The NXR Podcast - THE LIVESTREAM - Is Usury A Sin？

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00:00:27.600 today most 18 year olds could walk into just about any bank and be entrusted with thousands

00:00:32.480 of dollars of credit want to go to college but can't afford 60 000 a year there's a loan for

00:00:38.320 that a new car just sign here you can even finance pizza deliveries we as americans take debt and

00:00:46.240 it's accompanying exorbitant interest for granted but this wasn't always the case old testament

00:00:52.400 Israel, the ancient philosophers, the early church, medieval societies, and the reformers

00:00:58.600 all enforced strict prohibitions on any usury. Or, at the very least, they capped interest rates

00:01:06.460 and prohibited their use to exploit the poor. What changed and why? This episode is brought to

00:01:14.000 you by our premier sponsors, Armored Republic and Reese Fund, as well as our Patreon members

00:01:20.100 and donors. You can join our Patreon at patreon.com rightresponseministries, or you can

00:01:27.400 donate at rightresponseministries.com slash donate. Tune in now as we discuss the history

00:01:35.180 of usury and what the Bible has to say about it and where we should go from here.

00:01:41.500 this episode is brought to you by affirm buy now pay later no just kidding

00:01:52.400 brought to you by discover card the card you need in your wallet uh we're gonna be talking

00:01:58.140 about usury and interest and so to be honest for most of my adult life i just thought this was

00:02:03.140 always how things are we're gonna talk about 20 30 40 charges just to finance just to borrow money

00:02:09.480 And I think for a lot of us, probably most of our adult life, we thought that's just how things are.

00:02:14.000 I remember in the military, a buddy of mine, he got landed at his base and he went out and bought a car.

00:02:18.880 And I think his interest rate was 28%.

00:02:20.880 And in my mind, it wasn't like, man, he got taken advantage of.

00:02:24.960 What a loan shark, this, that, or the other. 1.00

00:02:26.720 Like, oh, he just, you know, like he was dumb. 1.00

00:02:28.840 He didn't know any better. 0.98

00:02:30.240 Nowhere in there was I thinking like, hey, maybe a 19-year-old kid who has a steady paycheck so he can get approved for whatever

00:02:36.700 shouldn't be allowed to actually be charged that much.

00:02:40.080 In this case, it was a salvage title infinity.

00:02:42.000 Like you could see the one side of it was like sagging.

00:02:44.300 It was like a terrible decision on his part.

00:02:46.360 But to be fair, that was also an exploitative salesman.

00:02:50.640 This usury, interest rates like that,

00:02:52.520 they have not been the norm historically. 0.94

00:02:55.080 We're gonna talk about, can Christians utilize it at all? 0.99

00:02:57.540 Is it a sin? 0.53

00:02:58.180 What situations would it be?

00:02:59.520 But our current context, what you have to understand

00:03:01.920 is it's very novel that we do things the way we do.

00:03:04.760 Even in Europe, we have friends that have immigrated.

00:03:07.460 They've said credit cards aren't as big a thing there.

00:03:09.480 It is a specifically American infatuation with stuff and with consumerism and with the debt that then gets us into those houses, into those cars.

00:03:18.240 And the point is, if it's novel, you can actually go back.

00:03:20.960 It was funny.

00:03:21.460 Bernie Sanders, of all people, I mean, the most busted of clocks in multiple pieces all over the beach.

00:03:26.360 But that clock was right in that he said, hey, President Donald Trump, it's time to do something about student loans, car loans, credit cards.

00:03:34.520 and the ridiculous amounts of interest

00:03:36.520 that are being charged.

00:03:37.520 And that doesn't mean forgiving those student loans.

00:03:39.760 What needs to be done, in my opinion,

00:03:41.960 is the universities need to fit the bill.

00:03:46.220 They've been passing out underwater basket weaving 1.00

00:03:49.680 and gender studies degrees that employ no one

00:03:53.560 and doing it at exorbitant costs. 1.00

00:03:57.680 And they defrauded people.

00:04:01.140 They defrauded people.

00:04:02.020 And those people need to be paid back.

00:04:04.880 There needs to be some responsibility to the students who chose to take on these loans.

00:04:09.140 But if you want to forgive the loans, you don't punish the taxpayer.

00:04:13.280 Because when the government does it, what that actually means, the government produces nothing.

00:04:18.300 The government doesn't have money.

00:04:19.620 Everybody needs a basic understanding you need to have about the civil government.

00:04:23.640 The government produces nothing that has no money.

00:04:26.080 It can't have money because it produces nothing.

00:04:28.460 So anytime the government pays for something,

00:04:30.440 that means the citizens are paying for something,

00:04:32.500 one way or the other,

00:04:33.520 either by raised taxes

00:04:34.580 or the government turns on the printers

00:04:37.420 and then the citizens pay through it

00:04:39.280 through another form of tax,

00:04:40.500 which is inflation.

00:04:41.460 But one way or another,

00:04:42.920 the citizens are paying for it.

00:04:44.140 Or ironically, by taking out a loan.

00:04:46.820 Right, that's true.

00:04:48.580 And that just means citizens also pay for it.

00:04:50.920 It's just our grandchildren.

00:04:52.260 It's future citizens that pay for it.

00:04:54.020 So the citizens always pay for it.

00:04:56.660 If the government pays for it,

00:04:57.780 that means you pay for it either you or your children or your grandchildren but it's the

00:05:01.680 citizens the government can't pay because the government doesn't make money it doesn't do

00:05:05.860 anything if you want a job done done poorly then you know then get the government to do it so

00:05:09.940 all that being said um it's not fair to take a guy who never went to college uh because his

00:05:17.940 parents gave him good advice and said hey we don't have the money for it and you shouldn't take out

00:05:22.960 you know 120 grand of of loans um but i'm a plumber i'm going to teach you son to be a plumber

00:05:28.900 and hand you the family business and he works hard and does all that and now because all the

00:05:33.440 student loans are being forgiven by the government that means that joe blow the plumber um who worked

00:05:39.880 hard and never never even went to school he's now having to pay for college college he never went to

00:05:44.860 somebody else's college so that they could get their underwater basket weaving and gender studies

00:05:48.820 degree and and ultimately work at mcdonald's so um the the people who've taken these loans

00:05:55.540 um i would say they bear some responsibility however so we're not saying that they're

00:06:00.940 absolved totally however in the world talking about categories and these kind of there are

00:06:06.580 predators and there is prey right so you look at the proverbs and all these warnings to my son my

00:06:13.600 son about the wayward woman, right? That there is such a thing in biblical terms. Look at the

00:06:18.880 book of Proverbs. She's a man eater, right? Like her house, it's the ground outside. It's 1.00

00:06:25.260 buried bones. I mean, she eats men alive. So that woman, she's a man eater. So that woman bears a 1.00

00:06:33.800 great deal of moral responsibility because she's a predator. But that son, if he disregards his

00:06:40.540 father's counsel right he's still got to stand before god and he can't just say well the woman

00:06:45.280 you gave me right that's been tried before adam tried that one uh doesn't work he's still going

00:06:50.240 to be morally uh guilty and apart from faith in jesus christ you know in the blood of christ

00:06:54.980 that covers sin then he's he's going to go to hell and so um but there are degrees of guilt

00:07:00.220 and so i think that you know those who have taken these loans um they have to they they've got to

00:07:06.880 have some skin in the game. That's my opinion. However, the predator also should have an

00:07:13.160 exponentially greater degree of skin in the game. And then the people who didn't take the loans

00:07:19.340 and were not the predators preying on those who took the loans shouldn't have any skin in the

00:07:24.580 game, which means the citizens, taxpayers, the government can't pay for it because that would

00:07:30.680 make the taxpayers, those who are actually innocent, so biblical justice, they can't pay

00:07:34.620 for it, but those who took the loan should pay something, because they did commit a sin, even if

00:07:39.680 in ignorance, a sin of allowing themselves to be deceived. And there's some degree of moral

00:07:45.240 culpability for that, but the predator in this whole equation is the universities, in my opinion.

00:07:51.700 There are entire universities that should be shut down, because they have been selling degrees at

00:07:57.620 exorbitant amounts, ridiculous amounts, that are absolutely worthless degrees, that don't actually

00:08:04.040 help anyone, not only just for employment, because that's not the only purpose of college.

00:08:08.120 The first purpose is simply to be educated, but they don't do that either. You come out and you're

00:08:12.660 unemployable and more stupid than you were when you went in. So any university, aka 95% of the 1.00

00:08:20.980 universities currently in our country that fit that bill, I think they should be paying 90%

00:08:26.000 of all the student loan debt. Citizens, aka the government, taxpayers who fund the government,

00:08:31.260 should be paying zero and then those who took the loans uh they should be having some skin in the

00:08:36.540 game and that's the university equation and and in that sense um bernie sanders is right i don't

00:08:43.280 know what his solution is but he's right about the problem right and everything that i just said

00:08:48.600 for universities go ahead and exponentially multiply that by 10 or even 100 and now we can

00:08:55.860 talk about credit card companies yeah yeah so uh i'm gonna go ahead i'm gonna go through a survey

00:09:00.660 just kind of the ancient world, Old Testament history, medieval societies, how they thought

00:09:04.400 about it. First though, let me go ahead and define the term. So usury and interest, they're not quite

00:09:10.040 interchangeable. We shouldn't be quite kind of using one or the other in between. So the definition

00:09:14.860 here, you'll see it on your screen, but I'll read it out. So definitionally, there's different

00:09:18.920 ways to define this, but this is the most helpful that I've found. Usury, excessive or unfair

00:09:24.380 lending rates, I think 20, 30, 40%. Interest, commensurate compensation for lending money.

00:09:32.100 So this is more closely tied. I lend you $5,000. Hey, can you throw in 50 on top of it just for

00:09:38.340 the five grand I didn't have over the weekend? So interest, it's a little bit more reasonable,

00:09:42.580 but then usury, you're always talking exorbitant, exploitive. Religious status. So thinking more 0.51

00:09:48.500 about this from different religions, different perspectives, usury has been forbidden in many

00:09:53.360 traditions christianity islam judaism we'll talk a little bit about that historically

00:09:57.620 now has it been forbidden in judaism so jew to jew and i'll get this in yes right but then what

00:10:05.680 the mid in the medieval ages the kind of beneficial arrangement was jews were permitted to lend to

00:10:10.520 christians right and christians kind of like the loans they weren't allowed because they were 0.72

00:10:13.860 christians to charge each other usury or charge each other excessive interest but they kind of

00:10:18.800 like like well i can borrow from the jews and the jews are like well i can then you know give to 0.80

00:10:22.800 them they can borrow but extort typically it was then what happened was they kind of were like well 0.97

00:10:28.320 we could take this community people if we just exile them we've canceled all the debt so in this

00:10:32.520 case we take all the universities and you exile them and so it's actually why they get kicked out 0.99

00:10:36.460 of a lot of different places in europe that's not the only reason but that was kind of the incentive

00:10:40.300 people get worked up about the jews because they held all the debt because christians took loans

00:10:43.760 out from them because they couldn't take from other christians and they were like wait we could

00:10:46.980 just exile these people and our debt problem solved i see it took america and express and just

00:10:51.240 bulldozed it off the edge of California. And so then legally, interest is something that's just

00:10:58.480 historically, it's more common. I'm not going to say it's ubiquitous. I'm not going to say everyone's

00:11:03.020 completely fine with it. But interest is one of those things that was more allowed and more

00:11:07.540 typically accepted. So you see that now, for example, that interest is just commonplace here

00:11:11.500 in the United States. So going all the way back, the Greeks and the Romans, the Romans capped

00:11:16.560 interest at 10%. So they had the 12 tables they were called. They were kind of the rules that

00:11:20.680 were laid out for roman citizens and it's capped at 10 for a while and then eventually they abolished

00:11:24.960 it altogether so those roman societies that individual citizens individual citizens and

00:11:29.720 even like business and everything like there was there was no existence of 30 payday loans

00:11:33.720 uh the greeks same thing what you'll see across all of these that i'm describing is they look

00:11:38.500 down on it especially as a profession you'll see calvin will say that and others as a profession

00:11:43.160 the userer he's not giving anything to society right so someone that just makes payday loans

00:11:47.720 or a loan shark or auto loans, he doesn't create anything. He doesn't create anything. He's

00:11:51.860 shuffling things around. He's getting a little bit of return on top of it. And so ubiquitously,

00:11:56.580 I can say this, certainly across the history that I've surveyed usury as a profession is

00:12:02.060 looked down on extremely charging some interest, personal loans. There's a little bit more leeway

00:12:07.380 there, but even still, even still, let's put that cap on that. I don't really like it. We'll get

00:12:13.260 into some of what calvin says so that's greece uh that's that's um rome the athenian city-state

00:12:18.300 same thing pretty leery of it how did they feel about real estate agents

00:12:22.240 i've always thought about i have a lot of friends that are in real estate that's a great question

00:12:27.880 but i i always think like you didn't build the house you don't own it you didn't buy it like

00:12:32.820 i'm buying the house i'm also painting i always think like why can't the owner of the house

00:12:38.760 and the buyer just talk you know like why does this other person to me that's because the

00:12:44.400 government is so involved that all these t's have to be dotted and i's have to be dotted

00:12:48.900 right someone has to look over all of that it's kind of the real estate it's almost like a lawyer

00:12:53.260 they're coming in uh because they actually have the the know with all to uh to do all the paperwork

00:13:00.400 and the paperwork is unnecessarily complicated for a private purchase yep yep okay go ahead

00:13:05.680 All right. So getting to Old Testament Israel, and this is really important because this is what

00:13:08.420 the Bible says about it. So while Israelites could charge interest to foreigners, and this was likely

00:13:13.640 less common, like it probably wasn't very common that you were, you know, going across the border

00:13:16.940 back and forth to wherever it would be to give out loans. Usury for fellow countrymen and the poor 0.99

00:13:23.680 was strictly forbidden. Exodus 22, 25. If thou lend money to any of my people that is poor by thee,

00:13:30.060 thou shalt not be unto him as a usurer, neither shalt thou lay upon him usury.

00:13:36.740 Deuteronomy 23.20, unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon usury, but unto thy brother thou shalt

00:13:42.340 not lend upon usury, that the Lord thy God may bless thee in all that thou settest thine hand to

00:13:47.920 in the land, whether thou goest to possess it. Literally one of the blessings. So you're going

00:13:52.640 into the land, and I'm going to condition that blessing on not exploiting your fellow countrymen.

00:13:59.280 So if you restrain from that,

00:14:01.240 trying to make a quick buck,

00:14:02.460 setting up these different means and schemes

00:14:04.680 to try to get your money to increase,

00:14:06.600 I'm going to bless you.

00:14:07.940 But if you exploit him and you take the poor,

00:14:10.500 I'm like, ah, you got to make rent?

00:14:11.900 Ah, you got to give me a hundred bucks on top of that.

00:14:13.960 That's tied to curse.

00:14:15.140 I'm not going to bless that

00:14:16.400 if you come into the land and do that.

00:14:17.960 You'll get spewed out of the land.

00:14:19.060 Exactly.

00:14:19.580 Quick question here, Wes.

00:14:20.780 Does the fact that the Lord was commanding them,

00:14:22.740 did you find in your research,

00:14:24.200 was this a common practice in pagan nations?

00:14:26.060 Do you know?

00:14:26.340 probably to the same degree it was like with the Athenian city-states and in Rome, but it was

00:14:33.000 definitely one of the things the Israelites were prone to. You see this in the Psalms. So going into

00:14:37.940 the early church, Nicaea actually, it forbid clerics. If any cleric charged interest, charged

00:14:43.920 usury, they were defrocked. So early on in the early church, after you kind of have Christendom

00:14:48.360 come in, very quickly, usury, it fell completely out of favor. It was not like, well, 5% or 7%.

00:14:54.400 It was out of favor. St. Augustine says this, lend not money at interest, thou accusest the

00:15:00.420 scripture which sayeth, this is from the Psalms, he that hath not given his money upon usury. I,

00:15:06.460 that is Augustine saying, I wrote not this, it went not forth first from my mouth and hear God.

00:15:13.020 Then Thomas Aquinas, as he quotes Aristotle, this is dangerous stuff. He says, now money,

00:15:20.060 according to the philosopher, Aristotle, was invented chiefly for the purpose of exchange

00:15:25.320 and consequently the proper and its principal use of money into consumption or alienation whereby

00:15:30.540 it is sunk in exchange. Essentially, he's saying money's purpose is not for it to grow. So Aristotle

00:15:36.880 makes the argument it's not organic, like a plant or a baby or something like that that's intended

00:15:41.860 to grow. It's to exchange. It's a medium of value. I have boots. You have food. You want the boots,

00:15:48.140 the food, what's commensurate? Well, we exchange money instead of having to make something that

00:15:52.340 the other person wants. So exchange and consumption, Aristotle, Aquinas, pretty smart guys in my

00:15:57.840 estimation, they said that's its proper use. And so trying to take it, get 5% or 7% or give it out

00:16:04.180 to someone and hoping that'll give it back to you more is an unnatural use of it. And so Aquinas

00:16:09.020 goes on to say, hence it is by its very nature unlawful to take payment for the use of money

00:16:14.440 lent. And it goes on a little bit in the quote there. I mentioned the Jews a little bit. After

00:16:19.440 Christendom comes in, the Jews, because they maintained their own language, Yiddish, and then

00:16:23.820 some Spanish variants, and they had their own insular communities and intermarried. And the

00:16:29.120 distinction, for the record, like it wasn't race. So there was no 23 and me, you know, and like the

00:16:33.020 early Christendom and like, ah, 2% Ashkenazi, you're out. These were people that, that was 0.98

00:16:37.700 their religion. So when we say Jewish, we're not just talking about people with a genetic lineage,

00:16:41.080 but literal communities of Jews. And for, I don't know, killing the Messiah, they typically began 0.58

00:16:47.740 to be, they were forbidden in some places from owning land, other places from working. And so 0.60

00:16:52.340 they really struggled to find a vocation where they actually, they could actually do. So sometimes

00:16:56.040 they'd be kicked out for one reason or another. And so the only occupation in industry that they're

00:17:01.600 really able to do was money lending. And again, that's because Christians were forbidding to 1.00

00:17:05.880 charge usury to christians and jews were forbidden to charge usury to jews but a very convenient 0.78

00:17:11.180 arrangement worked out where christians could get the loans from the jewish benefactors and the 0.79

00:17:15.200 jewish benefactors could get it from them they would get a little bit of money in the kickbacks

00:17:18.680 and christians they were using these loans to be fair loans drive business like debt drives 0.85

00:17:25.660 expansion and innovation well it's a catalyst it speeds it up it allows it's like i can i can um

00:17:31.680 eventually, I can make a million widgets over the course of 20 years. But by being able to

00:17:38.720 take loans, I can make a million widgets in the course of five years. And so that's what it does.

00:17:45.980 It's just a catalyst that speeds things much more rapidly.

00:17:49.900 Yep. Getting into the Reformation, the reformers did become more lax on usury. So Luther, he's very

00:17:56.560 against it early on, but later on he allows up to 10%. And Calvin wrote a small treatise, and it was

00:18:01.560 really helpful because he says, look, take, for example, homosexuality. There's a blanket ban on

00:18:06.860 that. There's no like, well, you can do it to a foreigner. He says, usury, there is some occasion 1.00

00:18:10.760 for it. It should be leveraged to the common good. But he's very critical of people that had it as a

00:18:15.000 profession. And he says this, what am I to say except that usury almost always travels with two

00:18:20.720 inseparable companions, tyrannical cruelty and the art of deception. This is why the Holy Spirit

00:18:26.580 elsewhere advises all holy men who praise and fear God to abstain from usury so much so that it is

00:18:32.200 rare to find a good man who also practices usury. The Westminster Divine, same thing. 10% was kind

00:18:38.760 of their cap. You get then into our current status. So essentially the rates kept raising.

00:18:45.360 That's the tough part is you have usury and it's exorbitant. You say, well, we don't want to go to

00:18:49.340 25%. But 5%? I mean, like we could still borrow. We could still make a little bit of money on the

00:18:54.380 side but again and again as i studied this what it's led to what we have right now once you let

00:18:59.800 the cat out of the bag once the glue is out of the bottle it's a really tough you could almost

00:19:04.820 call it a drug to get people back from people love money money makes the world go round right

00:19:11.300 um the love of money it says the root of all kinds of evil people love money they love the

00:19:17.420 idea of making for one a quick buck making money without working hard for it that's especially

00:19:23.100 tantalizing and what that's driven what that led to was eventually a type of credit system was about

00:19:28.140 1975 here in the united states and that's essentially now where you end up today you had

00:19:34.140 ban on it through most of church history and then some loosening and then a little more and then

00:19:38.940 global commerce and now most christians don't even have a category of like oh could a payday shark

00:19:44.940 uh job be wrong i'm not inherently immoral if you have to do that you have to do that

00:19:48.940 We just we don't even think anymore. Maybe that's that's not the most moral thing. Maybe I'm not

00:19:53.980 contributing to society. Maybe the job I'm doing isn't anything valuable. Right. Well said. Well,

00:20:01.000 let's go to our first commercial break and we'll come right back. Our sponsor, Private Family

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00:21:07.360 The danger of centralized power

00:21:09.400 is often represented by the word king.

00:21:12.680 As Americans, we hate the word king.

00:21:15.820 Civilian ownership of body armor is about helping people

00:21:19.420 to have increased power to resist tyrants and criminals.

00:21:24.380 And so Armored Republic is about helping you

00:21:27.260 to preserve your God-given rights

00:21:28.880 to the honor of the Lord Jesus Christ

00:21:30.820 because he is the king of kings,

00:21:32.940 and he governs kings, and he will judge them.

00:21:36.480 This is Armored Republic,

00:21:38.440 and in a republic, there is no king but Christ.

00:21:42.680 We are free craftsmen, and we are honored to be your armor spread of choice.

00:21:59.560 So that takes us to Americans today.

00:22:02.120 The average credit card rate is 28%.

00:22:06.080 28%.

00:22:07.540 We mentioned it earlier.

00:22:08.980 Credit card use is not as common in the rest of the world.

00:22:11.800 It's American.

00:22:12.680 that use their credit cards, and they use them a lot.

00:22:16.040 U.S. credit card consumer interest, I think this is in 2023,

00:22:19.520 was as high as $1 trillion.

00:22:22.880 That's the interest?

00:22:24.300 No, that's the debt.

00:22:25.200 The debt.

00:22:25.680 So they're having this debt.

00:22:27.140 That's not like, I put some money in the card,

00:22:29.340 I paid it off at the end of the month.

00:22:30.600 Which, for the record, I'm not, personally,

00:22:32.720 I'm not Dave Ramsey, I didn't cut up my cards,

00:22:35.100 but they're all paid off.

00:22:35.820 I have a revolving balance that's accruing 17% interest every month.

00:22:41.060 And so you have Americans, we are addicted to stuff, to in many cases, like Christmas just

00:22:49.760 happened. How many of you got toys for your kids or someone else bought them, grandparents in this

00:22:55.560 case, and they're cheap and they're plastic and they've already broken by this point? How many

00:23:00.220 of them are going to make it to just next Christmas? How many of them are going to be

00:23:03.560 passed down? Well, why do these toys not last? Is it the material? Oh, well, we get them from China

00:23:08.800 because it's cheaper and people can buy more of them and then it's easier for them to buy them

00:23:13.780 because they can do so with a credit card and it becomes this revolving system i want i want i want

00:23:19.060 james talks about this you want but you do not have we want and a credit system enables people

00:23:25.700 to have it now i just don't think that's a responsibility that about anyone is capable of

00:23:31.800 telling young men you can have a brand new sports car like legitimately you can come in you can put

00:23:36.320 your name on a piece of paper it doesn't feel very real you can walk off with the keys today

00:23:39.960 that's an exploitation of i would say human psychology it's an exploitation of the way

00:23:45.980 things work because the way things typically work is you work hard and the reward is at the end

00:23:50.060 you're laboring you're striving you're producing you're doing all of these things and at the very

00:23:54.080 end of it you receive the reward which you labored towards credit and interest that comes along with

00:23:59.700 credit that you can have it now and the hard work well at the end of the day if you really stack it

00:24:04.980 up and you can't pay it bankruptcy that's that's the negative side i have some of the the caveats

00:24:10.840 for christians that would engage in it businesses investments all of that but wanted to open up to

00:24:16.020 any additional thoughts i think it's interesting that you guys don't know this but shortly out of

00:24:21.020 college um for about a year and a half i worked at a an agency that worked to help people reduce

00:24:26.480 their credit card debt um did credit consolidation and um what always surprised me well i stopped

00:24:34.080 surprising me pretty quickly, was just how, how seldom people really understood, like, what it

00:24:39.920 was to have credit card debt, right? For a lot of people, it was just like, oh, well, now my monthly

00:24:44.840 bills have to include my credit card payment, right? And it's not like I'm ever even aspiring

00:24:50.400 to get rid of the credit card debt. It's just like, oh, now I have an extra $300 a month that

00:24:54.940 I have to account for my budget that is just the credit card payment. That never goes away for them.

00:24:58.900 the other thing that was interesting to me and is interesting to me now is um credit having good

00:25:05.380 credit which will open up you know financial doors for you has become a replacement for having

00:25:10.500 a good name the biblical value is to have a good name to be a man of good repute to be a man who's

00:25:17.020 reliable faithful um hard-working a good businessman who treats people well and fairly

00:25:22.600 but now you've got people with good credit but that says nothing about whether they're good

00:25:27.980 people necessarily. All it says is I'm able to mail in certain payments on certain times

00:25:33.100 and not fall behind. They might not actually be financially solvent either. You can have

00:25:37.580 quote unquote good credit and not be really financially solvent. You shouldn't have late

00:25:41.440 payments, things like that. And so this idea of credit has replaced, has become, like if you say

00:25:47.360 my credit score is 730 or something like that, people say, oh, you must be responsible. You must

00:25:52.380 be wise. You must be a man of repute. Well, it doesn't necessarily mean that. It is a cheap or

00:25:58.460 lesser substitution for what used to be the biblical priority, being a man of honor, having

00:26:03.640 a good reputation, which is more valuable than gold. And I think a lot of Christians have replaced 1.00

00:26:08.240 I have good credit with a name that's, you know, something that's more valuable even than gold. 0.65

00:26:14.360 That's a symptom of globalism, too, because the good name, people have to know who you are. Yes.

00:26:18.720 If you stay somewhere and there's three generations and you carry the family name, for one, it disincentivizes you from bad behavior.

00:26:26.200 I wouldn't want to heap dishonor upon my family's name, having a child out of wedlock, not paying back my loans.

00:26:32.260 But then people move around and they go to college and they travel abroad in Europe and they do this and that.

00:26:37.000 And so how do you trace them?

00:26:38.300 How do credit companies know?

00:26:39.660 Because, I mean, they want to give cards out, but they want to do it to the most responsible.

00:26:43.060 And so you need some type of credit score.

00:26:44.440 But the credit score, of course, can't account for generations of faithfulness, can't account for family, can't account for all of these things.

00:26:51.940 So we'll take people, we'll boil them down to the economic widget, the number on a screen and say, oh, I mean, this is literally 2008, the financial crisis.

00:27:00.660 This is what they did.

00:27:01.740 It took a bunch of good FICO numbers, bundled them up because they could make 3% on the dollar or, you know, this much, bundled it together and crashed the economy, destroyed lives.

00:27:12.520 now there's questions to be had about how that bubble got the way it did in the first place

00:27:16.180 but i mean that's what it was we're going to bundle these together prime scores subprime scores

00:27:20.060 make them into these little securities that we then sell and people pay us a fee

00:27:23.740 and then they get it and if everyone pays it off it goes well watch the big short

00:27:27.380 somebody watched it multiple times but it's but it's fascinating and it yeah think of how much

00:27:33.540 it impacted lives a decade of an american recession a depression in home prices people

00:27:39.600 that were planning to retire that had worked hard and their savings were in the stock market

00:27:43.960 and they lost much of it probably not all of it if they held through and everything like that

00:27:48.400 but sent back a decade and so you could have had a decade ahead of time with grandchildren that

00:27:52.700 you'd worked hard and saved from and what I want to see is that type of just profit at any cost

00:27:58.640 making a return making money back what's my five percent what'll get me six percent that that type

00:28:04.800 of thinking is supremely destructive in the west and christians we have to be in the system and i

00:28:11.160 have some thoughts on that like you have to own a home and you are probably as you own a trust fund

00:28:16.400 right you're gonna have to get a mortgage you're gonna have to pay an interest rate you probably

00:28:21.100 with how expensive cars are you're probably going to have to do the same um financing a gucci handbag

00:28:26.800 well that is not the same category as a house and car so christians have to live in the system and

00:28:31.420 we should live wisely but you can say i'm doing this because i have to and i need a house and i

00:28:35.880 think it's a good investment and a car and all these things but i also recognize my life is not

00:28:40.920 about the bottom dollar percent return in the stock market and like h1b visas same thing tech

00:28:48.840 companies want cheaper labor they can make more money and get a bigger return christians have to

00:28:54.900 say not worth it we'll pay our own workers more maybe this app you know isn't as good or isn't

00:29:01.140 as profitable, that's okay, because we don't exist to just literally make a bottom line for

00:29:06.200 shareholders. We exist for our laborers. We exist for, I mean, like manufacturing and farms.

00:29:12.620 They existed for the people around them. Well, every time a company goes public,

00:29:16.960 like there's a lot of studies that have been done about this, that it's not just existing for the

00:29:20.840 laborers. There's plenty that can be said about that and practicing integrity in your business

00:29:25.200 practices towards your workers. But it's also, you know, fundamentally, you know, a company exists

00:29:31.360 for its consumers, its clientele, you know, its customers, right? The customer is always right.

00:29:36.680 Well, every time a company goes public, you know, IPO, in a sense, it's the shareholder is always

00:29:42.960 right. They actually become more beholden to the shareholder than they actually do the consumer.

00:29:48.220 And so they can start doing things that actually the consumer doesn't even like, you know, because

00:29:54.300 simply because it makes the stock go up.

00:29:57.440 The shareholder is happy.

00:30:00.440 I'm going to give one more example of this 0.99

00:30:02.000 and we'll get into like Christians just practically. 0.97

00:30:04.320 How do you live in this type of system? 0.95

00:30:06.740 So you're going to see a picture on the screen

00:30:08.280 and I'll describe it for anyone that's listening

00:30:10.080 of two bowls of cereal. 0.92

00:30:12.240 And you're like, that's a silly illustration.

00:30:14.460 Well, the one on the left

00:30:15.620 is the American version of Froot Loops.

00:30:17.860 And the one on the right is the European version.

00:30:21.040 The one on the left, if you're listening, is brighter.

00:30:23.020 The color is just straight up, like there's more colors, they're brighter, they're more engaging.

00:30:27.620 The one on the right just looks a little bit more bland.

00:30:30.180 I don't know about the taste because I don't eat cheap, junky cereal.

00:30:33.860 The reason the American version looks how it does is because it has red 40, yellow 5, yellow 1, and blue 6.

00:30:40.140 These are food dyes that are incredibly toxic, and they're terrible for children.

00:30:43.840 And that's just not like a fringe, I read one paper.

00:30:46.500 RFK and the FDA are set to ban them.

00:30:48.660 The evidence is overwhelmingly clear.

00:30:50.580 Canada's banned them.

00:30:51.580 Europe has banned them.

00:30:52.440 these dyes they're toxic to your children to your health you should not be consuming them

00:30:58.680 so now why does kellogg's put this dye in this cereal because they think it's healthy for your

00:31:03.260 kids well no they don't they don't think that they know it's not the reason it is in there

00:31:08.180 is so that your children it's brighter more stimulating and engaging it's of course packed

00:31:14.320 full of cereal so when they taste it they get a similar uh euphoric feeling so they buy more most

00:31:20.400 of the boxes have cartoon characters on them. It's got Simba from Lion King. Why is that?

00:31:25.860 Because adults love Simba and Luke Skywalker? No. So at the grocery store, when you're walking down

00:31:30.360 the aisle, your kid sees it and they become the weapon to get you to buy Froot Loops. Like it

00:31:36.400 makes me angry. Your health for your children. And this is just one of hundreds of examples.

00:31:42.460 These corporations, what I would describe what we have now is type of corporate capitalism.

00:31:45.760 them. They don't care. Well, they do care. I'm sorry. But one thing, and that's money, right?

00:31:51.680 Money, money, money. I will pack this full of dyes. I will pack this full of sugar. I will make

00:31:57.340 clothes out of polyester. I will X, Y, and Z. And all that matters to me. Can I make it cheap? Can I

00:32:03.320 mass produce it? And will people buy it? And they have destroyed the health of your children, the

00:32:07.760 health of adults, the quality of our goods. How much stuff have you bought recently? And it's just

00:32:12.600 junk. It's manufactured terribly. It's not put together well. It doesn't last very long. 0.99

00:32:19.280 That is what's happening when the pursuit, above all, of these big, global, international

00:32:23.920 corporations is we want money. We want a return as much as we can, as fast as we can, and there's

00:32:30.460 no cost we will not pay. Of course, we don't want negative consumer perception or anything like

00:32:35.080 that. We'll avoid that. As long as people don't catch on to the red 40 and the yellow six and

00:32:39.200 of that we're happy to do it and so christians have to think of that system and say wait a second

00:32:44.560 that is not loving to our neighbor that is not what god intended i would say i'm a big fan of

00:32:49.920 the free market a free man owning his own trade making a good product and competing with others

00:32:55.600 to sell it so when i critique a type of corporate capitalism like that it's not a critique of free

00:33:00.240 trade as a whole but free trade and that is very different from an environment only fans is another

00:33:06.000 example of success of capitalism. A man went ahead and built a website, a Jew, Leonard Kroninsky, 0.88

00:33:12.720 and for women and men, he connects them both. It's one of the most profitable tech companies

00:33:17.600 because it takes like 30 employees to run. They make like $31 million per employee.

00:33:22.400 Great success story, right? He's an entrepreneur. He got out there. Not quite so much. And so that

00:33:28.880 drive for money, that pursuit of money, and it comes back to usury, interest, all of these things,

00:33:35.280 Thinking of money is how can I grow it? How can I grow with the fastest? How do I pursue it?

00:33:39.820 How do I get more of it? How do I line my pockets? And that's essentially where we are as Americans

00:33:44.920 and as Christians. Yep. Well said. You use the dyes with the cereal. The whole time you're

00:33:51.760 talking, I was just thinking you could use as an example, you could have put two bowls of cereal

00:33:56.060 like you did with the bright colored fruit loops with the dyes that are terrible for your health

00:34:00.280 and then the bland ones um but you could have also just put a bowl of cereal and then steak and eggs

00:34:06.020 you know or eggs and bacon or something um like cereal in general just all together is uh kind of

00:34:13.880 you know an example of you know like why why does cereal even become a thing you know well the food

00:34:19.780 pyramid which is one of the biggest psyops um that there's been certainly in the health industries

00:34:23.980 it's literally like it is almost to the t upside down in terms of like what's actually healthy for

00:34:29.820 so it's like well you need all these grains like well no you you actually don't well do you know

00:34:34.860 why those are on the base you might be getting to it because they're cheap because a lot because

00:34:38.680 food groups made up of these corporations lobby the fda to get stickers like heart healthy and

00:34:44.200 to put their products at the base of it so they wanted money and so they lobbied the fda through

00:34:48.100 these different avenues to say please make our product the base of the pyramid yeah right again

00:34:52.240 money money yep have you guys seen that south park clip that's floating around right now

00:34:56.280 where, um, the president in the show is, is unhealthy and he's like exponentially getting

00:35:03.840 unhealthy, uh, more and more unhealthy. And they're trying to figure out what's wrong. And

00:35:07.840 all these people around him are unhealthy. And the kid from South Park, I don't even know the

00:35:11.840 characters, but he calls in and he goes, it's the, it's the pyramid. And they're like, no, no,

00:35:15.940 no, it's not the pyramid. And he goes, no, it is. It's upside down. And they take the food pyramid

00:35:21.500 and it spins over on the screen and so the bottom is now like the fats and the oils and the meats

00:35:27.640 and then and then there's hardly any carbs and um uh grains and things like that and like they like

00:35:35.160 give the president the food pyramid and he just like immediately starts to improve and it's like

00:35:40.820 south park has called everything right that's great yeah another thing i was gonna say in terms

00:35:45.220 of the free market and thinking about just like forms of government stuff you know uh back to you

00:35:50.360 know a common theme that we've been talking about you know this week with you know categories and

00:35:54.300 things like that and and on the flip side ideology where you know you you you're you're ideological

00:36:00.200 you take one thing you try to make it the master key you know one size fits all it's a lazy approach

00:36:05.180 you know to to worldview thinking um and one of the things that you know i think christians have

00:36:11.260 done this when it comes to politics and when it comes to government is um libertarianism like the

00:36:16.280 idea, you know, I think every young man goes through a libertarian phase, you know, for a

00:36:21.560 while where he thinks like, this is it. I finally, you know, I finally figured it out. And, and what

00:36:26.620 happens is it's, it's overly simplistic. It's, it's my optic. It's, it's a conflation of, well,

00:36:33.460 government should be Christian. They should be because they should be moral and the Christian 0.92

00:36:37.660 worldview is the true worldview. And so government should be Christian. But then what happens is it 0.91

00:36:43.120 Christian becomes just a placeholder for small. And so then you begin to think that intrinsically

00:36:49.380 that small equates to righteous, but you can have a small wicked government and you can actually

00:36:57.440 have a large righteous government. And my point in that is I understand jurisdictions. I'm well

00:37:04.200 aware of sphere sovereignty or whatever you want to call it, or, you know, classical two kingdom

00:37:08.080 theology, whatever side of the fence you're on. I understand there are jurisdictions. There are

00:37:12.460 certain things, certain duties and roles that have not been given to the civil magistrate,

00:37:17.540 but rather been given to households, the family, the home. And then, of course,

00:37:21.140 certain things given to the church. And I think that gives you a pretty good general sense of

00:37:27.980 the lay of the land. But that doesn't completely settle the equation. There was a time where I

00:37:34.360 thought it did. But the reality, you know, so you think of, well, when it comes to commerce and

00:37:39.140 markets and trade, well, this belongs to, it's not the church, but it's also not the state,

00:37:44.920 it's the household. But this is where, like some guys, you know, especially bright guys who do the

00:37:50.700 reading, this is part of what got guys fascinated with things like socialism or communism or, you

00:37:57.900 know, Marxism, because they would just naturally begin to think, well, wait a second, what if

00:38:04.120 what what if a guy you know he's done nothing in his entire life but you know his great great

00:38:09.340 great grandfather uh just happened to be it's not like like like this guy was hard working this

00:38:14.820 other guy was lazy it's just time and place it's just you know his great great great grandfather

00:38:19.940 happened to you know settle out west and he bought land at the head of a river um and then all these

00:38:28.020 other people they bought land based off of a certain price because it had water access water

00:38:32.680 rights um you know further down river well this guy it's his lamb you know and it's it's free

00:38:38.620 trade it's you know he's a private citizen he can do whatever he wants well what if he dams up the

00:38:42.960 river you know and then everybody you know south of him uh downstream no longer has water rights

00:38:49.060 and then they like they can't even just sell the property because now it's worth a fraction of what

00:38:53.280 it was worth when they bought it um and then you know you apply that concept to patents things like

00:38:58.340 that, you know, it's like, well, you know, in some cases, somebody shows real ingenuity and

00:39:04.360 innovation and works really, really hard and has a brilliant mind. And, and then there's other

00:39:08.960 cases where it's like, no, somebody just, it's, it's again, product of place and time, like

00:39:14.060 somebody was just there first. And, but, but now for all of time, they, you know, so you think of

00:39:20.580 like monopolies, like should governments, our government already does this, like, okay, free

00:39:24.900 trade yes but there are stipulations i guess is what i'm getting at um uh like should there be

00:39:31.380 monopolies just across the board um and then think about that as it plays in not just to

00:39:36.520 your health you know with major food companies big meat you know where every mom and pop farmer

00:39:42.020 you know in the country is just driven out of business because they they they cannot produce

00:39:46.640 they don't have the money or or the the resources to produce at that level of quantity in order to

00:39:53.000 get the prices that low and so they can't compete their their meat's never going to be purchased

00:39:58.580 um and so then all of a sudden the big food companies have a monopoly on beef uh but then

00:40:03.780 they you know they want to drive the bottom line even lower and make profits go even higher and so

00:40:08.980 now you know everything is grain finished and then it starts to be steroids you know and injections

00:40:13.640 and and now there's mrna uh vaccines with cattle and all this kind of stuff and you're eating these

00:40:18.500 things even if you said i don't want to take the vaccine well you're probably still getting some of

00:40:21.920 it in you simply because you can't afford, you know, $30 a pound, you know, for ground beef or

00:40:27.780 whatever. And so all these things happen. That's just as it pertains to health. Okay, here would

00:40:32.980 be another example. What about the moral implications of speech? Well, freedom of

00:40:38.060 speech, we believe in free speech. But what if somebody beats you to the punch when it comes to

00:40:43.220 new platforms for free speech? You think of the early days of social media with Facebook and all

00:40:47.380 these different things and then somebody inevitably emerges the victor and then they entrench the

00:40:52.780 victory and and no competitor can take them out and then all of a sudden um you get four years of

00:40:59.400 joe biden uh because hunter lap hunter's laptop was suppressed and this is suppressed and that

00:41:04.560 is suppressed and it's literally none of that stuff yeah this is just hypothetical um no it's

00:41:09.260 not but like they're literally admitting it now like straight up mark zuckerberg and just for

00:41:13.900 the record, here's how you have to think about politics. Mark Zuckerberg, it is doubtful, highly

00:41:20.180 doubtful that he has had a genuine change of heart. So what happened? Well, the world has changed one

00:41:26.140 heart at a time, one heart, one mind, as, you know, facts don't care about your feelings, and you just

00:41:30.500 make the arguments and seek to be persuasive and do the reading and present the facts. And eventually

00:41:35.640 through persuasion, you convince enough people, 50% of the population plus one, and then things

00:41:41.340 start to change. Nope. That's not how it works. Uh, facts don't care about your feelings. That's

00:41:45.420 correct. Uh, you know, what else is correct? Here's a fact. Uh, feelings don't care about

00:41:49.240 your facts. That blue haired feminist, you can, you can do a 90 minute presentation with charts 1.00

00:41:55.380 and statistics and quotes and all the, and, um, she doesn't care cause my feels, you know, uh, 1.00

00:42:01.440 she, she doesn't care. Uh, her, her, your, your facts don't care about her feelings. Her feelings 0.63

00:42:05.720 don't care about your your facts mark zucker zuckerberg even i'm talking about even uh in

00:42:10.960 the case of powerful people not just the general populace but even the case of extremely wealthy

00:42:16.060 people or in the case of extremely smart people what you need to realize is society is is ultimately

00:42:21.340 shaped by a fraction of the population part of it has to do with intelligence part of it has to do

00:42:27.580 with virtue i think that's the biggest part um but but um but but my point is that um it's not

00:42:35.960 about convincing everyone it's about winning and when you win magically overnight all of a sudden

00:42:42.600 everyone happens to be convinced zuckerberg would not be doing what he's doing he's now adopting

00:42:48.220 elon's model of oh we're going to get rid of the fact checkers he's known that the fact checkers

00:42:52.740 were full of you know bullcrap he's known that for a decade yep he didn't come into new information

00:43:00.660 his feelings didn't just subjugate themselves to facts that he that he came into contact with for 0.72

00:43:06.500 the first time that's not what happened um what happened well uh two things uh trump won

00:43:12.680 and elon that's what happened x is the biggest like social media now yeah elon beat zuckerberg

00:43:21.380 and uses community notes instead of fact checkers so zuckerberg will too and lo and behold all the

00:43:27.520 other social media platforms you'll find that uh that they've all magically had a change of heart

00:43:32.160 um but here here's the point um you know like or mcintyre he would say in this house we believe

00:43:38.400 in elite theory and that that's that's just the reality that that is the reality um and so my but

00:43:44.420 my point is you know there was a time you know every young man goes through his his ron swanson

00:43:49.520 you know libertarian phase um and and that's all that's that's all good and well um you can go

00:43:55.880 through that phase uh but make sure it's a phase and that you go through it and you don't stop and

00:44:00.760 and uh a couple of days is a good amount of time for that phase i had a week i had about a six

00:44:05.840 month phase of libertarianism um but but here's the deal my point is small is not synonymous with

00:44:13.020 righteous. Governments should be righteous. But you can have a big government that's actually

00:44:19.240 more righteous than a small government. You can have a small government that's 100% wicked,

00:44:24.880 and a big government that's 80% righteous. And when you think of trade just as one realm,

00:44:30.300 yes, in a theological general sense, it belongs to households. Governments produce nothing.

00:44:35.160 That's true. But should the government, not just should, but does the government have a moral

00:44:40.660 obligation under God to break up certain monopolies in the free trade realm when it comes

00:44:49.060 to things that can literally shave off 15 years of the citizen's lifespan, or in the

00:45:00.100 realm of free speech, where an entire portion, half the country, no longer has a voice and

00:45:05.540 can't be hurt like then yeah i i do think um that and and you can say well that's not theocratic

00:45:11.880 libertarianism well i then i don't care i i don't know what to tell you um but a christian government

00:45:17.080 uh should uh have the power in order to meet the duty and obligation that if zuckerberg has a uh

00:45:26.360 a monopoly um an iron fist clenched on on all the free speech and and he's preferring one in a

00:45:36.860 partisan fashion one party to the other and that party also happens to be wicked and lying uh then

00:45:42.680 yes the government the sword is to punish evildoers that's evil so that's the question

00:45:48.560 is like well the government just it uh it exists to punish uh evildoers it doesn't exist uh with

00:45:53.820 you know capitalism and you know and when it comes to free trade um well can you um can you do evil

00:46:00.220 in trade can you do evil in the medical industry can doctors practice evil can they produce

00:46:10.000 fraudulent evil uh studies about a disease and and blur the statistics can can um speech free

00:46:18.840 speech platforms and social media platforms can they do things that are evil right well the

00:46:23.220 government has been given the sword the civil magistrate has been given the sword to punish

00:46:27.360 the evildoer and as far as you find evil um then that's as far as the reach of the sword yep i've

00:46:35.780 said to friends they've asked like it sounds like everything we're talking about kind of sounds like

00:46:39.820 more government and i feel like the last thing we need right now is more government but i would say

00:46:43.640 here's this this is what i said short term more long term less right because the ideal i mean just

00:46:48.980 like our constitution it's fit for moral people right the ideal is not the fda testing cereals

00:46:54.220 to make sure you didn't pack them with dyes the ideal is that people are so moral they care about

00:46:58.560 their neighbor that they just don't do it the ideal is not that you have to have these strict

00:47:02.720 laws in the books you're hunting down and you eventually have a society where if even if

00:47:07.100 somebody tried to do it they would be you know pushed out of town exactly like nobody would buy

00:47:11.200 it you know good neighbors would warn their fellow neighbors and say no i don't do that

00:47:14.780 This guy is, he's, he's selling snake oil. Yep. Uh, perversion laws and everything. Like we didn't

00:47:20.260 have a big deal with them because nobody for close to probably about the first 150 to 200 years of

00:47:25.580 our nation thought, Oh, I should market and sell smut. They didn't do that because laws are not

00:47:31.580 the only form of power. There's legal power, but there's also cultural power, cultural pressures,

00:47:35.700 cultural norms is powerful. That's why we want Christian culture. That's right. We want Christian

00:47:40.220 culture because we don't actually want to have a law about everything, but here's the deal. The

00:47:44.500 law is a tutor and we currently have a society of a bunch of degenerates that need a lot of

00:47:48.860 tutoring right so if if your country is filled with you know metaphorical toddlers then you're

00:47:55.480 going to have to have a stronger hand and and a sharper sword you know you might even have to do

00:48:00.020 a wield a little bit you know you got you know you got two swords going on um and and that's

00:48:04.500 currently where we are and and but that's not where we always have to be it's not always where

00:48:08.720 we were um we had a smaller government in the past and part of it is because well you know you

00:48:13.280 had a much smaller population yeah part of it is people that's true if you have more people you're

00:48:18.560 going to have to have more administration to some level not to managerial class but to some level

00:48:23.260 um but but it wasn't just that the population grew it's also that the population became less

00:48:29.380 trustworthy right we we don't have a high trust society anymore and with less trust you have to

00:48:35.180 have more management and more laws and more infractions and more all these different things

00:48:40.160 supervising you know what's actually going on because because everybody's trying to defraud

00:48:45.700 everybody and so yes in the short run i think you need more government and then also that gets into

00:48:49.980 jurisdictions in certain jurisdictions you you would have uh even on the short end you'd have

00:48:54.860 more government and then less um but even in the in the short time frame you would have less

00:49:01.700 government immediately in in whole swaths of realms or areas so think welfare right well

00:49:07.480 welfare in itself is evil. It's doing evil. It's theft. It's a fraud. It is taking from someone

00:49:15.700 who worked for it and giving to someone who didn't. It's also incentivizing the breakdown

00:49:21.680 of the family. It's saying, hey, you know what? You can be a deadbeat dad. And it's okay because

00:49:27.600 Uncle Sam will be Daddy Sam. You actually don't have any moral obligation to your children.

00:49:32.200 in fact if you stay will penalize your children you actually get less financial incentives for

00:49:39.060 keeping your marriage vows and being a present father in the home your children will get more

00:49:43.600 money if you go out and commit crime and go to jail and we'll also just jail in itself the

00:49:50.520 taxpayer will pay for your room and board three meals a day a little bit of exercise time you know

00:49:56.600 a bed and all these kinds of things and a working toilet um so we will actually pay for you while

00:50:01.200 you produce nothing and pay for your wife and kids that you produce nothing for and we'll do

00:50:05.740 a better job at it than you will um and so something like that that would be a whole arena

00:50:11.220 of government namely the welfare system that immediately um well we would have to a ton of

00:50:17.520 people would die we would probably have to wean them off but it would quickly if we're being

00:50:21.320 righteous quickly fade away other sections though would actually be larger my point is to say it

00:50:26.740 simply um if we if we do christian nationalism under christian nationalism x y and z well under

00:50:32.920 christian nationalism um it is not as simplistic it's just saying under christian nationalism

00:50:37.740 you'd have a christian government and a christian government would be a smaller government it would

00:50:41.820 be smaller in some ways and it would actually be exponentially larger than others and that

00:50:47.300 radically offends libertarians um but libertarianism is honestly it's like we'll go and live

00:50:56.420 in Never Ever Land, you know, like with the Lost Boys and Peter Pan, but eventually you have to

00:51:00.040 grow up. Libertarianism is a wonderful stage of life for a 17-year-old man. That's even a little

00:51:06.120 old. That's a little old. All right, let's go to our second commercial break. The last, we'll just

00:51:10.160 touch on some thoughts on Christians who want to not commit the sin of usury. There is a sin,

00:51:16.380 but also want to be wise with their finances. Great. All right, the clock is running out.

00:51:20.480 you need to go and register now for our Christ is King, How to Defeat Trash World Conference.

00:51:26.880 It's happening the year of our Lord, 2025, April 3rd, 4th, and 5th. That's a Thursday,

00:51:32.940 Friday, and Saturday. And by God's grace, we're able to provide for you an all-star lineup. We've

00:51:39.140 got Steve Dace, Calvin Robinson, Oren McIntyre, Dr. Stephen Wolf, Eric Kahn, David Reese, Andrew

00:51:46.180 Isker, John Harris, A.D. Robles, Dan Burkholder, Dusty Devers, Ben Garrett, C.J. Engel, and yours

00:51:53.680 truly, Pastor Joel Webben. Come on out. Join us April 3rd, 4th and 5th, 2025, Thursday through

00:52:01.400 a Saturday. Go to rightresponseconference.com to register today. Again, that's rightresponseconference.com.

00:52:10.160 Listen, guys, you probably listen to Right Response Ministries because you take the

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00:53:29.200 and all of finance for Christendom. All right. Well, welcome back. In this last section,

00:53:35.520 So some of the questions, I mean, we have sponsors that are investment funds.

00:53:39.660 I think of New Founding.

00:53:40.820 They're on the front page of Forbes Finance or New Venture Capital.

00:53:44.060 Those are institutions that are designed to have individuals invest and to get a return and to build different things.

00:53:49.880 I think we'd like to say here for the record, that's awesome.

00:53:52.560 Would that exist for all time in every system, every Christian system?

00:53:56.560 I don't know.

00:53:57.180 Who knows?

00:53:57.800 But the point is, here and now, there's a huge difference.

00:54:01.300 We talked about usury and charging and exploiting your brother.

00:54:04.220 There's a huge difference if Michael couldn't make rent.

00:54:06.720 He's never done this, but like you couldn't make rent.

00:54:08.780 And I said, sure, I'll loan you $2,000 and you need to give me back $3,000.

00:54:12.640 There's a huge difference between that and then me taking my own money voluntarily, not under compulsion,

00:54:19.000 saying, hey, I have some money.

00:54:20.340 I want it to be used to help build Christian companies.

00:54:23.340 And so I'm going to invest in Reese Fund, new founding.

00:54:27.340 Notice the compulsion, the need, the motive for it.

00:54:31.600 Me, if I was to charge Michael an extra $1,000, what's the motive?

00:54:35.880 Line my pocket.

00:54:37.120 If I'm investing in these companies, what's the motive?

00:54:39.560 To grow, to be a good steward, and to provide for better things down the road.

00:54:44.800 So right here, right now, the system we're in, I don't think you'd be able to swear off all loans.

00:54:50.180 You could cut up your credit cards.

00:54:51.380 If you have problems with debt, you probably need to do that.

00:54:54.520 But owning a house, I don't think any Christian sins in and of itself by just buying a house. 0.91

00:55:00.340 Now, you can buy too big a house because you're greedy.

00:55:03.780 You can buy too nice a car because you're greedy.

00:55:06.640 But I don't think those things are wrong.

00:55:08.800 Because the Bible typically forgoes universals in favor of particulars.

00:55:12.580 It doesn't give us a list of words we can't say and say you can say everything else.

00:55:16.440 So same thing with usury, as Calvin points out.

00:55:18.860 There are times and positions there's some use for it.

00:55:22.860 Calvin says, for the common good.

00:55:24.620 But to exploit, to leverage against your brother, to make a quick buck,

00:55:28.600 to make a profession of it if you are i i can't imagine our payday loan salesman uh listening

00:55:34.820 base is that high if you literally like make a living off payday loans that's your vocation bail

00:55:40.000 bail bonds by god's grace find another job brother but but short of that so don't do it as a

00:55:45.480 profession don't exploit your fellow brother but at the same time um grow your wealth for your

00:55:51.540 family's good for god's good there's no church political family situation that's made better

00:55:56.840 but you having less money nothing is made better like i'm just so much so much better place because

00:56:02.380 i have so much debt like no actually now you're stuck here because you can't move from your house

00:56:07.140 because it dropped in value and you have this the whole concept of that is like mitigating the

00:56:11.240 blessings of god right god um i would i would appreciate less of your blessings um like no i i

00:56:19.080 want i want whatever blessing god will give me and god you know who does all things well um if

00:56:24.760 faithful with little will give you much. God will give you a blessing in accordance with, you know,

00:56:29.580 at least for his own, for his own children. Sometimes he'll give an abundance of temporal

00:56:33.080 blessing to the wicked in order to further indict them for their detriment, you know, and to further

00:56:39.620 justify himself on that final day when they stand accused before him. But in the case of the

00:56:44.880 righteous, as God, children of God, yeah, God is a good father. He gives us blessings that we can

00:56:52.080 handle as he's maturing us. And so we don't, I don't want to mitigate blessing. If God would

00:56:57.500 say, you know, Joel, you've been faithful with little, and I want to give you more. I want to

00:57:00.720 actually give you more financial wealth for you to steward faithfully for my glory and the good

00:57:07.120 of my people. Great. And in the same way, I think that that principle, not a hard and fast rule,

00:57:12.320 I would, you know, there would be some nuancing and disclaimers here, but the same with children

00:57:15.960 are a blessing, a heritage from the Lord. We don't, you know, very few of us would mitigate,

00:57:21.420 you know like if we when our employer you know uh pulled us in monday morning and said listen

00:57:26.000 um you've been doing excellent work and i want to give you a raise i'd like to double your salary

00:57:29.940 very few of us would say 25 is fine yeah 25 is fine don't do that seems like too much i don't

00:57:36.220 know if i'll be able to properly steward at all you know this is just beyond it's above it's above

00:57:40.300 my pay grade um but we do do that with children even though the bible uses the same word wealth

00:57:44.960 blessing from the lord heritage uh with children uh we'll look to god as our ultimate employer

00:57:51.040 and uh god in very many cases not every case there's infertility and all these different things

00:57:56.940 uh but in many cases god is abundantly generous and kind and he's given the capacity for a raise

00:58:03.060 of five children and yet we go to our employer god and we say five children that's that's too

00:58:07.920 much blessing we'll take three um and you know and so um you know again i'm not saying you know

00:58:13.320 i'm not going to the the monty python skit you know every sperm is sacred you know that with 0.90

00:58:17.140 catholics and like so you know 12 children or you're in sin um obviously there's prudence and

00:58:22.260 wisdom and thought and all those things but um but my point is we don't we we shouldn't mitigate

00:58:28.060 blessing we do um often we do it with children all the time uh with our 1.2 kids you know in

00:58:33.500 white picket fence um and and then you know but with with money very few of us are mitigating

00:58:39.020 blessing we want to be blessed we want to use it to the glory of god um but it needs to be used

00:58:43.600 wisely so but what do you i just i was gonna just restate what wes said um in a slightly better no

00:58:51.720 no just just for those of you who are because because i know in spite of our audience being

00:58:58.600 extremely based right um predominantly the conversation in christian circles

00:59:03.940 is the conversation about money is why money is so bad right right um and so wes uh when you when

00:59:11.740 you talked about just kind of the system that we live in, um, one of the things that I think would

00:59:16.780 be helpful for people to think about as they're seeking to grow their wealth is, um, maybe a

00:59:21.760 principle for you is growing, uh, money, um, and wealth used to produce and to grow. So in the sense

00:59:30.980 of like, um, maybe, maybe you've got some money and what you want to do is you want to help a

00:59:35.820 brother start up a business he's working nine to five but he's a skilled mechanic right he doesn't

00:59:42.460 have the capital to start a shop but you've been blessed and so you you lend him some money with a

00:59:47.820 small interest rate or maybe a stake in the company or something like that that's a different purpose

00:59:52.900 that is growth and even flourishing to use a social justice word productivity that's actually

01:00:01.740 what we're supposed to be doing as humans, right?

01:00:03.820 But where it's taking advantage of,

01:00:07.220 if that's a helpful way to think about

01:00:09.700 how you use your money

01:00:10.740 or even what kind of loans you enter into,

01:00:13.840 loans for the purpose of productivity and increase

01:00:17.940 versus loans for the purpose of taking advantage

01:00:21.200 and pulling the wool over someone's eyes.

01:00:25.240 Like that maybe for listeners

01:00:26.800 is a helpful way to think about,

01:00:28.920 I think exactly what Wes is saying.

01:00:30.440 yeah that's a good way also uh in terms of like loans that um for the sake of an asset

01:00:36.360 versus like you know like you know college loans part of what makes it so bad is that um it's like

01:00:42.360 well i got an education um did you you know right first you know that's debatable second um even if

01:00:49.040 you did it's uh that is that's an improvement but it's it's not a tangible asset um when somebody

01:00:56.040 takes out a loan to buy a house they um yeah i mean yeah there can be a house market crash and

01:01:00.720 you know you can be underwater on your mortgage and those those things are possible uh but at the

01:01:04.880 end of the day you still have a tangible asset that you can sell right so it's like i took out

01:01:09.080 a loan uh for a house that house typically over over the long haul uh usually seven to ten years

01:01:15.840 and and pretty much every seven to ten year period uh if you're willing to wait at least that long

01:01:20.760 right so you know you buy a house in the very next year you turn around maybe you have a profit

01:01:25.220 maybe you don't, but if you're willing to wait seven to 10 years from the time of buying a house,

01:01:29.920 then you're pretty much always in the black. And so in that case, you're taking a loan for one,

01:01:35.160 a basic need shelter to you actually have a tangible physical asset that appreciates in

01:01:41.980 value, which is very different than a loan shark selling loans, not, not typically not to somebody

01:01:46.700 who's paying a mortgage for, for a physical asset that they own, but to pay rent to someone else

01:01:51.900 who owns that asset um meaning that um if they ever get behind the money's gone there's nothing

01:01:58.500 there's nothing that that money went towards that they physically own that represents that they can

01:02:02.500 sell you know in order to get out of bankruptcy is the only option they have no they have no um

01:02:08.520 no no safety line and so um that's another thing to consider is what am i taking a loan

01:02:13.680 for am i taking a loan for um just uh material stuff the the you know the louis vuitton you

01:02:21.320 know, handbag, um, you know, or am I taking a loan for, um, uh, a need and a need that also

01:02:28.920 happens to be an asset? Yep. Rich dad, poor dad, uh, great book. And he just simply says the rich

01:02:34.960 acquire assets, things that make the money and the poor acquire liabilities. Like I have, I've

01:02:40.660 said it before, like two homes and one's a rental. That's a lot. It's a lot of debt. It's closer to

01:02:44.840 a billion than not, but it's an asset closer to a million. You said closer to a million in total

01:02:49.420 that sounded like you said a billion for a real estate empire billions but but that debt is not

01:02:55.600 just debt for the purpose of paying debt it's an asset that's bringing in money and so as a

01:03:00.740 christian and all those things i can say yeah i think this is a wise choice to acquire this asset

01:03:05.100 that will take a loan but i'm acquiring it i'm giving someone a home to live in i hope in time

01:03:09.900 a christian from our church that isn't at the point to buy that they would rent it so i'm providing a

01:03:14.040 real tangible service again not software or something like that real service and it's bringing

01:03:18.980 in money instead of taking money out of my my wallet every month that is so different than a

01:03:24.000 consumeristic minded going into debt for a peloton or something like that right right yeah and this

01:03:30.620 is just i'll end it with this this is another one of those topics where um ideology again is uh

01:03:36.840 proves to be incredibly unhelpful um because the ideological answer which is appealing to someone

01:03:44.360 who's desperate. Um, and also, you know, if you're particularly uneducated in the realm of finance

01:03:50.380 and, and tempted to be lazy, um, ideal ideology is always appealing to those who are lazy because

01:03:57.480 it's a one size fits all master key. Instead of having to learn many topics and an exhaustive

01:04:02.280 education, I can just learn one, one secret thing. That's, you know, it's the, it's the gnosis. It's

01:04:07.540 the secret knowledge that enlightens me that, uh, now I can unlock every door. Um, so an example

01:04:13.140 of ideology on this topic would be in my opinion and some people won't like this um dave ramsey

01:04:20.580 um i think that that is um uh it's not exhaustive understanding of um wealth and finances i think

01:04:28.340 it's ideological um debt bad period in a discussion no disclaimers no just he says 15

01:04:38.660 your mortgage for your house is about the only debt you should have the only i will say in his

01:04:43.140 favor he's speaking to people who are never going to do the reading that's true right so it probably

01:04:49.460 is better for them you can't for those people to follow that advice that's that's not for some

01:04:55.280 people yeah uh but i know other people and i pastorally dealt with this where uh there are 0.99

01:05:00.280 people in their 40s you know 40 years old you know who are you know been taking the damn uh damn 0.99

01:05:07.320 Dave Ramsey. I was connecting the two names there. I wasn't trying to curse, but the Dave Ramsey 0.99

01:05:12.460 approach. And, um, and it's like, uh, and they're thinking I'm going to accrue wealth, you know,

01:05:18.580 uh, by, um, uh, accruing real estate. It's like, well, how many houses do you own? You know, one,

01:05:24.020 you know, and, um, how close are you to accruing the second one? Nowhere even close. Uh, but I'm

01:05:29.060 gonna, um, I'm going to do real estate and, uh, the S and P 500, you know, and which is, I think

01:05:35.560 the S&P 500 is relatively good and this and that and the other and paying off all of our debt and

01:05:42.820 like and I know a lot of people have been hurt by that like people you know in you know pastorally

01:05:47.700 parishioners who they're like you know I worked really hard in 2019 to you know my wife and I to

01:05:55.920 pay off all of our student loans because we believed it was morally right and that's the 0.99

01:06:00.600 financial morality, you know, ideological financial morality, you know, education that

01:06:06.140 we had received. And so we did it because we thought it was right. And then 2020 happens in

01:06:10.440 2021 and 2022. And what inflation does is that, um, it actually, uh, your debt shrinks with

01:06:18.200 inflation. It's a bad system because it also because money across the board shrinks. What

01:06:23.760 that means is if money is shrinking across the board, it means that, uh, the 50,000 that you

01:06:29.320 owed in 2019, well, by 2022 standards, it's more like equivalent of like $38,000 that you owe.

01:06:37.700 Likewise, the money that you save shrinks. So everybody in 2020 and 2021, if you had 50 grand

01:06:46.460 in debt and somebody else worked really hard to pay off all their debt and had 50 grand in savings,

01:06:51.080 the guy with 50 grand in savings now has the buying power of $38,000 in savings. And the guy

01:06:56.540 with 50 grand in debt now has the debt actual equivalency of $38,000 in debt. So the guy who

01:07:04.860 made poor choices, what he owes actually lessens. And the guy who made wise choices, what he owns

01:07:11.520 also lessens. And so my point is, it's not that simple. There are times, and maybe not with student

01:07:18.720 loans, but the principle still remains, there are times where, like Wes, your mindset was not just,

01:07:24.780 I should take my 30-year mortgage on the one house that I own that I have to have to meet a

01:07:29.440 base need of shelter. And I should turn that into a 10-year mortgage, you know, and get a lower

01:07:33.520 interest rate, you know, because interest is money lost. And so I've got, you know, let's say I've

01:07:38.380 got a 3.5 interest rate, you know, because I bought in 2021 or whatever, on the one house

01:07:44.040 that I actually need. And I'm going to take that 30-year mortgage and make it a 10-year mortgage

01:07:47.900 and get it all the way down to like a 1.9 or a 2.6% interest rate and pay it off in 10 years.

01:07:54.780 that's that's what dave ramsey would say right um west will actually be in a much better financial

01:08:01.380 position by not doing that and saying look the first loan i got because of this reason because

01:08:06.100 that reason military and all this i got at uh very low interest or zero interest and instead

01:08:11.980 of paying this off faster i'm actually going to sit on that debt for a while and go ahead and

01:08:18.360 actually take out more for a second mortgage in order to have a rental property that now i have

01:08:23.740 an appreciating asset that also pays dividends, monthly dividends. And I'm going to leverage that

01:08:29.220 to pay off the first home. And then I'm going to own when it's in the final notes, like that would

01:08:33.640 actually make more money. And I think that some of the financial advice that's ideological and

01:08:39.240 too simplistic, one size fits all part of the reason it's, it's bad is because it's financial

01:08:45.380 advice that worked in a different time in a different world. That's, that's another thing

01:08:49.660 that people don't realize is you're getting financial advice from Dave Ramsey or, you know,

01:08:56.260 to stop picking on him from David Bonson. You know, I would categorize it a little bit different,

01:09:01.720 but I think somewhat similar. These are guys who made a lot of money in the 80s, right? The 80s

01:09:08.240 are not 2025. The world has changed. The way money works has changed. Central banking, the core

01:09:16.860 problem of all this has stayed the same but you are correct that other things the way it operates

01:09:21.520 is almost more clear now like this inflation problem that is when you have a central bank

01:09:25.680 and a centralized currency that is what it'll always tend towards the printing of more money

01:09:30.060 the inflation away of debt which then incentivizes more debt taking but then also your savings you

01:09:35.000 have to be putting them in assets that return because if they just sat there they'd be worth

01:09:39.500 less and that's that's the core problem underneath this but you and i can't change central banking

01:09:44.020 tomorrow. Right. But that was like, I'll just leave here just to be helpful and a real practical,

01:09:49.480 tangible lesson. One little lesson that I learned through 2020 and 2021 was, and I never thought

01:09:55.620 about it like this. I never heard anybody explain it this simply, this clearly. But one thing that

01:10:00.240 I learned is I thought in terms of there were investments, whether it's real estate or stocks

01:10:07.200 or whatever there are investments bonds um and then there's money and and it clicked for me one

01:10:14.860 day uh in either 2020 or 2021 where i realized um that money is actually just another alternative

01:10:22.040 investment the better way to think of it is not there's money and then there's uh investments

01:10:28.740 um multiple put my money into but there's right that i put my money into but there's actually

01:10:33.780 there's wealth and then with investments money is actually one of those investments what investment

01:10:39.780 is it well it's currency it's the u.s dollar in my case um i am constantly and that's what made

01:10:47.940 me realize is that um there is actually no scenario there's there's no option of opting out

01:10:55.460 of any and all investments your wealth will be in some investment it's not whether but which

01:11:02.340 It's either a bad investment or a good investment.

01:11:05.320 If you're keeping your money in cash, well, that is an investment, an investment in the U.S. dollar.

01:11:11.360 And then you have to ask the question, is the U.S. dollar a good investment?

01:11:16.400 Does it bear?

01:11:17.420 Like, I don't know.

01:11:18.420 No, it's not.

01:11:19.880 That's a rhetorical question.

01:11:21.680 But that's not to say it's the worst investment, right?

01:11:24.440 Because an investment with a Nigerian prince, you know, believe it or not, the U.S. dollar will probably beat that investment. 0.73

01:11:30.580 you know your dollar's not beating much but it probably will beat that and so cash is actually

01:11:36.000 an investment um it's the and and and stocks are an investment and and real estate is an investment

01:11:42.700 bitcoin bitcoin crypto is an investment so there are good investments there are okay investments

01:11:48.000 there are very poor investments but all wealth is invested it's in something so then the question is

01:11:53.660 um all investments are susceptible i just preached to this you know like store up treasure

01:11:59.480 in heaven. We're going through Matthew where moth and rust do not destroy and where a thief does

01:12:05.700 not break in and steal. And those are two categories right there. There's external dangers

01:12:11.620 towards investments, a thief breaking in, and there's also internal decay. And so cash is

01:12:19.000 subject to thieves breaking in and stealing, but also in itself, an internal mechanism of inflation

01:12:25.600 and slowly decaying and those kinds of things um even something like bitcoin uh with you know you

01:12:31.560 think of quantum computing right right now seems like a distant dream but really the little bit

01:12:36.480 that i've looked into quantum computing right you want here's an investment um one of the guys in

01:12:41.140 our church i got to give him props i won't name them because it might get him in trouble with

01:12:43.920 his job but uh he recommended um there's a particular kind of refrigeration required for

01:12:48.960 quantum computing and there's tiny little companies that are making the refrigeration

01:12:54.600 necessary for that. And those are, you know, currently penny stocks that could be massive

01:13:00.800 if quantum computing actually takes off. That could be a really good investment. But the point

01:13:05.900 is quantum computing that seems like a futuristic dream right now is actually much closer than we

01:13:12.440 think by all metrics. And it is possible. It's possible, Wes. I know like you love Bitcoin. I

01:13:19.860 of a bitcoin but uh what if what if quantum computing allows for the hacking of bitcoin

01:13:25.160 eventually one day essentially the encryption would right would fail to the repeat the quantum

01:13:29.780 computing could attempt so many tries right at the encryption that it would be solvable exactly

01:13:33.960 right you say bitcoin gets hacked that sounds like great great grandma saying no okay yeah but

01:13:39.120 what i'm saying it's the sequence that's the bitcoin is like well you know what backs bitcoin

01:13:45.140 well that's the wrong way bitcoin is what backs everything that's that's the concept that's that's

01:13:49.760 what you're going for so bitcoin isn't even really to be viewed as an investment but actually as a

01:13:54.960 currency and what backs all other investments and i understand all that i i get the concept

01:13:58.620 and it's you know it's away from fiat currency and it's you know um it's decentralized and it's

01:14:03.860 also finite right so it's not just expanding forever so it's inflation proof but it is uh

01:14:09.240 part of what bitcoin it's it's um it's a it's a fail safe it's security it's it's a um it's it's

01:14:16.120 a code that's locked um but if you have something like quantum computing and it gets to the point

01:14:21.820 where it's it's capable of of putting out a million different um you know equations you know

01:14:27.820 all in a in a nanosecond then you know because people say well it would take you this many you

01:14:32.680 know million years to crack bitcoin unless right unless you know through technology and all these

01:14:38.440 kind of things so my point is everything is store up your treasure in heaven there's your point

01:14:42.040 store up your treasure in heaven where moth and rust don't destroy and thief can't ever break in

01:14:46.460 and steal even a quantum computing thief um but but the point is all that means that everything

01:14:51.780 is subject to decay and that's why we want to be good stewards of our wealth we want to multiply

01:14:55.900 our wealth but we want our true eternal wealth to be in heaven prioritizing the soul and eternal

01:15:01.080 things the higher things everything lowers in service of the higher that said though in the

01:15:05.560 in poor or plain, there are some investments that moth and rust will destroy much faster.

01:15:13.220 And some investments that thieves can break in much more easily. And so I'm just saying Bitcoin

01:15:18.920 technically still, because people say, well, not Bitcoin, there's treasure in heaven and Bitcoin,

01:15:22.560 and those are equal alternatives. No, even Bitcoin. Heaven is a blockchain. That's why I said the

01:15:26.420 whole quantum computing is just to say that even that is possible. But here's the deal,

01:15:31.860 it's less possible it's less possible and so when you're looking at investments remember cash

01:15:37.560 it's not uh what which investment do i put my cash in cash is just one of many investments it is

01:15:43.620 an investment it's it's the u.s dollar um it's a bet and i think it's it's a poor bet and i think

01:15:49.520 you can beat the u.s dollar in better investments and so looking at it like that and thinking um

01:15:55.520 i've got to put my wealth in something i've got to put my wealth in something and that's not a

01:15:59.640 Dave Ramsey tip that you're going to get.

01:16:01.900 My wealth is always in something.

01:16:03.980 Savings is an investment in the US dollar.

01:16:06.920 It's always in something.

01:16:08.240 What's something where there's going to be the least moth and the least rust and the

01:16:12.180 least thieves breaking in and stealing and destroying all these kinds of things.

01:16:16.360 And the reality is that in our world, the way that it currently works, we want to be

01:16:20.640 wise.

01:16:21.040 We want to be moral.

01:16:21.900 So we don't want to compromise things that are inherently moral.

01:16:26.220 There are certain things that you can't do.

01:16:27.580 like, yeah, you can make money, but it's immoral. But then there are some things that are not

01:16:33.560 inherently immoral, and they fall into a category of Christian shrewdness. And right now, I think,

01:16:39.120 in the year of our Lord, 2025, that there are ways of being shrewd, exercising Christian 0.84

01:16:45.360 shrewdness that actually are more profitable and can accrue generational wealth that don't

01:16:54.960 merely involve um paying off all your debt as fast as possible yep and that's what you're doing

01:17:00.720 what you're doing uh dave ramsey would say don't do and he's wrong and he's wrong at least to this

01:17:05.540 point so far lord he's wrong fingers crossed he's wrong all right thank you guys for tuning in and

01:17:10.380 we hope to see you next time

The NXR Podcast - January 22, 2025

THE LIVESTREAM - Is Usury A Sin？

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