The NXR Podcast - THEOLOGY APPLIED - Durable Trades ｜ How Men Can Be Economically Independent

00:00:00.000 Hi, this is Pastor Joel Webin with the Right Response Ministries, and you are listening to

00:00:04.240 Theology Applied. In this episode of Theology Applied, I was honored to have as a special guest

00:00:10.580 Rory Groves. Rory Groves. He wrote a book called Durable Trades, and what he and his family have

00:00:18.580 been working on for a while now is how to be self-sufficient. It makes me think of 1 Thessalonians

00:00:25.020 chapter 4, where the Bible says that we should seek to work quietly with our own hands and that

00:00:30.720 we should do so to a capacity where we are dependent on no one. I don't know about you,

00:00:38.720 but for myself, in the last 18 months of 2020 and 2021, I have become painfully aware of how

00:00:46.320 dependent we all are on so many functions of society. And I don't like it. So if you're

00:00:54.780 looking to be cancel-proof, if you're looking to be self-sufficient, self-reliable, independent

00:01:00.460 from the system, this is the episode for you. Also, if you'd like to support this ministry,

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00:02:16.060 Without further ado, thanks for tuning in.

00:02:18.740 Let's get started.

00:02:20.580 God's Word to every aspect of life. This is Theology Applied.

00:02:31.060 Hi, this is Pastor Joel with Right Response Ministries. You're listening to Theology

00:02:34.840 Applied. And as I've already said, my guest for today is Rory Groves. Rory, would you just take

00:02:40.080 a moment and introduce yourself to our listeners? Yeah, hi. It's great to be here, Joel. I appreciate

00:02:45.580 the opportunity. And yeah, I mean, I wrote the book, Durable Trades, Family-Centered Economies,

00:02:52.700 which that have stood the test of time. And so a lot of my research and work, and then my own

00:02:59.260 family, we've been on this journey of learning what it means to work together as a family

00:03:04.600 in a very individualistic modern age. That's really interesting. Well, in light of our current

00:03:14.340 culture that uh tends to cancel people i can't help but continue to think of you know well

00:03:21.460 thinking of first thessalonians chapter 4 verse 11 through 12 and it talks about you know that

00:03:25.620 we should aspire to work quietly and diligently with our own hands but but then it goes further

00:03:29.920 it says so you would be um dependent on no one right and man i don't know about you but the last

00:03:35.620 18 months i've just been i've been painfully aware of how dependent i am on so many different you

00:03:43.140 know, commodities economically dependent on this for conveniences dependent on that.

00:03:47.840 And I've just thought like, yeah, like I, I am not the cancel proof, resilient, conservative

00:03:54.500 Christian that I, that I thought I was.

00:03:56.480 I mean, by God's grace, you know, I, I'm, I pastor a local church that's conservative

00:04:00.900 and, and, you know, I do this ministry with right response ministry.

00:04:03.600 So I'm not, I don't feel like I'm compromising or cowering out of fear of, but I know a lot

00:04:09.780 of men right now are, are really struggling with that.

00:04:12.400 Do I, you know, do I compromise my values, my virtues in order to save my livelihood?

00:04:17.160 And so I feel like what you're doing is incredibly relevant.

00:04:21.420 So would you just, I don't know, speak to that, you know, for the guys who are trying

00:04:25.260 to reject the woke culture, the cancel culture, even with the cancel, you know, well, let

00:04:30.320 me ask it like this.

00:04:32.140 I'm not a libertarian, so I believe in cancel culture.

00:04:34.940 I just think that conservatives should cancel wickedness.

00:04:38.100 So what are some of your thoughts on cancel culture?

00:04:41.560 Let me start there.

00:04:42.400 Oh, man. Let's see. There's a bunch of jumping off points that I could go down. I think cancel culture is kind of like the latest iteration, the latest handwriting on the wall to say I probably need to become a little bit more self-reliant and get myself untethered from this system, this matrix that I'm completely a part of and unable to live without.

00:05:12.400 So you talked about kind of recognizing some of these things over the last 18 months. My background is as a computer programmer. I've spent the last 20 years in high technology. I've started my own software company. I've been very much immersed in that whole world for most of my life. Computer science degree in college and all of that.

00:05:34.040 And so there was a point at time about 10 or 11 years ago where I was I was actually watching some documentary about kind of like apocalyptic prepper kind of information and like that.

00:05:51.400 And it just struck me one time. Do I have anything useful I could contribute to society if the lights went out?

00:05:57.780 right right and uh the answer was a definitive no i don't know how to build things i don't know

00:06:05.520 how to grow things i don't know how to subsist without this incredibly um high level of

00:06:12.140 infrastructure beneath me and so um this kind of started just a curiosity of that ended up me

00:06:19.500 resulting in me moving my family out to a rural property um i continued on i didn't plan to leave

00:06:26.220 the technology side of things. But as I got more involved in like farming and shepherding and

00:06:31.960 working with the land and working with my family while we were working the land,

00:06:36.420 it really started to open my eyes to like, okay, there are some very practical ways

00:06:42.560 that we can reclaim some of these home-based functions and these home economics functions

00:06:49.960 that we've really parceled out to corporations and governments and different things over the years.

00:06:55.900 but there are many things that are available to us, available to men, if they want to lead their

00:07:01.180 families in this way. And eventually that kind of culminated into me looking into actual vocations

00:07:07.360 or trades, which is what I document in my book. And so the premise for the book is that, is this

00:07:13.200 exact thing. What can families do together in this day and age and build something that will last,

00:07:20.160 not something that's going to be cancelable, like you described, which is like the modern iteration

00:07:25.980 of where we're at. But also that would have some measure of insulation against just supply chain

00:07:33.040 issues and technology innovation and disruption. My whole field of technology is one of constant

00:07:41.400 change. Everything is going obsolete all the time. So you've got to reinvent yourself continuously.

00:07:46.220 you know nobody used to live that way we would have family businesses that would pass on from

00:07:53.440 the father to the son to the grandson and they would go for generation after generation they'd

00:07:58.800 get better and better and so there this is a modern reality that we live in and it's really

00:08:06.000 a false reality we were not designed to change careers every couple of years for their entire

00:08:12.280 lives. We were designed to get really skilled into a few select areas and then to be broad

00:08:19.580 generalists in a lot of areas so that you could build your own shelter. You could grow your own

00:08:24.860 food. You would live in communities of people who did that same thing. So anyway, this kind of

00:08:31.100 coming back to cancel culture is whatever the threat is, if you don't have families that are

00:08:36.920 self-reliant and if you don't have them living together in communities that are self-sufficient

00:08:41.740 or self-reliant, you're not going to be able to resist whatever tyrannies want to come down the

00:08:47.960 pike. And they will come. So at our founding in our country, we had 80, 90% of the population 0.63

00:08:58.200 were farmers, which means they were all self-employed. They didn't have employers.

00:09:03.660 Who was going to cancel them? They couldn't be canceled. And by the same measure, you'd had a

00:09:10.000 natural restraint on tyranny. So whatever the government had in mind to do, they were naturally

00:09:14.940 restrained because the people didn't depend on government and they didn't depend on corporations

00:09:19.540 who can, you know, as we're seeing with the vaccine mandates, they can parcel out whatever

00:09:24.680 the government wants. So anyway, there's a whole lot of layers there, but the bottom line is to

00:09:31.880 become more self-reliant really insulates yourself from all of the above. Man, that is helpful and

00:09:39.900 convicting. Because I'm like your past self. It sounds like you're not there anymore. So

00:09:46.520 praise God for that. But yeah, I just feel like, man, if we were in a post-apocalyptic world,

00:09:52.780 I feel like I'd be dead. I've never really been that handy. And that's just not really where my

00:10:01.580 interests were. I like the outdoors and those kinds of things. But as I got older, I was like,

00:10:06.180 when I was younger I loved those kinds of things and you know I enjoyed hunting and guns and those

00:10:11.700 things and as I got older I just lost interest you know and and so anyway so all that being said I

00:10:17.820 feel like a lot of men today just have not exercised or sharpened those kinds of skills

00:10:24.080 like when it comes to gardening or you know growing crops I wouldn't know the first thing so

00:10:28.520 well let me let me follow up on that because a lot of men today were not raised by men

00:10:34.280 or at least men who had this kind of broad knowledge. They were raised by specialists.

00:10:40.740 I mean, in the sense that their parents were specialists in one vocation or another,

00:10:44.900 and they didn't really have a broad skill set to pass on to their children. That's a new phenomenon.

00:10:50.580 My wife and I, you know, we call ourselves first-generation farmers, and there really

00:10:55.660 hasn't ever been a first-generation farmer up until recently, until you go all the way back

00:11:00.660 to Adam. Right. Right. In the sense that we're having to learn everything from scratch all over

00:11:06.460 again, because our parents were farmers, you know, they didn't teach us how to grow. And so we've had

00:11:11.920 to kind of claw back this knowledge, but what we're doing is we're teaching our kids. So we have

00:11:16.820 five kids and they're 11 and under, and they're out there with us and they're planting the gardens

00:11:23.060 and they're digging up potatoes. And my oldest son, he's out there on the tractor with the

00:11:30.720 bucket loads of manure while I'm out there with a pitchfork spreading it on the field. I mean,

00:11:34.640 this is just this stuff that we do. But for me, the key thing is not how productive the farm is

00:11:40.900 or whether or not we're making money or if it's profitable. It's that I'm passing a skill that's

00:11:46.040 an essential human skill onto my children. They're just growing up with it. So for them,

00:11:50.980 when it's their turn to start a family, they're going to have this broad base of skills. To me,

00:11:56.420 that's a huge value about working close to the land or working in trades or these kind of general

00:12:02.820 broad categories of skills is that you can kind of reignite that mentorship again so that your

00:12:09.060 children, they don't have to start over from scratch. Right. No, that's really helpful.

00:12:14.520 No, you're right. I mean, we live in the age of experts and the age of specialists,

00:12:17.720 And that's part of the problem when people look to somebody like Dr. Fauci for policy.

00:12:24.020 That's not his job.

00:12:25.120 And because policy, that's what politicians are supposed to be, is you're making policy.

00:12:30.580 And so you're looking at society as a whole.

00:12:34.000 So you bring in an epidemiologist, but you also bring in an economist.

00:12:37.900 And you bring in a psychologist, which for me would mean nothing because I think it's a bunch of bogus.

00:12:45.420 But, you know, yeah, you bring in a biblical counselor, you know, like, hey, if children don't see their parents' face for a year and a half, will that have an effect?

00:12:52.920 No, there's no studies that show that have an effect. 0.99

00:12:54.900 Well, are there no studies because it's never happened before in society because we've never been this stupid? 0.84

00:12:59.800 Oh, well, that might be, you know, but anyways, you bring in, you know, multiple experts and the politician is supposed to be, in some sense, a generalist who is looking out for society as a whole, who's, you know, taking counsel. 0.97

00:13:12.940 it makes me think of like in Israel you have a king and you have multiple counselors you know

00:13:17.180 you have you know the the magicians you know which again that was not not so great but yeah

00:13:21.700 multiple counselors and you're bringing them in you're hearing multiple sides of the story

00:13:25.220 um but today it's like like we live in a society of experts a society of specialists and we

00:13:31.440 ourselves are are so narrow and specialized in one field and and it's like it's so exceedingly

00:13:38.240 rare to find someone who has you can't be an expert in everything but the generalist is so

00:13:44.040 valuable today just to have somebody who has just a proficient working knowledge in multiple fields

00:13:49.980 um to be able because i think that's what a lot of like where wisdom comes from is being able to

00:13:55.360 to take multiple fields see how they work together and then and then come up with good policy or if

00:14:01.120 you're a father you know come up with a good plan and good direction and guidance for your family

00:14:06.640 And a lot of people, in the realm of knowledge, epistemology, we've outsourced that.

00:14:11.660 So we're dependent on experts and with trades.

00:14:14.040 And so it feels like it's just this big machine with all these tiny little cogs.

00:14:19.700 And it's incredibly difficult for anybody to be independent.

00:14:24.320 And so I read 1 Thessalonians 4, 11 through 12.

00:14:27.400 You know, work quietly and don't be dependent on anyone.

00:14:31.020 And it feels like a pipe dream.

00:14:32.420 It's like, well, yeah, that sounds great.

00:14:34.620 But how do you do that?

00:14:35.500 so getting real, real practical for a moment. So I've heard some guys, you know, I've talked to a

00:14:40.000 few guys who are trying to go into the, you know, the independent farming kind of thing. And they

00:14:43.200 say, well, you start with, you know, um, on the animal side of that, you start with chickens,

00:14:47.400 everybody starts with chickens. They're cheap. And then maybe you move up to some goats and then

00:14:50.560 can, can you tell us just real practical for a moment with, with crops, with animals? Like,

00:14:55.660 where do you start? How does a guy who lives right now, let's say he lives in,

00:14:59.980 you know, like a new build development. That's where I live, a new build development on a third

00:15:03.320 acre. Like if I wanted to do this, where do I go? How do I start? So, I mean, people are going to be

00:15:10.260 coming at this from a lot of different walks of life. And we get a lot of people because of both

00:15:14.760 the book and the fact that we've been doing this for a number of years and other people have kind

00:15:20.260 of watched what we've been doing. So we get a lot of people that are interested in moving out to the

00:15:24.740 country or they're interested in trying their hand at some of this stuff. And we have these

00:15:28.840 conversations a lot. One of the things is that people are at all very different starting points

00:15:34.100 and there may be a season of your life where this isn't really working out. We have some friends

00:15:40.320 that are in an apartment right now and they would love to be out on some farmland, but they're just

00:15:46.220 not in the cards for them right now. So they're doing like a community garden plot in the summer

00:15:51.860 months. But in terms of the thing that I would, I really encourage people is not to get too caught

00:15:58.900 up in how do I replace my income with a farm job? Because that's actually really hard to do. I mean,

00:16:05.360 farming is incredibly intensive and it takes an incredible amount of scale to be competitive

00:16:11.580 at this day and age. So just thinking that you're going to put some greens in the ground and sell

00:16:16.980 at the farmer's market and then be able to quit your job, it's going to be a while and it's going

00:16:21.520 to be a lot of intensive operations if you even want to get there. I encourage people not to look

00:16:28.220 at things in terms, especially starting out in terms of just pure profitability, but look at

00:16:33.180 things in terms of self-sufficiency. The biggest bang for your buck is going to be what you provide

00:16:37.960 for yourself. As soon as you exchange a commodity into money, it's going to lose about 90% of your

00:16:43.560 value. And that's again, because of what we're talking about. It's the economies of scale.

00:16:47.440 you're going up against much bigger operations as soon as you take your products to market.

00:16:53.240 But if you can get like chickens or a small garden, and you can start to raise something

00:16:58.980 that you yourself would eat and you yourself would enjoy. And then in the process, you're

00:17:04.680 gaining skill. I want to go back to something you said about skill and a broad base of skill

00:17:11.760 producing wisdom. That's very biblical. I'll send you some notes after the show. I can't think of

00:17:17.160 bit off the top of my head, but I have the basic premise is that in the Bible, God seems to prefer

00:17:23.380 generalists. When you take a look at how he filled people with wisdom in the Bible,

00:17:30.500 it was with wisdom to do a broad base of a lot of things, especially in the temple construction,

00:17:36.660 Bezalel and Aholiab. If you read through those accounts, he's empowering people to operate in

00:17:42.640 a very broad base of skills. They were not specialists in the sense that we think of

00:17:47.600 specialists, like a guy that's just going to do spot welding on this one spot all day long,

00:17:52.200 every day on a factory floor. They were in charge of very broad-based types of construction and

00:17:57.800 skills and all these different things. And that was one of the things that I get out of scripture

00:18:01.980 when I'm reading it. And of course, reading through the Proverbs and the Psalms and all

00:18:05.600 the wisdom literature, is that God really seems to, the term wisdom is synonymous with skill.

00:18:15.300 And so there seems to be kind of a deeper understanding when you have a more broad

00:18:19.660 base of it, rather than honing in on just a very specific area. And also that specialization that

00:18:27.160 we are part of, that we find ourselves as cogs in the machine. I mean, that machine is called

00:18:32.860 industrialism. That's been the whole point for the last 200 years. Since the Industrial Revolution,

00:18:39.540 everything in our society has been orienting us towards efficiency. And the way you become

00:18:46.320 efficient is by turning people into cogs. It's not as efficient to have everybody making their

00:18:55.280 own shoes, but that's what every farm family used to do prior to 1850. They make their own boots in

00:19:03.520 their own kitchens and they had the ability to do that. Well, it's not as efficient. Sure. Okay.

00:19:07.900 So we'll move the boot making to a factory. We'll free up the, you know, that family to spend more

00:19:13.620 time in the coal mine, let's say, and every society benefits. We'll just follow that out

00:19:18.600 for 200 years. And then you have, you know, you have people that don't know how to make anything.

00:19:23.640 I mean, they don't know how to show up for work on time.

00:19:28.500 There's just so much of a deficit of skill and knowledge anymore because we took away the broad base of things in order to gain efficiency.

00:19:36.560 So now we're in a day and age and people are finally waking up to this is that maybe we've gone too far.

00:19:44.300 And there's a lot in our generation that are taking stock of things and saying, you know, I don't think it's all just wrapped up in the paycheck.

00:19:50.680 there's maybe something more to life than just what I, you know, what I take home from the

00:19:57.100 cubicle job or the office job. Maybe there's more that I was meant to do with my body and being

00:20:03.320 physical with, like you were saying for Thessalonians, working with my hands. And I'm

00:20:09.660 wanting to say, yes, there is. You are designed to do a lot of things and to do a lot of things

00:20:15.780 very well. And that wisdom comes to you through that broad base.

00:20:22.320 So that makes a lot of sense. But there's one thing that I couldn't help but think as you

00:20:27.940 were speaking. So my brother, a lot of my listeners probably don't know this,

00:20:32.420 but I have two brothers and one sister. My sister, her husband is my fellow elder in my church here,

00:20:40.300 Covenant Bible Church in Texas, where we're located in Georgetown. My two brothers, though,

00:20:47.100 have a very different worldview. And one of my brothers is a registered Marxist. And we have a

00:20:56.140 good relationship. And we have, you know, conversations from time to time. He actually

00:21:00.500 was visiting recently, and we had a really great conversation. And we ultimately, you know,

00:21:06.220 profoundly disagree. And what it always comes down to at the end of the day is, you know,

00:21:10.300 theological and philosophical you know fundamental ideas you know we always it's like it's like we

00:21:16.560 have the same conversation and it's new and we're like man we're really getting somewhere and then

00:21:20.700 it always lands at oh joel well you think that people are totally depraved and i think people

00:21:27.980 are good and if they had universal housing and this and that you know they'd all be painters

00:21:32.060 and artists and you know so anyways so but my marxist brother if he was sitting here listening

00:21:38.280 to the things that you're saying um i think he would say well this is some of what carl marx is

00:21:44.160 upset about you know like because and he's upset about that he would say yeah i hate um the

00:21:49.100 industrial revolution and a lot of its aspects and these kinds of things he's you know so my

00:21:53.860 brother he's actually he's a cobbler you know and it's a business that was owned by um the grandfather

00:21:59.080 so he's working with the grandson now and um and his father owned it and so it started in the 20s

00:22:05.160 um, then they moved into the city of Seattle in the forties, but they still have the equipment

00:22:09.880 from the twenties, a hundred year old equipment. And, uh, my brother has, you know, his, his

00:22:14.860 doctorate, you know, but he's works as a cobbler and does nothing really with his degree and

00:22:20.020 is working with his hands and is happy and likes it. And, um, and they own goats and chickens and

00:22:25.780 things like that and building their little farm. And, and, uh, and so it's that my, my point is

00:22:30.780 he has a very different worldview than you and I do,

00:22:34.820 and yet he would agree with a lot of the things

00:22:36.780 that you were saying, and so what I want you to help me with

00:22:39.300 and our listeners with, how do you parse out

00:22:42.640 industrialism from capitalism?

00:22:45.340 Because, see, my brother, he's a Marxist, he's a socialist,

00:22:47.920 you know, and so how can you point out

00:22:51.580 the flaws of the industrial

00:22:53.740 craze that completely

00:22:57.600 severs labor from households 0.69

00:23:00.080 and where everybody's working at the widget factory

00:23:02.820 and you do one little thing over it.

00:23:05.420 Because my brother would, just like you,

00:23:07.480 he would disdain that.

00:23:08.420 He was like, you don't get the satisfaction

00:23:10.200 of bringing one product from beginning to completion.

00:23:14.100 Like that's part of his frustration.

00:23:15.660 He would say there is a significance

00:23:17.520 and a satisfaction and a joy in labor

00:23:20.080 when the cobbler gets to build the whole shoe

00:23:22.860 and not just one part of it.

00:23:25.240 And so as you're talking,

00:23:26.700 I'm just thinking about my brother who I love.

00:23:28.760 I love my brother.

00:23:29.520 I want to be clear about that.

00:23:30.660 If he listens to this, love my brother.

00:23:32.520 I respect him in many ways.

00:23:33.920 And then of course, I think he's dead wrong. 0.99

00:23:35.380 And he thinks I'm an idiot, you know, and whatever. 0.98

00:23:38.000 And I just, I just pray, you know, so, but he would be agreeing with a lot of the stuff 0.99

00:23:42.540 you're saying.

00:23:43.020 So where, what's the difference?

00:23:45.140 How do you parse that out?

00:23:46.260 Like, cause I'm assuming you're, you're a, a God fearing capitalist, you know, but.

00:23:52.100 Yeah, I am God fearing cat.

00:23:54.200 My, my views on capitalism have shifted as I started getting into this question more

00:23:58.980 and more. And I hope I do it justice. I actually just finished a chapter on biblical economics

00:24:06.400 for a textbook, a homeschooling textbook that's going to be coming out from generations. I'm not,

00:24:12.500 maybe next year, I'm not sure. But we were exploring all of these topics, which you were

00:24:18.280 asking, socialism, capitalism. I also look into distributism, which is something that would be

00:24:25.080 of interest for you and your listeners to examine. G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Baloch did a lot of

00:24:31.760 research and writing on a third way. It's not capitalism, it's not socialism, it's called

00:24:38.640 distributism, and it's more of a family-centered approach to economics. But then I spent a good

00:24:45.240 deal of time speaking about or writing about the family economy. And in exploring the differences

00:24:52.720 of capitalism and socialism from a biblical point of view, what I would say is, first of all,

00:24:59.660 your brother is right in the sense that the Industrial Revolution was the seed, it was the

00:25:06.360 cause for a lot of the Marx theory against capitalism. Marx said, my objective in life

00:25:17.440 is to dethrone God and destroy capitalism. So you can kind of get a functionality of where his

00:25:23.400 position was. He was pointing out in the industrial revolution, certainly gave a plenty

00:25:30.960 of opportunity for abuse on an industrial scale. And Marx was picking up on that and writing

00:25:39.660 against that. And his critiques of it were not invalid. What was invalid was a solution,

00:25:46.120 Because he was basing an atheistic, immoral, and a completely unbiblical philosophy. 0.68

00:25:55.280 He was applying an unbiblical philosophy for the basis of his solution.

00:26:01.520 And so that's where I would differ from him.

00:26:03.940 But where capitalism runs off the rails is the fact that capitalism views the individual as the fundamental unit of society.

00:26:13.860 in other words, the fundamental economic unit, whereas the Bible teaches that the family

00:26:19.020 is the basis of all society. So you have, and where do you get that? You can get that all over,

00:26:24.560 but basically you can go right back to Genesis and God created them male and female and he put

00:26:29.540 them in the garden. And before there was any government, before there were corporations or

00:26:34.760 any kind of institutions, any man-made institutions, there was the family. So the family is always

00:26:39.780 preeminent above any other man-made institution. And it operates as the most basic level of the

00:26:48.360 economy. And actually, it was always recognized that way. It wasn't until capitalism came along

00:26:52.880 that they started to view the individual as the basic unit of society, not the family.

00:26:58.200 And that would be my key distinction. If you have capitalism, you have the good things of

00:27:03.340 free enterprise, you have private property, you have liberty to the greatest extent possible,

00:27:09.780 You have private ownership of corporations, of all of the means of productions, and so on and so forth.

00:27:16.080 These are all good things.

00:27:17.120 These are all things that biblically are supported.

00:27:20.360 Where capitalism runs afoul is that there is no moral basis for capitalism besides freedom.

00:27:27.400 Freedom is kind of the ultimate morality in capitalism.

00:27:30.760 Well, if you have autonomous man, right, the heart is wicked.

00:27:35.900 The heart is deceitful beyond all things and desperately wicked.

00:27:39.080 who can know it so if you have the heart of man is desperately wicked or depraved as you would say

00:27:44.500 and you give that man ultimate freedom what is he going to do with it right and this is where

00:27:51.100 capitalism has nothing to say about it because if it's efficient if it produces wealth it's a good

00:27:56.400 thing i mean in terms of achieving the ends that of which it's set up for there are some other

00:28:01.700 nuanced things real quick i would i would add to that though i think that capitalism certainly

00:28:05.680 there's crony capitalism and certainly there are faults but i think what capitalism would say to

00:28:09.820 that is you know capitalism is not a religion but i i think that it would say that that capitalism

00:28:15.520 has competition and so there are checks and balances that are built into because because

00:28:21.400 for my brother like you know he you know so here's like some of the things he would you know he would

00:28:25.560 throw at you you know if he was on the show and you know he would say you know or he'd throw at

00:28:29.860 me probably he'd probably agree with you a little bit more but he would say all right well if if

00:28:34.000 there's a river and some guy, he owns land on the head of the river, up the river, and he chooses

00:28:40.160 to build a dam. But all these other people are dependent on the river downstream. But it's his

00:28:45.740 property and he has river rights and all that kind of stuff. He builds this dam and he becomes

00:28:50.280 obscenely wealthy, obscenely rich. And everybody else is actually suffering because of, or saying

00:28:57.300 the shortest distance between point A and point B is a straight line. And if somebody happens to

00:29:03.540 own this land. It's been in their family for generations. And it's not because they did

00:29:07.420 anything extra or they worked harder or this or that. They just happen to be in this place. But

00:29:11.260 then, you know, a hundred years down the line, great, great grandchildren, you know, the two

00:29:16.720 cities that pop up here and pop up here and their populations, you know, explode and you own the

00:29:22.720 land right in between, or you just own land, not all the land, but just land in that straight line

00:29:28.700 between point A and point B, these two cities, um, that land is going to be incredibly more

00:29:34.420 valuable than other land. And it's not because it has some special flower that grows in that

00:29:38.660 portion, you know, the land with, you know, medicinal property. It's just, you just got

00:29:43.100 lucky, right? You're at the head of the, you're, you're up here at the head of the river, you're

00:29:46.360 down here, you know, blah, blah, blah. And, and, you know, so he, he would kind of throw these

00:29:50.900 kinds of things out. And so then he would say, so you need a check and balance, right? You need

00:29:55.800 somebody to come in and be able to check the you know the oligarchy within capitalism the tech

00:30:02.700 giants and the you know the jeff bezos and where i would disagree with him is you know because his

00:30:07.880 solution is the state and i and i would say but so so your view is that the capitalist ceos

00:30:15.840 are corrupt and will exploit people um but the state won't you know so so my for me it's just

00:30:24.760 like they're all corrupt like putting on a police hat or putting on you know a domino's delivery hat

00:30:32.240 or like whatever hat you're wearing whatever role you're in whether it's a civil role or whether

00:30:36.120 it's in the private sector the heart of man is still the same so to me i i feel like there are

00:30:42.300 more i think there are more checks and balances within the capitalistic economic system than then

00:30:48.780 i think there might be in our government what what do you think you don't even have to speculate on

00:30:53.220 that because we have 200 years of history to see what the result of Marxist theories were. I mean,

00:30:59.020 within 140 years of the publishing of the Communist Manifesto, a third of the world was

00:31:06.060 under communist rule. And so we've seen the millions and millions of people, I mean, the

00:31:12.260 hundred million people that have died mostly of mass starvation coming out of Marxist theory.

00:31:18.340 So it doesn't matter that Marx identified some faults with capitalism.

00:31:25.620 What he projected into the world was far more catastrophic and evil than anything that came out of, you know, Wealth of Nations and Rand or whatever.

00:31:37.340 Adam Smith and the Wealth of Nations.

00:31:39.660 And so and I would agree in the assessment is that capitalism can certainly coexist with biblical law.

00:31:48.340 It just has to be subordinate to biblical law.

00:31:51.300 I think that's where what we see right now is where a lot of the rails are coming off or where the train is coming off the rails in the American society is we have abandoned God's law as a source of moral authority.

00:32:05.540 And when you do that, you know, going back this, of course, this is stuff has been happening for a long time, but you can see how each successive generation, the capitalism exploits the morality of that generation to achieve its ends.

00:32:22.540 And so now we have America, which, you know, used to stand for something more noble and good around the world.

00:32:29.060 We're the ones exporting pornography and Hollywood and all of this divisive agenda that's coming out of very progressive leadership.

00:32:39.100 This stuff is being exported by America to the rest of the world.

00:32:43.040 Right. We're the ones doing that. That's capitalism working itself out. 0.94

00:32:46.340 And so the key difference there is that you can certainly coexist, but capitalism in and of itself is not a moral authority.

00:32:54.860 It has to operate inside the boundaries of another authority.

00:32:59.340 So back to your point, as I agree exactly, is that the Bible teaches that man is inherently evil.

00:33:06.440 This is our fallen nature.

00:33:08.560 And Marx and communism teaches that man is inherently good.

00:33:12.300 And they just thought if you could arrange society in a way that was more fair, then everyone would flourish.

00:33:19.520 So, I mean, it would be one thing if you're projecting these ideas out there in the world and no one had ever tried it, right?

00:33:25.900 That's not the case.

00:33:27.940 I mean, show us an example in the world.

00:33:29.920 I mean, look at Cuba today.

00:33:31.500 They're the most egalitarian society in the world.

00:33:34.240 I think the average wage is something like $17 a month.

00:33:39.100 I mean, it's like it's impossibly, impossibly low this late, you know, at this stage in the world history for as long as they have been trying that experiment.

00:33:49.200 But you have corrupt people in charge and they will always act corruptly.

00:33:54.260 They will always prevent actual prosperity from coming.

00:33:59.120 And that destroys wealth.

00:34:01.800 I know you're absolutely right.

00:34:02.860 So I hear you better now.

00:34:04.260 I understand what you're saying.

00:34:05.880 And that was really helpful and makes a lot of sense because ultimately what you're saying is the same thing that I would say is that, you know, for the Marxists, there's the corrupt capitalists, the greedy capitalists, you know, like they would make an argument.

00:34:19.700 I mean, some of the arguments we would agree with, like, so, you know, like they would look at a CEO and then look at, you know, a laborer and say, you know, like capital, the idea of capital liquidated.

00:34:28.560 Like there are profits, but the idea of liquid capital that belongs to the owner rather than the laborers who actually are doing the work and producing, you know, blah, blah, blah.

00:34:40.160 And they would look at that and they'd say, this CEO makes 200 times what the input, like, okay, this person may have started the company, you know, or this person might be, might have, I don't know, like, you know, 20, 30, 40 points higher IQ.

00:34:56.480 this person might work um might work double the hours like but by all those metrics all right

00:35:02.040 they work twice as much but 200 times the salary they have twice the intellect 200 times the salary

00:35:08.620 you know like and so at every and i think that's what you know the you know marxism and every they're

00:35:14.480 all just different forms of egalitarianism that's the big and egalitarianism ultimately in order to 0.67

00:35:19.560 be consistent it becomes androgyny right that's why the whole transgender craze and all you know 0.81

00:35:24.400 you have to steamroll from gender, from this, from that. 0.99

00:35:27.780 Everything just has to be the same.

00:35:29.600 In order for it to be equal, we all have to be the same.

00:35:32.460 And we know that our God works within and within hierarchies,

00:35:37.340 that biblical hierarchy is a thing.

00:35:39.540 But hierarchy can be perverted to where it's 200 times a person at the time.

00:35:43.760 Because the biblical model of hierarchy is that the husband lays down his life.

00:35:48.540 And I think that's what you're saying.

00:35:50.520 And I think that like why we have to get back to the family, because you don't have the picture of Christ in the church with CEO and laborer.

00:35:58.720 You just that dynamic, but you do with husband and wife and with children.

00:36:02.920 And so at the end of the day, it's, I think capital, I think capitalism as an economic system fits within the biblical mold better.

00:36:12.060 although you're right there are flaws and has certain by default built-in checks and balances

00:36:18.220 through competition but only to to a point right because like for for all the capitalists out there

00:36:23.940 myself being one how in the world do you compete with facebook and and twitter and you know like

00:36:31.060 we try right so parlor we got them you know and then oh but we don't own the servers we're gone

00:36:38.060 You know what I mean?

00:36:38.660 And it's like, I'm all for it.

00:36:39.840 I like Marcus Pittman.

00:36:41.020 I like those guys and Lore.

00:36:42.640 And I'm going to support those things, right?

00:36:44.440 Because conservatives got to try.

00:36:46.160 We can't just sit around and complain.

00:36:47.560 We got to try.

00:36:48.720 But honestly, I'll just be honest and confess, I'm not super hopeful that we're going to be able to compete with Instagram and Facebook and Twitter and these kinds of things.

00:36:57.600 Because there's a certain point where you just, I mean, I think Google, like I read once, I think they buy a company like every day or every week.

00:37:06.980 they buy any company that even looks like it might have the potential a decade

00:37:11.060 from now to be a competitor and they just buy them and they buy them and they

00:37:14.880 buy them and you know and so it's just like it's like almost at some level it's

00:37:18.800 like it's one thing when someone's better they actually work harder or they

00:37:22.120 actually have a unique idea but it's another thing when it's like king of the

00:37:26.160 mountain king of the hill and you just you're not stronger you're not working

00:37:29.880 harder you just got there first and there's something about the strategic

00:37:33.820 positioning of the high ground that in having the high ground, nobody else can ever compete.

00:37:39.340 And so that's the problem that we're finding with capitalism is there's certain industries

00:37:43.700 and certain fields where it's like this person, yes, they had a unique idea and God bless

00:37:48.720 them for that and all the ways that it has lent towards flourishing with humanity.

00:37:53.200 But this is not just hard work and intellect and creativity.

00:37:57.380 There's something about just the nature of this industry where nobody can actually compete.

00:38:02.220 And so all that said, the governing force, I don't trust the state to govern the market.

00:38:09.540 And that said, I trust the market to govern the market.

00:38:13.340 I'm a big fan of Thomas Sowell and basic economics.

00:38:17.080 So I trust the market to govern the market much more than I trust the state to govern the market.

00:38:22.500 But that's why I'm a capitalist.

00:38:24.060 But I agree with you that the market still can't perfectly govern the market.

00:38:28.420 You're still going to have some of the problems.

00:38:30.480 And they're not small.

00:38:31.140 They're big problems that we have today.

00:38:32.880 So at the end of the day, what we're talking about is what has God provided to govern the hearts of men?

00:38:39.000 And it's his law.

00:38:40.980 And the basis, the fundamental human societal building block where the law of God is instructed and taught and birthed into the hearts of men is the family.

00:38:50.720 Would you agree?

00:38:52.520 Yeah, and I think, I mean, believe me, I've been in this industry my entire career, and I know exactly what you're talking about.

00:38:58.280 But I also see the hollowness of it.

00:39:01.140 some of these giant corporations, these things are not going to last. I mean, put your hand to

00:39:09.160 the plow and don't look back. I mean, honestly, these things, we don't need to create Christian 1.00

00:39:14.240 alternatives to these things. We need to just start living authentic Christian lives and authentic

00:39:20.220 Christian community. Those are the things that will last, right? Matthew 5 through 7, where Jesus 0.82

00:39:25.760 talks about building your house on the rock, it has nothing to do with political power or might.

00:39:30.320 It's following the words of Christ, building our homes, our families and our communities and our churches on that truth.

00:39:38.260 That truth will never fail.

00:39:40.240 We've seen this come and go through the ages in Christianity where there are powerful.

00:39:45.980 I mean, think about the think about the Roman Catholic Church and the power that it had up until Martin Luther and the Reformation.

00:39:52.640 I mean, we have seen dominant, powerful world forces before.

00:39:56.520 And we don't need to create a conservative version of everything that's out there. I mean, there are always ways in which we can be strategic. But honestly, these things are all going to pass. They're all just a shadow.

00:40:11.420 And the Lord, what he will preserve will be those God-fearing souls and those God-fearing communities who, like you said, they stand by his word.

00:40:23.100 Every word of God proves true.

00:40:24.680 That is what's going to last through all of this.

00:40:27.260 So in my mind, things are going to crumble.

00:40:31.060 And I actually think there's a cause for great hope in that, in the sense that God is going to restore righteousness in his own timing and in his own way.

00:40:41.020 And he's calling people to be part of that right now and to not try to be so immersed in the popular culture that we're always trying to be distracted by who's ahead, who's winning, who's losing and all these things.

00:40:52.520 I think a lot of the presidential and the whole political cycle is hugely distracting to the everyday kind of brick by brick kinds of things that we need to be doing as Christian families and building community in our churches and building more self-sufficiency so that when those things aren't there for us, when the systems crumble inevitably as they will, we actually have answers for the world.

00:41:20.600 We have answers for people who are looking and saying, hey, what is it that you have?

00:41:26.220 Why are you still able to survive and to thrive in the middle of a crisis pandemic and we

00:41:32.700 can't even figure out what to do from one day to the next?

00:41:36.440 And the rules keep changing on us.

00:41:38.380 Why are you happy right now?

00:41:39.820 Why are you doing so well?

00:41:41.480 Well, the world's going to need some answers.

00:41:43.520 And so I think it's easy to get caught up in what these massive corporations are doing

00:41:48.860 and the fact that the wicked are prospering in many ways.

00:41:52.420 But to me, it's not a problem.

00:41:55.800 Just stay true to what the Lord is calling you to do.

00:41:58.580 Keep your nose to the grindstone

00:41:59.980 and he'll take care of the rest.

00:42:02.640 Well, that's super encouraging.

00:42:04.980 And I've thought about that a little bit,

00:42:06.700 but the way you said it was just so painfully clear

00:42:10.200 that if I could sum it up in a sentence,

00:42:12.720 it's just reminding the Christian

00:42:15.060 that our only strategy is not merely to compete,

00:42:21.580 but we also have the strategy of outlasting.

00:42:24.940 Amen.

00:42:25.220 That the flower fades, the grass withers,

00:42:28.260 but the word of the Lord,

00:42:29.540 and whatever the word of the Lord has built,

00:42:32.520 namely, first and foremost, his church,

00:42:35.320 his people, communities, families,

00:42:37.480 those things endure forever.

00:42:39.280 And I personally would go beyond that

00:42:41.480 in a lighter sense, not in the same degree,

00:42:43.900 but in a lighter sense, that all truth is God's truth, that in heaven, that, you know, in

00:42:50.760 mathematics, that two plus two will still be four, you know, that all that, you know, so every good

00:42:55.660 endeavor, you know, every true work that is in accordance with God's words has an eternal merit,

00:43:05.100 an eternal value. And, and so I don't know, I've thought about it some, but the way you said it

00:43:10.140 was just so encouraging to me, just realizing, because sometimes it just feels like insurmountable,

00:43:14.680 absolutely impossible, like David versus Goliath, but where, I don't know, where David's

00:43:20.320 like a handicapped, you know, somebody who... 1.00

00:43:23.660 It still wouldn't matter, would it? 1.00

00:43:26.080 Yeah.

00:43:26.580 And what I forget is that, no, but Goliath, it's not just David versus Goliath.

00:43:33.120 Goliath is self-sabotaging.

00:43:35.180 Goliath will slay himself.

00:43:36.740 yeah um and the word of god promises that that um that at the end of the day if we're if a person

00:43:42.620 is in rebellion against god they're not and and the most elaborate kingdoms of the world like that

00:43:47.640 you know like you said you know the roman church but i think like assyria and babylon you know like

00:43:52.860 i mean you look at like one of the great wonders of the world and it's like this can't fall we

00:43:58.660 can't lose and then it's just like yeah in one day and um yeah so yeah so when i think of i'm like

00:44:06.280 but it's Twitter, Rory. It's Twitter. Yeah, Joel, but what about Assyria? What about Babylon?

00:44:11.700 Exactly. So that's good to hear. That's encouraging.

00:44:14.480 Reminds me of a quote I use in the book from Francis Schaeffer. He said,

00:44:18.420 men always build their towers so high they fall down. And don't you see that happening

00:44:24.660 all the time? There's just so much ego and pride in what man can do. Come look at this tower that

00:44:31.680 we have built that reaches to the heavens. And God laughs and holds them in derision.

00:44:36.900 And so I just have so much confidence that the Lord is going to take care of his people.

00:44:41.440 If we can stay focused on the task, and it's a big task, you know, and coming back to the family,

00:44:47.440 this is a big task to disciple our children the way they should go and to do it and to build

00:44:55.100 something that will last with our families is a worthy pursuit. And it's something that's going

00:45:02.460 to take all of what you have, but it's something that I can attest to and many other families who

00:45:07.460 are walking this way can attest to. It is worth all of your effort. It is worth everything that

00:45:12.760 you are doing to pour into building stronger families. Amen. Well, let me ask you this. This

00:45:20.180 maybe one of the last questions that i had for you how everything that we're talking about

00:45:26.320 how significant and if we if we want to be independent be dependent on no one work quietly

00:45:32.420 with our own hands you know become cancel proof and become a generalist and not just a specialist

00:45:36.880 and more independent be able to passing these things down to our children um how important

00:45:43.820 And is it in terms of location, where a person chooses to raise their family?

00:45:50.820 Yeah, that's a good question.

00:45:53.500 I guess I hadn't thought too much about that.

00:45:56.860 In my book, it's not location dependent.

00:45:59.940 I mean, we talk about farming, but that's just one of the 61 trades that I cover in the book.

00:46:05.540 And so it really depends on what you're being called into, what you sense that the Lord has for your family.

00:46:13.820 Let me answer it this way. One of the exercises that we take families through is to kind of do

00:46:20.800 a survey of the unique gifts of each member of your family. What are the passions? What are the

00:46:28.480 gifts? What are the callings? What is your experience, background, kind of just to map out

00:46:34.800 each person in your family, starting with mom and dad, and then doing it with the kids,

00:46:39.740 and then try to do the math. So basically, what is this all adding up to? What is our family good

00:46:49.040 at doing together? Not just what is dad doing and then going off to dad's job and mom watches

00:46:55.240 the kids in the household, but as a family, what can we do together? That's what I wanted to figure

00:47:01.400 out. What could we do together in this day and age that would be sustainable? And what we found

00:47:08.540 out is it was a mix of things. So we're involved a little bit in farming, we're involved in teaching,

00:47:13.900 we're involved in writing. And, you know, some for some people, they're, they're doing things

00:47:19.580 like Airbnb, they're doing things like open up some custom blacksmithing kind of metal working

00:47:25.300 shop. Some people are doing silversmithing and goldsmithing. And there's a whole number of

00:47:31.220 different ways in which families can work together towards a vocation or multiple vocations.

00:47:38.540 And so it really depends on what you feel called to, getting back to your question, in terms of location.

00:47:44.860 There is obviously a huge benefit in rural versus city.

00:47:50.900 You're going to have a lot more freedom just right on down to the zoning laws.

00:47:54.620 I mean, when we moved out of Minneapolis, we moved to southern Minnesota, but, you know, I couldn't get chickens where I was in Minneapolis.

00:48:01.620 And we had about a 10th acre little lot right on the kind of right, right in the southern part of Minneapolis, but great little neighborhood.

00:48:12.160 But, you know, it couldn't do that much.

00:48:14.940 So for me, it was a big deal to get out somewhere where we had a little bit of space.

00:48:21.480 We had some more liberties in terms of what we could do.

00:48:26.920 A lot of times you get further away from the city, you have lower property taxes.

00:48:30.660 You know, there's lower crime. There's there's benefits. And today, a lot of people can telecommute.

00:48:37.520 And so you're not as restricted in terms of having to be in the office. Now, whether that's a long term situation or not depends on your job.

00:48:47.560 But I would say that, you know, rural is certainly preferable. If you want to go into farming, and I would encourage everybody to try to grow at least a kitchen garden to try to get some basic hands on experience with growing, even if all you're doing is making salsa at the end of the year, you know, just or growing some pumpkins or some squash to keep over winter.

00:49:07.980 just do it because God created us to 10 gardens. I mean, that's in the beginning, that's what he

00:49:15.400 did with Adam. It was the first occupation. So it's in our DNA and there's a lot of theology

00:49:19.780 in the garden. But besides that, if you are interested in going into farming, you know,

00:49:24.100 you want to look at other things like what's the annual rainfall. I mean, can that place be

00:49:28.340 sustained without irrigation? There's a lot of props out there for a lot of farms that will not

00:49:33.420 be around if, um, there's some kind of crisis. So you want to try to get into a climate, which

00:49:39.060 would be a lot more, um, hospitable to the kind of activities you want to carry out with your

00:49:44.880 family. So I guess that's kind of a broad answer. No, that was a great answer though. Okay. So

00:49:51.320 in general rule tends to be better than cities, but then also I thought what you said that was

00:49:57.600 so helpful was um just taking taking a tally of the family and not just dad and not even just dad

00:50:03.960 and mom but looking at the children talking to them seeing their desires their gifting seeing

00:50:08.780 what can we do together and the hodgepodge thing was was helpful you know that it could be a mix

00:50:14.040 of things because at first i was just thinking man farming

00:50:17.360 yeah well so like benjamin benjamin franklin right he was a statesman he was a publisher he

00:50:26.580 He was an author. He was an inventor. George Washington was also an orchardist. He was a

00:50:32.020 military general. I mean, these guys, like we've been talking about this evening, is they were

00:50:37.760 generalists. They had a lot of different skills. And the nice thing, if you can spread yourself out

00:50:43.860 across a couple of these things, let's say three, four, maybe even five different trades, let's call

00:50:49.480 it, you're not putting so much pressure to try to make up the income from any one thing. So you're

00:50:54.680 not trying to make $60,000, $80,000 a year from farming, which is incredibly difficult to do.

00:51:00.460 But maybe you could make $10,000 a year from breeding animals and selling sheep. One of the

00:51:07.680 things we do is sell purebred sheep. And so maybe you can raise some of your income that way. And

00:51:13.420 that's a big deal. But then maybe you're gardening to the extent where you're not buying a lot of

00:51:17.780 food in the grocery store anymore. Kind of a nice thing to have if the grocery store shelves are

00:51:23.400 going empty. Besides the fact, whether or not you're getting paid for it, these are some nice

00:51:28.640 things to build into the system, bring the supply chain back home. So there's these advantages to

00:51:34.360 just having a more broad skill set. And you also don't burn yourself out trying to ramp up so

00:51:39.040 heavily in just one area. So that's kind of the more having a mix of trades approach.

00:51:45.260 Yeah, that's really helpful. All right. Well, let's go ahead and land the plane. Do you have

00:51:49.180 any final words? I'll give you the final word. Oh man. I mean, I think, you know, God created us

00:51:56.280 in the garden as families, right? He took Adam and Eve, put them in the garden and he put them

00:52:04.020 to accomplish something together. And I think the degree to which wherever you're at today,

00:52:08.800 and I know there might be a lot of guys that are in a situation where they can't just go out

00:52:12.820 and buy a farm or they can't, they just have no ability to start doing this stuff.

00:52:17.480 But I think the key thing is to start thinking covenantally as a family, as the head of the household, if you're a dad, if you're the mom starting to think of what you can do with your husband to team up with your husband to do something together as a family.

00:52:33.040 I think that's how God views us.

00:52:34.880 And I think that that's where the blessing is.

00:52:36.640 So to the degree you can do things with your children, involving them in your important tasks, not just meaningless chores to keep them busy, but actually important tasks for the family.

00:52:49.340 That's where the blessing flows.

00:52:51.460 That's where the intergenerational discipleship happens.

00:52:54.580 That's where the passing on the skills and the culture and the values to the next generation takes place.

00:53:00.160 So start somewhere and then try, you know, try as God, as God wills it to bring your

00:53:06.200 family together around a common vision.

00:53:09.580 Amen.

00:53:10.300 That's really helpful, Rory.

00:53:11.440 All right.

00:53:11.740 How can our listeners follow you?

00:53:13.320 And one more time, plug your book.

00:53:15.080 Sure.

00:53:15.540 The book is called Durable Trades, Family-Centered Economies That Have Stood the Test of Time.

00:53:21.180 And it's available wherever books are sold.

00:53:24.260 You can come to our website at thegrovestead.com.

00:53:28.480 So TheGrovestead, like my last name and homestead, TheGrovestead.com.

00:53:33.860 And if you click on the book's detail page, you can get a sample chapter of the book and see a little bit more about it.

00:53:42.160 And if we ever have any coupons for the book, we publish them right there on that site.

00:53:46.840 So come to that site. That's the best way to get. We also publish a quarterly newsletter.

00:53:50.540 letter we have a new one that's we just finished up and it's just going out this week where we

00:53:56.000 talk about a lot of what we're doing out here and how to build kind of like on the ground how we're

00:54:00.500 building a family economy if you want the nuts and bolts that's really cool all right roy thanks

00:54:05.660 so much for coming coming on the show appreciate it absolutely been a pleasure as a special thank

00:54:10.680 you for your gift of any amount we'll be happy to send you a free digital book from our store

00:54:14.980 To access this offer, visit rightresponseministries.com slash offer.

00:54:20.520 We highly recommend Pastor Joel's book, Am I Truly Saved?

00:54:23.900 If you or someone you know has wrestled with doubts about the love of God,

00:54:27.680 this would be a great resource.

00:54:29.660 As a reminder, to get this offer, go to rightresponseministries.com slash offer.

00:54:34.360 And thank you for your generous support.

The NXR Podcast - December 01, 2021

THEOLOGY APPLIED - Durable Trades ｜ How Men Can Be Economically Independent

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