Speaker 1: Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitch Show on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: My guest today is Mark Gerson. Mark is an investor, entrepreneur,
Speaker 1: and philanthropist and has a fantastic new book out called
Speaker 1: God Was Right. Hi, Marks, So nice to have you.
Speaker 2: On, Carol, great to be here, Thank you.
Speaker 1: So what was God right about?
Speaker 2: Tell us? Well, God was right about everything? And how
Speaker 2: do we know that?
Speaker 3: Well, we know that now for the first time in
Speaker 3: the twenty first century because the Torah, the Five Books
Speaker 3: of Moses from Genesis to Deuteronomy, was written several thousand
Speaker 3: years ago.
Speaker 2: And what kind of book is the Torah. It's not a.
Speaker 3: History book or a science book or a cookbook. It's
Speaker 3: a guide book. And it offers thousands of psychological insights guidance.
Speaker 3: That means the Bible should not be in the religion
Speaker 3: section of bookstore. It should be in this self help
Speaker 3: section of bookstores. So the Bible offers us practical guidance,
Speaker 3: interesting guidance. I'm just about every question we have today
Speaker 3: and what I seek to do When God was right?
Speaker 3: Was I line up the Biblical claims on several different
Speaker 3: subject several dozen different subjects, ranging from diversity to anti fragility,
Speaker 3: to routine to future orientation. And then I say, here's
Speaker 3: what the Bible says, here's what modern social science says.
Speaker 3: And then what is fascinating is every single claim that
Speaker 3: the Bible has made, or the Bible made three thousand
Speaker 3: years ago, is now in the twenty first century validated
Speaker 3: by modern social science. So the Bible is right about everything,
Speaker 3: which makes it the best book ever written in a
Speaker 3: book worthy of our study and devotion.
Speaker 1: It's funny because I definitely see it a little bit
Speaker 1: as a history book, and I never thought of it
Speaker 1: as a self help book. For example, what are some
Speaker 1: lessons that people should pick up from it?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, very interesting.
Speaker 3: The Bible, I mean, Moses says in Deuteronomy twenty nine
Speaker 3: exactly what it is. He said, this book is written
Speaker 3: for your benefit, and a book written for your benefit
Speaker 3: is a self help book. And the Bible addresses, in
Speaker 3: the most practical terms pretty much everything we do. Let's
Speaker 3: talk about the first thing we do in the morning,
Speaker 3: which is what closes should we put on? What should
Speaker 3: we Well, that's addressed in the Bible. So how is
Speaker 3: it addressed in the Bible. Well, when God sends Adam
Speaker 3: out of the Garden of Eden. He sends him out
Speaker 3: with one thing, garments. Now this is interesting. It would
Speaker 3: be presumed that Adam would leave with garments, just like
Speaker 3: if you said I left my house this morning, or
Speaker 3: I said I left my office. Now I wouldn't say
Speaker 3: I left my office with garments. It could be presumed
Speaker 3: that I did so. So why is God emphasizing garments. Well,
Speaker 3: we don't have to go very far in the tower
Speaker 3: to find out why, because relatively shory. Thereafter we have
Speaker 3: what is quite possibly the most important twenty minutes of
Speaker 3: Jewish history.
Speaker 2: And this is because the great.
Speaker 3: Aged blind patriarch Isaac is about to give the birthright,
Speaker 3: the imprometer of Jewish leadership to one of his twins.
Speaker 3: The problem, he's giving it to the twin that he
Speaker 3: loves the most, but who's completely unqualified to lead the
Speaker 3: Jewish people.
Speaker 2: This is Esau.
Speaker 3: So Rebecca, the real hero of the Bible, the real
Speaker 3: hero Genesis, has about twenty minutes to change all of
Speaker 3: history and to assure that our husband is tricked into
Speaker 3: not giving the birthright to Esau but instead giving it
Speaker 3: to Jacob, who, for his deficiencies up to that point,
Speaker 3: he's still a young man, is much more qualified than
Speaker 3: Esau to lead the Jewish people. The birthright goes to Esau, Carol,
Speaker 3: you and I are not here. If it goes to Jacob,
Speaker 3: we're here. Rebecca has twenty minutes to steer in the
Speaker 3: right direction. What does she tell Jacob to do? She
Speaker 3: tells Jacob put on Esau's less clothes, put on his
Speaker 3: best clothes. Why is best clothes? Isaac is blind, so
Speaker 3: what does it matter what clothes he has on it all?
Speaker 3: And why is best club? Just put in any clothes?
Speaker 3: Because Rebecca has a profound psychological insight, which is they
Speaker 3: we feel like.
Speaker 2: What we wear, and we perform like how we feel.
Speaker 3: So in order for Jacob to convince his father that
Speaker 3: he's Esau, he first has to convince himself. He first
Speaker 3: has to feel like Esau himself. How can he do that?
Speaker 3: Rebecca knew the answer, put on his best clothes. And
Speaker 3: let's fast forward to the twenty first century, where there's
Speaker 3: abundant social science on clothing, and what do we learn well?
Speaker 3: We see in twenty twelve there's an experiment of Northwestern
Speaker 3: University where one cohort of students is given a white
Speaker 3: coat and told it's a doctor's coat. Another cohort is
Speaker 3: given the same coat and told it's a painter's coat,
Speaker 3: and then they're given attention seeking tasks. Those who were
Speaker 3: told it was a doctor's coat do much better. Fast
Speaker 3: forward two years to twenty fourteen, there's an experiment at
Speaker 3: Yale which is a negotiation workshop with some real estate negotiation,
Speaker 3: and one cohort of male students is told come in
Speaker 3: suits and tie. The other is told come however you want.
Speaker 3: Those who come in suits and tie end up with
Speaker 3: vastly more profits in the experiment than those who came
Speaker 3: as they are.
Speaker 2: So what do we.
Speaker 3: See time and again that we feel like how we
Speaker 3: dress and we act like how we feel. And there
Speaker 3: are deeply practical implications to this as well. When people
Speaker 3: wake up and they're they're sad or even feeling depressed,
Speaker 3: what will they normally do? They'll normally put on a
Speaker 3: pair of sweatpants and something like a baggy sweater. What
Speaker 3: does that do? It exacerbates the depression. So what we
Speaker 3: now call fashion psychologists tell people to do. It says,
Speaker 3: put on a floaty dress, put on fun jewelry, put
Speaker 3: on bright colors. Why because fashion psychologists have rediscovered Rebecca's insight,
Speaker 3: which is that if you want to feel a certain way,
Speaker 3: dress that way, and then you will feel that way,
Speaker 3: and then you will.
Speaker 2: Be that way.
Speaker 1: So your wife is a rabbi, could you have missed
Speaker 1: your calling to be a rabbi as well?
Speaker 3: I'm the rabbi's husband. I am so blessed to be
Speaker 3: married to a rabbi and to the particular rabbi to
Speaker 3: whom I am married. So now I love being the
Speaker 3: rabbi's husband. I'm a businessman and entrepreneur, and I love business,
Speaker 3: and I love studying Tora, and I love being married
Speaker 3: to a rabbi.
Speaker 2: I'd recommend it to everybody.
Speaker 1: Only so many rabbis to go around, but that's true.
Speaker 2: So get one when you can, right.
Speaker 1: So, you have so much going on and you do
Speaker 1: so many different things. How did you put a book
Speaker 1: in or what.
Speaker 2: Made you do this? Well?
Speaker 3: I started studying tora every day about twenty years ago,
Speaker 3: and I really started it in the study of the Hagadah,
Speaker 3: which is the guy that leads us through the passover Sator,
Speaker 3: which I think is the greatest book. Word for work
Speaker 3: is very short, ever written, and then what I realized.
Speaker 1: It doesn't feel that short at the let me tell you,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's.
Speaker 3: Another discussion about about how one should use the Hagada
Speaker 3: at the sat.
Speaker 2: That's a good point.
Speaker 3: But I discovered what the Haggadah really was, which is
Speaker 3: it's the greatest hits of the Torah. And it's the
Speaker 3: greatest hits of the Torah because it's the point of
Speaker 3: the Passover Sator. The Passover is our authentic juition year,
Speaker 3: not Russia Shana, It's not even in the Bible.
Speaker 2: In Torah.
Speaker 3: Passover is what the Bible calls the head of months.
Speaker 3: So I'm ahead of months. We're supposed to use the Hagadah,
Speaker 3: the greatest hits of the Torah, to review how do
Speaker 3: we do in the previous year, who am I now?
Speaker 3: And who do I want to be in the coming year,
Speaker 3: and how do I become that person? So it was
Speaker 3: the greatest hits of the Torah. So I found myself
Speaker 3: studying the Torah every day. And so the first thing
Speaker 3: I do in the morning is I run for six
Speaker 3: miles on the treadmill, and I still the tower on
Speaker 3: the treadmill, and then I have a harusa in Jerusalem,
Speaker 3: and we study after that.
Speaker 2: And I love the Tora.
Speaker 3: I study every day, and I've found it to be
Speaker 3: the most interesting, endlessly rich, and entirely practical book ever written,
Speaker 3: with lessons and guidance that is as relevant in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty five as it ever was in the past and
Speaker 3: will continue to be in the future. And then I
Speaker 3: realized that modern social scientists, without knowing it, have been
Speaker 3: asking and answering the same questions that the biblical author did.
Speaker 2: So that's what God writes about.
Speaker 1: We're going to take a quick break and be right
Speaker 1: back on the Carol Markowitch Show. What do you want
Speaker 1: people to take away from?
Speaker 2: God was right?
Speaker 1: What's your main kind of goal for them?
Speaker 3: I want people to take away that the Torah is
Speaker 3: the greatest self help book ever written, that whenever someone
Speaker 3: is questioning something, struggling with something, challenged by something, season
Speaker 3: opportunity no matter how big or how small. And I
Speaker 3: actually have a chapter in the book called No Small
Speaker 3: Things about how in the Torah and modern self science,
Speaker 3: we know there's nothing that small. But no matter what
Speaker 3: someone's thinking about, no matter what question someone is asking,
Speaker 3: whether it's what should I wear in the morning, to
Speaker 3: how much should I give to charity? To how should
Speaker 3: I orient my life in the remaining thirty forty fifty years?
Speaker 3: Whatever it is, the answer is asked, anticipated, and answered
Speaker 3: in the Torah. And what God was right seeks to
Speaker 3: do is to extract the entirely practical meaning from hot hundreds,
Speaker 3: maybe thousands of passages that are really there to guide
Speaker 3: us through our daily lives.
Speaker 1: What do you think people misunderstand about the Bible in
Speaker 1: our modern world? It seems like we don't spend that
Speaker 1: much time on it. Most people are not reading it
Speaker 1: or listening to it on the treadmill. What do we
Speaker 1: not get?
Speaker 3: I think people get the genre wrong. And the first
Speaker 3: step in understanding any book is to get the genre right.
Speaker 3: So if you read a book of science fiction and conclude, oh,
Speaker 3: it's ridiculous. People can't take a spaceship to Venus, the
Speaker 3: answer is you got the GENRENG.
Speaker 2: It's not a science book.
Speaker 3: It's a science fiction book, and people get the GENRENG
Speaker 3: with the Tora.
Speaker 2: All too often.
Speaker 3: People think it's a history book, and they say, well,
Speaker 3: this couldn't have happened before that. It's not a history book.
Speaker 3: The Bible tells us it's not a history book. Vegetation
Speaker 3: is created before the sun early in Genesis, saying this
Speaker 3: is not a history book, it's not a science book.
Speaker 3: That's another example why it's not a science book. It's
Speaker 3: not a cookbook. It's a guide book. So we have
Speaker 3: to read the Torah as a guide book, and the
Speaker 3: stories in the Torah, the laws in the Torah. Everything
Speaker 3: in the Torah exists, sure to telecoherent narrative, but that's
Speaker 3: not the main purpose. The main purpose of the Torah
Speaker 3: is to help each of us live happier, better and
Speaker 3: more meaningful lives today.
Speaker 2: And that's true whenever today.
Speaker 3: Is what do you worry about with regards to the
Speaker 3: Tora anything, what keeps you up?
Speaker 2: Well, there is a.
Speaker 3: Chapter in the book on fear and uh and so
Speaker 3: the what the Torah teaches us about fear. So the
Speaker 3: Bible tells us eighty five times more than tells us
Speaker 3: anything else.
Speaker 2: Do not fear afraid, Yeah, yeah, eighty.
Speaker 3: Five times, which is interesting because the Bible never tells
Speaker 3: us to do things we would do in the absence
Speaker 3: of guidance. So the Bible never says, for instance, you
Speaker 3: shall love your children, because we all do. We know
Speaker 3: no one needs to tell us to do it. So
Speaker 3: it tells us to do things that are unnatural, and uh,
Speaker 3: and and that and and so what is it so fear?
Speaker 3: It tells us do not fear eighty five times because
Speaker 3: we'll naturally fear. The Bible tells us do not fear.
Speaker 3: So in the book. What I extract from this biblical instruction,
Speaker 3: which is really throughout all the books of the Bible,
Speaker 3: is only fear immediate thing. So if Allian's charging at you,
Speaker 3: that's a good time to be afraid. It's an It's
Speaker 3: a quite proper evolutionary response is to be afraid. Everything
Speaker 3: else demote to a concern. And when something is demoted
Speaker 3: from a fear to a concern, what does.
Speaker 2: That enable us to do?
Speaker 3: It enables us to think rationally about it and to
Speaker 3: decide intelligently. So I think, as Lionel Trilling put it,
Speaker 3: we all have a moral obligation to be intelligent and
Speaker 3: governing our fears is probably the first step in that process.
Speaker 1: Is there a way to reorient society back towards God
Speaker 1: or towards religion in a way that doesn't involve, say,
Speaker 1: the government. Do you think that there is any any
Speaker 1: move that we can make as a people to get
Speaker 1: us back to where we're supposed to be.
Speaker 2: What a great, great question.
Speaker 3: Well, there was this kind of awesome thing that happened
Speaker 3: last year, there was an authentic religious revival in Kentucky
Speaker 3: and uh, and I think it's a beautiful moment. I
Speaker 3: think America needs a religious revival. Yeah, And I think
Speaker 3: that religious revival can come with a discovery or a
Speaker 3: rediscovery of the Torah. And h and about how entirely
Speaker 3: practical the Tower is. So I think if people realize
Speaker 3: just how practical the Tower is, that it's not anachronistic
Speaker 3: work of history or ancient anything, but it's entirely earned, contemporary,
Speaker 3: and totally relevant, people will fall in love with the
Speaker 3: Torah and they'll seek its guidance. And when they seek
Speaker 3: its guidance, they'll want to understand its passages and ultimately
Speaker 3: follow its guidance.
Speaker 2: And the towra is clear.
Speaker 3: There's this fascinating passage where it talks about the God
Speaker 3: of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob,
Speaker 3: leading us to ask, why isn't just say the God
Speaker 3: of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and skip the other two ovs?
Speaker 3: Because what the Tower is telling us, is there are
Speaker 3: different ways to approach God. Abraham had one way, Isaac
Speaker 3: had another, Jacob had another. And what do we learn
Speaker 3: from that?
Speaker 2: That there are.
Speaker 3: Different ways to approach God within a faith, and there
Speaker 3: are different ways in which faiths can approach God. So
Speaker 3: no matter what faith, someone has, approach God through that faith.
Speaker 3: And I think it would be great to have an
Speaker 3: American religious revival. I think America is right for it.
Speaker 3: America is totally suited for it.
Speaker 2: And I'm all for it.
Speaker 1: Make America Christian again, make.
Speaker 2: America religious again.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and and and let let people discover the the
Speaker 3: beauty and the truth and the eternal and contemporary relevance
Speaker 3: of the Torah. And when people whether people come to
Speaker 3: the Torah through Judaism or Christianity, it's all good. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. I usually ask people what their plan B would
Speaker 1: have been in life, like when they are, you know,
Speaker 1: an economist or something. I say, you know, what else
Speaker 1: would you might have done? But you seem to have
Speaker 1: done Plans A, B and C. Is there a path
Speaker 1: you haven't taken that you would maybe regret not taking.
Speaker 2: Well, that's such a good question.
Speaker 3: Well, America is such a great country for so many reasons,
Speaker 3: and one of the reasons is the amount of opportunities
Speaker 3: that create. So I feel very blessed with the opportunities
Speaker 3: that America has given me, particularly the opportunity to meet
Speaker 3: and marry my wife, but other things as well, for instance,
Speaker 3: to study the Torah and write about it, to launch
Speaker 3: businesses and start to co found United Houtsalid Israel and
Speaker 3: African Mission Healthcare. And I've just been so blessed with
Speaker 3: these opportunities and just so grateful for the opportunity to
Speaker 3: have written.
Speaker 2: God was right to share.
Speaker 3: The wisdom and the truly contemporary relevance of the Torah.
Speaker 3: And I just hope people understand that the Tora is
Speaker 3: it's the best ever self help book, and it asks
Speaker 3: and answers all the questions that anyone anyone has about anything.
Speaker 1: What advice would you give your sixteen year old self?
Speaker 2: Very good question. I'll give a very practical answer.
Speaker 3: And there's actually a chapter in the book on education
Speaker 3: and another chapter on the limits of education, so it's
Speaker 3: really only the answer is only tangentially related to the book.
Speaker 3: But the advice I would give to my sixteen year
Speaker 3: old self would be there are only four things you
Speaker 3: get out of a college experience. Those four things are
Speaker 3: the professor who inspires you, the subject that captivates you,
Speaker 3: the friends you make, and.
Speaker 2: The girl or boy you fall in love with.
Speaker 3: Okay, those are the only four things you can get
Speaker 3: of a college experience, and those four things exist at
Speaker 3: hundreds and undreds of colleges and universities. So I just
Speaker 3: I think it's so sad when I see young people,
Speaker 3: and even sadder when I see their parents fixated on
Speaker 3: the supposed or alleged importance of their child going to
Speaker 3: one school, when in fact, those are the only four
Speaker 3: things that someone can get out of the college experience.
Speaker 3: Each four is amazing, and each four is offered at
Speaker 3: hundreds and hundreds of places. So I would tell my
Speaker 3: sixteen year old self and sixteen year old now that
Speaker 3: it's really important to work hard. It's really important to
Speaker 3: have an ethical core and a moral center. And if
Speaker 3: you take that the ethic of hard work, and that
Speaker 3: moral core and that developing sense of mission, you can
Speaker 3: take it anywhere. And if you get rejected from this
Speaker 3: college and that college and ten others, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 3: It will not affect your life chances. So go to college.
Speaker 3: Seek a professor that'll inspire you, a subject that castivates you,
Speaker 3: make ten to fifteen good friends, and fall in love
Speaker 3: with a terrific.
Speaker 2: Boy or girl, and you'll have a great experience.
Speaker 1: It's funny because I don't even count on two of those.
Speaker 1: I would really I just root for my kids to
Speaker 1: go to college, to make a lot of friends, and
Speaker 1: fall in love with somebody, hopefully get married shortly after college.
Speaker 1: That's sort of the goal for me with the whole
Speaker 1: college experience.
Speaker 2: If they happen to.
Speaker 1: Have an inspiring professor or to learn something along the way,
Speaker 1: that will be like complete bonus.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, if you look at the course catalogs
Speaker 3: of these colleges. Now, of course there's a lot of
Speaker 3: nonsense in these course callogs, but there's a lot of
Speaker 3: really good stuff too, and so students can learn and
Speaker 3: they're I mean, what a great opportunity to be given
Speaker 3: these years when all thats expected of you is to
Speaker 3: learn to make friends and to grow.
Speaker 2: It's just an incredible opportunity exactly.
Speaker 3: And I lovely you said, Carol about getting married young,
Speaker 3: because I have a chapter in the book on the
Speaker 3: Biblical formula for love and marriage and what they said
Speaker 3: from this, yeah, direction, the story of Isaac and Rebecca,
Speaker 3: how they just decided to marry each other, and the
Speaker 3: logic of how they decided to marry each other and
Speaker 3: how they came to have the happiest marriage in the Bible.
Speaker 2: That logic leads to early marriage.
Speaker 1: So what is it? Give us the hint?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Okay, So Eliezer, who's so Abraham sends his servant, Eliezer
Speaker 3: to go find a wife for Isaac, and he says
Speaker 3: to Eliezer, go to Haran.
Speaker 2: Why Haran because Abraham.
Speaker 3: Years before had made souls in Haran, so it was
Speaker 3: a place where whatever making souls means, it was a
Speaker 3: place where souls could be cultivated. So he says, go
Speaker 3: to Haran. Eliezer goes to Haran, and she's a young
Speaker 3: woman approaching, and he says she was very The text
Speaker 3: tells us she was very fair to look upon. And
Speaker 3: we know one other thing about her, which is she's
Speaker 3: exceedingly generous. She brings water for Eliezer and all of
Speaker 3: his camels, and estimated like dozens and dozens of trips
Speaker 3: of water. So Eliezer knows three and only three things
Speaker 3: about this woman who is Rebecca. One is that she's
Speaker 3: from Haran. Two she's very fair to look upon, and
Speaker 3: three she's ridiculously generous. On the basis of those three
Speaker 3: and only three characteristics, he says she's the woman for
Speaker 3: my man, Isaac. And then Rebecca is given the opportunity herself,
Speaker 3: do you want to go with Eliezer and marry Isaac?
Speaker 3: And by the way, people who say the Bible is sexist,
Speaker 3: they don't understand the Bible.
Speaker 2: They don't know what they're reading. This is one of
Speaker 2: many examples.
Speaker 3: Several which I cover in the book of How the
Speaker 3: Bible is the great work of female empowerment. Rebecca is
Speaker 3: given the choice herself, do I marry the guy or
Speaker 3: do I not marry the guy. She only knows two
Speaker 3: things about the guy. One is that Isaac is rich,
Speaker 3: so he's a good provider, and two.
Speaker 2: They loves God. Oh.
Speaker 3: She says, yes, I will marry him. And then the
Speaker 3: text tells us in Genesis twenty four sixty seven, he
Speaker 3: married her. She became his wife, and he loved her.
Speaker 3: And the order of things in the Bible is always important.
Speaker 3: So what does the Bible tell us? First identify two
Speaker 3: or maybe three characteristics in the other person, and whether
Speaker 3: she likes warmer cold weather vacations, whether his friends are
Speaker 3: funny or not two of them. Identify two or three
Speaker 3: genuinely important characteristics. Then just get married. Don't think too
Speaker 3: much about it. Just get married. Once it's two or
Speaker 3: three boxes have checked, then start doing spouse like things.
Speaker 3: So he married her, she became his wife. Must be
Speaker 3: two different things, because I listened separately. So he married her,
Speaker 3: Then she became his wife. What does it mean to
Speaker 3: become a wife or a husband? Probably iterant acts of
Speaker 3: giving right and then love follows. In modern culture, we
Speaker 3: have it the other way around. We have this absolutely yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: we have this ridiculous notion of falling in love. You
Speaker 3: don't fall in love. You might fall on your face
Speaker 3: or fall on the ground, but you cultivate love.
Speaker 2: You don't fall into it.
Speaker 3: You cultivate. It's quite the opposite. That's what the Bible
Speaker 3: tells us. Identify two or three characteristics, get married, start
Speaker 3: doing spouse like things, and then you will experience a
Speaker 3: love that will last forever.
Speaker 1: I hope that teens listening can can take these lessons,
Speaker 1: but I think that might be a hard sell for
Speaker 1: some of them.
Speaker 3: Well, it's it's you know, the so the Bible says it,
Speaker 3: but then modern social science totally validates it. Is that
Speaker 3: every alternative to that very simple and clear biblical formula has.
Speaker 2: Proven to be a catastrophe.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I have the data in the book on
Speaker 3: how all of the alternatives have failed. In the data,
Speaker 3: living together bad idea. Serial dating one boyfriend girlfriend after
Speaker 3: the next into one's thirties or even later leads to
Speaker 3: unhappiness in all kinds of very specific ways.
Speaker 2: And I have a whole chapter in the book on that.
Speaker 1: We're going to take a quick break and be right
Speaker 1: back on the Carol Marcowitch show. Well, I love this conversation,
Speaker 1: and I think your book is just fantastic. You are
Speaker 1: just such an interesting person. Leave us here with your
Speaker 1: best tip for my listeners on how they can improve
Speaker 1: their lives.
Speaker 2: What a great point.
Speaker 3: I think the best tip on how you can improve
Speaker 3: your life it's right there in the Bible. It's identify
Speaker 3: a characteristic that you want to add to your personality
Speaker 3: or your character, So identify it right now. So let's
Speaker 3: say someone says, I wish I was more giving, I
Speaker 3: wish I was more generous, I wish I was kinder,
Speaker 3: whatever it is, identify one characteristic of growth and of change.
Speaker 3: Then the Bible tells us, again totally validated by modern
Speaker 3: social science, how to develop that characteristic. Just start doing
Speaker 3: the thing. In other words, fake it till you make it.
Speaker 3: So if you say I wish I was more giving,
Speaker 3: you don't have to plunge the depths of your soul
Speaker 3: to figure out why you're not giving as much charity
Speaker 3: as you want. Give a little more tomorrow today, give
Speaker 3: a little more Wednesday than Tuesday, and keep going. And
Speaker 3: what the Bible tells us, and modern social science confirms,
Speaker 3: it takes about three months before that characteristic becomes a
Speaker 3: part of you. So I would say, just identify that
Speaker 3: characteristic that you want to become part of you, that
Speaker 3: you want to grow into and grow with, and then
Speaker 3: just start doing the thing. And then whatever that thing is,
Speaker 3: whatever that characteristic is, it will become part of who
Speaker 3: you are. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I love that. Do the thing. He is Mark Gerson,
Speaker 1: His book Is God was right up anywhere books are sold.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Mark.
Speaker 2: Thank you Carol, so such a great conversation. Really appreciate it.