Speaker 1: Life Audio.
Speaker 2: Maybe this is uncharitable, Scott, But when somebody says we
Speaker 2: believe in biblical authority and keeps advancing such a bad argument,
Speaker 2: it makes me question the commitment to biblical authority and
Speaker 2: at least say on this issue, something is overriding biblical
Speaker 2: authority from the culture.
Speaker 3: Being a Christian doesn't make you feel like you're on
Speaker 3: top of things. It actually makes you feel like you're
Speaker 3: under things and in need of grace.
Speaker 2: I get why people are drawn to the left. I
Speaker 2: understand it at the very end. Though why I think
Speaker 2: I'm not is that there's no other way to put it.
Speaker 2: Then it's just divorced from reality. Should Christians be leftists?
Speaker 2: Can leftism consistently be wed with a Christian worldview? And
Speaker 2: is leftism gaining ground in the church and in the culture?
Speaker 2: Scott Ray, We've got a fascinating new book we're going
Speaker 2: to do a review on by Phil Christman called Why
Speaker 2: Christians Should should be Leftists?
Speaker 1: You ready, rock and roll?
Speaker 3: I'm ready. Let's get to it all right.
Speaker 2: So this is really more of an essay than it
Speaker 2: is a book. It's kind of a testimony of his experience,
Speaker 2: which we'll get to. But before we dive into the
Speaker 2: case that he makes. What does the author mean by leftism?
Speaker 2: What are we talking about here.
Speaker 3: Well, he distinguishes it from liberalism, which he's referred to
Speaker 3: political liberalism there as opposed to Just to be clear
Speaker 3: for our listeners, the term classic liberalism is different than
Speaker 3: political liberalism, which is different than leftism. Okay, The classic
Speaker 3: classic liberal tradition is what our founding fathers had in
Speaker 3: mind of individual rights, free expression, limited government, you know,
Speaker 3: things things like that that form I think sort of
Speaker 3: the heart and soul of political conservatism today. Political liberalism
Speaker 3: is a different, different view of that which takes a
Speaker 3: larger view for the state, heavier taxes, more services, things
Speaker 3: like what we might call democratic socialism, in which we
Speaker 3: see in Scandinavia and parts of Europe, where it's just
Speaker 3: a different it's a different arrangement where taxes are higher,
Speaker 3: service and services are more provided, and there's less space
Speaker 3: for for what we call mediating institutions that stand between
Speaker 3: the state and the individuals. Leftism is political liberalism on steroids, okay.
Speaker 3: And the leftism that he's describing here is I think,
Speaker 3: sort of heavy on deconstructing the institutions, mainly of the
Speaker 3: market economy where he does where the liberal I would say,
Speaker 3: political liberals want to want to they want to remodel
Speaker 3: the house. Leftists want to tear the house down and
Speaker 3: create some thing new, great, an entirely different system. Because
Speaker 3: he just he describes the political liberals as being complicit
Speaker 3: with capitalism.
Speaker 1: He does, that's right, And so what.
Speaker 3: That suggests is that he wants he wants to dismantle
Speaker 3: the whole apparatus and start over again. Right now. Of course,
Speaker 3: what that what the starting over again looks like, is
Speaker 3: a lot trickier than dismantling the current one. But that's
Speaker 3: but that's what he that's basically what he means by leftism.
Speaker 3: That's that how you read it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so he's not talking about theological leftism, although we
Speaker 2: see that seep in here at times.
Speaker 1: It's more political.
Speaker 2: So sometimes we tend to think, well, those to the
Speaker 2: right of us wherever we are, are fundamentalists, and those
Speaker 2: a little bit to the left of us we might
Speaker 2: call liberals or leftists. He is way to the left
Speaker 2: politically than probably most, if almost any, at least in
Speaker 2: the evangelical world.
Speaker 1: So you functionally, and.
Speaker 3: I think he would be far to the left of
Speaker 3: most in the Democratic Party.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he has a chapter white, the Democratic Party doesn't
Speaker 2: go far enough. We'll get to that why classical liberalism
Speaker 2: doesn't go far enough.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean classical liberalism. He wants very.
Speaker 1: Little nothing to do with.
Speaker 2: Okay, so he says here on page sixty seven, leftism
Speaker 2: would mean either heavy taxes on or on heavy taxes
Speaker 2: on or common ownership of the sort of property that
Speaker 2: produces wealth. So he really means socialism, but in many
Speaker 2: ways is also very favorable at times towards Marxism. So
Speaker 2: that's the kind of leftism that he seems.
Speaker 3: To be arguing, just the leftist view, instead of a
Speaker 3: market economy where it's individuals, you know, doing mutually beneficial exchanges.
Speaker 3: It's more of the I think the idea that the
Speaker 3: mean what do he calls it? The the means of
Speaker 3: producing our stuff is commonly owned, right and can't and
Speaker 3: can't then the ownership of those, as Mars describe, the
Speaker 3: means of production can't be owned by individuals who concentrate
Speaker 3: their wealth and their ownership by by virtue of that.
Speaker 3: So it's it's it's either state state owned, but more
Speaker 3: owned and common more owned by the public is what
Speaker 3: they're after.
Speaker 2: We're going to offer some of our critique of that,
Speaker 2: but I'd love to know what you think the author
Speaker 2: gets right. Whenever I read a book like this, and
Speaker 2: my first instinct is I'm going to take issue with
Speaker 2: this book, I look for areas I have common ground,
Speaker 2: areas that are positive errors I can learn from.
Speaker 1: So what do you think the author gets right?
Speaker 3: I think there are there are a number of things.
Speaker 3: First on my list is the biblical mandate to care
Speaker 3: for the poor. Okay, the biblical mandate to to make
Speaker 3: sure that our policies and are you know, are public
Speaker 3: policy doesn't disadvantage further the least among us. And I
Speaker 3: think that that's a biblical mandate that I think he
Speaker 3: gets right. The other one that I think I think
Speaker 3: is really strong that I think he gets right, and
Speaker 3: this is a critique of capitalism in general, is it
Speaker 3: does lead to over consumption. I mean, I think we
Speaker 3: all could we all could benefit from de accumulating the
Speaker 3: amount of stuff that we have. In fact, one of
Speaker 3: my worst nightmares is that, you know, my wife and
Speaker 3: I are going to pass prematurely and leave our kids
Speaker 3: to sort all that out, you know, And God forbid. Uh.
Speaker 3: I think he rightly recognizes the importance of politics, and
Speaker 3: I think he gets the definition of that right, He
Speaker 3: gets that exactly right. Yeah, And this is why we've
Speaker 3: said before, Sean, that this is what makes politics fundamentally
Speaker 3: a moral enterprise, because it's how we order our lives together,
Speaker 3: and economics is intertwined with that, because he could nomics
Speaker 3: to go a step further, is how we balance the
Speaker 3: burdens and benefits of how we order our lives together
Speaker 3: in community. Those are those are all have significant moral overtones.
Speaker 3: And I think he gets that right, you know, and
Speaker 3: I love you know. Towards the end, uh, he says,
Speaker 3: you know, the essence of Christian faith is that we're
Speaker 3: all sinners in need of grace. And if you know,
Speaker 3: being a Christian doesn't make doesn't make you feel like
Speaker 3: you're on top of things. It actually makes you feel
Speaker 3: like you're you're under things and in and in need
Speaker 3: of grace. He points out, we live in a moral universe,
Speaker 3: which she's right, there more morality. I think he's right
Speaker 3: that God has embedded a moral framework into the nature
Speaker 3: of reality, and our our intuitions every day tell us
Speaker 3: that that's true. And every time somebody is the victim
Speaker 3: of injustice, your relativism goes out the window because people say, no,
Speaker 3: I've been wronged. And for the relativist, you know, the
Speaker 3: giant says who question looms large but not but not
Speaker 3: for Christmas. You know, ultimately we live in a moral
Speaker 3: universe because God said these things are right, are wrong? Uh,
Speaker 3: I mean he's he offers a critique. He doesn't have
Speaker 3: a lot of tolerance for woke stuff, which which I appreciate. Uh.
Speaker 3: He he points out, you know, scientism, you know he has,
Speaker 3: he has let's just say he doesn't have his his
Speaker 3: faith in science to be able to take over what
Speaker 3: would be lacking if you put religious faith on the
Speaker 3: back burner is not high. So he's you know, he
Speaker 3: is definitely that he's not a secularist. He is. I mean,
Speaker 3: I think his his Christian faith I think is real.
Speaker 3: Uh And I think as a result of that, he
Speaker 3: gets a lot of he gets he gets some things right.
Speaker 3: You got other things you want to.
Speaker 2: Say, Yeah, that's a great list. That's pretty much many
Speaker 2: of the common ones that I had. His definition of
Speaker 2: politics is he says, it's just morality is practiced by
Speaker 2: more than one person. As humans, we need each other.
Speaker 2: Thus we have to continue to hash out how we'll
Speaker 2: live together. And so he agrees with us. We differ
Speaker 2: on his political views, but he's basically saying we need
Speaker 2: to think biblically about politics and politics as one way
Speaker 2: we love our neighbor. We would agree with that approach,
Speaker 2: differ on the practice, which we'll get to.
Speaker 3: And I think we might actually differ on some of
Speaker 3: the ends.
Speaker 1: Okays, I think that's right.
Speaker 3: We would definitely differ on many of the means to
Speaker 3: accomplish those ends. In the past, I think we've said
Speaker 3: that generally there's widespread agreement on the ends of what
Speaker 3: a political economy should look like. I'm not so sure
Speaker 3: we will always agree on the ends for this.
Speaker 2: Fair enough, I think that's I think that's right, and
Speaker 2: we'll get to some of that. He says, For example,
Speaker 2: we live in a moral universe. He writes us on
Speaker 2: page seventy eight. You know, I did think you see
Speaker 2: coming through this idea. He goes that morality is not
Speaker 2: optional for Christians, and he says, we live in a
Speaker 2: moral universe. This is one of the points that Christians
Speaker 2: of all stripes ought to agree about agree. We think
Speaker 2: that both morality existence itself emanate from God's nature. But
Speaker 2: as a good leftist, God's nature seems to be reduced
Speaker 2: towards love, which is love, And I go, yeah, it's love,
Speaker 2: it's also justice, and if you go too far to
Speaker 2: the right, it's just justice. In this case, too far
Speaker 2: to the left seems to just be love. I think
Speaker 2: we need to balance that out. But insofar as we
Speaker 2: live in a moral universe, he says, morality, at least
Speaker 2: for Christians, is not an add on, It's part of
Speaker 2: the fabric of the universe. Amen to that, he says
Speaker 2: scientism tends to reduce us to selfish survival machines. I'm
Speaker 2: reading this going amen. So there's plenty we can be
Speaker 2: positive about. But in some ways, he says, this is
Speaker 2: really more of an essay than a book. And I
Speaker 2: thought it was fascinating because he's kind of given a testimony,
Speaker 2: like somebody could stand up give a testimony, even evangelical church,
Speaker 2: about how we left kind of the right leaning Republican Party,
Speaker 2: remained a Christian in the way he describes it, and
Speaker 2: now is on the left. So I'm curious what you
Speaker 2: make of his conversion story and any points that jumped
Speaker 2: out as significant to you.
Speaker 3: Well, it seemed his conversion quote political conversion, was because
Speaker 3: he read the Sermon on the Mount and was deeply,
Speaker 3: deeply impacted by that, and I think saw, you know,
Speaker 3: saw a whole host of things that had implications for
Speaker 3: him in terms of politics and economics. Now, I think
Speaker 3: we can will debate a bit with some of the
Speaker 3: takes that he had takeaways from the Sermon on the Mount,
Speaker 3: but I think that's basically what got him sort of
Speaker 3: started on this leftward trend. And I wonder you know,
Speaker 3: this is a point we've made in the past when
Speaker 3: we've talked about the intersection of Christian faith and politics
Speaker 3: and economics. Is is the political political economic world in
Speaker 3: which the Bible was written was so different absolute And
Speaker 3: that's why I think we've got to be very careful
Speaker 3: in how we how we do any direct application from
Speaker 3: the Biblical text, namely things like the Sermon on them
Speaker 3: out to political economy today. So there's there are, I mean,
Speaker 3: there's just a whole host of really significant differences that
Speaker 3: have to be taken into account. I mean, the big
Speaker 3: one is that you know, if you would have asked
Speaker 3: if you would ask the average person in the first
Speaker 3: century who they were going to vote for. We have
Speaker 3: a vote, what do we vote? We're voting. We're voting
Speaker 3: for Caesar or not. You know, you don't vote for season,
Speaker 3: you lose your head. And you know, economics was completely different.
Speaker 3: It was a zero sum economic world, and so there
Speaker 3: was this necessary connection between winners and losers, and people
Speaker 3: were stuck in the economic strata that they were born into. Nobody,
Speaker 3: you know, nobody. There were no rags to riches stories
Speaker 3: in the ancient world. Lots of the opposite, as the
Speaker 3: Prodigal Sun shows. But you have to take those differences
Speaker 3: into account. Now we'll talk more about how he reaches
Speaker 3: somewhere on the mount in a bit.
Speaker 2: So some of the things jumped out on page one.
Speaker 2: The title is testifying, and he talks about growing up
Speaker 2: in a fundamentalist, evangelical, Pentecostal, Calvinist background. No, I don't
Speaker 2: want to it's quite a combination, it is, and my
Speaker 2: point is not to pick on any one of those.
Speaker 2: But I've written a book on deconstruction and just this
Speaker 2: is you hear this over and over again when people
Speaker 2: move to atheism, agnosticism, progressive Christianity. There's very much a
Speaker 2: reaction against the way somebody was raised.
Speaker 3: And I think what this sounds to me like he
Speaker 3: is the sub theme underneath this is religious rigidity.
Speaker 2: I think that's right, and that's a part of the
Speaker 2: theme that we hear understandably so, but in his mind
Speaker 2: he's like, instead of chucking the faith, I want to
Speaker 2: hold on to Jesus, but re envision what that looks
Speaker 2: like politically and economically is how he approaches this. So
Speaker 2: we don't need to talk about this, but he walks
Speaker 2: through how he assumed that the Republican Party was exactly
Speaker 2: what it meant to be a Christian. He's concerned about
Speaker 2: the wedding between the two. He taught his case of
Speaker 2: how he went left as he feels like President Barack Obama,
Speaker 2: which is completely attacked by Christians in terms of being
Speaker 2: a secret Muslim and his character, et cetera. The economic
Speaker 2: crash of two thousand an eight. He talks a lot
Speaker 2: about that, talks about Michael Brown and uh uh Timir
Speaker 2: Rice and some of these stories Eric Garner Freddie Gray
Speaker 2: that started to merging about twenty twelve twenty thirteen really
Speaker 2: shaped him and he felt like concerns about wokeness and
Speaker 2: CRT were just a diversion from the issue Donald Trump
Speaker 2: put him over the top. He's like, once people can
Speaker 2: support Donald Trump and call themselves Christians, I'm out the
Speaker 2: me too movement, the pandemic these I'm trying to get
Speaker 2: people a sense of and we're not gonna go into
Speaker 2: this narrative, but they have a sense of where he
Speaker 2: came from and how it frames where he's at.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: You can sort of see sort of one domino falling
Speaker 3: after another, and he gets he gets to you get
Speaker 3: to the end of the dominoes, and you know, there's
Speaker 3: there's not there's not much left that he was that
Speaker 3: he was wanting to embrace, except for I think he
Speaker 3: still still embraced the scriptures. He still embraced his relationship
Speaker 3: to Jesus. Now, I think we read the scriptures. We
Speaker 3: read the scriptures quite differently as a result of that,
Speaker 3: and I think we can I mean, we all have
Speaker 3: our lenses through which we we read the scriptures. Uh,
Speaker 3: And I think some let's let's just say, I think
Speaker 3: some political economic lenses are are stronger than others for
Speaker 3: for some people. Sure, And I think the I think
Speaker 3: with you know, it's less clear Sean, you know which
Speaker 3: came first, you know, the political reorientation or.
Speaker 1: That's an interesting question.
Speaker 3: I think I think for him, the Sermon on the
Speaker 3: Mount probably came first, and that was the first, that
Speaker 3: was what kicked off the dominoes falling. Uh. But it's
Speaker 3: not as it's not as clear that he continued to
Speaker 3: read the scriptures. I think through you know, without without
Speaker 3: those pretty strong left cleaning lenses.
Speaker 2: You're right, And some of what he talks about here
Speaker 2: in the Sermon of the Mount, it suggested a life
Speaker 2: that was available to me and to them. I felt
Speaker 2: the possibility of universal solidarity as opposed to this kind
Speaker 2: of Darwinian winners and losers approach on the right.
Speaker 1: You had this.
Speaker 2: Universal solidarity we should lean into, which is a theme
Speaker 2: we always hear on the left.
Speaker 1: So he's drawn in by that.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: One thing he talks about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which is I think just another way of saying
Speaker 3: that what you had mentioned earlier is that the left
Speaker 3: tends to emphasize love, the right tends to emphasize justice.
Speaker 3: And you know that's I think that's another way of
Speaker 3: saying some of those same things.
Speaker 2: Right, Okay, fair enough, So we're we're gonna come back
Speaker 2: to some of the issues that we've just peppered on here.
Speaker 2: But early in the book, I mean, page twenty five,
Speaker 2: he raises some of the questions of what this means
Speaker 2: for the LGBTQ conversation, and part of his leftism which
Speaker 2: seems to always occur in my book, maybe someone could
Speaker 2: find except to this involves a rejection of the historic
Speaker 2: Christian view of sex and marriage and embracing LGBTQ relationships
Speaker 2: and identities. Now, he three times says in the book,
Speaker 2: on different pages twenty five, fifty eight, and eighty six,
Speaker 2: that we know something by its fruit, and it says
Speaker 2: sometimes theological arguments you can only settle by observations. So
Speaker 2: he's talking about certain biblical arguments about sex and marriage,
Speaker 2: and he says, kind of, you know, once I was
Speaker 2: in several churches where some people who what is he
Speaker 2: described as lesbians were not able to serve. He goes,
Speaker 2: for me, that's the end of the debate, that people
Speaker 2: say we want to obey Jesus, but some people couldn't serve.
Speaker 2: And then he says, you know that some people would
Speaker 2: stand in the way of a gay person's right to marry.
Speaker 2: I'm out now. I have a lot of thoughts on this.
Speaker 2: I don't want to get two sidetracked, but any do
Speaker 2: you want to weigh in on this?
Speaker 3: Well, again, like you, I'm not particularly surprised that this
Speaker 3: is where he went. It's not a central part of
Speaker 3: what he's dealing with. In my view, this is just
Speaker 3: a this is another domino that fell and not it's
Speaker 3: not it's not a surprise at all that it's one
Speaker 3: that did. And the you know, the I think part
Speaker 3: of the left leaning culture is you know, and this
Speaker 3: emphasis on inclusion and when he talked to emphasis on
Speaker 3: sort of universal solidarity is I think another way of
Speaker 3: saying that it's trying to be as inclusive as possible,
Speaker 3: and I think it. I'm not I'm not surprised, and
Speaker 3: I want to I want to be careful that we
Speaker 3: don't we don't get the theological cart before the horse
Speaker 3: on this, because our theology, our ideas, determine how we act.
Speaker 1: They should they should now.
Speaker 3: And it doesn't he We're not not leaving room for
Speaker 3: places where the church has failed, and I think the
Speaker 3: church has failed in some respects to be to show
Speaker 3: the love of Christ to the LGBTQ community. Now, I
Speaker 3: think we can do that without abandoning our convictions either.
Speaker 3: But and it's true that there's some in the LGBTQ
Speaker 3: community who see our convictions as the same thing as
Speaker 3: not being loving towards them. Sure, and I think that's
Speaker 3: I think that's my guess is that's probably what some
Speaker 3: of what he means by their fruits.
Speaker 1: I agree, But he's adopted a certain view, a cultural
Speaker 1: understanding of love being affirmation, which I think is decidedly
Speaker 1: not biblical. And three times he says, by your fruits
Speaker 1: you shall know them. Well, what is the scriptures talking about?
Speaker 1: Is what is the point being made here? It's the
Speaker 1: fruit of repentance. It's the fruit of obedience. Look in
Speaker 1: the Sermon of the Mountain again five through seven. I
Speaker 1: ironically in Matthew chapter seven, it's very clear that we
Speaker 1: judge a fruit by we judge a tree by its fruit.
Speaker 1: In that context, it's the fruit of obedience, it's the
Speaker 1: fruit of lawfulness, and it's the fruit of repentance. And
Speaker 1: so three times he mistakes this argument.
Speaker 2: If people have been doing this, I've responded this for
Speaker 2: probably a decade and a half now, and people continue
Speaker 2: to advance this and so to me, maybe this is
Speaker 2: uncharitable Scott. But when somebody says we believe in biblical
Speaker 2: authority and keeps advancing such a bad argument, it makes
Speaker 2: me question the commitment to biblical authority and at least
Speaker 2: say on this issue, something is overriding biblical authority from
Speaker 2: the culture. That's the case that I would make, all right,
Speaker 2: So he says that he goes after the Democratic Party
Speaker 2: as not going far enough, which I just thought was interesting.
Speaker 2: You often hear it from the right, but to hear
Speaker 2: it from the left, their critique is going to be
Speaker 2: different from the right. Why does he say the Democratic
Speaker 2: Party doesn't go far enough?
Speaker 1: Because it's it's in collusion with capitalism exactly.
Speaker 3: That's the point, and in his view, are our capitalist system.
Speaker 3: And again remember he uses the term capitalism. I don't
Speaker 3: like that term because but I'm going to use it
Speaker 3: because that's what he did.
Speaker 1: But just say, just to.
Speaker 3: Remind our listeners that Karl Marx coined that term and
Speaker 3: it was intended pejoratively at the at emerging market systems.
Speaker 3: So I would prefer market based economies, you know things
Speaker 3: market systems. But that's a little more unwieldy to say,
Speaker 3: so we'll just go we'll go with capitalism for now.
Speaker 3: With that caveat enough. But I think he, you know,
Speaker 3: in his view, any anything that's tainted by capitalism is
Speaker 3: morally tainted. And what I what I don't get is
Speaker 3: I'm sure how you can live in the world without
Speaker 3: being in some form of collusion with capitalism if you
Speaker 3: were buying and selling things on the open market.
Speaker 1: How such as a book?
Speaker 3: You know, market exchanges are sort of the way we
Speaker 3: you know, the way we get out of subsistence level
Speaker 3: where we produce everything that we own and we'll come back.
Speaker 3: We'll come back to that, yeah too. But I mean
Speaker 3: that's basically the reason showing is I mean, he would
Speaker 3: he would like to see that the capitalist system dismantled
Speaker 3: and replaced with something different, something that he calls what's
Speaker 3: the term he used, Uh? Private? What do you say? Private? Private?
Speaker 1: We'll come back, but that, you know.
Speaker 3: But the tension, I think is that, uh, if you
Speaker 3: if you're going to deconstruct something, you have to reconstruct
Speaker 3: it too. And it's it's pretty heavy on deconstructing market
Speaker 3: systems and pretty light on what's going to take its place.
Speaker 3: And so we'll come back to that.
Speaker 2: You're right though, on page sixty three he says, even
Speaker 2: the Democrats are always in practice in some amount of
Speaker 2: collusion with capitalism. So capitalism is the ultimate bad guy,
Speaker 2: the cause of suffering in the world. And so he
Speaker 2: says Biden, as I expected, was horrible. And so by
Speaker 2: the way, his critique of Biden helps us understand what
Speaker 2: he means by the left. He says, he offered unqualified
Speaker 2: support for Israel's ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza. So being
Speaker 2: on the left is completely seemingly abandoning and critiquing Israel
Speaker 2: really strong climate change policies, for giving billions of dollars
Speaker 2: in student loans. These are the kind of things he
Speaker 2: holds up Bernie Sanders, Rashida talib ilan Omar as kind
Speaker 2: of brave and constantly fighting the right kind to battle.
Speaker 2: So that's the leftism that he's leaning into.
Speaker 3: And although you know, Bernie Sanders has a very healthy
Speaker 3: net worth.
Speaker 2: Of course, yeah, separate issue, fair enough, but really nice
Speaker 2: based on capitalism he does. Okay, So how do you
Speaker 2: there was a statement in here that he made. Let
Speaker 2: me see it's on page twenty four. I'm really curious
Speaker 2: you're taking this because you've written a lot on capitalism.
Speaker 2: He says, it is now at least possible for person
Speaker 2: to say, write a book for a major Christian publisher
Speaker 2: that says why not consider socialism? Now this is Erdman,
Speaker 2: So it's a little broader than say like a Baker
Speaker 2: or a Zondervin or you know, a Harvest House publishers,
Speaker 2: but it's a Christian publisher. Is this new and does
Speaker 2: that surprise you?
Speaker 3: Well, I would actually, I would have expected a different
Speaker 3: publisher oh on this, meaning I would have expected something
Speaker 3: like Orbis or Mary Noel, which are the Catholic publishers
Speaker 3: that have been have been advocates of liberation theology around
Speaker 3: around the world. So that that's the part the imprint.
Speaker 3: What was a bit of a surprise to me, although
Speaker 3: I'm not surprised that Christian publishers are publishing it because
Speaker 3: as we mentioned several times before, there is there's this
Speaker 3: fascination with socialism among millennials in gen Z today that
Speaker 3: did not exist among you know, my baby boomer generation.
Speaker 3: And part of the reason for that is because you know,
Speaker 3: gen Z I think has a very fading memory, if
Speaker 3: at all, of what life was like in Eastern Europe
Speaker 3: under communism, where socialism was tried, I mean, socialism was
Speaker 3: tried in Cuba, North Korea, Soviet Union, China, Uh, you
Speaker 3: know all, I mean all sorts of places around the world.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: And every place that's been tried, it's been accompanied with
Speaker 3: tyranny for one uh and economically it's it's proven to
Speaker 3: be disastrous. UH. And the reason for that is because
Speaker 3: the state can't read the minds of individuals who make
Speaker 3: their who make their preferences known by the exchanges that
Speaker 3: they make in the marketplace. The state, the state can't
Speaker 3: figure out what's best for individuals apart from those those
Speaker 3: market realities. And that's why the market, the markets reflect
Speaker 3: our values for bet for better or for worse. Now,
Speaker 3: sometimes it reflects him for worse, and he's I think
Speaker 3: he's focused on the way markets reflect our values for worse. Okay,
Speaker 3: But this, this is I think quite consistent with some
Speaker 3: of the what we've seen, the gen Z fascination. It
Speaker 3: is with socialism.
Speaker 2: And there's a different beweeny gen Z fascination with it,
Speaker 2: and a Christian publisher opening the door to socialism, making
Speaker 2: a case or to a book making a case for socialism.
Speaker 2: So to me, it's a sign that I'll be looking
Speaker 2: for more to see if we see a normalization in
Speaker 2: that direction, which I'm all for arguing ideas, but I
Speaker 2: have some real issue we're going to get to with
Speaker 2: some of the arguments here.
Speaker 1: So what's your take on this.
Speaker 2: Is it possible for somebody to be a leftist in
Speaker 2: the way he characterized it in the book and a
Speaker 2: Christian or are they mutually contradictory positions?
Speaker 3: Let me I'll answer that, and then I want to
Speaker 3: sharpen the question, okay, because I'd rather answer a different question. Okay.
Speaker 3: The reason is because I think the Bible is clear,
Speaker 3: you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will
Speaker 3: be saved. Okay, nothing about you know, political, economic, you know,
Speaker 3: entailments of that. So I I don't think anything in
Speaker 3: here disqualifies him from naming the name of Jesus and
Speaker 3: being saved. Okay. I would say, is is is being
Speaker 3: a leftist in the way he describes consistent with faithfulness
Speaker 3: to scripture or consistent with a Christian worldview? And that's
Speaker 3: a that's a different question, yes, And I think the
Speaker 3: answer to that is probably not not to mention the
Speaker 3: l g B, t Q stuff we've already talked about,
Speaker 3: but I think they're there. I think there's there's some
Speaker 3: problematic things in the view that leftism takes, mainly on economics,
Speaker 3: that I think run counter to the notions of human
Speaker 3: beings being created with freedom in the image of God,
Speaker 3: with dignity and that and that Sean everywhere this has
Speaker 3: been tried, those things have been They've just been wiped out. Uh.
Speaker 3: And there's a funny thing about Utopia's there's only one
Speaker 3: time where utopia is not going to have tyranny, and
Speaker 3: that's when the lord returns and consummated, consummates his kingdom,
Speaker 3: and we will have we will have a utopia with
Speaker 3: a benevolent king without without tyranny or coercion. Now, the
Speaker 3: other thing that I think is is problematic with leftism
Speaker 3: is the view of private property. And I think private
Speaker 3: property the way, particular the way John Locke articulated it,
Speaker 3: and it was very influential to the Founding Fathers Locke.
Speaker 3: Locke's view was that the view of private property was
Speaker 3: an entailment of our rights over our own lives and
Speaker 3: our own bodies. Because he saw the fruit of our
Speaker 3: labor as an extension of our right over our own body. Now,
Speaker 3: of course we got from a Christian world view. Of
Speaker 3: course God, God is the one who owns our bodies,
Speaker 3: and he owned he owns it all. So the theological
Speaker 3: argument is a little bit different for that. But I
Speaker 3: think Locke was onto something, and I think this is
Speaker 3: one of the reasons why the Bible affirms private property
Speaker 3: as being consistent with not only the ability to take
Speaker 3: care of the poor, but consistent with a view of
Speaker 3: a human person as being free and created in God's image,
Speaker 3: with intrinsic dignity. That allows for the freedom that market
Speaker 3: systems that empower in ways that no other system is done. Now,
Speaker 3: it doesn't do it perfectly, but it does a whole
Speaker 3: lot better than any other system that's been tried.
Speaker 1: I think that distinction is very fair, And now is
Speaker 1: a similar distinction.
Speaker 2: Now, I was going to make God judges somebody's heart,
Speaker 2: and we can't. Your point about if you believe in Christ,
Speaker 2: you know you shall be saved.
Speaker 1: That's like a minimal Christian salvation.
Speaker 2: So denying the right to private property doesn't mean you
Speaker 2: lose your salvation. A believing in radical climate change or
Speaker 2: some of the other things that he talks about here
Speaker 2: are not selvific issues. The question is do they line
Speaker 2: up with a Christian understanding of the world.
Speaker 1: That's where we would take serious issue. The thing that does.
Speaker 2: Give me concern is there's just flirting with Marxism at times.
Speaker 2: And Marxism is directly antithetical to.
Speaker 1: The Christian world view.
Speaker 2: It is a materialist worldview period, and of course Christianity
Speaker 2: is not has a fundamentally different view of what it
Speaker 2: means to be human, the nature of what sin is.
Speaker 2: So he doesn't call himself Marxist and embrace all that,
Speaker 2: but the flirting with that, I would just say, gives
Speaker 2: me concern.
Speaker 1: On that level.
Speaker 2: You know, he doesn't lay out exactly what the gospel is,
Speaker 2: talks about grace being a sinner. It still feels like
Speaker 2: a left leaning kind of solidarity Heaven on Earth.
Speaker 1: Kind of gospel.
Speaker 2: But that might just be a lack of clarity on
Speaker 2: his part that he clarifies somewhere else, and I haven't
Speaker 2: taken the time to look at that. But in principle,
Speaker 2: I think your distinction, your distinction is fair. So he
Speaker 2: defines capitalism and I want to read it for us,
Speaker 2: And I just again super curious if you agree with
Speaker 2: his take on this. He says, let me just read
Speaker 2: it for us. He says, by capitalism, I mean the
Speaker 2: social system in which the means of production, the stuff
Speaker 2: that makes all our stuff, which includes land, equipment, intellectual
Speaker 2: property like patents and the like, and stock that gives
Speaker 2: you a control and interest in these things, is allowed
Speaker 2: to belong to individual people who have a legal right
Speaker 2: to pass it on to their children and sell to
Speaker 2: other individual people or whatever else they might take a
Speaker 2: mind to do with it. That's it, That's all I mean.
Speaker 2: Is that a fair description of capitalism?
Speaker 1: No? No, okay, to not mix words.
Speaker 3: Well, there's there's just there's quite a bit more to it. Now.
Speaker 3: In part two of this, we're going to offer a
Speaker 3: moral case for free markets, and we're gonna and we
Speaker 3: use the term free markets in that. But I think
Speaker 3: his you know, his his definition it all reflects around
Speaker 3: the right of private property, and there's just there's just
Speaker 3: a lot more to it than that. Now. I think
Speaker 3: private property is central to that. But the problem with
Speaker 3: with I think the view that he's taking is that, yeah,
Speaker 3: I think we have there there can be limits on
Speaker 3: how much, how much you pass on to your errors.
Speaker 3: That's why we haven't inheritance taxes to limit some of that,
Speaker 3: which I don't, which I don't think is unfair. And
Speaker 3: you know, I've got it. We've got you know, a
Speaker 3: good a good family friend that we've done for a
Speaker 3: long time, very very well to do who basically said,
Speaker 3: I'm not giving anything inheritance to my kids because I don't.
Speaker 3: I don't want them to be in a place where
Speaker 3: they're not earning their own way on their own I
Speaker 3: commend them for them. But Sean, what happens when you
Speaker 3: don't have private property is really the problem. Because one
Speaker 3: of the one of the things that our listeners may
Speaker 3: not be aware of, and our and our students are
Speaker 3: not being taught in their history courses is when the
Speaker 3: earliest settlers came to the United States in the Massachusetts
Speaker 3: Bay Colony, they tried socialism for the first year and
Speaker 3: they nearly starved to death. And it wasn't until they
Speaker 3: adopted basically a regiment of recognizing private property and allow
Speaker 3: people to have an interest in their own interests economically
Speaker 3: that they began to flourish, and they began to produce
Speaker 3: enough food to actually feed themselves, and they begin to
Speaker 3: produce other things that they needed by virtue of these
Speaker 3: mutually beneficial exchanges. And I think that the reason, I
Speaker 3: think the other reason that private property matters is because
Speaker 3: you can't produce everything that you need on your own.
Speaker 3: You have to have you have to have others producing
Speaker 3: other things, and we trade and exchange based on the
Speaker 3: things that we're good at. You know, there's a video
Speaker 3: that was done years ago called eye Pencil.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, fact.
Speaker 3: It's a story about a person who tries to make
Speaker 3: a pencil all by himself, and it's this hercule in
Speaker 3: tact that if he tried to put it to scale,
Speaker 3: pencils would probably cost ten to twenty dollars apiece. And
Speaker 3: it was it showed how unrealistic it was to think
Speaker 3: that we can have the things that we have without
Speaker 3: a vibrant, dynamic, market based system. The follow up to that,
Speaker 3: by the way, is called I Smartphone. Oh that's encourage
Speaker 3: our encourage our viewers to take a look at that.
Speaker 3: Both of those videos, they're very enlightening about what's what's involved. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and none, but none of that happens if we don't
Speaker 3: recognize a right to private property.
Speaker 2: Jay Richards talks about that and is but God, greed
Speaker 2: and money, in which he says, you've got to get
Speaker 2: the right material. You've got to transport the right material.
Speaker 2: You gotta weed it together, you gotta shape it, you
Speaker 2: gotta market it.
Speaker 1: Like there's so much more.
Speaker 2: The whole point is a pencil seems simple, but it's
Speaker 2: a lot of cooperation that takes place that one individual
Speaker 2: can't do by themselves.
Speaker 3: Not to be fair, I wouldn't call that community okay,
Speaker 3: like some do. Some want to do that. I think
Speaker 3: cooperation is the right thing. I mean, think about think
Speaker 3: about you know. John Stossel did this years ago in
Speaker 3: a video he entitled that he made entitled Greed, a
Speaker 3: great piece on ABC News, and he goes into the
Speaker 3: grocery store and he said, how did this? This is
Speaker 3: my stake I'm bringing home for dinner. How did this
Speaker 3: get here? And he goes back all the different steps
Speaker 3: and all the different people who had to do their
Speaker 3: jobs and be involved in order to bring the most
Speaker 3: basic food to market. And there were about like twenty
Speaker 3: different steps that were involved, and all sorts of different
Speaker 3: companies that were involved, each seeking their own interest. Well
Speaker 3: at the same time benefiting for.
Speaker 1: The collective good and his enjoyment of the steak. Of course,
Speaker 1: I'm sure he enjoyed it.
Speaker 2: So we're going to come back, like you said in
Speaker 2: part two and make a case for not capitalism market
Speaker 2: what's the term use again, market economy, market economies. But
Speaker 2: there's three kind of big objections that he levels and
Speaker 2: maybe just kind of give us your quick take on this,
Speaker 2: and one of them that he writes on page sixty
Speaker 2: eight is that he says, you know, capitalism doesn't generate
Speaker 2: dynamic innovation in part because people are just one step
Speaker 2: away from financial rumen and so if people had more
Speaker 2: of kind of a social security that was built into
Speaker 2: them and had more insurance, then they be dynamic and innovative,
Speaker 2: and capitalism undermines that.
Speaker 1: And he gives an example. Actually, I thought it was interesting.
Speaker 2: He says Jonah suck when he wanted to get the
Speaker 2: polio and not to become a billionaire, but he just
Speaker 2: wanted to give the property rights away as an example
Speaker 2: of how this can be done for the collective good.
Speaker 1: What's your take on that?
Speaker 3: Well, I think what he's what he's what he says
Speaker 3: is true in the developing world, but not in the
Speaker 3: West where and I would call it crony capitalism that's
Speaker 3: being tried in a lot of the developing world, mainly
Speaker 3: sub Sahara Africa. And I don't think the average person
Speaker 3: is one step from financial ruin now. I think there
Speaker 3: are more people living paycheck to paycheck. That probably is true.
Speaker 3: And it is true that you know, people are people.
Speaker 3: People do get bankrupted by cancer treatments, for example, if
Speaker 3: they're not insured. Now there's there's a lot more discussion
Speaker 3: about that, but capitalism, there's no doubt, and the the
Speaker 3: empirical evidence is beyond dispute that capitalism generates dynamic innovations.
Speaker 3: Now there's just that. I mean, his statement about capitalism
Speaker 3: not doing that, it's just patently false, because I mean,
Speaker 3: we could go we go on and on and on
Speaker 3: about the innovations that market based system that allow people
Speaker 3: to benefit from the fruit of their labors and from
Speaker 3: taking risks, and we forget entrepreneurs are the ones who
Speaker 3: provide the vast majority of jobs. And it's it's companies
Speaker 3: that are under the size under the size of fifty
Speaker 3: that produce like seventy five percent of the jobs in
Speaker 3: the United States, and so without entrepreneurs being willing to
Speaker 3: take risks, and they.
Speaker 1: Risk it all they did.
Speaker 3: And you know, and lots of entrepreneurs fail for a
Speaker 3: variety of reasons, and the ones that succeed often do
Speaker 3: so spectacularly. But remember some of the some of the
Speaker 3: most significant entrepreneurs, Jeff Bezos didn't make a profit for
Speaker 3: probably fifteen years.
Speaker 1: I didn't realize it was that long.
Speaker 3: It was a long time until people trusted the internet
Speaker 3: that there, that their financial information was going to be safe.
Speaker 3: So I think the salk I think is as a
Speaker 3: wonderful example of charity and altruism, you know, good, you know,
Speaker 3: although my understanding is that people who made the COVID
Speaker 3: nineteen vaccines, they did make a nice profit over it,
Speaker 3: that was not the same kind of fair of altruism,
Speaker 3: but that you know, that's just patently false.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think these are the exceptions that kind of
Speaker 2: proved the rule. Like if you were accounting numbers here,
Speaker 2: the amount of people that built businesses like you said,
Speaker 2: that hired other people, created products that worked for the
Speaker 2: collective good were not motivated by these very things and
Speaker 2: would not have been motivated by these very things. So
Speaker 2: you can find an exception here or there isn't going
Speaker 2: to set up a pattern that this will work as
Speaker 2: a whole, because, like you said, it actually never has.
Speaker 2: One of the arguments he makes at least twice in here.
Speaker 2: And you see this a lot in kind of the
Speaker 2: mainstream media is he talks about how we outlawed non
Speaker 2: penal slavery in the US, but that actually developing countries
Speaker 2: slaves grow our chocolate, build our iPhones, work on the
Speaker 2: stadia that will host the World Cup. He says, whatever
Speaker 2: you call our economic system is not fully outgrown the
Speaker 2: slavery that attended its expansion. So should we blame the
Speaker 2: US for enslaving people around the world for our own
Speaker 2: greed because of capitalism?
Speaker 3: Way overstated, and the exceptions don't make the rule. What
Speaker 3: I want to be careful about, Sean, is that we
Speaker 3: don't equate employment with enslavement. Those are two different things.
Speaker 3: And I caught glimpses of where, you know, all the
Speaker 3: examples that he cited were these extremes. You know, he
Speaker 3: didn't cite the examples that way way outnumber them. About
Speaker 3: people who you know, take jobs voluntarily, they leave them
Speaker 3: voluntarily their mutually beneficial exchange. I mean you and I.
Speaker 3: You know, we get we get paid for coming to
Speaker 3: teach our classes. We agree to do that. It's it's
Speaker 3: a mutually beneficial exchange. Nobody's forcing us to do this.
Speaker 3: We can both leave these at any time we want to,
Speaker 3: though I'm hoping that neither of us do. But to
Speaker 3: to e quite employment with being enslaved, I think is
Speaker 3: hugely reductionistic and just doesn't doesn't appreciate just what the
Speaker 3: what a labor market actually is.
Speaker 2: I think he also does not talk about places like
Speaker 2: in say China, and the actual slavery of wigers over there,
Speaker 2: you know, and I wouldn't get if he was right,
Speaker 2: that wouldn't get capitalist countries off the hook for what
Speaker 2: they allegedly do. I think your point still stands. But
Speaker 2: to just single this out as if it's a unique
Speaker 2: problem of capitalism is completely and.
Speaker 3: I'm not I'm not given three cheers for sweatshops, but
Speaker 3: I am given maybe one or two because if in
Speaker 3: the in the in the parts of the developing world
Speaker 3: where those exist, yeah, the conditions are are unethical and
Speaker 3: should be illegal. But to give I mean, if those
Speaker 3: people don't have those jobs, those factories aren't there Jehan,
Speaker 3: what are their alternatives? Alternatives are, you know, begging on
Speaker 3: the street or you know, selling their children or uh,
Speaker 3: you know, you know, prostitution for women. Uh, there there are,
Speaker 3: There just aren't good alternatives. So, yeah, there are things
Speaker 3: problematic about that, and I'm not I'm not I'm not
Speaker 3: an apologist for those sure, but I think those things,
Speaker 3: those do provide meaning, meaningful jobs, and in some in
Speaker 3: some parts of the world, Sean, we families don't have
Speaker 3: a choice but to send their children to work because
Speaker 3: they because they can't feed their families without that. Now
Speaker 3: you might ask, well, why are they in that situation.
Speaker 3: Some of it has to do with the economic system
Speaker 3: that exists in general that doesn't provide innovation. But again
Speaker 3: that's another story. But I don't want to. I don't
Speaker 3: want to. I don't want to equate being employed with being.
Speaker 1: Enslaved agreed fair enough good good distinction.
Speaker 2: So in his part of a Solution against capitalism, and
Speaker 2: you were referencing this earlier, is what it calls private
Speaker 2: sufficiency plus public luxury.
Speaker 1: Let me just read the way he describes it. It's
Speaker 1: on page sixty six.
Speaker 2: He says, I'm personally a big fan of the idea
Speaker 2: of private sufficiency plus public luxury. To quote a mantra
Speaker 2: beloved of some eco socialists, a society where nobody has
Speaker 2: a private swimming pool, but they're well maintained in beautiful
Speaker 2: public pools every few blocks. Few people have cars, but
Speaker 2: public transit is a sci fi dream. I can't own
Speaker 2: thousands of the books I cover it, But every last
Speaker 2: little township library has robust collection and line the fancies
Speaker 2: research libraries in the world. Is that doable what we
Speaker 2: should strive towards and be fans of, or is that
Speaker 2: an unworkable utopian dream?
Speaker 3: Well, I think it's It's a nice idea in theory
Speaker 3: and the public libraries. You know, we just got back
Speaker 3: from New York City not long ago. New York City
Speaker 3: Public Library is astonishing. Yeah, it's fantastic. But private sufficiency,
Speaker 3: it will not motivate people to work harder. So true,
Speaker 3: and this is where you know, yeah, I mean we
Speaker 3: have to take into account the fallen the fallen timber
Speaker 3: of humanity. Although the Bible does not condemn the pursuit
Speaker 3: of self interest, right, and we'll get to that in
Speaker 3: part two. But I think private sufficiency is not enough
Speaker 3: to keep people striving and working and continuing to bring
Speaker 3: new products to market. That Bennett that provide wealth and
Speaker 3: jobs and products and services as people need is not
Speaker 3: going to provide the kind of medical innovation that's going
Speaker 3: to save lives and the public public luxury, I think,
Speaker 3: is subject to what what environmentalists call the tragedy of
Speaker 3: the commons. And generally, when things are held in common,
Speaker 3: nobody owns them, and nobody takes responsibility for it, and
Speaker 3: nobody feels responsibility for them. And that's that's a big
Speaker 3: part of the reason we have issues with the environment
Speaker 3: because the pollution that I create the wind takes that
Speaker 3: to somebody else's neighborhood and I don't have to worry
Speaker 3: about it, right And rivers that are polluted, you know,
Speaker 3: they go to other countries and I, therefore I don't
Speaker 3: have to worry about it. And if it's and think
Speaker 3: about what's happened to public housing today, you know that
Speaker 3: that's that's that's not a good advertisement for the possibility
Speaker 3: of public luxury. Now. Lots of communities have great parks,
Speaker 3: but lots of parks are not privately owned. They're run down,
Speaker 3: and there's there's not they're not nobody. Nobody has an
Speaker 3: incentive to keep them up.
Speaker 2: My wife's family is a big car family, and one
Speaker 2: of the advice they gave us is never buy a
Speaker 2: used car that was a rental because it's your People
Speaker 2: who drive a rental car are going to drive it
Speaker 2: differently because they just turn the keys over to somebody
Speaker 2: else versus one you own and care for because of
Speaker 2: human nature. And I think that makes your point that
Speaker 2: good in theory, but just simply not going to work.
Speaker 2: I like libraries, but there's some books I like to
Speaker 2: own and it means something to me, and I write
Speaker 2: in it, and I go back to it, and I
Speaker 2: think there's not only not something wrong with that, there's
Speaker 2: something good about that that I think he's missing. Biblical
Speaker 2: argument we love you take on this is uh. He
Speaker 2: talks about work and makes the point that he says,
Speaker 2: Jesus the couples work from subsistence entirely. So this passage
Speaker 2: in Matthew six, verses twenty eight through thirty. I'll read it,
Speaker 2: and Jesus says, and why are you anxious about clothing?
Speaker 2: Consider the lilies the field, how they grow? They neither
Speaker 2: toil nor spin. Yet I tell you even Salomon, all
Speaker 2: his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But
Speaker 2: if God so close the grass, the field which today's
Speaker 2: life and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he
Speaker 2: not much more clothe you?
Speaker 1: Owe you of the little faith.
Speaker 3: What's in between the lines on this is that work
Speaker 3: is primarily the means by which God closes us and
Speaker 3: feeds us. And I think I don't think he's decoupling
Speaker 3: work from subsistence. What he's saying is that God will
Speaker 3: ultimately provide for you. He doesn't suggest what the means
Speaker 3: is to provide that.
Speaker 1: Sean, there's interesting point.
Speaker 3: I mean, how do how do how does how does
Speaker 3: God answer the prayer give us this day our daily bread?
Speaker 3: Mainly it's by our jobs that we have m right,
Speaker 3: and I think in part it's by the economic systems
Speaker 3: that we have that generate wealth. I you know, I
Speaker 3: to be honest, I can't remember the last time I
Speaker 3: prayed that prayer except in church when we repeat the
Speaker 3: right because because you know, God has God has provided
Speaker 3: this through my job. Now. He also says later that
Speaker 3: that Jesus also sacramentalized.
Speaker 1: He does work, he does.
Speaker 3: And that you know, in part the reason is because
Speaker 3: our work contributes to the common good, but it also
Speaker 3: is the means by which we take care of ourselves
Speaker 3: and our dependence.
Speaker 1: That's a that's a great point.
Speaker 2: I'd not thought about that, the means by which God
Speaker 2: gives the bread, the means by which God clothes us.
Speaker 2: I think the larger point he's here the end is oh,
Speaker 2: you of little faith. It's about their faith, it's about
Speaker 2: their trust in God. And this is merely an illustration
Speaker 2: to get there, not trying to decouple work from you know,
Speaker 2: subsistence in the way that he wanted to.
Speaker 3: I'd want to ask our author, if he's taking this
Speaker 3: literally like this, why does he Why doesn't he quit
Speaker 3: his job?
Speaker 1: Fair question?
Speaker 3: Why why does he get up and go to work?
Speaker 3: Because he knows that if you don't work, you're probably
Speaker 3: not going to eat.
Speaker 2: Which is the danger of taking passages out of a
Speaker 2: larger biblical context, in which Paul has a lot to
Speaker 2: say in the proverbs about somebody being worthy of their
Speaker 2: wages and specifically working. All right, So I got just
Speaker 2: a few more for you here. At the root of
Speaker 2: some of this, he argues that Christians should view everyone.
Speaker 1: As their neighbor.
Speaker 2: So should we view everybody as our neighbor, and should
Speaker 2: the government not favor citizens over non citizens.
Speaker 3: Well, I think, you know, put it this way, the
Speaker 3: parable the Good Samaritan, Yes, suggests that our neighbor is
Speaker 3: anyone who has a need. That's the definition of our neighbor. Now,
Speaker 3: I think we have we have slightly different obligations to
Speaker 3: different types of neighbors based on relationships. For example, I
Speaker 3: have a different What compassion looks like for my students
Speaker 3: is different than what it looks like for my family,
Speaker 3: right because I'm there are things that I will do
Speaker 3: for my family that I won't do for my students.
Speaker 3: Just include my students in on that, you know, and
Speaker 3: I think it and it also I think depends on
Speaker 3: proximity and nobility and stewardship. Well, I think what he's
Speaker 3: suggesting here is something akin to open borders immigration policy
Speaker 3: that I think fails to take into account that governments
Speaker 3: have limited resources, and that the citizens that pay taxes
Speaker 3: I think have a greater claim on those resources than
Speaker 3: those who do not. Now, those who have need also
Speaker 3: have a claim on the common resources. I think that
Speaker 3: that's true, But I don't think governments are necessarily wrong
Speaker 3: to restrict those exercising those claims to those who are citizens. Now,
Speaker 3: I think that we need to leave some room for
Speaker 3: people who are non citizens as a safety net. I
Speaker 3: think there's for example, I think they ought to be
Speaker 3: provided with medical care Becter. That's a public health concern
Speaker 3: if they're not. But I think that the combination of
Speaker 3: open borders in a welfare state is that prescription for
Speaker 3: I think a stewardship disaster. And I think that's probably
Speaker 3: not quite what's taken into account.
Speaker 1: I think that's fair. I don't know. We could have
Speaker 1: a discussion about that.
Speaker 2: She might be right whether the point of the Good
Speaker 2: Samaritan is that my neighbor is anyone in need versus
Speaker 2: we should not just assume that my neighbor is those
Speaker 2: who are like me and I get along with. But
Speaker 2: it expands my boundaries to include somebody like a good Samaritan.
Speaker 1: Wait a minute, they're my enemies.
Speaker 2: And obviously the Bible's not going to address the age
Speaker 2: of the Internet, where we're aware of needs around the
Speaker 2: world and the impossibility of managing that. I mean, right now,
Speaker 2: my wife, we have a neighbor who's not doing well,
Speaker 2: and she was shopping yesterday and went over and delivered
Speaker 2: food to her and spent an hour just talking with her.
Speaker 2: There's a responsibility to somebody across the street from us
Speaker 2: that you don't don't have equally to somebody on the
Speaker 2: other side of the world. Doesn't mean we don't care
Speaker 2: about them, as we don't give to them, but they're
Speaker 2: still I don't think it's yeah, weaited more heavily. It's
Speaker 2: not possible to treat every single person on the planet
Speaker 2: as a government or an individual, nor should we seem.
Speaker 3: That's sort of what I meant by proximity.
Speaker 1: Okay, fair enough of it. That makes sense.
Speaker 2: So a couple last questions and we'll wrap this up.
Speaker 2: I'm curious what At the very end, he has this
Speaker 2: suggestion about how to move forward to get people to
Speaker 2: become leftists, and he says we need to recruit Christian moms.
Speaker 1: Of all genders.
Speaker 2: So in part, there's the angle of like, do we
Speaker 2: need to recruit more moms than more guys? And this
Speaker 2: is probably such a stereotype, but some would say the
Speaker 2: left can lean towards more feminine compassion, the right can
Speaker 2: lean more masculine with justice, and these are just kind
Speaker 2: of stereotypical ways. Sometimes people will characterize that. So for
Speaker 2: someone in the left that leans into compassion and solidarity
Speaker 2: to say we need more moms, it's interesting because in
Speaker 2: this moment we're seeing more guys, at least in the
Speaker 2: US become more conservative and more women leaning to the
Speaker 2: left a little bit. It's it's an interesting moment to
Speaker 2: say that. So there's that piece. But then Christian moms
Speaker 2: of all genders.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's I mean, we should probably we should just
Speaker 3: point that out and then otherwise leave it alone.
Speaker 2: I do have I have to point when you say that,
Speaker 2: I'm like, I'm sorry you have left the Christian faithful
Speaker 2: farm that is nowhere in Scripture. The idea that a
Speaker 2: biological male can be a mom is it's an insult.
Speaker 1: I hate to say.
Speaker 2: I'm not to an individual person, but to the clear
Speaker 2: teachings of Scripture, Genesis, all the way forward.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he says we need to recruit Christian moms because
Speaker 3: they things. Done's why. That's which we sound, you know,
Speaker 3: which you know, that's sort of what wipes out that
Speaker 3: that masculine feminine characterization that we were going for. But
Speaker 3: you know, I get why he wants to recruit people
Speaker 3: to the cause. But it's a I think that the hard,
Speaker 3: the hard hard left is a really hard sell for
Speaker 3: most people. And I think, you know, I think this
Speaker 3: is why, you know, the candidacy of folks like Bernie
Speaker 3: Sanders never really went anywhere. It's just it's a tough
Speaker 3: sell because people. I think people recognize that incentives matter
Speaker 3: and that you have to account for a reality in
Speaker 3: a fallen world. And mark Markets do really good job
Speaker 3: of that.
Speaker 2: We're going to talk about that in our next episode.
Speaker 2: But I feel in some ways it feels like a
Speaker 2: tug in between my heart and my mind because a
Speaker 2: lot of things he writes, my heart goes, yeah, I
Speaker 2: want solidarity like that. I want to have this universal
Speaker 2: connection with people and care for the poor and the environment.
Speaker 2: Like some of the stories he tells are pulling on
Speaker 2: the heartstrings. Like I get why people are drawn to
Speaker 2: the left. I understand it at the very end, though,
Speaker 2: why I think I'm not is there's no other way
Speaker 2: to put it than it's just divorced from reality. He
Speaker 2: writes on page one sixty two, one of the most
Speaker 2: important things about leftism is that it is a rejection
Speaker 2: of the existing reality in favor of moral values that
Speaker 2: no society has made concrete yet, And I go, yeah,
Speaker 2: it hasn't made it concrete. Why because it doesn't line
Speaker 2: up with human value, it doesn't line up with economic laws,
Speaker 2: it doesn't line up with human nature and our self interests.
Speaker 2: So it's not that we haven't tried it yet, it's
Speaker 2: that we've tried it and it's failed. And that's the
Speaker 2: consistent record. So I'm not a leftist because I don't
Speaker 2: think the Bible supports it.
Speaker 1: And even if I wasn't a Christian.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't be a leftist because it just doesn't match
Speaker 2: up with reality.
Speaker 1: It doesn't work.
Speaker 2: Now, if you have any final comments on that grape,
Speaker 2: but maybe tell us we're going to do a part
Speaker 2: two on the positive case for a market economic.
Speaker 3: Rights written on this on the virtues of quote capitalism.
Speaker 3: That was that was the publisher's title, not mine, And
Speaker 3: and we laid out a moral case for free markets,
Speaker 3: and I think there are there's there's good biblical and
Speaker 3: moral justification for organizing our political economy around as free
Speaker 3: as free a market system as we can have. That's
Speaker 3: not to say that it shouldn't have guardrails. And then
Speaker 3: there's a place for that and it doesn't mean that
Speaker 3: there shouldn't be abuses. But as I think, as we've
Speaker 3: said before, the problem with capitalism is capitalists. See the
Speaker 3: problem with socialism is socialism.
Speaker 1: Mmmm.
Speaker 3: Those are the problems you mentioned. That's intrinsic to the
Speaker 3: system that's right, and whenever it's been tried, it has failed.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm looking for that episode.
Speaker 2: And if you're watching this on either YouTube or listening
Speaker 2: on the Think Biblical podcast, make sure you comment or
Speaker 2: you send in your email thoughts to us Think Biblically
Speaker 2: at Biola dot edu and give us a review.
Speaker 1: Thanks for watching. In the meantime, make sure you think
Speaker 1: biblically about everything.
Speaker 2: Hey, friends, if you enjoyed this show, please hit that
Speaker 2: fall button on your podcast app. Most of you tuning
Speaker 2: in haven't done this yet and it makes a huge
Speaker 2: difference in helping us reach and equip more people and
Speaker 2: build community. And please consider leaving a podcast review. Every
Speaker 2: review helps. Thanks for listening to the Sean McDowell Show,
Speaker 2: brought to you by Talbot School of Theology at Biola University,
Speaker 2: where we have on campus and online programs and apologetic
Speaker 2: spiritual firmation, marriage and family, Bible and so much more,
Speaker 2: we would love to train you to more effectively, live, teach,
Speaker 2: and defend the Christian faith today, and we will see
Speaker 2: you when the next episode drops