Episode 226
PASTOR DOUG WILSON - The Basic Laws of Stupidity: Institution Building and the Dank Right During Trump 47
Pastor Doug Wilson joins for the 6th edition of Will & Doug's Book Club, this time with a discussion about the impact of human folly as articulated in Carlo Cipolla's book, "The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity." The book explores the nature of stupidity, its pervasive presence across all demographics, and its implications for institutional building and leadership.
Pastor Wilson & I explore how economic policies, such as tariffs, intertwine with the challenges of navigating contemporary societal dynamics, particularly for those engaged in institution-building. Pastor Wilson's perspective offers a valuable framework for understanding the interplay between individual actions and broader institutional health.
Key Takeaways:
- Pastor Doug Wilson emphasizes the significance of recognizing and managing human stupidity within institutions, as it is an inherent challenge that leaders must confront.
- The conversation delves into the concept that the number of foolish individuals is consistently greater than one might anticipate, regardless of the demographic being examined.
- Wilson discusses the necessity of institutional immune systems that can withstand heretical teachings and moral decay to ensure the survival and integrity of churches and organizations.
- The episode highlights the importance of loving one's neighbor and enemy, while also recognizing the need for church discipline to maintain the moral fabric of the institution.
- A distinction is made between 'apostles' who seek to disrupt and 'refugees' who come seeking help, emphasizing the need for churches to welcome those in need while guarding against harmful influences.
- The dialogue explores how societal and economic pressures can lead to feelings of disenfranchisement among young men, and how a supportive community can help mitigate these challenges.
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
"The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity" - by Carlo Cipolla
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Transcript
Foreign.
Speaker B:Hello, my name is Will Spencer and welcome to the Will Spencer Podcast.
Speaker B:This is a weekly show featuring in depth conversations with authors, leaders and influencers who help us understand our changing world.
Speaker B:New episodes release every Friday.
Speaker B:I'm feeling better after last week.
Speaker B:Thank you for your prayers.
Speaker B:However, time is a bit short for these next couple weeks, so these introductions will be as well.
Speaker B:This week I'm thrilled to present my conversation with Pastor Doug Wilson, which just wrapped a moment ago live on YouTube and X.
Speaker B:For our latest episode of Will and Doug's Book Club, we discussed the wonderful little book of economic satire with a good bit of truth mixed in Carlos Chipola's the Basic Laws of Human Stupidity.
Speaker B:From there, Pastor Wilson and I transitioned to discussing institution building, Trump's tariffs, economic warfare, and listening to and sanctifying the dank right as, Lord willing, we move into an era of increased economic opportunity and prosperity.
Speaker B:This was one of my favorite conversations with Pastor Wilson so far, and I hope you're blessed by it as well.
Speaker B:If you enjoy the Will Spencer Podcast, thank you.
Speaker B:Don't forget to like this episode, subscribe and share with friends.
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Speaker B:To go deeper, subscribe to my substack or click Buy Me a Coffee in the show notes.
Speaker B:And please welcome this week's guest on the podcast, the Senior Minister of Christchurch in Moscow, Idaho, Pastor Doug Wilson.
Speaker B:Pastor Doug Wilson, welcome back to the Will Spencer Podcast.
Speaker A:Great to be with you.
Speaker B:I'm very excited for what I think is the 6th edition of the Will and Doug Book Club because, all right, in the past we've talked about Mere Christendom and Idols for Destruction and American Milk and Honey Case for Christian Nationalism.
Speaker B:I pulled these all off my bookshelf.
Speaker B:Deeper Heaven and then Men and Marriage.
Speaker B:Here we go.
Speaker A:There we go.
Speaker B:So I've enjoyed all of our conversations about these books very much.
Speaker B:And today after our last conversation, which was about Idols for Destruction, you recommended another book which is somewhat smaller, the Basic Laws of Human Stupidity.
Speaker B:And this brilliant.
Speaker B:This came with a very strong.
Speaker B:This was a delightful little book, by the way.
Speaker B:I was reading this on an airplane, I was having a good laugh through it.
Speaker B:So maybe you could talk a little bit about this book and some of the aspects of it.
Speaker A:Sure.
Speaker A:I was on vacation a few years ago, maybe five years ago, and one of the things we do when we're on vacation is we try to find bookstores or used bookstores and Nancy goes and shops for useful things and I go browse in the bookstore and I We were in a small town in north Idaho and I came into this bookstore and saw this book on, on the shelf and I thought, what, what on earth is that?
Speaker A:That I picked up, picked it up and started browsing there in the store and made an immediate conquest of me.
Speaker A:This book is like a couple of other books from decades ago.
Speaker A:The Parkinson's Law, for example, or the Peter Principle.
Speaker A:Parkinson's Law work expands to fill the time allotted for it.
Speaker A:The Peter Principle is that people get promoted to their level of incompetence.
Speaker A:They do a good job, then they do a good job, and they keep getting promoted until they stop doing a good job and then they stay there for the next 30 years.
Speaker A:In other words, satiric books, funny books, humorous books that have a serious point to them.
Speaker A:And this book was very much in that vein.
Speaker A:It was, oh, this is funny.
Speaker A:This is hilarious.
Speaker A:Oh, this is true.
Speaker B:Yes, he's not messing around with this.
Speaker A:No, it's not messing around.
Speaker A:So basically, he's got basic laws of human stupidity, the first one being the number of stupid people is always larger than you think.
Speaker A:And he defines stupidity as someone who takes an action that harms you but also does no appreciable benefit to himself or perhaps even harm to himself.
Speaker A:Which is, he distinguishes that from the, the activity of a burglar, you know, a bandit or a burglar or a thief is following some sort of rule guided behavior.
Speaker A:You have a stereo and he wants a stereo and, and so he breaks into your house to take your stereo.
Speaker A:But because it's rule guided behavior, people can anticipate it.
Speaker A:They can build a security system that, you know, they can defend themselves against it because it's, it's destructive behavior that at least makes sense.
Speaker A:And Chipola's argument here is that stupidity makes no sense.
Speaker A:There, there's, and, and consequently there are, there is no way to defend yourself against it.
Speaker A:You, you can't, you can't come up with a system that anticipates how a stupid person will come in and wreck things.
Speaker A:And, and there are other laws that are really.
Speaker A:This is not a, an aristocrat snarking at the blue collar types.
Speaker A:That's right, because one of his, one of his laws is that stupidity, the, the number of the stupid people which is always larger than you expect, is constant in every demographic group.
Speaker A:So he said, if you've got a group of janitors at a large corporation or a group of Nobel Prize winners, the number of stupid people which will be larger than you think is going to be the same in both groups or comparable in both groups.
Speaker A:And you think, okay, this is just beyond cynical, but it's also very helpful.
Speaker A:It's helpful to understand that some things don't have an explanation.
Speaker B:Yeah, the stupid people are.
Speaker B:It's kind of framed as a force of nature.
Speaker B:Like it's just something that we exist within that we have to account for and that we all deal with every day.
Speaker B:And there's really no explanation for it, particularly because the stupid person harms others at no appreciable gain to himself.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And he has a quadrant.
Speaker A:He's an Italian economist who wrote this book initially in English as sort of a Christmas present for his friends.
Speaker A:It got translated into a number of other languages and was an international bestseller, but was never translated, was never published in, in, in English until just recently.
Speaker A:And, and he divides everybody up into one of four quadrants.
Speaker A:There's the, there's the intelligent person who does good for himself and good for others.
Speaker A:There's the helpless person who doesn't know how to fend off the, the predations of the stupid person or the, or, or the burglar.
Speaker A:The burglar who helps himself and hurts others.
Speaker A:And then the stupid person who just.
Speaker B:Hurts everybody, including himself.
Speaker A:Including himself.
Speaker B:Those are those.
Speaker B:I think, I think Chipola calls them the super stupids.
Speaker B:Most people are on the line.
Speaker B:They don't actually cause harm to themselves, they just cause harm to others with no benefit to themselves.
Speaker B:And that whole quadrant is the super stupid.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Anyway, if you want a good chuckle on an airplane or, you know, it's, it's a great, great book.
Speaker B:But I imagine it had particular relevance for you as an institution builder.
Speaker B:And that's why reading it, I was so interested to talk with you about it because yes, we all live in our day to day lives and interact with the general public or bureaucracies and we encounter stupid people in various degrees.
Speaker B:But as an institution builder, anyone who builds an organization knowing that stupidity will be a force that you have to contend with must be a real challenge.
Speaker B:Obviously no one in Moscow is stupid, so that's prepared.
Speaker A:Yes, I've got news for you.
Speaker B:Fake news, fake news, fake news.
Speaker A:So yeah, if you build institutions, there's a great, a great Seinfeld line.
Speaker A:People, they're the worst.
Speaker A:So if, if you build a school or a college or a publishing house or you know, the, the, a number of the things that have taken root here in Moscow, this really is something that you have to contend with.
Speaker A:You have to budget for it because you're Hiring people.
Speaker A:And, and you, the what, however fine you set the, the mesh on your filters in the interview process, there will be people who get through the inter.
Speaker A:Interview process because the interviewer, you know, you've got a group of, you've got a band of interviewers.
Speaker A:Well, maybe some of them are stupid.
Speaker A:Maybe, maybe.
Speaker A:And of course, you know, one of the things you have to factor into this is if a, if a thousand people bought this book and read it, a number of them would misapply.
Speaker A:The, the lessons.
Speaker A:They would, I think of that, that, that Nazi meme.
Speaker A:Are we the baddies?
Speaker A:You know.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:For the movie or TV show, whichever it was.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Are we the baddies?
Speaker A:Well, there will be.
Speaker A:Out of the thousand people, some people ought to be asking am, am I one of these stupid people?
Speaker A:And the chances are it's possible.
Speaker A:That's possible.
Speaker A:You, one of the things you want to do is budget for that.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And, and so consequently, when you manage institutions, you have to factor in the reality that somebody somewhere is going to do something that is destructive to himself and to everybody else.
Speaker A:There's another line in one of P.G.
Speaker A:woodhouse's books where he says you have to real.
Speaker A:A leader has to recognize that in the people that he's overseeing, somebody is always up to something.
Speaker A:And he says the rest of them are up to something else.
Speaker B:That's, that's a Woodhouse line.
Speaker B:So I think it's, it's interesting that the book helps clarify for readers who perhaps are not stupid what it actually means to be a good person.
Speaker B:In his own, I guess he's an economist, so he expresses it not necessarily in strictly moral terms, but in economic terms, that you benefit yourself and that you benefit others.
Speaker B:And so the ability to see that say, oh, okay, my function within this organization or the many groups that I'm a part of, families, et cetera, is to seek to benefit others at not necessarily a cost to myself and perhaps also at benefit to myself, maybe in that order.
Speaker B:Do you think that this book can help stupid people identify the fact that they're being stupid?
Speaker A:I, I do.
Speaker A:I.
Speaker A:They would.
Speaker A:There would have to be.
Speaker A:Obviously he's speaking as an economist and obviously I don't think a stupid person can come to that realization without the Holy Spirit doing some work.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:But let's say there's, there's prep, you know, wise people, loving people dealing with this person.
Speaker A:And then, yeah, it's conceivable that someone could come to the point of repentance because a number, because that's what's going to be required because the, the stupidity that he's talking about really is a moral thing.
Speaker A:It's like.
Speaker A:It's like the fool in Proverbs, where the fool has said in his heart, there.
Speaker A:There is no God.
Speaker A:Well, we're not talking about the absence of intellectual rpm.
Speaker A:Some of the greatest fools in the human race are people who are highly intelligent, they've won prizes, they've published great books.
Speaker A:They are very insightful in certain areas.
Speaker A:So the fool in biblical terms is a moral category.
Speaker A:And if you read this book, even though it's written by an economist who's not appealing to scripture or anything like that, you can say the stupidity he's talking about is a moral category and consequently can be repented.
Speaker B:Oh, okay.
Speaker B:That provides some hope.
Speaker B:And what's funny about the book is that the word stupid just lands with such a thud, but it's such an accurate term for what he's describing.
Speaker B:And that's kind of the delight of the book, is that he's handling this comical term, but he's defining it in a very precise and useful way.
Speaker A:Yeah, don't sugarcoat it.
Speaker A:Just tell him.
Speaker B:That's right.
Speaker B:That's right.
Speaker B:And you can, you can actually feel in the book his grief over the whole thing.
Speaker B:Like he's trying to maintain a sort of academic remove from the subject because he's an economist and he's got graphs and charts and, you know, Greek letters and everything, and yet you can tell he's talking about something that has.
Speaker B:Has impacted him, his life with a great weight.
Speaker A:That's that.
Speaker A:That's right.
Speaker B:So I wanted to.
Speaker A:Not only.
Speaker A:So it's affected everybody's life and, and everybody has.
Speaker A:Has to deal with this.
Speaker A:And, and what this does is gives you a grid or a metric for being able to process what's happening.
Speaker B:So for the, so for the leaders who are listening, what the, the consistent theme since Trump's election, however many six months ago, something like that has been, this is a.
Speaker B:This is a reprieve.
Speaker B:It's a respite.
Speaker B:It's an opportunity to build.
Speaker B:And I'm seeing a growing tide of commentators in our space who seem to be focusing on going local, sort of withdrawing from larger political kind of kind of battles for the moment at least, and emphasizing.
Speaker B:Emphasizing building locally.
Speaker B:So, as a man who's built a number of institutions yourself, and we have this moment where everyone seems focused on institution building, which I think is a great blessing, what sort of recommendations would you give to men who are seeking to build their own institutions in this.
Speaker A:Unique moment we have, yes, one of the advantages of acting locally, take a, take a, play a page from the leftists playbook.
Speaker A:Think globally, ask locally.
Speaker A:Christians should be, think intergalactically, act locally, love it.
Speaker A:The cosmos belongs to Christ.
Speaker A:But obedience happens in the day to day.
Speaker A:Obedience happens where you're living.
Speaker A:And one of the great advantages of such direct action, planting a church, starting a classical Christian school, you know, doing this sort of thing where you live, that sort of direct action is valuable because you don't have to get permission from anybody.
Speaker A:You don't have to get anything through Congress, you don't have to get anything through the state legislature.
Speaker A:You don't have to get, you know, just do it.
Speaker A:Just go share the word, preach the word, Rent a, rent a storefront and start preaching.
Speaker A:You know, there'd be, and I think that we have to take full advantage of this respite that we have.
Speaker A:We don't know how long it's going to be.
Speaker A:There's going to be pushback or some sort of counter at some point.
Speaker A:And it's going to be formidable, I believe.
Speaker A:And I would much rather have a lot of Christians in a lot of places with a lot of institutions that they care about defending rather than, you know, I'd rather have thousands of guerrilla bands all over the country than one huge standing army.
Speaker B:And I think that suits the American character as well or sort of decentralized nature.
Speaker B:Right, so that's great.
Speaker B:So, so, so to tie into that, a couple weeks ago, maybe it was last week you talked in your blog about, you know, institutional immune systems.
Speaker B:And it seems like that's kind of swimming around some of these conversations.
Speaker B:Not only institutional internal immune systems, but institutional external immune systems from conditions.
Speaker B:So maybe we can talk a little bit about that idea because I thought that was very relevant right now.
Speaker A:Yes, institutions, like people require an immune system.
Speaker A:If a church or denomination or a college or whatever the institution is, doesn't have the ability to fight off infections, then it's going to die.
Speaker A:And it might be a slow agonizing death or it might be a rapid death, but they're going to, going to die.
Speaker A:And in the, in the arena that I'm talking about, the death could be one of two diseases.
Speaker A:Basically it's disease of the head heresy or disease of the heart morals.
Speaker A:Basically think of a church that denies the Trinity or church that denies the deity of Christ or denies the uniqueness of Christ.
Speaker A:That's, that's a heretical teaching that is going to kill that church.
Speaker A:It's going to.
Speaker A:They're done.
Speaker A:Stick a fork in it, they're done.
Speaker A:Then you have the churches that a man leaves his wife and nothing happens.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:A man leaves his wife and marries his secretary and nothing happens.
Speaker A:The wife, unhappy, drifts off to another church, but he's just, He's.
Speaker A:And he's still the deacon.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:That is the first step to the Alphabet.
Speaker A:People that, you know, you're.
Speaker A:You can't.
Speaker A:How.
Speaker A:How on earth are you going to say no to anything now?
Speaker A:Right, yeah.
Speaker A:You can't.
Speaker A:So is the.
Speaker A:The evangelical church tolerated heterosexual sin, open heterosexual sin, for a long time, and all of a sudden, presto, here we are in Sodom.
Speaker A:How'd we get here?
Speaker A:Yeah, well, basically the.
Speaker A:The fence against the immune system is church discipline.
Speaker A:You cannot protect an institution in this fallen world without saying no.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:You have to say no to certain heretical doctrines, and you have to say no to certain immoral practices.
Speaker A:And if you don't say.
Speaker A:If you don't say no, then you're going to be overrun by the people who want to do all the things that you thought could just be suppressed without saying anything.
Speaker B:I'm glad that you mentioned the open toleration of heterosexual sin, because as I've attempted to reconstruct the recent past of evangelicalism, having arrived newly to this world somewhat unexpectedly, that seems to be one of the most likely explanations that I've been able to come up with.
Speaker B:Sort of how we got here, that the sexual revolution found its way with, like a great flood into the church, and it was just kind of openly tolerated and allowed.
Speaker B:And that was the beginning of maybe not even a slippery slope, but a cliff that has enabled so much other heretical and moral compromise to find their way into the church.
Speaker B:Is that a correct assessment?
Speaker B:That seemed to be.
Speaker B:To be the most likely.
Speaker B:Okay, please go ahead.
Speaker A:Very much so.
Speaker A:Basically, my father used to say, lord, bless him.
Speaker A:He said, sins are like grapes.
Speaker A:They come in bunches.
Speaker B:Oh, there you go.
Speaker A:They come in clusters.
Speaker A:And you see that in the New Testament.
Speaker A:Overwhelmingly, when the apostle Paul starts talking about sin, he'll.
Speaker A:You'll have a whole cluster of them.
Speaker B:Yeah, right.
Speaker A:He does that in Romans.
Speaker A:He does that in Galatians 5.
Speaker A:He does that in.
Speaker A:In Corinthians.
Speaker A:He does that.
Speaker A:You know, and you notice that particular sins keep bad company.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Envy and malice go together.
Speaker A:Envy and malice are.
Speaker A:Are twins.
Speaker A:So you have fornication, adultery, uncleanness.
Speaker A:You know, all of these things are clustered together.
Speaker A:And so consequently you can't Let.
Speaker A:You can't admit one without bringing in the whole batch.
Speaker A:And that's going to happen.
Speaker A:We have many proverbs, the camel's nose under the tent, the, you know, the.
Speaker A:That's the.
Speaker A:That's the game that has been run on us.
Speaker A:And because we were asleep at the switch when it came to obeying the Bible, that's what it boils down to.
Speaker A:We didn't want to obey the Bible when someone that we knew our whole lives had a troubled marriage and it broke up and then he married again.
Speaker A:And nothing was biblical about it.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Nothing was biblical about it, but we just sort of let it go because we know him well.
Speaker A:That's an argument that the homosexuals can use.
Speaker A:Yeah, I know him too.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:He's.
Speaker A:He's done a lot of good, you know, he's.
Speaker A:And, and so if we, if we start playing the that was then, this is now game, we're.
Speaker A:We're going to discover that all kinds of sinners can play.
Speaker A:That was then, this is now.
Speaker B:So it seems there's a category of sins that have just kind of socially, I mean, not even socially collectively in America and the west has just decided to overlook.
Speaker B:That's not really a sin anymore.
Speaker B:But now we have to somehow bring the car back onto the road.
Speaker B:And from an institutional level, is it possible to do that within an already existing institution?
Speaker B:I'm thinking of, for example, Joe Rigney's book the Sin of Empathy, which I haven't read yet, but he'll be coming on the show to talk about in about a month.
Speaker B:Seems like some of that is, is.
Speaker B:Is wrapped up.
Speaker B:But is that possible to do or do we just have to build new institutions?
Speaker B:I go back and forth on this myself all the time.
Speaker A:I think, I think some institutions are too far gone.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:But I do.
Speaker A:I also believe that some are salvageable.
Speaker A:And so, for example, it would be hard for me to believe, for example, to, to name names.
Speaker A:It'd be hard for me to believe that Wheaton could be turned around by this point.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:It was looking pretty grim for a bit there for Grove City College, a stalwart conservative college that started to do the woke wobble, but they just have a new president and it looks very promising.
Speaker A:So, you know, Grove City looks like they have turned around or are turning around.
Speaker A:So there is hope for that, for that sort of thing.
Speaker A:But you shouldn't bank on it, you know, if you compromise, I think the mortality.
Speaker A:I'll put it this way, I think the mortality rate is very high and, And So when you're associated with an institution and a prudent assessment thinks we're not going to be able to turn this around, then it's time to think about planting a freshman, planting new institutions.
Speaker A:So 8 out of 10 times new institutions, 2 out of 10 times, maybe you're going to be able to salvage it and pull it from the fire.
Speaker A:Now, in our particular circumstance, it was just simpler and easier to start new institutions here in Moscow, which, which we have done.
Speaker A:But I'm a big fan of those who have successfully, you know, pulled their institution back from the woke left or the progressive left or the liberals.
Speaker B:Can you think of, can you think of some other institutions?
Speaker B:I'm thinking of the work that Trump is starting to do, the Doge is starting to do, trying to bring some of the governmental institutions, church institutions are, are one set of things, I think, I think our government, our, our state institutions, you know, have been so massively corrupted.
Speaker B:The IRS comes to mind, the Federal Reserve.
Speaker B:Do you think Trump and his administration will be successful in meaningfully changing any of the institutions that we all sort of collectively live under?
Speaker A:It's, judging from all the yelling that's going on, I think, I think so.
Speaker A:I think that Trump and Elon really have gotten in between the hogs and the bucket and, and the noises that we're hearing indicate that they're, they're not pleased at all about it.
Speaker A:One of the ironies is if you look at Meg Basham's book, Shepherds for Sale.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:What, what Elon is doing with those is also going to have an impact on cleaning up the church because a bunch of the corruption money, the, the money that was being paid into the church to drag us left, that's going to dry up.
Speaker A:Some of that, a significant part of that is going to dry up also.
Speaker A:So I, I, I think that there are moderate signs of hope.
Speaker B:I, I tend to agree.
Speaker B:I think that Trump and Elon are making a lot of people and JD Vance are making, and Pete Hegseth and Kash Patel are making a lot of people very uncomfortable.
Speaker B:And, and it's kind of baffling to think that Trump hasn't even been president for three months yet.
Speaker B:What are we coming up on three months in a, in a week or so?
Speaker B:Does it, I don't know, is it just me or does it seem like time has slowed down in a way?
Speaker B:I remember his first administration seemed to kind of rip by, and this one, it seems like every day is a new, is a new war that.
Speaker A:Yeah, yes.
Speaker A:And basically Every once in a while, he or one of his people will say or do something atrocious, and I'll go, oh, man, good.
Speaker A:But most of the time, it's Christmas every morning, so.
Speaker B:Okay, so I've been wanting to ask because there are a lot of very smart people and we all kind of feel this way.
Speaker B:The tariffs conversation.
Speaker B:Can we talk about that for a minute?
Speaker B:Because this seems to be one of the things that just, it's kind of flying over my head in many ways.
Speaker B:The complexity of the discussion, the geopolitical aspects of it.
Speaker B:I can say for sure that I, that I've known from my travels overseas that while, you know, you have the American left that's so heavily focused on Russia, Russia, Russia, and the extreme left, and the extreme American right is focused on Israel, Israel, Israel.
Speaker B:Go around the world and the whole world will say the same thing.
Speaker B:China, China, China.
Speaker B:Why won't you wake up?
Speaker B:And it seems like Trump has finally woken up to that reality.
Speaker B:So maybe we can talk about that for a moment.
Speaker A:Yeah, the thing, the thing that I think we, I would want to press on.
Speaker A:Everybody is in this whole tariff tumult, okay?
Speaker A:That's what this is.
Speaker A:In the whole tariff tumult.
Speaker A:We're actually talking about two things, not one.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:All right.
Speaker A:The, the one issue is, are tariffs a good economic policy when everybody is more or less behaving?
Speaker A:Okay, so, for example, when Carolyn Levitt said that basically Mexico or Canada was going to pay the tariff, was going to.
Speaker A:No, it's a, a tariff really is a tax.
Speaker A:So I'm with Thomas Soul on that.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:So if, if we tariff certain Canadian products, then Canada is going to raise their prices to cover the tariff.
Speaker B:That's right.
Speaker A:And if an American consumer buys that Canadian product, he paid the tariff through the raised price.
Speaker A:Okay?
Speaker A:So when it comes to, to that reality, taxes are tariffs.
Speaker A:Okay?
Speaker A:Taxes.
Speaker A:And I'm, I'm with the, I'm with the libertarians, I'm with the free traders on, on that issue.
Speaker A:The second thing that we're talking about is tariffs as cudgel or tariffs as club.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:Or put another way, tariffs as the art of the deal negotiating technique.
Speaker A:Okay?
Speaker A:So if, if Trump says, I, I think the tariff on China now is at 125, something like that, but let's say he jacks the tariffs up to 400%.
Speaker A:That, that is not a, an economic policy.
Speaker A:That's an act of economic war.
Speaker A:Okay?
Speaker A:It's not exactly bombing Shanghai.
Speaker A:It's, you know, it's, but it's A hostile act, basically.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And it's a hostile act intended to force them to make concessions that they don't want to make.
Speaker A:All right, they, and if so, what I'm urging everybody to, to do is I'm saying, okay, I'm with the free traders on the economic argument about tariffs, but I want to wait and see what all the tariff levels are when Trump is done.
Speaker A:So let's say, let's say we fast forward to six months from now and let's say Argentina has zero tariffs on us, we have zero on them.
Speaker A:Let's say Israel has zero tariffs on us and we have zero on them.
Speaker A:Let's say Canada has come down to 5% and we have 5% on them.
Speaker A:But.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:And at the end of the day, I want to look at the actual numbers where the tariffs actually are and see was, was Trump the most significant president in a long time in bringing tariffs down?
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:And he, he did it by threatening tariffs.
Speaker A:Right, right.
Speaker A:He, he did it by applying tariffs.
Speaker A:Now if, if we had permanent tariffs on everybody at, you know, extreme, extreme levels, then I think that that's going to wind up hurting everybody.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:But I don't think that that's what he's doing.
Speaker A:I think this is simply his style of smash mouth negotiation.
Speaker A:And I'm, I'm willing to wait and see the results of that negotiation.
Speaker A:If, if we come out the other end with everybody's tariffs higher, I would call it a loss.
Speaker A:But if we come out the other end with the average tariff level greatly reduced, then why wouldn't the free traders be happy?
Speaker B:Do you think it's possible to get to a place that we were, I think before the income tax where tariffs were all outward facing and there was no internal income tax on the American people.
Speaker B:Do you think it's possible to get there?
Speaker B:I'd love to believe that it is, but I'm not so sure.
Speaker A:Yeah, but just think about all the things that we thought were impossible that Trump just is going to go ahead and do.
Speaker A:He's, he's certainly talked about eliminating the income tax and I've heard the, that there's been discussion of eliminating the income tax for people who earn under a hundred K or something like, but most people.
Speaker A:Let's say that he does that then even though the tariff, even though an outward facing tariff is a tax on the Americans who buy foreign products, if there is no irs, then what you have, you've replaced one tax with another, but it's not an intrusive tax because you don't have to fill out a form.
Speaker A:You don't have to report your income.
Speaker A:You don't have to.
Speaker A:There's nobody prying into your private life.
Speaker A:All they know is that you bought a pallet of lumber.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And you paid the tax by means of the price that's baked in.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:So yes, I think that that kind of trade off is quite possibly in the works.
Speaker A:And it would go a long way to answering the argument of the people who say, look, a tariff is a tax.
Speaker A:I'd say, yeah, for most people a tariff is a tax, but it's a better tax than the income tax.
Speaker B:Well, I think it was, I was listening to something.
Speaker B:Maybe it was a lecture or a podcast you were on, or a Doug and Friends you were talking about.
Speaker B:You were talking about how the, the taxes need to be below 10%, something like that, about how it's taking, it's competing with the Lord some.
Speaker B:Maybe you can unpack that idea.
Speaker B:For, for people who haven't heard that, heard that particular point before, there's, there.
Speaker A:Are two things I, I'm basing an argument out of.
Speaker A:For 1 Samuel 8, when the people come to Samuel and they want a king, and, and they request a king like the other nations.
Speaker A:And I believe that because in Deuteronomy 17, in the law of Moses, God places certain restrictions on the king.
Speaker A:When you get a king, the king must not multiply gold, he must not multiply horses, he must not multiply wives, and the king has to write out a copy of the law for himself.
Speaker A:So Deuteronomy in the Mosaic law regulates the behavior of a king.
Speaker A:So that tells me that it wasn't a sin for the Israelites to request a king.
Speaker A:And I take it that they were wanting a king like the other nations.
Speaker A:Roundabout.
Speaker A:And Samuel interpreted it as they were asking for a king who would behave in a tyrannical way.
Speaker A:And in first Samuel eight, Samuel gives a bunch of warnings.
Speaker A:If you do this, if you persist in this, you're going to get a king who takes your sons, who takes your daughters, who takes a tenth of your flocks, who takes a tenth of your crops.
Speaker A:And what that king is doing is he's demanding as much as God does.
Speaker A:God requires a tithe.
Speaker A:And I think that when Romans 13 says that we are to pay taxes, to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, well, at what point does the tax turn into theft?
Speaker A:You know, pure old fashioned theft.
Speaker A:So when Ahab took Naboth's vineyard, why didn't he just call it a Zoning change or, you know, why didn't he call it land reform or taking land from the 1% or, you know, a lot of euphemisms that we cover that.
Speaker B:Well, environmental regulations.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:Correct.
Speaker A:So what Ahab did was.
Speaker A:Was a violation of the Ten Commandments.
Speaker A:He stole.
Speaker A:Even though he was a civil magistrate, he was a thief and a murderer.
Speaker A:So if the, if the Bible tells us to pay our taxes and the Bible also tells us that the civil magistrate can steal, there obviously has to be a threshold or a dividing line where the one becomes the other.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:And I draw that line at 10%.
Speaker A:So when, when the civil magistrate starts thinking that he needs as much money as God does, he's swollen, he's overflown his banks.
Speaker A:Over overflowed his banks.
Speaker B:So in a sense, the, the initiation of the income tax and the Federal Reserve, that was symptomatic of a nation that had abandoned much of its Christian teaching on money and its relationship to the.
Speaker B:To the magistrate.
Speaker A:Correct.
Speaker B:So do you.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:So I guess the, the hope would be, even though the Trump administration is not a Christian administration, they may bring us back more closely, not necessarily for Christian reasons for the, but for the good of the population, that perhaps they could bring us back more a Christian.
Speaker B:It would be a theonomic alignment with, with biblical principles for, for how we address that.
Speaker A:Correct.
Speaker A:Even though Trump is.
Speaker A:He's culturally a Christian, he's just baptized, but in terms of he's not an evangelical Christian who bases his day on the Bible.
Speaker A:Yeah, I think we all agree, but as I pointed out during the election to people, if.
Speaker A:If Harris won the election, there would be be precisely zero evangelical Christians in the White House, in the West Wing, it, in the administration.
Speaker A:And I said, if Trump wins this election, the place is going to be crawling with them.
Speaker A:There will be believers everywhere.
Speaker A:And I think that that's played out.
Speaker A:And so consequently, even though Trump is not himself a stalwart believer, he has absolutely made room for them.
Speaker A:And personnel is policy.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:Yeah, personnel definitely makes possible policies that would otherwise be impossible with a completely different set of personnel.
Speaker A:Correct.
Speaker B:So we've talked about institutional immune systems.
Speaker B:We've talked about taking back institutions from sort of morally compromised, rebuilding new institutions.
Speaker B:And it seems that one of the sets of institutional immune systems has been against sort of feminism and its consequences.
Speaker B:And what I'm also seeing now, and this has been a surprise to me, is a rising tide of what we might call fascism on the right.
Speaker B:I think that's probably an accurate term as well.
Speaker B:So you have an institutional immune system against sort of as a feminist view, a collectivist view.
Speaker B:But now you also have this, and I think the word is actually used, fascism, monarchy also gets used.
Speaker B:That's rising amongst young men on the right.
Speaker B:And this has been a surprise to me because I looked at a lot of that as an expression of tension during the Biden administration that it was a pressure cooker, a lid kept on a pressure cooker.
Speaker B:Everyone was very angsty about that for good reason.
Speaker B:And I thought, you know, when the, When Trump won the election, maybe we'll get a chance at a big sigh of relief, but it only seems to have gotten worse, so maybe we can start talking about that a little bit.
Speaker B:Because, I mean, I've got.
Speaker A:I've got a similar take to yours, which I have not given up on yet.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:And because as you mentioned, Trump has been in office for coming up on three months.
Speaker A:Yeah, let's.
Speaker A:I'll.
Speaker A:I'll.
Speaker A:I believe that a lot of the Nietzschean angst in what I would call the dank right was the result of several things.
Speaker A:It was the result of the pounding that young white men were taking, getting kicked in the head over and over and over.
Speaker A:You can't go to medical school, you can't get into law school.
Speaker A:You can't.
Speaker A:You know, the, the world of DEI turned on.
Speaker A:Instead of saying, we're going to have a colorblind admissions process to whatever, let ships fall where they may.
Speaker A:The affirmative action movement that morphed into metastasized into war on whites, basically, a lot of young white men were disenfranchised and alienated from their own people, from their own economy, from all, all of these things and took it ill.
Speaker A:They.
Speaker A:They just.
Speaker A:They.
Speaker A:They.
Speaker A:So, but what, what you're talking about is there's two elements to it.
Speaker A:One is all the abuse, the persecution, the name calling, the.
Speaker A:You're the bad guy in the piece.
Speaker A:The white people are the cancer of the planet.
Speaker A:There was that part of it, but then there was the economic part of it, okay?
Speaker A:The, The.
Speaker A:The outsourcing of jobs, jobs going overseas, factory shutting down.
Speaker A:The.
Speaker A:The things that young white men used to gravitate to and excel at and, you know, were.
Speaker A:They were being squeezed out or shuttered or, you know, and, and so the economic pinch point and the.
Speaker A:Coupled with the unrelenting hostility of official.
Speaker A:The official culture against them produced.
Speaker A:They started looking around for who's gonna, who's gonna help me navigate this?
Speaker A:Unfortunately, the evangelical church was pastored by the winsome.
Speaker A:All right?
Speaker A:So everybody's got to be winsome.
Speaker A:Everybody's got to be a beta.
Speaker A:Beta males are the most like Jesus.
Speaker A:And, and we're going to attract young people that way.
Speaker A:And so big Eva and big swaths of the conference circuit.
Speaker A:Reformed evangelical world really were in the longhouse.
Speaker A:It really was, really was bad.
Speaker A:And, and so that aroused a lot of additional hostility because these young men, when they look to the church for how does the Bible help me navigate this terrible situation?
Speaker A:What would Christ have me do?
Speaker A:All they heard was a slightly modified version of what they would get in a TED Talk.
Speaker A:So sermons were TED Talks with Bible verses attached.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And so a lot of these young white men grew angry and cynical and bitter, and you.
Speaker A:And were ready to blow.
Speaker A:And I think that was the condition running up to the election.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A: The: Speaker A:Now, let's say that there is, and I don't know the future, and I don't know if Trump can pull it off, and I, I don't know the future, but let's say we're a year from now, and there really is a Trump boom.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:An economic boom.
Speaker A:DEI is gone.
Speaker A:All of, you know, all of this stuff is.
Speaker A:The crazy is gone, is outlawed.
Speaker A:The, The American military is once again a career option for people who don't want to be attacked for being white or being male or whatever.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And the economy takes off like a rocket ship, let's say that happens.
Speaker A:And it's one year from now, I believe a lot of this angst goes away.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:One of the reasons why the, the Middle east is such a, a boiling pot of turmoil is because there is no employment for young men.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:Yeah, very much so.
Speaker A:There, There, there is no economic opportunity.
Speaker A:And when there.
Speaker A:So young men have a lot of energy, they have a lot of aggressiveness.
Speaker A:And what a booming economy does and what capitalism does, understood in a Christian way, what capitalism does is it channels that energy in ways that are constructive for everybody.
Speaker A:Everybody's blessed.
Speaker A:But men are going to be dominant no matter what.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:And this is some.
Speaker A:Even though, even though some of these young, angry young men think that Gilder, George Gilder is a bad guy.
Speaker A:Gilder is the one who taught me that men are going, men are going to be dominant no matter what.
Speaker A:And your only choice is to have.
Speaker A:Whether that dominance is going to be constructive or destructive.
Speaker A:And what we were headed for if, if Harris had won the election, I believe that we would have had an explosion of young men.
Speaker A:Yeah, there would have been, I think There would have been a big mess because that energy has to go somewhere.
Speaker A:If Trump turns the economy around, then I think that energy, somebody's going to say to, you know, young Smith here, why are you down in your mom's basement typing?
Speaker A:There's.
Speaker A:They're hiring.
Speaker A:Right, Right.
Speaker A:Why don't you do this?
Speaker A:Why don't you do this?
Speaker A:The.
Speaker A:And no longer can you say, no, I can't because I'm white.
Speaker A:And they won't, they, they won't hire a white guy or they won't promote a white guy.
Speaker A:That's going to be, that's going to be gone.
Speaker A:So we'll, we will see.
Speaker A:It's possible that in Trump's first term, he was, he had a promising economy that got shut down with the pandemic.
Speaker A:And I believe that he got played by the, by the COVID Mongers and I.
Speaker A:But I think 47 appears to be tackling everything a lot differently than 45.
Speaker A:And so consequently, my hopes for an economic resurgence, which is going to pull the bitterness away from a lot of young men.
Speaker B:So in a post, I agree with you and I pray that you're right, sir.
Speaker B:So in a post winsome evangelical world where you have Reformed churches that now are quite appealing to men, but men are carrying a lot of this bitterness with them as they, as they enter into churches.
Speaker B:So I think we see it, I think we feel it.
Speaker B:It's online.
Speaker B:I think one of the great tragedies is, is the belief that your online behavior doesn't feed back into your offline life.
Speaker B:I don't think we're two separate people when we're with our anonymous Twitter account than when we are.
Speaker B:When we're elsewhere, it just kind of goes, how can Reformed churches.
Speaker B:And I spoke with Dr.
Speaker B:Longshore about this.
Speaker B:I think it was a couple of weeks ago about J.C.
Speaker B:ryle's book holiness.
Speaker B:I think that there's a sanctification challenge here.
Speaker B:In fact, I know there is.
Speaker B:So how can Reformed churches build their own institutional immune systems against this bitterness?
Speaker B:Because it's not coming with you.
Speaker B:In fact, at my church, we're reading the Great Divorce right now, and that's a, a wonderful example of all the things that you can't bring with you to heaven.
Speaker B:And so how can, how can Reformed churches build their own institutional immune systems against some of these ideas in the interim, unless and until the Trump boom, God willing, happens?
Speaker A:Yeah, so it's a great, great question because there's going to be a lot of refugees, people showing up at the church and they're going to track stuff in and.
Speaker A:And it's the church's task to get them, you know, adjusted, cleaned up a bit, and.
Speaker A:And have them take off their shoes.
Speaker A:You can't track that in here.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And like you said, bitterness is.
Speaker A:Is one of those things, and it can see to it.
Speaker A:It says in Hebrews 12, see to it that no root of bitterness spring up, and by it many be defiled.
Speaker A:Yep.
Speaker A:So bitterness is a root.
Speaker A:And if you've ever dug up a tree stump before, you know that roots go all over the front.
Speaker A:It's just this little stump like this, and there are roots all over the front yard.
Speaker A:And pretty soon you're having to call in a backhoe to get this thing up.
Speaker A:Well, bitterness is like that.
Speaker A:The roots, the tentacles.
Speaker A:The roots go everywhere.
Speaker A:And the author of Hebrews says, let no root of bitterness spring up, and by it many be defiled.
Speaker A:One wise person has said that bitterness is like eating a box of rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die.
Speaker A:It just doesn't work.
Speaker A:Whoever wronged you thought you were nothing.
Speaker A:And your bitterness is saying you agree with that.
Speaker A:The person who made you bitter mistreated you.
Speaker A:And now by your bitterness, you're mistreating yourself.
Speaker A:So you really want in this time to be putting wholesome food on the table, teaching the way of Christ not as a feminine, gentle Jesus, meek and mild approach, but the first and second great commandments are love the Lord your God, and to love your neighbor as yourself.
Speaker A:The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience.
Speaker A:Of these three, faith, hope, and love, the greatest is love.
Speaker A:So it's not squishy to teach the law of God.
Speaker A:It's not squishy to say that Paul says in Romans, owe no man anything except for the debt of love.
Speaker A:Love does no harm to its neighbor.
Speaker A:Therefore, love is the fulfillment of the law.
Speaker A:And so consequently.
Speaker A:And then we need to teach people that certain things are inconsistent with Christian charity, with Christian love.
Speaker A:One of the things I found most helpful, my dad wrote a.
Speaker A:A book, how to Be Free from Bitterness, which has been distributed hundreds.
Speaker A:It's in like 28 languages or something, so.
Speaker A:Crazy number of languages.
Speaker A:Hundreds of thousands of copies.
Speaker A:And I would.
Speaker A:I would advise churches that have an influx of bad, shattered young people coming into your church to have that be one of the things in the welcome basket.
Speaker A:You know, when you.
Speaker A:Welcome aboard.
Speaker A:And this is, we want to love God and love each other and love the people who do us wrong.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And that's when you're coming To Christ.
Speaker A:That's what you're coming to learn how to do.
Speaker A:One of the things that the online trolls will say and they'll take.
Speaker A:You know what?
Speaker A:I'm just now talking about love.
Speaker A:As the Beatles taught us, all you need is love.
Speaker A:And I've become a flower child somehow.
Speaker A:But the kind of love I'm talking about is not an effeminate.
Speaker A:Here, walk all over me again, quoting my dad.
Speaker A:My dad said the Bible says that you have to love your neighbor.
Speaker A:You're to love your wife, and you're to love your enemy.
Speaker A:And he's.
Speaker A:He.
Speaker A:He taught me that everybody you meet all day long is one of those.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:All right.
Speaker A:It's either your enemy or your wife or your neighbor.
Speaker A:And you can't get off the hook by saying, who is my neighbor?
Speaker A:By the.
Speaker A:You know, you're supposed to love.
Speaker A:Now, the.
Speaker A:The thing that is amazing about this is when you love your neighbor.
Speaker A:Excuse me, when you love your enemy, the presupposition in that is that you're supposed to have them.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Now, what the winsome guys have done, what the men in the longhouse have done, is they have taken the commandment to love your enemies as a command to have no enemies.
Speaker B:Got it?
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And that's simply, simply false.
Speaker A:I'm supposed to behave in such a way as to generate opposition.
Speaker A:And I maybe have said this on your podcast before, but I like saying it.
Speaker A:So no reformation is ever accomplished to the polite sound of background golf applause.
Speaker A:Sure.
Speaker A:Nobody has said, yes, we are wicked and twisted and perverse, Please come fix us.
Speaker A:That's.
Speaker A:That's how it goes.
Speaker A:So if anybody stands in the pulpit and opens the Bible and reads the text and says, these are the words of God, this is what God says.
Speaker A:You are loving God by that action, and you are loving the people in front of you.
Speaker A:Because the loving thing is to tell the truth, to speak the truth, and you want to speak it in a particular manner.
Speaker A:As Paul says in Ephesians, speaking the truth in love.
Speaker A:See, the two things need to go together.
Speaker A:But the soft squish evangelical left says that if you have an enemy at all, it was almost certainly your fault.
Speaker A:Yes, okay.
Speaker B:In not so many words.
Speaker A:Yeah, right.
Speaker A:You.
Speaker A:You did it by being insufficiently winsome.
Speaker A:It used to be.
Speaker A:It used to be the vile back in the day, you know, 50 years ago, it used to be that you were vile if you said or did vile things.
Speaker A:But today, for the soft evangelical left, you're a vile person.
Speaker A:If you say something that makes somebody else say and do vile things.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:So if I, if I'm in a conversation with you and I say, you know, little boys can't become little girls, something like that.
Speaker A:And we're just.
Speaker A:And let's say someone snips that and puts it online in a way that goes viral.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And then we go to YouTube and we read the comment thread below, this viral clip a year or two ago that happened to my dear wife, Nancy.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:Where someone, someone took a clip of her talking about a spanking incident with one of our kids, and it had a million or more.
Speaker A:You know, it was views all over tarnation.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:Which made the rest of the family quite jealous.
Speaker A:Nancy, the, the firebrand.
Speaker A:So that, that happens and people out there go nuts.
Speaker A:And then the squishy evangelical says, you're the problem because you triggered that.
Speaker A:You made that happen.
Speaker A:So you're a vile person.
Speaker A:Nancy was a vile mother.
Speaker A:She was a vile teacher because she was saying something that made other people go completely bonkers.
Speaker A:And of course, going completely bonkers can always be arranged.
Speaker A:So as soon as you define the vile Christian is the one who makes all the non Christians fall over going, ow, ow, ow, then that's what they're going to do.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:That's how the world works.
Speaker A:And as soon as we get to the understanding that that is a play that they're running on us and we come to the liberating moment of not caring.
Speaker B:You're free, Right.
Speaker B:And this is where the sin of empathy kind of comes in, right?
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker B:The emotional manipulation.
Speaker B:So you, you've kind of.
Speaker B:So this is a question I've kind of wanted to ask and you've kind of touched on it a little bit.
Speaker B:I, I think so.
Speaker B:You.
Speaker B:No reformation happens in response to gentle golf.
Speaker B:APPLAUSE There's a.
Speaker B:I don't mean confrontational in a belligerent way, not in a sinful way, but in a way to confront culture, to speak truth and to culture and to adopt, contra, the winsome.
Speaker B:The Moscow mood has been to be more, say, confrontational in a righteous way, I would say.
Speaker B:And so I've had many conversations with good men and good women that have a longer history in evangelicalism than I do.
Speaker B:And they've sort of given me a sense of context.
Speaker B:And they say that, you know, the, the dank right that we're seeing right now, the, this guy, this, this tone that I think many agree is far over the line in terms of Christian behavior.
Speaker B:They, they will say that.
Speaker B:Well, you know, Doug Wilson, he set the stage for that, and it was his book, the Serrated edge.
Speaker B:And it was that approach that he really pioneered these techniques, this approach, this posture that now all these guys, they're.
Speaker B:They're blameless.
Speaker B:They're.
Speaker B:They're sort of taking it.
Speaker B:That's.
Speaker B:It's his, his fault for the way that they're responding.
Speaker B:And it sounds to me that that's sort of a similar idea that, like, this is a play in a way that's being run.
Speaker B:To say that like, well, you do it this way and then they iterate on that in.
Speaker B:In perhaps sinful ways.
Speaker B:Oh, but it's, it's really the serrated edge's fault.
Speaker A:Yeah, I think that's a great question, and it's on point.
Speaker A:And I would, I would.
Speaker A:And I'm not unused to that question.
Speaker A:That's a, That's a common allegation.
Speaker A:Look, you.
Speaker A:You were the pioneer, and it, it doesn't help matters when some of the people who are misbehaving over there will say that themselves.
Speaker A:I, I first, you know, I first learned this from Doug Wilson, and my hat's off to him, and too bad he turned into a boomer con.
Speaker A:But, but I, I first learned it from him.
Speaker A:And credit where credit's due.
Speaker A:Now back to my praise of Adoles, you know.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So this, the, the problem with this analysis is that you, you see, it.
Speaker A:It's a, It's a logical fallacy, I think that cries out for a name.
Speaker A:Probably does.
Speaker A:It's an informal fallacy.
Speaker A:But the apostle Paul taught free grace.
Speaker A:Okay?
Speaker A:You turn to Christ, look to Christ with, apart from works of the law, you're justified by faith alone.
Speaker A:Apart from works of the law.
Speaker A:Now, one of you will say to me, then, okay, why not do evil that good may come?
Speaker A:Okay?
Speaker A:So when you look at the book of Romans, he's laying out his gospel of free grace.
Speaker A:And then he points to certain ways that that gospel will be distorted.
Speaker A:Okay?
Speaker A:And he says, somebody's going to say this.
Speaker A:Either as an adversary, what you're saying leads to antinomianism, or someone's going to pick it up and run and become an antinomian in the name of Paul.
Speaker A:Okay?
Speaker A:So Paul's going to teach free grace, and an antinomian will pick it up and run with it, or a legalistic Pharisee will pick it up and accuse Paul with it.
Speaker A:See, look at what you're causing.
Speaker A:Paul's response to that is their condemnation is just.
Speaker A:That's not what I said.
Speaker A:That's not what I teach.
Speaker A:That's not where it goes.
Speaker A:How can we who died to sin still live in it?
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:The answer is just laid out very clear.
Speaker A:I'm not saying that the people who are distorting what I'm saying to justify their sin, their condemnation is just.
Speaker A:Those who fail to recognize that I am unalterably opposed to that kind of distortion, their condemnation is just.
Speaker A:Someone is.
Speaker A:Someone threw this charge at Martin Luther.
Speaker A:If you teach this gospel of free grace, then people are just going to say, I'm forgiven.
Speaker A:I can go send up a storm.
Speaker A:And Luther's response was, let them.
Speaker A:They answer to God.
Speaker A:I answer to God for what I'm saying and what I'm doing.
Speaker A:And I do believe that I have to make it clear that the dank right is radically misunderstanding what we're doing, what we're about.
Speaker A:And they're not my prime pupils, or are they're not my star pupils that are going on to show the deeper way.
Speaker A:They are kids who flunked out of the class.
Speaker A:And, and they said, well, I studied, I studied under Wilson.
Speaker A:I learned all these tricks from him.
Speaker A:And someone comes to me and says, what about Schwarz over here?
Speaker A:He says he learned all his.
Speaker A:He, he says he was your former student.
Speaker A:He says he learned all this from you.
Speaker A:I'd say, sure.
Speaker A:Would you like to see his grade book?
Speaker A:Would you like to see the grade book?
Speaker B:I think.
Speaker B:And that's, that was sort of how I felt about it.
Speaker B:And that was always my response.
Speaker B:Because my belief is, as a man, I'm responsible for what I say and for what I do and for my work.
Speaker B:And I can't point to what I learned.
Speaker B:There's a, there's a, there's a classic like, don't do drugs, don't smoke.
Speaker B:A non smoking ad from like the 80s or something like that, where a kid is smoking a cigarette in his room, his dad comes in, is like, who taught you this?
Speaker B:And the kid's like, I learned it for watching you, dad.
Speaker B:I learned it for watching you.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And the dad has this moment of conviction and like, okay, sure.
Speaker B:So you have a kid in his room, you know, from his father.
Speaker B:At a certain stage of life, we can accept that.
Speaker B:But when we're talking about conduct as adult men who are responsible for our own lives and our own worlds, our, our own words, and in the, in the public square, let's say it, it lands squarely on you and your relationship with God.
Speaker B:Don't look at the other guy.
Speaker B:Like, look at yourself.
Speaker B:And I'm grateful to know that Luther Said the same.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And, and so if, if someone, if, if some online troll is attacking other people's reputations.
Speaker A:And, and, and he's doing some crusader with laser eye eyes thing, but he's attacking individuals by name.
Speaker A:He, he's just personal destruction.
Speaker A:And then he says he learned it from me.
Speaker A:I'd say I sign everything I write.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:I don't, I don't hide behind an avatar.
Speaker A:So just lesson number one.
Speaker A:You're, you're not doing it.
Speaker A:So basically, I think that I, I.
Speaker A:There is one, there is one aspect of this to which I'm very grateful to the dank guys on the right.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:Because they have done what very few, no one was able to do up to this point, which is that they've made me look like a moderate all of a sudden.
Speaker A:All of a sudden I'm, I'm balanced.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:I'm the nice middle of the road guy.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker B:Thank you so much.
Speaker A:Oh, you know, all of a sudden I'm winsome.
Speaker B:Thanks.
Speaker B:Thanks for that.
Speaker B:Cheers.
Speaker B:Well, so, so then, so then maybe we can, we could talk just quickly about.
Speaker B:I regard some of some of these manners as a mission field.
Speaker B:Like personally, you know, I think we talked about the root of bitterness and, and I wonder for, for pastors who are interested, available, and capable of doing, of doing this work, because I, I am aware that these men are, are working their way into reformed churches across the nation, and pastors are aware of it.
Speaker B:What advice would you give to those pastors for who are maybe encountering it for the first time face to face, you know, and potential membership interviews, counseling sessions, to begin working with that root of bitterness in an effective, in an effective way, because it's, it is quite sensitive.
Speaker B:And, and as you said it rightfully that there is legitimacy or there is a legitimate cause behind it, but it's still, it's something, it needs to be pulled out.
Speaker B:What advice would you give to pastors, fathers, faith leaders, to begin working with that, to take that root of bitterness out that maybe doesn't require a backhoe.
Speaker B:Maybe they don't have those resources.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So I would say, I would, I would urge pastors in that situation to make a mental distinction.
Speaker A:First, for the people arriving, I'll use two metaphors for it.
Speaker A:One is make a distinction between apostles and refugees.
Speaker A:Apostles from that world versus refugees from that world.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:The apostle is someone who wants to come into your church, and he wants to be an elder.
Speaker A:He wants to teach a Sunday school class, and he wants to show everybody the Way, you know, this is the way.
Speaker A:He's an apostle.
Speaker A:It's the job of a shepherd to drive that guy off.
Speaker A:He's a wolf.
Speaker A:Okay?
Speaker A:A refugee is someone who shows up tattered and mangled.
Speaker A:He's a refugee.
Speaker A:He was in that world.
Speaker A:He may have been a member of Proud Boys.
Speaker A:He may have been in one of these groups and got disillusioned, and now he's turning back to the church again, and he shows up and he's got bruises and cuts all over him and rhetoric in his mouth that he learned from the guy you just chased off.
Speaker A:Okay, so make a distinction between apostles and refugees.
Speaker A:The same thing applies to people from the left.
Speaker A:Apostles of the left chase them off.
Speaker A:Refugees, detransitioners, you know, no matter how beat up they are, they should be welcome.
Speaker A:Okay, Then to change the image, make a distinction conceptually between wolves and mangled sheep.
Speaker A:Okay?
Speaker A:The.
Speaker A:The.
Speaker A:It's the shepherd's job to fight off the wolves.
Speaker A:It's the shepherd's job to rescue the mangled sheep.
Speaker A:And basically, the evangelical world has done a poor job of identifying the kinds of slights and injuries that a lot of these young men have gone through.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And they'll just backhand them.
Speaker A:Oh, poor buddy.
Speaker A:You know, your people enslaved black people centuries ago.
Speaker A:And he.
Speaker A:Well, he said, well, one of the things that was done to me is I was given a lousy education, so I don't know anything about the years before I was born.
Speaker A:I don't know.
Speaker A:I don't know anything.
Speaker A:I don't have a father.
Speaker A:I don't know how to make a living.
Speaker A:I don't know about the middle passage.
Speaker A:I don't know anything.
Speaker A:All I know is I get attacked for being white, and I get attacked in such a way as I can't make a living.
Speaker A:I can't afford a wife.
Speaker A:No girl wants to have anything to do with me.
Speaker A:All right, now you're a pastor.
Speaker A:That.
Speaker A:That's a refugee.
Speaker A:That's a mangled sheep.
Speaker A:You take him in.
Speaker B:Praise God.
Speaker B:And just one more quick question.
Speaker B:What advice would you give to men who want to become refugees, who are in this world and they just.
Speaker B:They've seen something that they just can't tolerate, or they're sick of it, and they realize it's taking them nowhere.
Speaker B:It's corrupting their lives, their relationships, and they want to exit, but they.
Speaker B:They can't see a way out.
Speaker A:Yeah, one of the.
Speaker A:This is going to be.
Speaker A:This is a hard thing, but one of the bravest.
Speaker A:You're going to have to start with one of the bravest things you've ever done, okay?
Speaker A:And that is because otherwise, because it's going to be crabs in a bucket, basically, if you, if you try to climb out of the bucket, the other crabs will drag you back in.
Speaker A:And so you have to be turn to almighty God and say most I, God, I got myself into a situation.
Speaker A:I am going to have to make a clean break and I'm going to need courage and backbone to do it.
Speaker A:And then for the sake of Christ, don't make a clean break and then go to some squish church.
Speaker A:You know, go to a church where they preach the Bible where they love God and they love their neighbor and they love you.
Speaker A:And if you don't have a church like that in your neighborhood, move.
Speaker A:Find a place where you can worship God with people who love him.
Speaker B:Amen.
Speaker B:Amen.
Speaker B:I thank you again for your wisdom and your clarity on these issues.
Speaker B:I think we are navigating our way culturally as Americans and as Christians and as men, especially through turbulent waters.
Speaker B:And I appreciate the pathfinding that you offer there for the men who are struggling with these east.
Speaker B:So I wonder if our next conversation, you had recommended this in a previous conversation, if we could touch on Martin Luther's commentary to the Galatians.
Speaker B:Maybe it's time to have some theological conversations.
Speaker B:I had never heard of this, but I've become since aware that it's a, it's quite an important book.
Speaker B:So maybe we'll talk about this for our next episode of Will and Doug's Book Club.
Speaker A:Great.
Speaker B:Thank you so much, Pastor Wilson, as.
Speaker A:Always, thank you, Doug delay.
