Was Jesus a Socialist?

[00:00:08] Speaker A: Welcome to this week's think deeper. I'm Jack Wilke, joined by Will Harev and Joe Wilkie. Once again, this week, we're continuing our talk about money with a little bit of a different angle. We're going to get to that in just a minute. I want to remind you guys again, we've got three brand new books rolling off the presses here any day now. [00:00:25] Speaker B: Pre order. [00:00:26] Speaker A: In fact, I was involved with all three of them. A Gospel of Mark study guide. A book called Transform Faith. That is a collection of writings for myself and Dr. Brad Hareb over the years that's really trying to build out the Christian worldview on the specifics of the Christian life and pressing issues of the day. So that's called Transform faith. And then the Sunday school catch up, which is for people who didn't grow up in the church or people who feel a little behind in Bible classes or sermons, kind of helping your Bible literacy. And so all three of those are on the way. Again, they're in preorder status. I know some people are not quite familiar with the terminology. We'll get a preorder and a week later they say, hey, where's my book? It's going to be a little bit we're getting there. We're finalizing cover designs and layouts and proofing and all that. And we're ready to hit print on these pretty soon, but keep an eye out for that. And I think the two books that we've been teasing for the longest are in production as well. They're not up for pre order, but Dr. Brad and Melinda Hareb's parenting book won't be too far behind. And then my follow up to Church Reset is not too far behind. I know. Joe were you guys writing that together or was that just a solo project? Joe yeah, mainly me. [00:01:41] Speaker B: But if Will has any ideas of what he wants, I am more than happy I sent it his way of like, hey, just look over it if you have things you want to add. [00:01:49] Speaker C: If I had unlimited hours, I for sure would want to join in on that. [00:01:52] Speaker A: Yes. [00:01:52] Speaker B: Yeah, that's my problem, is exactly the hours. But yeah, we got another book. And I don't know if it's going to be 101, 150 rules, 201 rules. I keep adding to the rules. I'll read things on Twitter and I'm like, man, that's really good. I got to add that. So I'm compiling different masculinity things. And so it's going to be a gym podcast production. Basically. We're going to have that come out with four gym podcasts, which is why I'm going to have Will involved. His name is probably going to be on the book one way or the other because the gym podcast is our thing. It's a joint project, and I want this to be a joint project as well. And so that hopefully will be but 100. [00:02:27] Speaker C: And whatever rules to being a man is what it's going to be correct. [00:02:29] Speaker B: Yeah, 100. And rules being a man, or however many rules we end up having. [00:02:35] Speaker A: Yeah, so those are more projects in the pipeline. But again, you can preorder. Currently, those first three I mentioned gospel of Mark, Transform Faith and Sunday School catch up. And so you go to thefocuspress.org shop and it's just under the new category and check those out. All right, let's get into the episode. We spoke about money last week, christian money management, earning money, the idolatry of money, but also the downplaying of money is unimportant. And so we got into all that. But then one of the things about money is kind of our cultural view of money, our political view of money, things like that. And especially as it comes to being Christians, we're supposed to be charitable, we're supposed to give. And so a lot of Christians, especially in the last, I don't know, ten years or so, have really gone to this ideology that socialism or some form of socialism, democratic socialism, Bernie Sanders, all of those things are what Christians should do because, hey, they're all about, hey, health care, free health care for everybody. How can Christians be against caring for people? I mean, the Good Samaritan did, didn't he? And free education, free college, college debt paid off, all of these things that the democratic socialist platform is behind. And you read some stuff and they can make a case and they can throw scriptures at you to say, this is clearly what Jesus wants, is that Christians should vote for these things. Christians should advocate for these things. Christians should get behind these. So we wanted to talk about that, but not just about socialism, because this isn't a voting issue, this isn't a voting episode. This isn't strictly politics. I think there's some underlying things to this discussion we're going to get to at the end that it kind of reveals about the way we think, the way we process things culturally. And so we're going to get to those bigger kind of foundational issues at the end, but we're going to start with a discussion of socialism. So I'm going to get into defining the terms, and then I'll let you guys go with where we stand on it, and then we'll get into some of the arguments and go over those. Most of the time when people say socialism, they're talking about state ownership and redistribution of resources. Socialized medicine would be the state is paying for everybody's health care. The state has kind of intervened in that. They're the new middleman between the customer and the doctor. Socialized education, I mean, we kind of have that to a degree. We've got a few things that are socialized in that sense. And so it's just the state redistribution. A lot of times the socialists themselves will run in and say, no, socialism is when the workers own the means of production. And so businesses and all that kind of being returned to the people that do the work and that the labor is where the real value is and not the ownership and the landlord thing of you should own the property, and it should be wrong to rent out property. It's the people who live there and take care of it. I mean, it's all of those kinds of ideas. To give you an illustration of the means of production thing, my dad started a plumbing company, as we've talked about. And there's this idea that the people that dig the holes and repair the pipes, that's their company, they're doing the work and so the workers should own the means of production. That is the more technical definition of socialism. That's what the socialists often mean. That's not usually what people mean when they're talking about socialism, when Bernie Sanders talks about democratic socialism. So those are the two terms we're talking about here. Mainly that first one. But let's get into why is this not a Christian belief? Why is, oh, man, giving people free stuff, free health care, free food, free education, free whatever you want to say, the state paying for it? Why would say sorry real quick? [00:06:23] Speaker C: I would say it has the allure for people of caring and kindness, as you pointed out, Jack, like what Christian would be against everybody having available health care, everybody having access to those things. But the other thing it has the allure of is equality. Is everybody's on the same playing field? Obviously, as much as they would like to get it this way, there is no big wealth gap. Everybody's equal. Those are two things that appeal to a lot of people again, kindness and caring, which we should be kind and caring. But equality is a big one as well. And I think that's going to be kind of a, I guess point that we want to get at in this episode is that, listen, equality is a buzword. Equality is not necessarily something that the Bible talks about, especially in terms of wealth, but as we talked about, in terms of roles within the churches, in terms of a lot of things. But society wants to push everything to we got to be equal, got to be equal, got to be equal to be equal. And we don't see it that way according to Scripture. And so I wanted to point that out real quick that's the allure of it and why a lot of people can fall for these articles that talk about Jesus being a socialist or these articles that talk about socialism being good thing is because it's like caring for people and equality, man, who wouldn't sign up for that? So, Joe, I don't know if you want to get into maybe that's such a good point. [00:07:40] Speaker B: It has the sound of wisdom. It just sounds good. We're taking care of one another and sure, we're all for that. We're going to come to that. [00:07:48] Speaker C: Nobody's better than anybody else, right? [00:07:50] Speaker B: Exactly. We're going to come to the end of that. And some people use the end of Galatians three. Right. Well, there's neither slave nor or free man, right. There's no Jew nor Gentile or male or female. Right. [00:08:02] Speaker C: We're all one in Christ. [00:08:03] Speaker B: It's a utopia of equality. We're all one. We're all the same. So that's really come on now. We are going to come to that in the outline of maybe how we can work on some of those things and some of the more appealing parts, quote unquote, and what we think about that. But why it's wrong. First and foremost, the thing that comes to my mind is look at all of the parables that Jesus taught concerning masters and either slaves or the vineyard worker, right. And the workers in the vineyard, the guy who gives the talents, he goes on a faraway trip. I mean, Jesus had so many opportunities to say there's no need for a master, there shouldn't be any. And really, the masters should be probably serving the servants in that role, and they should be dispersing their wealth. And then Paul comes in later and he's got Ephesians six and he's got Colossians four. And instead of, hey, slaves, you're working unto the Lord more than unto your masters. Why doesn't he come in and just tell the masters to disperse the wealth? Why doesn't he come in and really get onto them? It's the same argument, kind of John the Baptist not telling the soldiers, hey, leave the army for the pacifism. Right. He had a perfect opportunity to set the record straight as to what he wanted, and instead he doesn't blow up the entire structure of the owner and the slaves or whatever of the master. He keeps that structure. It's just both have a role to play within that structure. The master being good, but not turning everything over to them. [00:09:27] Speaker C: That's first real quick and then you can keep rolling. You brought the parable of the talents. Why didn't he give them all the same amount of talents? Why didn't he give of them ten or all of them five or all of them? [00:09:37] Speaker A: Right. That's not the way some of the socialists will point to the one about the laborers that showed up at nine in the morning and eleven in the morning and three, hey, they all got paid the same. Okay, talk about taking something out of context, but exactly. It god is able to give the ways that he wants and yeah, we labor for him, but then you kind of get into a works based salvation. You're stretching the analogy in a direction it wasn't meant to go. [00:10:01] Speaker B: Exactly. We're talking spiritual, not the physical redistribution of wealth here. Like he's physically redistributing heaven. There's a spiritual element of we all get the same reward of getting to walk with funny. [00:10:13] Speaker A: With that, Parable will brought up the point of equality. And you'll hear equality of outcome is what socialists want. Is no matter how hard you work, no matter how smart you are, no matter what decisions you make, you should end up in the same place. Everybody should end up in the same place. And obviously that's ridiculous. And so people would say, we don't want equality of outcome, we want equality of opportunity. That's not biblical either. We spoke last week about the wise man builds an inheritance for his children. If your parents leave you something, it's not an equal opportunity. And that's where you kind of see the bigger some of these states grow and the more socialist they become. It's a 100% inheritance tax. You can't pass things on to your kids because they're trying to flatten that, hey, you shouldn't get a head start just because your parents did well. Well, that's not biblical. And so equality of opportunity, no, I don't believe in that either. I want to give my kids a better start. I want to get them to that place. But again, socialism, again, even anti socialist people get into this equality language and it's like it's just not there, right? [00:11:15] Speaker B: And that literally is the American dream of I'm going to give to my kids something that I didn't have. I'm going to be better for them. That's why so many people come over to America to be able to give their kids what they didn't have. I mean, that's just human nature of wanting to do so. You know, I think there's a flattening of human nature itself when they're trying to do it. But another reason kind of going back to why this is wrong, going back to your definition of the state ownership and dispersing, redistribution of resources and wealth and everything, jesus wanted us to give and he wanted us to give cheerfully. He expects us to voluntarily give. Where's the voluntary part of coming in and going, well, that's ours, and Redistributing, this is the Church's, and therefore we're going to take it and move it to where we think that's not you being able to voluntarily cheerfully give that's taxes is really what it is. We're going to take what's yours and we're going to figure out where we're going to give it best. Therefore, I'm not cheerful in giving. It's a duty at that point, I suppose, but I'm not cheerful in voluntarily giving. And so I think that's another thing that I would say is against that form of socialism, which once again, they may look at and go, well, no, we're talking a different form. This is what socialism ends up being. [00:12:24] Speaker C: We've hit proverbs so much in the last few episodes because it pertains so much to this discussion. But you think about how many of the proverbs get nullified, essentially, if this socialism is the way we are supposed to go, if it is a redistribution of wealth, you can just imagine the proverb of, like the hand of the diligent makes everybody else around him rich, right? Work hard for your wages so that you can leave an inheritance for everybody else. That's not what the proverbs talk about. The proverbs talk about you working hard. You go to the ant instead of being a slugger, you make sure and be diligent and actually work. [00:13:02] Speaker A: So you. [00:13:02] Speaker C: It'S not for everybody else. And we've had our giving discussion last episode. Obviously, Christians should be giving people. But to your point, Joe, voluntarily giving out of the way that they're prospered. And then another thing we've got on here, we're supposed to give of our own money. That implies that you are working for your money and then you voluntarily decide, I'm going to give. It the socialism concept. Again, nullifies know, everybody owns everything and you don't really have proper ownership of the things that you have. And it's antithetical to what we see in Proverbs, and it's antithetical to what Jesus taught. But again, equality, kindness sounds nice to everybody. And again, this speaks to why Christians need to spend more and more time in the Proverbs, because Proverbs are about you work hard, you make money, you take care of your family. [00:13:55] Speaker A: Yeah, it's amazing, like how people can be so self congratulatory, patting themselves on the back for their generosity of the plans they make to give away somebody else's money. There's all this the 1%, bernie Sanders, the 1%. The 1%. Like, Bernie, you own like six houses, man. Why do you have to go after these people? Don't you have a responsibility here? Well, no, it's always somebody else's. And that doesn't make you a generous person. I mean, when we talk about giving, it is about sacrificial giving. It's about looking at what you have and saying, how can I share with the people around me and doing something of what is my own and passing that around? And that is not this the idea we'll go down to the voting booth or we'll advocate for policies that make somebody else give away their money, make the government go in and seize somebody else's assets to give to somebody else. Where do you get that? Why does that make you generous? [00:14:52] Speaker B: Why does that make such a good point? You got the widow's might and she's like, you know what? I'm going to keep my might, but this pharisee is super rich, so I just broke into his house and stole all his stuff. I'll put that in there. [00:15:02] Speaker C: I'll give his stuff. [00:15:03] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Boy, that's what we see. [00:15:07] Speaker C: Go ahead, Joe. [00:15:08] Speaker B: Finish. No, I was just going to say again, it's just a good point that's what makes this so infuriating is, yes, the poor. You're supposed to still give out of your poorness. And this is the point that Paul makes in two, corinthians eight, nine. Is he's looking and saying, the Macedonians gave and those people are dirt poor. Like they were willing to give to my cause and they had nothing. You guys have plenty here in Corinth. You guys are very wealthy. Those who had nothing gave out of their basically out of their poverty, and they gave liberally, they gave amazingly. And so he's kind of throwing some shade at the corinthians for having all of this money and not doing anything with it. And so we look at those who are on welfare and those who are the poorer of society and, yeah, it sounds so great to vote money unto everybody else and to say, well, let's take everybody else. Why in the world would we think that is an attribute, a positive attribute? [00:15:56] Speaker C: What's frustrating about it is those who will be proponents of socialism will make all these points about how for the capitalists, money is an idol and money is the driving force. Is that not the exact same thing with socialism? It just takes on a different form of like, those who are less wealthy are still idolizing the wealthy of the rich and they want it redistributed. That's still idolization of wealth and idolization of money. It just takes a bit of a different form. And so that's typically a stone that will be cast at those who capitalists of like, we are turning money into an idol. From my point of view at least, that's exactly the same thing the socialists do. [00:16:33] Speaker A: I want to say two things on this before we move on to some of the arguments. Number one, faithful and little. Faithful and much. And it's very easy to look, well, if I had a billion dollars, okay, what are you doing with what you have? Are you giving the widows? Might you have opportunity today? What are you doing with it? Because if you're not doing it now, you wouldn't do it if you had a billion dollars. So it's very easy to look and be like, well, those guys, if somebody as good as me were in their position, well, you're in your position, so what are you doing with it? That's a great point to your point as well, Will. I wanted to get to this a little bit last week when we were talking about kind of the Christian demonization of wealth and the love of money is the root of all sorts of evil. It's true. And it is hard for a rich man to enter heaven. Those scriptures are all there. But interestingly when he talks about for the love of money is the root of all sorts of evil, the verse before that is the one that says those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a snare. We make that about rich people. There's a lot of people who don't have anything that want to get rich that wish they could, that are out buying lottery tickets, that are out trying to hit it big, trying to do the next get rich quick scheme because, man, they really want to be rich. And that's one of the things that mean you kind of pull back the curtain behind socialism. It's envy. You have what I don't have. I want it. I want to take it from you. So I and my buddies have it. And that's a desire to get rich. That's a desire to have something that's not yours. And I mean, James talks about that when you have those desires you want and you don't ask and you don't have and all of those things. And so there's very nefarious motives behind it. There's very envy and things that we look at people that have money and go, oh, man, rich. They love money. Well, people who don't have money can love money. [00:18:14] Speaker C: Yeah, that's what I was trying to get at with the idolization is still there. It just takes a different form. Let me play devil's advocate for just a second here. And this is the next thing we wanted to bring up because people will point to verses like I'm about to read to say the early Church was a socialist community. This is the goal of what we should be trying to work towards. So you got verses like Acts, chapter two. Of course, we know verse 38. We know 3000 were baptized. I'll start in verse 43. Then fear came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles. Now, all who believed were together and had all things in common sold their possessions and goods and divided them to all to anyone who had need. You skip over to chapter four. You see starting in verse 32. The multitude of those who believe were of one heart and one soul. Neither did anyone say that any of the things he possessed was his own, but they had all things in common. Skipping down to verse 34. Nor was there anyone among them who lacked for all who were possessors of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of the things that were sold and laid them at the apostles feet and they distributed to each as anyone who has need. Guys, sounds like the early Church was socialist. Sounds like that's exactly what we need to be heading towards here. Again, people will point to these verses and essentially think that it's a slam dunk in the face of the capitalist here. What's our response to that? [00:19:31] Speaker B: The term sharing is caring comes to mind. There's a difference between I'm sharing what is mine with somebody else, which is a very loving and kind and Christian thing to do. And Peter and John coming in going, all right, that's ours. We're going to reallocate these funds because you're too rich and we're going to give it to so and so because he's not rich. You know, I'm glad that you really worked hard for what you have, but come on, that's ours now. [00:19:56] Speaker A: Or the church saying, you know what? These widows aren't getting fed. They're not getting their bread. So we all got together and voted and decided we're going to go take Cornelius's house and sell it, which Cornelius wasn't there in Act Six. My timeline is a little messed up, but with know yeah, and we're going to go take his stuff and sell it and sorry, budy. I mean, that's just that's how the vote came out. [00:20:16] Speaker C: That's what we decided. [00:20:19] Speaker A: Or Peter just going like, all right, you don't have that anymore. That's mine now. [00:20:23] Speaker C: And that speaks to our point about it was voluntary. [00:20:27] Speaker A: Even with Ananias and Sapphira, he said when you had it was in your control, right. [00:20:31] Speaker B: You could have done whatever. They didn't get in trouble for not giving. And I think that kind of gets mischaracterized of, well, that's not the problem. They lied about what they said they were going to yeah. [00:20:42] Speaker C: People think, well, because they didn't get all of it or give all of it. That was the problem. No, the problem was they gave some of it and tried to pretend like it was all of it. [00:20:49] Speaker B: That's exactly it. You lied to the spirit. And he literally makes the point this was yours to do what you wanted with. Pretty much. But don't say you're going to do something or don't say that you did do something when you're lying to the Spirit. And this is right on the heels of the verse you just read, that's the very next thing 32, I think, leads right into chapter five of like yeah, and then there was Ananias and Fire, everybody's giving of themselves. And then here comes these people who claim that they did and they lied about it, and that was a problem. So we can easily look at that and make the case that, oh, well, they just didn't give everything and that's the problem. That's why they were killed. No, that's not it at all. It has to be something that is coming again from a voluntary, cheerful giving. That part cannot be stated enough. And in socialism, there's a reason. You look at all the socialist countries, countries that have gone socialist and Marxists around the world, does anybody smile? No. [00:21:40] Speaker C: It's not this utopia that they make it out venezuela. [00:21:43] Speaker B: And you look at Russia and you look at the places that have really tried to apply this brutal living conditions. Nobody's happy, nobody's giving voluntarily. They're taking as much as they can because they cannot make it. Because you have a governing body who's deciding who does and does not need it. You think a governing body has the opportunity, even one as small as the church. It doesn't have to be 330,000,000 Americans, even one as small as the Church of Christ. You think if we had a governing body and they were distributing wealth, that people wouldn't be left behind. This is why local church bodies should be helping and voluntarily giving to one another, which is what was happening. [00:22:16] Speaker C: Well, just think about the incentivization structure. I think that's the correct use of the word there of okay, you've got half say you got a congregation, half the people work really hard, half the people do not. And the church decides, all right, we're going to redistribute resources here, we're going to reallocate wealth here. What does that incentivize cool? I don't have to work that hard then because I'm going to get the benefits of everybody who does work hard. And that's what gets at least in the economic sense, that's what to me is so frustrating because it's just common sense that if you look around and say, it doesn't matter how hard I work, everything's going to be equal or I'm going to get basically taken care of. What does that incentivize sit on your rear end and do nothing? That's the incentivization structure. [00:23:06] Speaker A: That's what Paul has to deal with in second. Thessalonians man does not work, neither shall he because you had people literally doing that. Well, Jesus is coming back, so I quit. All right, I'm just going to sit here and you guys, somebody will feed me says, no, you feed yourself. You get back out there and get to work. I wanted to also point to, I mean, there's so many New Testament scriptures about the importance of sharing. While I'm here in one, Timothy six, verse 18, instruct them to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share. He tells him, Timothy, go to the rich people in your congregation and teach them to share. Teach them to be generous people, not take their money and you don't have control over it. But this is one of mean I could go on a whole total side tangent of here. Could you imagine a preacher going up to some of the rich people in church being like, all right, Pony rich, we're all happy for you, you've got a really nice house, but we need you to step up. We need to step up in your giving. Well, no, we don't do that because you don't want to drive that person away. And so there very much is a Christian expectation of be willing to share what you have, be willing to give, be willing to, as they were doing, sell on their land to give to others. And this is one of the problems with the demonization of wealth and success and all that. I know a number of really wealthy Christians who do a lot of good works. Some of the people that support a work like Focus Press like we do, are people that have done well and are incredibly generous. But if their money was taken from them by force like you're saying will, the incentive wouldn't have been there to earn it. And so it's important that we don't take that away whether we're in society or in the church either to say, all right, we're just going to demand or demonize you for what you have, that's not a good. Idea. [00:24:51] Speaker C: Well, and that's the utopia that we should be striving for. Not everybody's equal and has the same amount of money. It's that everybody we talked about this on our most recent Deep End episode for all of our Focus Plus subscribers that came out last Friday. The fact that could you imagine if congregations made it a point to try to get their families and couples to be financially responsible? How much greater the giving could be? That's the utopia is that everybody in your congregation, everybody that goes to your church, is financially responsible enough and financially well off enough. Maybe they're not millionaires, but they're financially well off enough to where they can give and they can be generous and they can do that voluntarily. And money can just be flowing because of, again, the financial responsibility. That's the utopia. That should be the goal, the idealistic vision, not, well, let's just get everybody on the same playing field. And again, I know we're talking more so about economics here, but man, Jack, to your point, that's exactly right. We see Christians should be giving and caring people. And if you have a system where we're going to take what you've worked for, you're going to be more tempted and more led towards, well, let me hoard what I have rather than let me share and give what well, there's. [00:26:05] Speaker B: What you'll hear and what people are going to know, the people that are for socialism. And there are a lot of Christians. Jesus was a socialist. Things like this, that push that. Don't you care about people without health care? Don't you care about the downtrodden? Don't you care about those? Can't afford those things real quick. [00:26:20] Speaker C: What's so interesting about that, Joe, is, like, Jack referenced the Good Samaritan. What did the Good Samaritan do in that parable? He paid for the guy to stay at the hotel and in fact, he gave her the hotel, the inn, or whatever it was, and he gave him extra money, right, exactly, of his own money, and said, hey, hopefully this covers him. If you end up paying more, let me know, I'll pay you back. What did he do? He paid for it. It wasn't like it was just free health care that was provided. He actually had to go and set aside his own money voluntarily to take care of this man. It wasn't free health care that was paid for by the state and paid for by taxes. That's the difference. [00:26:58] Speaker B: Well, that's where I wanted to kind of bring in some scriptures on this, because exactly to this point we can go to Proverbs 31 eight and nine, open your mouth for the mute, for the rights of all the unfortunate, open your mouth, judge righteously and defend the rights of the afflicted and the needy. And then I want to flip on over real fast to the end of James One, which of course, I think we can quote, but I don't want to get it wrong, of pure and unfiled religion yeah, here we go. Is in the sight of our God and Father. Is this to visit orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained by the world. We as Christians ought to be thinking about the poor and the downtrodden, basically more than anybody, because that is our job. But this is where I'm not going to get too political on this, but this is the problem in the fact that we allowed the state to come in and start taking care of what was the church. So why do you think all the hospitals are named St. Thomas and St. Anthony's and St. Joseph's and St whatever. [00:27:49] Speaker C: Was the one caring about the poor? [00:27:51] Speaker B: Exactly, it the church was the one that did it. The church was the one that funded to all of these things. And you could say the church, yes, the Catholic Church, I realize that, but like Christianity, quote unquote, people that believe in God were those that were the most generous when it came to taking care of somebody. And at some point along the way, we just said, okay, we'll step back and we allow the government to do what was our work. Now we're in a predicament because we're here and the government goes, okay, well, we're going to take your money to do this, when in reality we could have just done it voluntarily in the first place. I think Christians need to get back to voluntarily looking to do as much as we can to help others. And this is why ministries like Samaritan Ministries and such is big among Christians. Is there is this helping one another and sharing aspect? And I know there's problems with it, and I'm not going off on the goods and bads of Samaritan Ministries, but that concept of Christians helping Christians and Christians helping others through this health care, that's a very real thing. And so, yeah, I think those who have the money ought to be looking for the downtrodden, seeing what we can give. Here's my question on this, though, guys, let me turn this back around. At what point does the helping of the and I'm not talking orphans and widows per se, but the downtrodden in life, when do we hit the enabling point? So in a socialist society, a lot of people, to your point, will are enabled and are desentivized, I think, to do nothing. And so it's a very enabling thing. At what point does a Christian begin to enable another person to sit on their rear and do nothing? [00:29:26] Speaker A: Go ahead. [00:29:28] Speaker C: No, I was just going to say, is it decentivized? Because I've been saying de incentivized basically for the last three years. So I really what is jack you're the wordsmith here? [00:29:37] Speaker A: Disincentivized. So I need to throw a third option. [00:29:42] Speaker C: Continue your go for it. [00:29:43] Speaker A: So not only on the enabled, but there are a lot of people that have the entitled thing and anybody who's been in ministry or eldership, you know, you've got the people that call your church building or maybe members who just constantly looking for a handout, looking for more. What can I get? What do you have for me? And again, the entitlement, we'd have people call up, and it was kind of like, we don't really have it right now. We just gave to a couple of other works or other people that were in need, and right now the answer is no. And I thought you were Christians. I thought you cared about people. The entitlement, and especially one of the things that really bugged me over the years of being in a preacher, getting the calls to the church office was people who wouldn't be caught dead darkening our door, never stepped foot in the church building, calling up, hey, do you guys give food support or things like that? Well, we don't have it right now. Click. Why are you calling up a church that you don't attend, that you have no connection to and just, hey, give me this. But we live in this society, and again, it's kind of like, well, you're a church, you're supposed to do it. And so you deal with that entitlement, with that enabling, and I know we're supposed to give to people, but, man, when that entitled attitude comes in, it's not really a nice way to do it, but again, let's say it's a member. It's a member who just is in the elder's office every other month, hey, I need help with this, I need help with that. I don't think and we talked about this on our deep end the other day as their spiritual leaders, their Christian life involves their financial life. Their stewardship of money is a Christian thing that they do. And so it is not outside of the elder's duty to say, let's help you with this. Let's get this sorted out. Let's sit down with your budget, let's see where we can cut some costs, let's see if we can get you some more work. But, I mean, if Amanda that's exactly. [00:31:32] Speaker C: Right, and that's what I was going to bring up. And this is the point that we have hit on for the last several months in the sense that we cannot have the it's not a gospel issue approach, which is, unless it's salvational, unless it's a doctrinal issue, that's not really anything we need to worry about. The fruits of that are lessons, sermons, classes that don't deal with this kind of stuff, talking about Christians and money. And another fruit of it is, as you're saying, Jack, elders and church leadership, who that's their business. That's their money. [00:32:02] Speaker A: Money. [00:32:03] Speaker C: There's their financial business. We're not going to touch it. No. As you just perfectly say to Jack, I don't want to restate it because you said it so well. But the whole idea of church leaders, if you to answer your question, Joe, somebody who is, let's say it's a member, repeatedly needing help, repeatedly needing assistance. I think it's within bounds for the elders and the church leaders to say, we are here to help you. We care about you, as was one of our flock, we want to help you, but we want you to get to a point where you don't need the help anymore. And so whether that be making sure they're not racking up a ton of debt, whether it be making sure that their spending is appropriate, it's the whole teach a man to fish thing, right? You don't just give him a fish over and over again. You eventually teach him to fish. And so I think that's something that is perfectly within bounds to answer your enabling question, because you don't want to be poor stewards of the Lord's money. You don't want to just be throwing money to everybody. Oh, here you go. Sure, sure. Take this, take this. Oh, you need help. [00:32:55] Speaker A: Sure. [00:32:56] Speaker C: There needs to be some wisdom in the stewardship. [00:32:59] Speaker B: So here's another question, though, that Jack gets me thinking about. What obligation does a church have to those not within the church? Should we be supportive of and I'm not talking ministries per se, homeless ministries and such, there's a great place. And shout out Jerry Groves in Colorado, because I know he does a lot of work with the homeless. He's in a poorer part of the community and is just one of the better personal workers among the homeless that I've seen. I don't know if he listens, but, yeah, he's a great guy. But what's our obligation for those that are not part of the church, as Jack talked about? [00:33:34] Speaker A: And we used to get this all. [00:33:35] Speaker B: The time at Miller Street. We were in another kind of a poorer part of Denver area and we had a homeless camp like down the street and man, we'd be hit up twenty four seven and we try to help them and we'd maybe give them a free night in the local hotel and a couple Subway gift cards or whatever else. We'd never give him cash, but what's our obligation there? [00:33:55] Speaker C: So my thought, first of all, I hate admitting when Jack was correct. It is disincentivized. So jack disincentivized. [00:34:02] Speaker B: Goodness. [00:34:03] Speaker A: Well, that might be the first time. [00:34:05] Speaker C: You'Ve ever been frustrating. Yeah, I know. How about that? [00:34:08] Speaker B: I did it just for the look on your face. [00:34:11] Speaker C: You got it, man. I've been saying it wrong for three years. [00:34:15] Speaker A: Great. [00:34:15] Speaker C: So Jack gets the w on that. You and me both. Yeah, exactly. [00:34:18] Speaker A: You're welcome. [00:34:19] Speaker C: So my thought on your question, Joe, is, first of all, galatians 610, let us do good to all. But then what does he say? Especially those who are of the household of faith. What does that imply? It implies that kind of higher priority needs to go to those who are within the flock and those who are of the household of faith. And that would be my answer, is that for the most part, needs to be people within your flock. I mean, that should take at least the higher priority, the higher emphasis, but it also does say do good to all. And so I think that, personally speaking, the obligation that you I wouldn't use the word obligation. I would use the word opportunity. If you have opportunity to hopefully reach somebody with the gospel, maybe show the love of Christ, and that maybe leads somewhere, do it, man, like, Jack's talking about people calling up, but the people who are legitimately needing help, man, don't just stick them in a hotel and say, man, hope it works out for you. No, use that as an opportunity to maybe show them the love of Christ, teach them the gospel. That, to me, would be the ultimate example of what we're talking about here. When you say those who are outside of the church. So that would be what I would say. Higher priority does need to go to those who are already within the flock. But when you do reach outside of the flock, man, use that as an opportunity to carry out Matthew 25, doing it under the least of those as an opportunity to show Christ's love, as an opportunity to hopefully teach the gospel. Jack, what do you think? [00:35:38] Speaker A: Yeah, I always struggled with that. We had, like, fuel cards and things like that that we would have on hand when people would come by. But I don't know the lack of relationship and I know there's the criticism of your benevolence always being a hook, that you know that you're baiting for evangelism and that it's you're. It's not necessarily supposed to be that it's not evangelism. You're just doing good to do good, because God has called you to do that. But I don't know if the choice is between keeping a lot of money in the budget for mission works and things, ministries of the church versus stocking those things, or just always having something on hand. I really think we should be very much balanced to the former rather than the latter. But I don't know, it's really hard because the bigger a church gets we weren't even that big of a church, but the bigger a church gets, man, those people get requests every single day. Multiple come out of the woodwork. Oh, yeah, like the guy winning the lottery. [00:36:42] Speaker B: Everybody is your friend now. [00:36:44] Speaker A: People see the building and they go, well, they clearly have money, and so let me ask for food. Let me ask for this. And I know every church comes up with different ways to deal with it. I really have a hard time looking at the New Testament and thinking that the design was for the church to, as an institution, be a place that anybody could look and be like, well, they'll take care of me because they're supposed to and lean on the good graces of the church. I feel like we should be much more proactive in our choices of what we're doing with our money. I'm not saying don't give money to those, but it never felt good to me. It always felt so cynical. Again, the entitlement of you're a church. Just give me money and I'll never talk to you again. And I don't know, some people have that view of the guy, the panhandlers, when you get off the highway asking for money. Well, it's not my job to know what he does with it. And God just tells me to give to him. I'm not sure about that either. [00:37:36] Speaker B: Pearls before swine a little bit. [00:37:38] Speaker A: Well, yeah. And again, money is finite. I mean, you have to acknowledge that. And the $5 you give to them, is there's a million things you could do with that $5? Is that the best use of it? And you can get into paralysis by analysis of never giving it to anybody because well but it's like well, that one is likely throwing it down the toilet. This one is not. I don't know. I really struggle with this one, as you can see. I don't have an answer. But now that I'm not in ministry no, he's just incentivized from learning my answer. [00:38:13] Speaker C: I was going to say he's still celebrating his word victory, that his judgment is just clouded. [00:38:18] Speaker A: He can't so hard to work it into the sentence I couldn't come up with. [00:38:22] Speaker C: Give me a break. [00:38:24] Speaker B: I still like the term deincentivized more. [00:38:27] Speaker C: I do, too, to be honest with you. [00:38:29] Speaker B: I'm going to sound like an idiot, but it'll sound cooler while saying it's. [00:38:32] Speaker C: Like the people that say irregardless when that's not a word. [00:38:35] Speaker A: It's just regardless. Yeah, sorry. See, that's why you have to use the right word, is people are going to be disincentivized. [00:38:41] Speaker B: Shut up. Oh, my goodness. Anyway, yeah, I would say my take on that, I think the world benefits when Christians do things for other Christians. And what I mean by that is, you know what I'm going to take. So we sent money, and another guy in India graduated with Jack, I think, or maybe one year behind Jack in Bear Valley. [00:39:08] Speaker A: Great guy. [00:39:09] Speaker B: He went over there and he had this really cool idea of, hey, let's get a osmosis system for the water, and that will provide clean water to these villages in India that people will come for miles. And so, yes, it was initially to kind of help the church, but it has been such an evangelistic opportunity where people will come from miles and miles, several different villages, and while they're there filling up water, they get evangelized to now. I think initially it was to kind of help the Christians in the area who were suffering from all sorts of diseases and struggles from the water, but they use that for that. I would say the same thing for a healthcare system or for a hospital. We want to take care of our own. We want to take care of the poor and needy and the sick in our church or whatever. We start this ministry and next thing you know, we have more people coming to it. I think that's the natural progression of things is as the church takes care of the church, it starts to take care of the world and kind of goes out from there. And that's when people start to see there's something special about this. That's when it becomes an evangelistic opportunity. But I think it should ideally start with we're going to take care of our own and then see where it goes from there. I'm with Jack. I'm definitely more on the cynical side of things. I know that's not nice, and that's not what we're called to be as Christians. So that's probably a heart issue that I need to pray about and work on. Man, I see a lot of people take advantage of churches where churches give and give and give, and it's not like you need a return for it. That's not the point of giving. But at the same time, once again, we cross over into the enabling point at some point where the person doesn't have to get a job because the church is bankrolling them. That's not appropriate. So I think every church and every eldership or men's meeting or whatever needs to determine what their threshold of giving is willing to give, maybe to non Christians and to Christians alike. We want to be cheerful, givers, but at some point we have to pump the brakes, I think, a little bit. So, fellas, with that, I want to get into the last unless there's anything else you want to add, I want to get into the last part of our outline here and last part of the discussion, which is some people will say, and Jack, kick this off to you first. I think some people will say, well, it's a good idea on paper, right? It's a good idea on paper. And you created the outline. You've kind of given that line, you put that line down, and we've all heard that before. What do you mean by that? And maybe let's let this kick us off into a discussion of are there any valid points to socialism here? [00:41:28] Speaker A: I hear this all the time, and it's almost like people are trying to throw them a bone. Well, yeah, you're trying to be a nice person. You're trying to come up with a way to feed people and give them health care. But socialism, it just doesn't work. It works on paper, but people are greedy. Well, if something only works on paper, but it doesn't actually doesn't work. Yeah, my three year old can draw an airplane on paper. It's not going to fly. Because you say, well, it's because of human nature. Exactly. That's why it doesn't work right? Everything was raging against God, was raging against created order, was raging against humans and who we are, but not even in a bad way. It's not though. People say, well, people are just greedy and that's why it doesn't work. If people weren't greedy, you wouldn't have people trying to get to the top and control everything. No, I mean the greed, greed is an issue in every system, capitalism, socialism, whatever else. But the other thing is work is good, achievement is good. Anything that I'm not doing this to get the laugh again here. Anything that disincentivizes had to use the word sorry. Hard work is yeah, that's the point. Not a good thing. And so people say on paper? No, not on paper, don't give them that concession. This is a terrible idea because work is good, achievement is good, and this whole system is against that. [00:42:50] Speaker B: But is there any point or is there any positive like why do you think this is such we kind of laid it out to begin, but why do you think this is so popular specifically among kids these days? Is there any point of validity in their argumentation? I guess anything that we would say, okay, we can agree on X, Y or Z because this is sweeping the minds of young people. I mean, it's just across the nation because it sounds so good. As we talked about earlier, are there points of validity within this things that we think maybe the church could address? [00:43:23] Speaker C: The cynical part of me says the only reason young people are sweeping up with it because young people don't really want to put the hard work in to make the money. And so they would just rather have the people who have already made the money again, have it reallocated and redistributed so that they get to enjoy the prosperity as well. That's the cynical side of me. It's again, mainly for the young people that are all the Bernie Sanders supporters and yeah, man, forgive my student loans and all this stuff. It's like, yeah, have the common sense to realize that those aren't free. It's not like just the debt is just disappearing and getting vaporized. But as far as the valid points and validity, I don't know, I'm a pretty staunch capitalist in the sense that it's the best economic system out there. And so you could argue the fact that there are people who just are in know as far as capitalism goes, they just want to make more, more and and more and more and more and more and more and more and that's a problem. But to Jack's point, like you just said, greed is going to be a problem in every system. And so I don't see a lot of valid points to socialism. Jack, I know you've got some listed here. I don't know if you want to cover some of these, but yeah, I don't have much as far as yeah, well socialism gets this right. I don't think it gets a lot right personally. [00:44:36] Speaker B: I think the critique may be right. I think the way it goes about solving it is brutally wrong. [00:44:42] Speaker C: What do you mean the critique? [00:44:44] Speaker B: I think capitalism when it's taken to a I'm not against capitalism clearly I like the idea of everybody being able to make money, american dream, those type of things. So I'm not against capitalism. However, capitalism without virtue, capitalism without which I think is really what we're getting to making money for the sake of making money where you will step on I mean how many lives are lost, how many sweatshops are kept open because of greed and making money. I'm not saying that there's ways that it doesn't have to we're not raising the minimum wage to $20 so everybody can you know what I mean? There's ways to do it. But I do think that in our current American society we have gotten to the point where we make money without ever thinking about lives in a lot of ways and specifically lives in other countries. You could talk about this is why unions were formed. Unions there's problems for everything. Right? So I don't at I don't know that our current system in America is working and socialism certainly isn't going to fix it. But I also think that in pursuit of the almighty dollar, kids are exploited, there's all sorts of terrible things that take place. That would be my problem is the capitalism without virtue jack, what would you mean? [00:45:54] Speaker A: That was kind of my thought on it is capitalism generally is good, but people say that the market incentives kind of bring the virtue in. Like, well, if you poison your customers, then you're not going to have more customers and therefore you're incentivized to do good business and to offer the best product. Basically offer the best product. But what you're seeing is there's a lot of people who go, you know what, that's going to be a problem long after I die. So I don't care. While I'm alive, I'm going to get super rich off of this and I'll just let somebody else clean up the issues later. And so there's that. Without mean you see not to bring him up two months into his run and Brad had an article on him the other day, the Oliver Anthony thing about something's wrong with this country and I think that's what all of the political world is acknowledging from every side of the spectrum is there's something wrong with it. And, Will, you're right to a degree of work harder. You can find a way through for sure. On the other hand, it's really not in a good place where it is kind of I was having this discussion with friends the other day about the whole women working outside the home and you want to provide to where your wife can stay home. But that shouldn't mean that other than people in very specialized fields have to work 80 hours a week and never see their kids, There was a time not that long ago where you could work in a factory. Didn't have to have anything more, didn't even have to have a high school education. You could own a modest home and a car and go on vacation once or twice a year, and you could just live. Now, you do have to have the side hustle. You got to drive Uber. You got to deliver food. You got whatever else to keep your head afloat. And you can and you should, because hard work is good, but those aren't good things. And so the critiques that socialism comes in with is pointing to all that stuff. And so that's why it resonates. It's like, yeah, that kind of stinks, but then, okay, well, we'll just take it from somebody else. No, that's not how it works. And so I don't know. Again, as Joe said, their solutions are horrible. But I mean, it is fair to say that it's not at a good place right now. [00:47:59] Speaker B: And the demonization of the 1% comes from the fact that a lot of them do cheat taxes. [00:48:04] Speaker A: They do get out. [00:48:04] Speaker B: And yes, I realize they're loopholes, but they're big enough to have laws be written to support the loopholes. You know what I mean? [00:48:10] Speaker A: Well, you look at something like Amazon. The reason Amazon, everyone loves Amazon because you get your product for cheapest, you get it fastest. They got to be Amazon because the government gave them backdoor. Deal. Not backdoor, but just like, deals to know, well, people won't have to pay tax on yours. Or you'll get all of these savings, all of these incentives, all these breaks that you and I wouldn't get if we started a business. And so they're saying, look, the playing field is tilted. Well, yeah, it is. And we benefit from that to a degree, but then we suffer from it in the long run. There's so many things like that. And you look at COVID, I mean, in 2020, when they switched everything, everybody's ordering everything online, and how many new billionaires that created the wealth transfer people talk about that's not a healthy thing for a society. A lot of people have gotten a lot poorer. Your inflation, all the money, all of the added expenses that we're having to work even harder to keep up with. Some people just got super rich off of that. And that's kind of what the minor profits get at, is if you're starving your own people or making it really hard for them to keep their head afloat while you're just getting fatter and fatter and fatter bank accounts, that's not great. That's not a good thing. [00:49:24] Speaker B: That is the problem with the American system is the middle class is disappearing, right? You're having those that are getting a lot richer and a lot poor, and that middle. Class of what you're talking about. The factory worker, the guy driving a truck, the blue collar guy, like they could make it. They can't make it these days. Why? Because that's actually hitting poverty. There are parts I think the poverty line in Denver, Colorado, I think is 80 grand. 75 or $80,000 a year is poverty line in Denver. There's a reason we moved. It's just insane to me that's the problem is in our current economic structure. Yeah, you can get into the Feds, you can get in a lot of things. This isn't a political podcast. However, with inflation and everything else, it's making it very difficult, which is why so many people want to turn to socialism. They're looking at it going government created the issue, therefore government is going to fix the issue by redistribution of wealth. Once again, horrible way of solving it. But I do think that America has some struggles. [00:50:20] Speaker C: Let me speak to something real quick because we got like ten minutes left and we still have to hit something we want to give its due diligence to. And that is kind of the underlying issues here that Jack referenced to start for Christians in the church. One thing I do want to speak to because I fully resonate completely with what Jack said and the strong language aside, the Oliver Anthony point about this country is kind of going down the tubes and you've got rich politicians that are just making life tough for everybody while they're getting to live large. I resonate with that as somebody who's trying to make sure that I make enough money to provide insurance for my two kids and be able to have my wife stay home and home school and all these things that are very expensive while also wanting to see my kids at some point. It's a struggle, it really is. I'm not saying that we should just work harder and it'll be fine. I get that it is a struggle. At the same time, I think Christians have a responsibility to have a level of faith in God to where if you look at your life and you're working hard and you're trying to make sure that your family is brighter for, and you're doing everything you can to disciple your kids. I don't want to just kind of cliche casually say it'll all work out, but I think this is where faith comes in. If you're sitting at home working 40 hours a week and you've got eight to 10 hours to watch TV every day and you're struggling, that's one thing. If you as a father and a husband and you as a family are trying and working hard and doing everything you can to make money here and there and to do what you can to have your wife stay home and all these things, I would like to think that God will provide. That is something that the faith covers it in a way does that make sense. I don't want anybody to think like, man, it is hopeless. There's just nothing I can do. I think the faith has to come in here of I'm working hard, I'm diligently trying to provide for my family. We're raising our kids according to the Lord. God's not going to leave us hanging. And that sounds like, well, that's just a really easy cop out thing to say. But I don't want that to get lost in this discussion because I think it's incredibly important for Christians to keep that perspective. Like God's not going to leave them hanging if they're doing what they should and continuing to work hard. [00:52:33] Speaker A: I think that's true. I think the Psalms say he's not seen the righteous begging bread. He's not going to let you starve. And of course, Matthew six, he takes care of the birds and the lilies of the field. And you trust those things for sure. It's just the unfortunate point of like it's going to take that incredible level of work to scrape by because those aren't promises that you're going to thrive. Those are promises that you'll have what you need be able to, so you do. Again, I kind of had this critique on Facebook a while back and somebody really gave me the business. Well, you just need to work harder, Amen. You have to do it. You don't just say, well, I'll live off of the state and I won't provide for my family. You do what you have to do. It's just unfortunate that there is kind of that choice between can I see my kids more than 2 hours a day or an hour in the morning and an hour before I go to bed at night because I'm working double jobs and double shifts and all this stuff. It's not ideal. And so I think, again, that's where the socialists are critiquing. They don't care about the family so much, but just on the individual level. And it's a fair critique that even though you are going to have what you need, man, it could be better. It's unfortunate that we've kind of come to a place right now where you see eggs at $6 a dozen at some point or whatever and it's like, wow, that is a kick in the teeth. I think that part of the critique is fair, even though, yeah, God does provide, it's still really hard. It's harder than it's supposed to be, I guess is what I'm saying. [00:54:09] Speaker B: And I think this is as we kind of get in the last bit, I think we need to be careful when somebody is pushing it, understand them, listen to where they're coming from and. [00:54:21] Speaker C: Why they think you're talking about pushing socialism. [00:54:23] Speaker B: Yeah, because underneath it, I think it's stupid. I think we're laying out it's not biblical. There's a lot of problems with this that we are very much planting our flag here. However, there are a lot of hurting Americans and there are a lot of people kind of lamenting this, and there are a lot of I'm going to call it out a lot of boomers that are just like, if you just didn't need so much avocado toast, then we wouldn't be here. Like oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, the avocado toast is why I can't make a $3,000 a month house payment when you got to make it at $800 a month. Come on, now. [00:54:56] Speaker C: Come on. I don't know why you don't just do it my way when it drives. [00:55:00] Speaker B: Me up a wall. [00:55:01] Speaker A: I saw a tweet yesterday that's true. This is literally true. He said a starter house doesn't exist anymore price wise, like a starter house. What would have been a starter house is now $300,000. This is a starter house. [00:55:15] Speaker B: Yeah, we got a little bit of. [00:55:16] Speaker A: Land on it, which is really nice, but it's going to take a lot of work. It's an older house. It's not in great shape, and it was difficult to get into. I mean, his point is real of if you want something that is not a total piece of junk, it's almost nonexistent. [00:55:33] Speaker B: So that's my point is just listen to people first and foremost when they're saying this, understand where they're coming from. A lot of times it's driven by hurt. A lot of times driven by greed, too, and it's driven by stupidity and driven by I went to the public schools, and therefore redistribution of wealth is good that they push that a lot in there and demonizing the 1%. So sure, that may come through as well, but you may have people that are genuinely struggling just lamenting the system. That's the Oliver Anthony thing. I can get behind the lamenting of the system. We find common ground on saying, yeah, that is broken. However, let's discuss the ins and outs. But let's get to the end here, which is some of the bigger issues, the underlying issues, and I'll start the first one of it causes us to maybe step back and figure out what does Christian compassion look like? We've had this discussion, but Jack get us into that a little bit of this kind of bigger issue of Christian compassion. [00:56:25] Speaker A: I think we talked about that of churches giving and on an individual level of giving. But I think about Ephesians, chapter four, and I had the reference down here, 28 of let him who steals steal no longer, but work so that you can share. I read that one in one Timothy Six of teach the instruct the rich to be rich in good works and share what they have. And there's a number of verses about that of work hard so that you can have in one Timothy five where he talks about providing from your own. If you don't, you're worse than an infidel. The expectation in all of those is you're going to make enough to take care of what your basic needs and then have a little bit to share. And so that should be the goal of every Christian is to share, is to be somebody in Acts four who can sell something and give to somebody else or come in with the donation when it's in need. And the envy the kind of zero sum game thought of socialism of well we got to take it from somebody to give it to somebody else. No, make more, earn more, build more, have more so that you can give is a good thought as a church and as individuals. [00:57:26] Speaker C: The other thing that I would bring up here and we've hit this quite a bit so we can move on but we talk about how the church kind of demonizes the wealthy. It also glorifies the poor in a lot of instances kind of the insinuation that the poorer you are the more holy you are. And listen, a lot of that is based in envy in my opinion and we've hit that already. But the thought of like again, well those who are wealthy and those who are rich, they just idolize wealth. So do those who are poor because how many of them would instantly swap with somebody if there were no ramifications of you take your position, I take mine, they're going to take the more wealthy position. And so it's based in envy. It's based in, again kind of just this false concept of well we need to strike a rich man is going to be harboring into the kingdom of heaven so let's run the other direction. That's not biblical. Again to beat the horse to death you're ignoring proverbs you're ignoring the very valid scriptures about working hard. And so this is something that we talked about in last episode. I think pulpits need to do a lot better job of teaching and preaching lessons about money that are not just the generic vague ambiguous. Make sure you use your money to the glory of God and make sure that you get like man, come on, people need specifics, people need more than just the generic vague stuff about how to use their money and what God's word talks about money. And so that would be the only thing that I would say there is that a lot of Christians, I would say, have a warped view of money and I don't think pulpits and church leadership have helped with that. And I think it's time that we need to swap that around, because envy is something and covetousness is something that is listed in all of those places in the New Testament as a pretty big sin, as something that God sees as a big deal. And that's not something that any Christian has any business being involved in. Envy, greed, covetousness and I think again just kind of the demonization of the rich in a way creates that envy. It creates that covetousness, fosters it maybe. [00:59:31] Speaker B: I should say that's a great point. It's a great point. Another big issue, and really one of the last ones I'll speak to this one because we have on here beware of emotional manipulation and oversimplification. I can sympathize and empathize with somebody who is bemoaning where America has gotten we have to beware of them taking that emotional, that empathy and distorting it, twisting it, manipulating it to where know, we're advocating for something that's horrible. And I think they're oversimplifying a problem by they're trying to fix know socialists are trying to fix a very complicated problem in simplistic and rather barbaric ways. When you see the way it's carried out across the world, they kind of want to just wave their magic wand to something. So beware of the emotional manipulation. You see this a lot on Facebook or on social media where you see somebody who goes without health care or whatever, and they kind of get the sob stories and they trot that out and look, that's horrible. I hate when those things happen. I'm not saying that I'm unaffected by it, but they're trying to take the. [01:00:37] Speaker C: Political it's a tactic that they're using. [01:00:39] Speaker B: That's exactly it. They're trying to blend the political and they're abusing churches and looking at Christians and using this as an attack against Christians by taking their political agenda and beating us over the head with some emotional sob story. Don't fall for the manipulation tactics. Don't fall for the oversimplification and don't allow them to politicize our faith, basically and make us out to be the bad guys because people are struggling. We realize people are struggling. There are better ways to handle it other than you taking my wealth and giving it to somebody else. That's not the way that this is not the way it should go. But you see that a lot on Facebook from Christians and non Christians alike. Demonizing those who push capitalism, demonizing those who aren't willing to just have the state come in and take all of their stuff. It's a political issue. It's a complicated issue. It's a lot of things, but don't allow for the emotional manipulation is what I would say. [01:01:29] Speaker A: One of the other things is so much of this socialism, but many other things is just trades on, well, it shouldn't be this way. You should get free health care. This is how the world ought and ought not to be. Who's to say according to what standard? Where are you getting this? Should or shouldn't be? It sounds good. Oh, well, everyone should get free health care. Okay, how what are the consequences of doing that? Who's paying for that? All of those questions, they don't enter into these manipulative conversations. And you see that same stuff in the church. Well, women should be allowed to preach. Okay, why? What are we going to do about this? Well, men and women should be there shouldn't be ahead of the household. Well, there is. Okay? We have this sense of what should and shouldn't be. That doesn't matter at all. Literally doesn't matter. It's all in our heads. [01:02:19] Speaker B: Well, anything else? [01:02:20] Speaker C: I don't have much else to add. [01:02:21] Speaker A: No. [01:02:23] Speaker C: A lot of people might be looking at it going, this is kind of a weird episode topic. There are underlying issues as why we ended here that illustrate why this is important and why this is a big deal. And we started, I guess, full time. Jack started think deeper. What was it, 2018, like a long, long time ago. And we started it really full time at the beginning of 2022. And it was one of those things, like when we first got started, there were a lot of episodes that we lined up like, yeah, this would be good, let's talk about this. Let's talk about this. And then as we continue to lay out episode topics and things, you realize there are a lot of things that don't really get talked about. There are a lot of things that really don't get a lot of press in the church, and money is one of them. This kind of political system of socialism that ties into money is one of so, you know, I want to thank you gentlemen, just you two, for being willing I mean, these are topics that I think the church needs to discuss. These are topics that don't get discussed and so want to encourage everybody who's listening. Obviously, we appreciate the comments on Facebook for those of you who are Focus Plus subscribers. We always appreciate the comments and questions that we get from there so that we can roll those into our extended deep end segment. But I would say if there are other topics, if there are things that you're thinking like, man, my congregation, we haven't addressed this in a while, or man, I really don't know where to turn to to find answers on this. We're not standing here saying we are the guys that have the answers to every single issue, but we are standing here saying we're the guys that are willing to at least discuss the issue, and we're the guys that are willing to at least open God's word and see, okay, where should a Christian fall on this? As closely as we can. According to Scripture, as far as according to our best understanding, that's what we are willing to do. We're not always going to get it right. But one of the to me, the biggest aspects of this podcast that we wanted to really hit home is we'll discuss the issues that maybe everybody else doesn't want to. And so, again, long diatribe of me basically saying, if you've got something that you want us to talk about, if you've got a topic that you're like, man, I really want to hear about this, let us know. Reach out to us, message, Facebook, comment, whatever it is. So that's all that I've got to say. Jack, Joe, I don't know if you have anything else to wrap us up with. [01:04:36] Speaker B: It's a great point. It's a great point. Yeah, I was thinking, as you were talking about yeah, we discuss sex, we discuss masculinity and femininity, we discuss birth control, culture in the church, birth control and IVF. And, I mean, hey, that's what we are here for, to think deeper. And this is yet another episode I'm glad you pointed out, Will. This is just one of those things we look around and go, man, nobody's really discussing money and the socialism that's really creeping up on Facebook and in Christian circles, and we're seeing this on our social media and such of like, Christians really starting to advocate, young Christians really starting to advocate for this. So we wanted to reach out and say that. So, yeah, just to double up your point, Will? I think that's fantastic. Let us know specifically, again, subscribe, because those who subscribe and give us some comments and whatnot of, hey, these are some topics that's going to shoot right to the top of our list. Hey, even if you don't subscribe, let us know. Facebook, post, whatever it is, get a hold of us on social media, and we'll look to fit it in. But those who subscribe, of course, are going to get first dibs on where we go with this, and we'd love suggestions on what you'd like to hear. All right, fellas. Well, with that, we're going to wrap up and yeah, thank you for listening. We'll talk to you again next week.