that would preach about this radically generous father
00:25:52.060who made all things, who blesses his people, and at whose right hand are pleasures forevermore.
00:25:59.000So the ascetic gets it wrong by actually ending up maligning God's character as a good father
00:26:05.600in saying all of these good things you've made that wealth basically represents,0.78
00:26:10.760those are actually bad things. When you said very good over the whole creation,
00:26:17.620Father, you were wrong. These are dangerous things. And it's like, they're dangerous to
00:26:23.640the sinner, but they are actually powerful to the righteous, which is why, I mean, asceticism
00:26:28.900cannot stand up to the whole scripture. You have verses like Proverbs 10.22, the blessing of Yahweh
00:26:35.060makes rich and he adds no sorrow with it. Meaning that if you find sorrow along with wealth,
00:26:42.520human beings are the ones who brought all of that sorrow to the equation. God added no sorrow to it.
00:26:48.900In fact, when God blesses in a normative way, generally speaking, and you again read the
00:26:55.300covenant blessings in the book of Deuteronomy, read the Proverbs, you'll see that one of the
00:27:02.180One of the side effects of God blessing his people as they live at peace with the world he made and the laws that he made by grace and through faith is that they actually tend to gain wealth, money, and space.
00:27:15.820These are just actually good, natural, not even natural, but side effects that God built in to the thing.
00:27:23.600You can even see that through the patriarchs.
00:27:44.660I'm close enough to the farming world and the farming community that I know that each of these animals is a rather substantial dollar amount.
00:40:30.280But because we don't have the theological grounding to have good ambition, ambition ends up looking like the seeker-sensitive megachurches, multi-churches, franchise model churches, essentially just taking the corporate world, bringing it into the church because that's the only way that they know how to be ambitious.
00:40:47.760And then they just multiply and make themselves like some Warren Buffett-esque CEO-type figure.
00:41:39.780Where they would understand rightly what glory is and what it's for.
00:41:43.460It's not just their self-glorification.
00:41:45.520The glory of a thing is that thing when it is at peace with what God has made it to be and do.
00:41:50.760So a man is glorious when he is for Christ's crown and kingdom, loving his wife, raising children, loving his neighbor economically, which looks like expanding the economic pie.
00:42:06.720Doing excellent work that will cause him to stand before kings, being a courageous risk taker for the right things, being wise as serpent, innocent as a dove.
00:42:16.080when a man has range like that, and then he applies those gifts which God has given him
00:42:23.300in a way where he's not just saying, but anyone could look at his life and say,
00:42:28.540that guy is trying to take two talents that God gave him and return 10 to his king. That's what
00:42:33.160he's trying to do. And that man will win glory. He won't win the false glory that comes from men.
00:42:39.140That's not what he's aiming for. But he might win proper honor from other men. He might win
00:42:43.900respect of other men, but he's ultimately not aiming to build his own kingdom. He's aiming to
00:42:48.920build God's kingdom. But sometimes people think they mistake hard masculine risk-taking courageous
00:42:57.120vocational work, and they mistake it for babble building categorically, like where all of that
00:43:02.600is necessarily babble building. It's like, no, it's not. We should want to raise our sons not to
00:43:09.260be lazy, worthless blobs of, of, you know, grown men who were like, well, at least I never0.72
00:43:16.080accomplished something and risked being proud. Well, you know, that's the interesting thing.0.98
00:43:20.800Cause I remember like my teenage years being in church, we would always hear things about like,
00:43:25.600Hey, you know, don't be a workaholic. Stop thinking your career's everything. Almost never
00:43:30.740were you like, dude, get off your mom's basement couch, stop watching Marvel movies and go do
00:43:36.400something. Your family's really struggling because you're making $26,000 a year and you want to have
00:43:41.100five kids and have your wife stay at home. And you're telling your wife, her grocery budget is
00:43:45.300$217 a month to feed five kids. Dude, you're, you're denying the faith. You need to go make
00:43:52.040more money. Like, and I know there are situations people always throw the asterisk. They'll be like,
00:43:57.340what about the guy who lost both feet in an accident at the mill? And one of his eyes got
00:44:02.920poked out you know when he was getting the mail for his wife when she was pregnant and and then1.00
00:44:08.880after that he got a traumatic brain injury and he was uh you know an idiot and so uh you're being1.00
00:44:15.400a legalist like no paul says a man who doesn't provide for his family has denied the faith and1.00
00:44:19.980is worse than an unbeliever so therefore provide for your family he's talking about money guys
00:44:24.860like he's actually talking about feeding people yeah so i will say just as a preface to that sure1.00
00:44:30.000I will give an asterisk because in the world we live in, you have to be aware of the world we live in.
00:44:35.840And your salaried income, you take home 50% of what you actually earn.
00:44:41.840And when you actually factor in property taxes, gas taxes, food taxes, all the taxes, just the breathing tax, you take home very little.
00:44:51.080So the government is making it very, very difficult for you to exist and to support your family, especially on one income.
00:45:18.740So you'll have to deal with cursed, sinful people.
00:45:22.260So Paul wouldn't look at like, for example, a family being carried off into captivity in Babylon by the invading empire when they were, you know, a faithful covenant member and say, why aren't you providing for your family? You're worse than an unbeliever. I'm not saying that. And that is a good, again.1.00
00:45:40.060No, I know that's not what you're saying. It doesn't mean, though, it doesn't absolve you of a responsibility. That's just an excuse. But it's reality. And so you need to have that information in mind and use ambition to say, OK, now that I know this, there are tax codes. Why do the wealthy people not pay taxes? Why, when Mitt Romney was running for president, did he only pay 13 percent in taxes? Why didn't Trump want to disclose his tax statements? It's because they don't pay taxes because they know how to work the system.
00:46:07.640Yeah. And so knowing that you should be able to figure that out, which is one of our applications later, but you should be able to game the system and be like, as you know, crafty.
00:46:17.540It's like, you know, someone says, Hey, you know, to get into the, this unit in the military, this combat unit you want to join, you got to be able to run a six minute mile. And you're like, okay, great train. I can do my six minute mile. And then they say, Oh, you show up to run the mile for the test. Like, Oh, with a 40 pound weight vest on.
00:46:32.360Oh, okay. That's another factor. You're running the six minute mile with a 50% weight belt on
00:46:39.220to mix my metaphors here. You just are because you're being robbed in a way that is five times
00:46:44.980worse. Literally. I mean, then the, the tyrannical situation that God warned them about when he said
00:46:51.080your Kings will demand a tithe of your money, a 10% tax. If you have the Kings, like the nation
00:46:57.200surrounding you and now we're like 5x that with 50 in taxes is this where we get to talk about
00:47:03.280the people and the usury and should i i'll leave that one out so that'll be after hours no i what
00:47:09.300we were talking about was women and and work yeah you know i'm glad you guys brought this up because
00:47:13.160this is a theological error that has led a feminacy in men is a theological error um as
00:47:19.080well as just teaching training men to not have ambition it's a trained thing it's a virtue well
00:47:24.100Well, and that's what I was going to say, you know, bringing this all around.
00:47:27.240I think what we really have to get at is that pastors and churches need to,
00:47:32.740number one, understand what men are facing.
00:47:34.340So like understanding inflation, understanding what you're saying to men
00:47:38.760when you're saying, hey, you got to be a sole breadwinner so mom can come home.
00:47:44.300What are some actual ways you can make that happen?
00:47:46.800Because, you know, maybe working entry-level retail is not going to get that done.
00:47:50.880But when we say to our men, and you have to pastorally, when you say to your men, you need to make more money, I think it would be another thing to be able to point them in the right direction with small business owners and resources and say, look, if you're faithful in a small thing, we can train you, we can teach you, we can help you, we can assist you so that you can get to a place where you're making more money.
00:48:12.720And I think this is where a lot of men get discouraged is because a lot of pastors, A, they don't understand what men are facing.
00:49:44.480federal, we don't mean like federal theology, like covenant theology. We mean, um, people
00:49:50.100have appointed themselves the federal head of humanity and rob all of us by debasing
00:49:54.540the currency. That's a word. Yeah. So, so getting back to my, my, my main point, thank
00:49:59.520you for that. You're welcome. You're welcome. What is that? What, what is the idealized job
00:50:02.880then for these pastors, you know, that are, that are training your men? What is the ideal
00:50:06.860job? And we live around Hill Air Force Base. And so, and the military industrial complex
00:50:12.700that supports it. That's correct. And so the ideal job is to work for the government or for
00:50:16.820a government contractor because you have almost no risk there. Cast iron benefits. Very difficult
00:50:22.300to get fired. You don't even actually have to work. Yeah. You have a benefits package that's
00:50:27.120worth conservatively in today's day, $40,000 or $60,000 a lot of the time. By the time you actually
00:50:32.300add it up, if you were to go and get it yourself. Pensions are in the millions. Yeah. By the time
00:50:36.580you're done, you work your 20 years. Very hard to get fired. My dad did 20 years in the Air Force,
00:50:42.42020 years in the government after that. And he's a hard worker. He's a, he's a guy who's rises to
00:50:46.960the top and ends up leading people wherever he goes. And it's like, you know, he's talked so
00:50:52.620many times about how like Eric, you've, you've led organizations now where one of the ways that
00:51:00.100you've improved organizations is by firing people. Big time. You may not do that in the government.
00:51:05.840No, not. So it's the perfect ideal, platonic ideal of a job for this kind of risk averse safetyism mindset. And we're saying safety third.
00:51:18.780Yeah. And the other thing that I would say is when you think about the church, part of this is when all your people are trained as men and leaders by the bureaucracy, corporate or government.
00:51:28.420one of the problems you tend to find is that then your elders become these risk averse bureaucrats
00:51:33.280right you're actually safer if you just kick things up the chain or you pass the buck to
00:51:37.860somebody else and so i think that one of the things when we're talking about wealth we're
00:51:42.540also talking about the kind of men that we're going to raise in a community because i can tell
00:51:45.880you as a small business owner when you have 15 people 20 people 30 people whose lives and families
00:51:52.500depend on you getting things together and things have to work and your products have to be delivered
00:51:57.140around time and your services do as well. There's a weight of responsibility. You become a different
00:52:02.260kind of man. Yeah. And always think about that. There's a line in the Aeneid where he says down
00:52:06.840deep, they harden fast. Meaning when you're deep in the fires of hell, going through trials, men
00:52:13.100harden. Yeah. And so in all of this, we're really talking about wealth is about the men who build
00:52:18.620it, right? And what they build it for. Yep. And if I think you do it right and you train your men
00:52:23.260right to be wealth builders that's one of the ways you're going to get hard men that's right
00:52:27.620i think we need to make a t-shirt that's just an eric khan profile picture like a portrait and
00:52:33.680profile that just says it's like in the aeneid yes as the caption yeah i think so we'll get our
00:52:38.640designers so so just finishing up this this thing that i keep getting interrupted in you know sorry
00:52:43.920gloriously thank you for that is that like your life but yeah the thing is it's happening right
00:52:47.920now would you stop interrupting me while i am interrupting you the the idea of just like keeping
00:52:53.500your head down taking the safe job yeah taking the corporate job or the government job or whatever
00:52:59.580is that functionally what you're doing if you do work is that you are building the house of pagans
00:53:05.980by playing it safe you're building somebody else's house you're building somebody else's house
00:53:09.980you end up being a slave to a pagan lord who is building wealth and you're back but it's a lot
00:53:16.920easier it is a heck of a lot easier to do that there's no risk right brian we were talking about
00:53:22.940this the other day with one of our friends trent um but we were talking about how the when you when
00:53:28.600you start a business for example like the energy units right we're yes it's astronomical how much
00:53:36.000energy it takes so really that's the other thing that like we're calling men to is yeah we have to
00:53:42.300do that. If we're going to build parallel economy outside of this, working for the pagan masters.
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00:54:58.480i think it's it is important though because and we'll talk about this later
00:55:06.420is the what what are you using wealth for or what are you working for is a really important thing so
00:55:12.820andrew isker in our interview he said something that i thought was really good
00:55:16.480if you work for a corporate job you work for a pagan you you're you're making you know really
00:55:22.020good money at a government contractor yeah it doesn't mean you're sinning necessarily i mean0.91
00:55:27.380you just have to be honest like okay what i'm doing here is i am plundering egypt yes like
00:55:33.060i'm taking money they're giving me a salary and i'm going to turn it into building the kingdom
00:55:37.880yeah and and that's the point when when jesus tells the parable i think it's i'm speaking off
00:55:43.140the cuff here so i might be off in my details but i think when jesus tells the parable of the
00:55:48.180dishonest manager he talks about how you can use basically like filthy lucre like mammon like money
00:55:54.740This kind of like wealth that has been, you know, it's dirty.0.51
00:55:59.920It's gone through like, and actually that's all wealth, by the way.
00:56:10.440Jesus is kind of lamenting in this parable that the sons of this age,0.89
00:56:14.520he's talking about like these pagans, these absolute sinners are so cunning.
00:56:19.580Like they can turn a profit on literally anything.0.74
00:56:22.660this dishonest manager he's getting fired and so he starts writing off debts for all the
00:56:27.580millionaires that owe his master money so that he'll be like somebody will take a big chungus0.87
00:56:32.320in the court wherever he goes he doesn't want to dig ditches he doesn't want to dig they're like0.90
00:56:36.360he's like i'm too old i'm too i i'm i'm a weakling i can't dig ditches like what am i gonna do0.95
00:56:41.140i'm gonna ingratiate myself with every millionaire in town and yeah he becomes the big chungus of0.90
00:56:47.200the court. I'm surprised you got the big chunk. That was for Ben. Well, so Proverbs 12, you had1.00
00:56:58.560read Proverbs 10. I'm trying to class this up. You make it so hard. The hand of the diligent
00:57:04.040will rule while the slothful will be put to forced labor. Yeah. That's in the Bible guys.0.61
00:57:10.140Like God said that. I just, I just wanted to tie it into your dishonest manager thing. Cause he's
00:57:16.140like, wait a minute. I don't want to dig ditches. Yeah. I don't want my hand to be put to forced
00:57:21.480labor. So he was diligent and granted like, and that was the point though, is that Jesus was
00:57:26.900saying like, how much more should the sons of light, should Christians be cunning and righteous?
00:57:33.940Like not to be, I'm not saying go start a confidence game in like a mafia in your local0.94
00:57:40.040area and be like, they told the King's hall, they told us that we should just go get rich by whatever
00:57:44.660means necessary. So I started selling insurance to people and threatening to burn their businesses
00:57:50.940down if they didn't pay me. So I mean, it worked. I'm very wealthy now. No, you need to understand
00:57:55.700what wealth is for. Another proverb that I think is very important. You've already mentioned this,
00:58:00.160this principle, Proverbs 21, 17, whoever loves pleasure will be a poor man. He who loves wine
00:58:04.880and oil will not be rich. Like these dudes that Eric's talking about that are like a lot of them,
00:58:09.760some of them inherit their money from family, you know, whatever. But a lot of these guys who start
00:58:13.520businesses and you know they end up with a hundred million dollars in their 40s because of their wise
00:58:18.160management and cunning stewardship it's like they're driving trucks that look like pastor
00:58:22.680dan's truck and that's not a compliment it's not a nice vehicle no it's it's not it's not if i've
00:58:28.800had to take the engine apart multiple times right like if or may they don't they don't stoop as low
00:58:34.340as to drive the toyota sienna that i had my wife driving for a while to be fair it looked better
00:58:40.520when I, when, when we started using it, it was, it was us. So, so I want to, I want to transition
00:58:45.440a little bit. So, so we've kind of tangentially discussed this idea of like, well, Christians
00:58:50.960should be going out and taking dominion and starting businesses and taking risks. And we're0.74
00:58:57.620going to talk more about that practically, how to, how to start, how to take the first step
00:59:01.820in a little bit, but I've heard this criticism. So I said, you know, if you're, if you're playing
00:59:07.920And it's safe. You're working in the corporate world and you're just trying to keep your head down just so that you can get home, watch Netflix, you know, buy a nice car, go on a nice vacation just so that you can retire and live, you know, just die, you know, in Florida on the beaches. Don't waste your life, John Piper.
00:59:25.620Anyway, so I've heard some people say that there is no such thing as a Christian business.
00:59:32.160Because I've said there's pagan businesses.
01:02:39.060I feel like intellectuals all the time are outsmarting
01:02:41.880themselves. Yeah. Like, of course you can be a Christian business. You can run it on Christian
01:02:46.720principles and be faithful to God in your business. Well, I'm a Christian and I only
01:02:50.540hire Christians and we operate Christianly. Yeah, exactly. And we use our money to do0.99
01:02:55.440Christian stuff. Yeah, exactly. You're a Christian business. I think just in a blue
01:02:58.900collar way, you can be like, look, at face value, we can obviously do that. Yeah. And
01:03:03.120like Brian said, sometimes the best thing we can do is just sneer at people and say,1.00
01:03:06.460you're an idiot. I mean, of course you can do that. And then we ignore them and then we build1.00
01:03:12.520our business. And then we just, we just say, oh, that's anyway. And then we just keep, we keep
01:03:17.300building our Christian business. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Christians are wildly good at getting
01:03:22.100conquered. Let's, let's talk a little bit more about this. Like when we're, when we're thinking1.00
01:03:26.440about like, what is the kind of economic thinking that gets you conquered? Well, yeah. If you don't
01:03:31.760explicitly have the missio day in mind when you're doing a business, let's say you are a business
01:03:35.860owner. And you're like, yeah, there is no such thing as a Christian business. And so I'm just
01:03:39.780going to kind of operate based on my, you know, my MBA and, and, and, uh, whatever podcast you
01:03:46.160listen to that's on business. And so you recruit like you would, uh, in, in some pagan industry.
01:03:52.280And you, you, you have a certain, uh, mission statement that is fairly pagan. I mean, you are
01:04:01.040being conquered the walls are down the pagans are in the building yeah and they're running the ship
01:04:07.160you have just had mutiny orchestrated by yourself yes and so what ends up happening is that you will
01:04:16.300lose the business you have no control then over the virtue of the business and what it's trying
01:04:22.240to accomplish two two examples yeah two examples of this one of them again from a recent conversation
01:04:29.060with Kings Hall Listener, who is a very successful businessman and from a family of success. So this
01:04:36.720is kind of in his blood. And he was talking about a multi, I think it was a telecommunications
01:04:42.780company that was very, I mean, medium-sized company in this world, but to us, huge, you know,
01:04:47.680like quarter of a billion dollar company, right? That was Christian. Basically, they were Christians.
01:04:52.240They had Bible verses on the wall. You walk in and you knew that you were in a space where
01:04:56.780Christians were in charge. And the owners sold the company to Samsung. And the question that0.99
01:05:04.160was asked of these Christians who made a ton of money was, what are they going to do with the0.62
01:05:08.980walls? You made a bunch of money, great. And I'm sure you can do great things with that money,0.89
01:05:15.380not disparaging that, but the thing you built that was producing and could continue to produce
01:05:22.020income and employ people and make a difference in the lives of many other Christians.0.97
01:05:27.680You just sold the pagans. Another example, and I'm not going to name names on any of these, but1.00
01:05:32.280a guy that built a business and like a very successful business. This is, these are real
01:05:38.140examples, by the way, we're not making these up and hired a bunch of people in the community
01:05:42.900to work at the business. You know, Christian men who were like, yes, finally we get to work for
01:05:48.660this company that's a Christian company doing good work. And they weren't a Christian company0.96
01:05:53.400because they were selling Jesus junk because they were selling like Sunday school testament0.59
01:05:58.020rewards, you know, and like in a little mints with verses on them. And so they were just,0.52
01:06:04.180they were just providing. And this is what the economy is made out of people. It's made out of
01:06:09.300human needs. It's the love of neighbor applied to providing your neighbor with things they need
01:06:14.760and want that will improve their lives in an exchange that's mutually beneficial. That's the
01:06:19.100economy. It's just the first, you know, the greatest commandments applied vocationally.
01:06:24.460So built this business, tons of men working there in the community, whole community kind of,
01:06:29.660you know, bullied up by it. Obviously the church is being benefited because here's these godly men
01:06:34.640with good jobs that are providing for families and giving to the church and schools and all this
01:06:38.860stuff's happening. And then, you know, the, the leadership of that company decided to sell it
01:06:44.080again, decided to sell the company to pagans. It made a ton of money. And then everything seems
01:06:51.320okay. Like, hey, this is a good sale. They're not going to fire all the Christians or anything.
01:06:55.740Yeah, but then COVID happens. And guess what the big company that bought them did?
01:07:00.980If you don't get the vax, you're in trouble. So all of a sudden, in an event that could not
01:07:08.220easily have been just foreseen. You've got to believe that I think the people who sold this
01:07:14.460business, I have in mind, regret that they did this. Because that's an example of Christians1.00
01:07:19.220getting conquered. Where you had this great thing that you had built with your blood, sweat, and1.00
01:07:23.940tears. Could have passed it on. And could have passed it on, could have continued to expand.
01:07:28.880And look, I haven't built a business worth tens of millions of dollars. So I'm not claiming to
01:07:35.000know all the temptations or even all of the ins and outs of all these decisions. But when Christians1.00
01:07:40.940think this time, these short-term five years instead of 500-year kind of things, as Dan wrote0.98
01:07:45.520in our notes, that's one way that I think Christians, that the type of men who will hear0.98
01:07:51.220this episode, and maybe some of you will build businesses like that, fully expect that to be the0.70
01:07:55.060case, but you got to be careful that you don't fumble the ball on the one-yard line, right? Don't
01:08:00.300fumble the ball on the one yard line. Convert. And that means through the generations.0.99
01:08:05.660Yeah, that's really good. So I mean, we can move on from Christian businesses1.00
01:08:09.260to Christian families. So Christian families are really good at getting conquered as well.0.82
01:08:14.400We've talked about public schooling before. You want to get conquered, just send your1.00
01:08:18.740generations to the pagans to be discipled as a pagan. And surprise, they're pagans now,
01:08:23.920and you've lost your generations. But another thing that people do is that they
01:08:30.160They spend their inheritance, that is for the generations, not for them, not supposed to be for themselves, but they spend the inheritance of their grandchildren on themselves in some sort of retirement.
01:08:59.860So this inheritance for your generations are completely squandered on your RV trip across the U.S. or your riverboat tours in Europe or whatever the heck it is, get crazy.
01:09:15.060And then when you get too old to do that, then you get put into a home because you don't want to inconvenience your kids or maybe your kids are unwilling to take you in.
01:09:22.000And then the nursing home will bleed you absolutely dry.
01:09:25.32020 grand a month until you have no money.
01:10:01.060Yeah, it's weird because I actually, so the first time, I had never heard about inheritance in the church in, I don't know, like 15 years, like seminary, we didn't talk about that.
01:10:09.880The first time I had ever read about it was in a Joel Salatin book.
01:10:13.640And I remember asking a friend about that.
01:10:15.740I was like, do you think inheritance, like, do parents owe their kids inheritance?
01:14:48.040No, but in all seriousness, one of the questions that I've had guys ask me a lot, because I see this a lot happening, not so much boomers who are like, hey, how do I get my kids to buy into this multi-generational view?0.90
01:15:01.260But what I've heard a lot of is guys in younger generations saying, hey, I really want this, but then I go talk to my boomer parents, and they're like, screw you guys.
01:15:14.680I'm just going to go to the golf course.
01:15:16.280right how do you counsel that guy because part of it is like well we can't kidnap our parents and
01:15:21.680no if you're in that situation we we've we've had this conversation with so many families in church
01:15:27.220young men young families like what do i do to my parents who just they they're christians but and
01:15:32.660and they really they are christians they're members in churches they're you know but they just they
01:15:37.220are classically discipled in the the boomerism you know so what do i do and and what what i tell
01:15:45.420them like relentlessly is you need to remember what your duties are to your parents. They're
01:15:52.100responsible for their duties to you. If they fail in those duties, you don't respond as they're
01:15:57.520inferior because you are. We're Presbyterians. Like we believe in superior, inferior relationships
01:16:04.080where in a genuine sense, in a hierarchical sense, my parents, my in-laws are in a position
01:16:11.840of superiority to me where honor is due in one direction in a way it's not due in the other
01:16:17.420direction. They have their own commands, but I have this command to honor them. And so I don't
01:16:22.800honor my parents by becoming really rude to them and theologically know it all to them. And like,
01:16:29.420well, you guys are just boomer. Okay. Boomer, like just being absolutely sinful and disrespectful
01:16:34.500to them, even when they're wrong in, and I'm not talking about like, if they're like, there are
01:16:41.160really terrible parents that you should not trust. And there's valid times to cut off parents even,
01:16:46.000and that can, to protect your own children and things like that. But I'm just talking about
01:16:49.640these run-of-the-mill disagreements where they don't see it. You honor them and you do what Dan
01:16:54.320said. You said, okay. And you say this in your heart and your soul and your family, you get this
01:16:57.920right. We're going to take ground on this issue that my parents never did. Because they weren't
01:17:05.360discipled to think rightly about this. They're not thinking rightly about this. But as for me and my
01:17:09.800children, I'm going to tell them, son, daughter, mom and dad are working for your children's
01:17:17.120inheritance, right? Not for you to depend on, for your children to receive, right? And so you need
01:17:24.260to get to work on their children's inheritance. Like, I just think you take the ball and you
01:17:31.220take the handoff in the generation and you keep going and you honor them. You don't publicly
01:17:36.860disparage them. You don't try to wear them down or like belittle them. I think you don't. A lot
01:17:42.600of the time, this looks like not forcing every conversation to just kind of like be about how
01:17:47.960you think they're wrong about everything. That's just a really good way of dishonoring your parents
01:17:51.960and ending up with a really terrible relationship that is your fault. Yeah, you're sinning. You're
01:17:57.360actually just sinning. And God says, do you want to live long in the land? Honor your father and
01:18:01.940mother. He doesn't say, do you want to live long in the land? If your parents get everything right,
01:18:05.740honor them well like what parents would end up getting honor you you certainly wouldn't yeah
01:18:11.220like we want our children to honor us even though hopefully standing on our shoulders
01:18:15.360they'll see farther than we did like i fully expect my children and dan's children and your
01:18:20.320children to take ground that we never even thought about and they're like well this is the obvious
01:18:25.040next thing to do and that wasn't even possible that's genius i would i would have never done
01:18:30.380that and probably couldn't have, you know, but they will, Lord willing. So I think it's pretty
01:18:35.900simple. You honor your father and mother. That's good. Yeah. I think that really ties into the
01:18:41.020conclusion where like, what do you do? Because honoring your father and mother is actually a
01:18:45.520really good place to start. I know we've talked about it in the past, but one of the best ways
01:18:50.000is to recognize, even with the faults of your father and mother and the sins that they had
01:18:55.920committed and their shortcomings is that you are who you are because of them. And so any blessings
01:19:01.960that you have are usually because of your parents and your upbringing. And so it's best to dwell on
01:19:08.640those things rather than their shortcomings. And why hasn't my father given me a million dollars
01:19:15.720worth of rental properties in order to manage? And you can start lamenting that. And it ends up
01:19:20.860actually being really effeminate and gay because you're not taking responsibility. You just wish1.00
01:19:25.700that something had happened. And so what are the things that you need to do? Honor your father
01:19:32.080and mother. Well, in order to do that, you need to be a self-controlled man. You need to have
01:19:37.140self-control. A self-controlled man is not a man that makes excuses. A self-controlled man is not
01:19:42.500one that blames other men or other people for their problems. So what is a self-controlled man?
01:19:48.140i think it helps to just by the way identify like what is a man maybe that would be helpful
01:19:55.680what is a man what is a man yeah oh yeah this is a tough one what is it what is a man yeah i don't
01:20:00.960know don't ask your your t your uh i'm not a biologist yeah i think i'm not 100 sure
01:20:07.680let's edit that out let's edit that question out i don't know if we have an answer
01:20:11.400oh boy what is a man no you're right you do need to start with it we're thinking about this in
01:20:17.040terms of, as is often helpful, these expanding spheres where you're an individual man or woman,
01:20:27.040okay, you have duties before God in that vocation. As a man or a woman, then you're maybe a father,
01:20:33.020a mother, a husband, a wife, okay, that's another, you're this person nestled in this bigger sphere
01:20:38.200being a father, mother, husband, wife. Then you're nestled in this other sphere being a churchman,
01:20:42.600church woman where you are one of God's covenant people participating in a local church and good
01:20:48.380membership. And then you go out and you have duties as a citizen. You kind of go out in these
01:20:54.760spheres and you can begin to understand, I think, and get your assignment. Discover your job
01:21:01.140description that God gives you rather than inventing it yourself in each of those spheres
01:21:05.980can honestly just be really helpful. I think there's two levels or stratums to this thing
01:21:12.420where on the one hand, we have all the general principles.
01:21:15.060Men are supposed to provide and protect.
01:21:17.200Genesis 2.15, we're made in the image of God.
01:21:19.660Man comes from the root word for fear, courage.
01:22:57.660And so in order to take dominion, yeah, what that involves like, so if you were to walk
01:23:04.840into the barren land and the order was take dominion over this you have to have an idea of
01:23:10.280what that's supposed to look like yeah like what does that mean do i walk around in circles until
01:23:14.800i've covered the whole like you know obviously it means more than that it means success look like
01:23:19.060yeah what would success look like so i think it's really helpful to have certain principles
01:23:23.540uh i've talked about it as like having a mission vision values those are like very corporate-y
01:23:28.460sort of business terms, but I think applied to the man, having principles that you would die for
01:23:35.380before capitulating are really vital to have. Certain things that I exist to do this thing,
01:23:43.540this thing, and this thing, and I would die before I capitulate on any of those things.
01:23:48.220And then you would use your time, money, wealth, and place to serve those principles.
01:23:52.220Yes. And they are, again, the principles start with the basics in the basics category.
01:23:56.680Like, God forbid you become a successful business person, it goes to your head, you cheat on your wife with the secretary, and then you're a wealthy loser.
01:24:07.300Like, God forbid that you do something like that.0.76
01:24:09.440And you pass on generational curses instead of generational wealth.
01:24:12.320You know, God forbid you succeed in building this durable, anti-fragile, productive property business, whatever it is, and then you sell it out to the pagans so you can go and have some fun vacations and just shoot your legacy in the foot.0.98
01:24:26.680Like, God forbid you don't disciple your children and you put all your time and all of your best strength into just building this wealth-producing thing, and then you fail to catechize and disciple your children and you lose them to an Absalom somewhere who's going to steal their hearts.
01:24:42.320You know, God forbid you do those things, but once you have those kind of basics in here, getting really practical, I think, on this subject can be helpful because a lot of guys are probably looking at this.0.87
01:24:54.000they're like, I want to do this. I want to increase my income. I want to build productive
01:25:00.360assets. I want to do this stuff. I don't know where to start. And I do think one of the most
01:25:05.680practical places where a young man can start in thinking about this is just disciplining yourself
01:25:14.560to think in two directions kind of all the time. One of them is, what did God give me? What did
01:25:21.900he put in my hands? Your assets are going to be your skills too. What am I good at? Am I good at
01:25:29.200talking? Am I good at words and communicating? Am I good at building? Am I good at doing that
01:25:34.720assessment? Maybe you're a one-talent guy, five-talent guy, 10-talent guy, whatever it is.
01:25:39.160Where is that? And then also, in an outward-facing way, saying, what are the needs of my neighbors?
01:25:48.560what are the needs and wants of my neighbors that wouldn't be sinful, right? You know,
01:25:53.000cause your neighbors have some wants that would be sinful to go out and provide for them. Your
01:25:57.700neighbors want to look at porn. Don't, you know, don't be like, Oh, an economic opportunity. No,
01:26:02.140what are the non-sinful, what are the righteous needs, the normal human needs that your neighbors
01:26:07.220have or wants and needs that are, would be righteous to fulfill. And then you can start
01:26:11.160to get out of this kind of like, um, trying to discover your Enneagram number and your like
01:26:16.400spiritual gift survey will somehow magically tell you exactly what job to do. It's like, no.
01:26:22.160Because then you're going to get the result. Your spiritual gift is being conquered.
01:26:25.580Your spiritual gift is being conquered. It's like, no, if you instead go, well, okay, I am
01:26:30.760really good at managing people. I'm really good at it. So I might not be really good at doing
01:26:37.320some trade or something like that, but maybe I'm really good. Well, that's a great skill.
01:26:40.700So maybe I'll build a business and say, I'm going to use like the least glamorous business idea I've
01:26:45.060ever had, which is port-a-potty rentals. Maybe you're like, our area has a lot of construction
01:26:50.540going on all the time, a lot of development. You know what development sites need? Port-a-potties.
01:26:55.920So I'm going to say, what capital would I need to start a port-a-potty company? I'm going to train
01:27:00.400some people, manage them well, get some systems in place so that I can rent out a port-a-potty
01:27:05.180with less overhead than the competitor, provide better service because I'm a Christian, honor my
01:27:10.940word, just go about it Christianly. And then pretty soon, maybe you, you end up operating
01:27:15.840the largest port-a-potty rental in your, in your, in your city. And it sounds silly, but it's like,
01:27:20.520literally, that's something that people are going to need forever. Anywhere they're building stuff,
01:27:25.780like there are, when you start to think this way, looking in and saying, what is, what are the
01:27:31.020talents God's put in my hands? And then looking out and saying, what do my neighbors need or want?
01:27:35.620and can I connect the two in a way that's economically productive, loves my neighbor
01:27:41.600by benefiting them, benefits my family and hires people, builds business. And pretty soon you look
01:27:49.500out and instead of having a scarcity mindset, which is so much of the killer of productivity
01:27:55.420and building productive wealth, this scarcity mindset of, well, there are few jobs and a lot
01:28:00.840of people competing for them. How will I ever make a living? And instead you look and you're like,
01:28:04.400there's a lot of people around here that people have a lot of needs and wants. I bet I could find
01:28:09.200a need or a want or maybe two or three or four or five different things, you know, multiple streams
01:28:14.220of income. Dang, I bet if I just read the Proverbs, worked hard as unto the Lord, generous with my
01:28:20.380money, honest with my customers, love the people I encounter, take a genuine interest in other
01:28:25.960humans. Like if I just do these Christian things, wow, maybe there's not a scarcity out there.
01:28:31.300maybe there's enormous opportunity. Like the world is made out of opportunity right now is
01:28:37.180one of the things Christians need to get in their bones. Yeah, big time. There's one story I heard0.99
01:28:41.100where a gold miner was asked the question, how do you find gold? And he said, gold's everywhere.
01:28:48.480You just need the eyes to see it. And so that's kind of what you're talking about. You have to
01:28:54.080have a different frame of reference in order to see that there's actually opportunities everywhere.
01:28:58.560yes and and so another thing that i would like to talk about so you you said uh that you need to
01:29:04.340uh what was your first point you said you had two points so you look in and you say where am i good
01:29:09.780at because people are different and then you look out you say what do my neighbors need okay that's
01:29:13.260great the other thing i would say is find a respectable man because this so much crosses
01:29:18.680over with masculinity in wealth creation and and uh taking dominion in uh wealth money space
01:29:26.600is that you find somebody that has been successful