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