Ideas Have Consequences
Everything that we see around us is the product of ideas, of ideologies, of worldviews. That's where everything starts. Worldviews are not all the same, and the differences matter a lot. How do you judge a tree? By its fruits. How do you judge a worldview? By its physical, tangible, observable fruit. The things it produces. Ideas that are noble and true produce beauty, abundance, and human flourishing. Poisonous ideas produce ugliness. They destroy and dehumanize. It really is that simple. Welcome to Ideas Have Consequences, the podcast of Disciple Nations Alliance, where we prepare followers of Christ to better understand the true ideas that lead to human flourishing while fighting against poisonous ideas that destroy nations. Join us, and prepare your minds for action!
Ideas Have Consequences
Full-Time: Work and the Meaning of Life with David Bahnsen
We have an active, working, creative God who created humanity to be like Him. As such, our daily work should be a source of meaning and purpose in our lives. Yet, even among believers, work is often approached as a burden that remains an unfortunate means to a better end, like the weekend or even retirement.
In contrast, the Bible often equates our work with our worship. When did we forget this? Over the last decade, the rate of prime-aged men in the U.S. not working has been lower than it was during the Great Depression! However, unlike during the Great Depression, most of these men are choosing not to work. In the words of today's guest, we are undergoing an epidemic of worklessness. Why is this? What happened? Is the church partially to blame for this? Today’s guest David Bahnsen has an inspiring biblical worldview that encompasses all areas of his life. He is simultaneously named one of the top financial advisors in America by Barron’s, Forbes and the Financial Times while teaching and writing about the integration of faith and economics on the side. In his newest book, Full-Time: Work and the Meaning of Life, Bahnsen makes the case that our work plays an integral part in providing meaning and purpose into our lives and is one of our most important avenues of discipleship and influence. This discussion is for you if you are searching for ways to integrate theology into every part of your daily work.
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And so what I think happened was the church found all of these positive, utilitarian components of work and in so doing, just completely missed the entire creational message that work was not valuable because it enabled you to do the valuable things. Work was the valuable thing.
Luke Allen:Hi friends, welcome to Ideas have Consequences. The podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance. Here on this show we examine how our mission as Christians is to not only spread the gospel around the world, to all the nations, but our mission also includes to be the hands and feet of God, to transform the nations to increasingly reflect the truth, goodness and beauty of God's kingdom. Tragically, the church has largely neglected this second part of permission and today most Christians have little influence on their surrounding cultures. Join us on this podcast as we rediscover what it means for each of us to disciple the nations and to create Christ-honoring cultures that reflect the character of the living God.
Scott Allen:Well, welcome again everybody to another episode of Ideas have Consequences. This is the podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance. My name is Scott Allen, I'm the president of the DNA and I am joined today by my friends and co-workers Darrell Miller, dwight Vogt, luke Allen, and we are really thrilled today to have a special guest with us, david Bonson. David, welcome. Well, thanks so much for having me.
David Bahnsen:It's good to be with you.
Scott Allen:It's a thrill to have you with us. For those of you who don't know David, he's often making appearances on television and in the media. In the area of economics and investment, he is the founder and managing partner and the chief investment officer of the Bonson Group, which, in his role there, he oversees about 4.5 billion dollars in client assets. He is consistently named as one of the top financial advisors in America by groups like Barons and Forbes. In addition, he's the author of several best-selling books, and that's really why David is with us today. He's releasing a brand. You're releasing a brand new book today, february 6th. So congratulations, david.
Scott Allen:The title of the new book which we're going to talk about today is Full Time Work and the Meaning of Life, and those of you who listen to our podcast regularly know that that's really close to our heartbeat. Just a couple more things, david, on the bio that I saw here that kind of perked my interest. You're a faculty member for both the Acton Institute and the Blackstone Fellowship of the Alliance Defending Freedom. We are close to both of those groups and care deeply about their ministry. And just one more thing that kind of caught my attention as I was looking at your bio Jack Fowler at National Review calls, said of you, david, that you're the apostle of free and virtuous markets and prosperity and human flourishing. So I thought that was great.
David Bahnsen:Well, kind words from Jack Minowat to me, so that's good to know.
Scott Allen:Well, before we get into the book, david, I would love to hear just a little bit more about your background. It sounds really fascinating. You're obviously in finance, economics, business, but you also care a lot about biblical worldview and theology. Just tell us what were some of the things that made you what you are, where you came from and etc. We'd love to just get a little bit of background.
David Bahnsen:Yeah, it really is sort of impossible to tell my story without starting with my late father, where virtually everything that I believe kind of started. I just was incomprehensibly blessed to be raised by the man who was Dr Greg Bonson. He passed away when I was 20 years old and he was 47. But in his 27 years of adult life he packed quite a punch. So he was a Christian intellectual who was primarily focused on matters of worldview development, christian apologetics. He did his doctorate at USC that was very focused on epistemology, developing a really thoroughly Christian theory of knowledge and how Christians can know things. Then, of course, as an apologist and a theologian, that philosophical training led into how he saw the world and how he believed Christians should develop a world and life view. Being someone who was coming of age in the 60s and 70s, there was a, at the same time, a really interesting movement, a gentleman like Francis Schaefer asking the question how should we then live? Shortly later, chuck Colson became really involved in the notion of Christian worldview and helped to popularize the idea.
David Bahnsen:I was raised in the 70s and 80s where a lot of these things were more niche, more intellectualized, not so prevalent in mainstream evangelical thinking. And yet in my home and in our kitchen table, biblical worldview was table stakes. Now, all of a sudden, I'm an old man, my father's been gone a long time now and it does seem like there's just a wonderful resurgence of interest in what it means to think and live like a believer. It's much more mainstreamed in evangelical Christianity the things that were so important to my dad when I was growing up. And so that long introduction about my dad is necessary to kind of set the table, because I think most people believe I went a different path.
David Bahnsen:I work in finance and I developed a career over the last 25 years on Wall Street and most people would not think of that as very similar to my father, who was both a preacher and a teacher and a sort of generic Christian intellectual writing and speaking and contributing to Christian scholarship. But I don't think they're that disconnected. I think the pay scale is quite different, but what I'm trying to do is live out and apply into my daily endeavors the things that my dad was teaching and talking about, and I think that are a rich part of a Caipirian tradition which is maybe a word a lot of people are not familiar with, but was an integral part of my upbringing that I believe in the Lordship of Christ in all areas and for me, applying those principles that I was raised with theologically, philosophically, intellectually, applying them into matters of capital markets is a very logical extension.
Darrow Miller :I'd like to hear how you're thinking these two things come together. For us it's very similar. I was at Lebris in the late 60s, mentored by Francis Schaefer, and then within our work, it was how does Biblical worldview relate to poverty and development? And those things go together, but most people separate them. You're talking about worldview that's over here. If you're talking about poverty and development, that's over here, no, they're not. Christ is the Lord of all of life, as you have said, and he wants us to speak into all of life. How do these things come together so naturally for you so that our listeners can oh wow, I've never thought of that before.
David Bahnsen:Well, specifically with the field of economics, I think you tee up a very important question, because I believe that there are people that are, and Reformed Christianity in particular, has always asked the question how do we have a more specifically, distinctly Christian approach to raising children? How do we have a specifically distinctly Christian approach to marriage? A lot of people, especially in a more ecclesiastically centered Christian environment, ask how they can have a more faithful and specifically Christian understanding of church, and I think all those things are vital spheres in God's kingdom, and so I don't have anything to say. Obviously that would belittle the significance of children, parenting, marriage and, of course, our church life as believers. But I think you'd have to go pretty far and wide to find people that are asking the same questions at the same intensity, believing in the same magnitude about a distinctly Christian approach to economics, and the reason is that we're able to take a lot for granted in economics. If, for example, a system of free enterprise is one most conducive to conditions for human flourishing and most consistent with some of the principles that we find in Scripture, well, free enterprise doesn't require a lot of promotion. Right, Biblical parenting requires a lot of promotion. These days, you're going against the grains of what a lot of secular psychology would have to say about parenting and what a lot of modernity has to say about parenting. But even people that say they're against free enterprise say it on an iPhone they bought for $1,200. Free enterprise is baked into every element of our very prosperous society, and so we have the luxury of perhaps not appreciating free enterprise because we don't have to as much.
David Bahnsen:And over the years I became very convinced that a lot of Christians are instinctively pro-market and don't know why. And my dad taught me to always root my beliefs about things in first principles. And so when I find people in social theory and political science, we kind of know this with fields or disciplines like mathematics, that you can't say 2 plus 2 equals 4 and then go on to do math and find exceptions to where 2 plus 2 doesn't equal 4. If you believe it does, then that leads to a certain theorem that's going to dictate a lot of the other work you're going to do in applied mathematics. So I believe in certain first principles that are going to dictate how we want to think about economics, and for me some of those first principles that I extract from scripture have to do with what the Bible teaches me about the human person.
David Bahnsen:So I can find very gifted secular economists that agree that economics is essentially the process by which humans act around the reality of scarcity, that there is scarce resources that have to be allocated, and it becomes more complex when we apply that not only to individuals and families, but then to the way a society might cooperate together.
David Bahnsen:And over the years there's been just all these glorious evolutions in our understanding and thinking about this, and at some point it led to an incredibly enriching period for the world as we embraced ideas like division of labor, mutual cooperation, specialization, free exchange, free trade, more advanced capital markets all these things that came out of the classical school of economics in the last two hundred fifty three hundred years post enlightenment, attached to rule of law. I mean it really just. We're living through this glorious couple of centuries in human history, and yet I find it woefully inadequate to explain a comprehensive worldview of economic understanding for a believer. I think a believer has to root those things to God's creation and what God taught us in creation, and so that's my main aim the way we think about capital markets. We manage a little bit over five billion dollars, and I view every dollar of that five billion is connected to what I believe about capital markets and the ability to attach real life financial solutions to real life financial needs, and our macroeconomic understanding is pivotal in that process.
Scott Allen:David, I'd like to get into the book a little bit. I just completely agree with all you're saying about needing to root everything, and everything can be rooted in Biblical first principles, because God is the creator of everything, this is His world and he's the Lord of it all. Your latest book again the title is Full Time Work and the Meaning of Life.
Scott Allen:I'm talking about work and we, you know, in the DNA, we've noticed that evangelicals in particular, we have this woefully inadequate view of work and I think it's because we have this kind of as we describe, but we have a theology that isn't in some ways really.
Scott Allen:It's kind of partially biblical, but it's not fully biblical. It begins, as we often say in Genesis, chapter three, with the fall, so it's got a. It's a theology of the fallen nature of man and Christ's work and redemption praise God but it skips the very beginning, which is all about God and creation, and so we have this really woefully inadequate theology of creation and our role in creation. You know, it gets completely overlooked. So I would love to hear from you, david, on kind of what. I'd love to hear what problem you were observing that caused you to say I've got to write this book on work, and I'd like you to answer that, if you could, in two ways. Number one was the problem you were observing in the broader culture right now, and then in the church as well, meaning kind of evangelical church, I guess.
David Bahnsen:Yes, and I think it's a wise way to frame the question because I think those are two different things. In one sense I could even parse it out to further subcategorization, generationally, because I think that there's a different problem, unique to 20-somethings, versus problem I'd identify with people that are in their 60s or 70s and yet, I would say, at a high level in terms of the general culture at large. I don't think there's any question that in a more sort of therapeutically obsessed, pop psychology obsessed environment that we find ourselves in, that work is viewed as at odds with the human psyche, that the human condition is being victimized by work and that we have developed this, I think, softness culturally, but also one that does not merely diagnose wrongly, it diagnoses the exact opposite. It's one thing to say work is the source of our problems when it isn't. But I'm saying more than that. I'm saying work is not the source of our problems, it is the solution to these problems and in the cultural moment, which I do not disagree with the assessment that we have higher levels of alienation and isolation than we have traditionally had, Certainly throughout my adult lifetime, I think, various so-called conditions of despair, hyper-anxiety, drug abuse, alcohol-related depression, a very downward pressure on people's community connections, social connections, all of these things, and time and time again I am mystified at the inability to see how much so often these things are rooted to a purposelessness, a lack of teagoss, and I think that God in his creational intent gave us a teagoss, and he did this before the fall.
David Bahnsen:And this really invites, I think, the answer to your second part of your question about the thing I'm writing within the Christian world, that I think people either explicitly wrongly believe that work is a byproduct of sin, not a byproduct of creation, or they implicitly get that wrong. It's one or the other. But there's been a pretty robust faith and work movement in America for the last 100 years and I believe it has largely been driven out of a sort of pietism and a fundamentalism that was highly retreatist. It essentially embraced the idea of work because work allows some character development. You can learn things like honesty, learn things like getting along well with others all character traits I fully support and that in so doing, as the faith and work movement advanced, it might even produce an economic benefit that would allow you to support your church more, support missions more certainly, make arrangements for the daily provisions of your family, which is biblical obedience.
David Bahnsen:And so what I think happened was the church found all of these positive, utilitarian components of work and, in so doing, just completely missed the entire creational message that work was not valuable because it enabled you to do the valuable things. Work was the valuable thing. That the entrepreneurial processes of building businesses that deliver goods and services to meet the needs of humanity, the fact that people get employed in such an entrepreneurial endeavor, whether they are an employee or perhaps the employer, that the entire process by which this market economy functions, that has created this thing we call civilization, that it is a glorious thing that was commanded to us by God for us to become a co creator with him, and I always quickly, you know qualify theologically. I'm perfectly aware of the fact that we can't create like God does, X and a hero, but I do believe that's the only difference.
David Bahnsen:I believe that God created us to create with him. He can create out of nothing, we can only create from the things he created, but that our ability to create out of our ideas is utilizing the spirit of innovation, productivity, creativity that mirrors our father, because we're made in his image, because we're image-bearers of him. This is the verb of economics work and I think that the church insisting upon sacralizing a message of work that only speaks to some of the sort of peripheral benefits that come from it witnessing to your co-worker paying the bills to support your family it has led to a massive mediocrity of Christians in the marketplace, and that's why I wrote the book.
Scott Allen:That's so radical.
Dwight Vogt:You're basically saying work is central and it's central to our godliness, our being the way we are made and created. And yet we resist and we push back against that on every level. Because why? I mean? You can add, I could think of reasons, but there's a strong pushback to what you just said, because what it becomes ambition? It becomes Ruthless ambition, it becomes a seeking after wealth. I mean there's a strong pushback to what you're trying to say.
David Bahnsen:I would think yeah well there is, and I suggest in the book that part of it. I think this is maybe some of the hardest-hitting stuff in the book, although I was very, very careful to go to some of my counselors and spiritual mentors to make sure I didn't go over the line. But I think that a lot of pastors struggle with work ethic themselves and I think it's very difficult for certain pastors to stand up at the pulpit and preach to the pews about the need to work more and need to be more devoted to their careers, devoted to these ventures. That so much of their identity not the entirety of their identity, but this is ontological, this is a part of our being, and the fanciful things we go through to avoid this basic reality is mystifying to me. So instead, what the pastors do is they don't ignore the subject. They preach an entire sermon against something that is not even happening in their pews or, very frequently, is not the predominant case, which is against the people that are working too hard. So you could have a congregation full of 28-year-old men living at home, playing video games, not developing a career, not being a man, and yet the sermon is going to be to a 50-year-old who is working hard all the time. It's completely surreal, and I think that that is something the church has adopted from the culture. How many movies exist about some person who was working too much? And then they went back home for the high school reunion and remembered the small town, remembered the ex-girlfriend and all of a sudden they realized I'm going to quit the job, I'm going to leave the career behind. It's time to focus on something more sentimental, something more romantic, something more emotionally satisfying. It doesn't mere real life.
David Bahnsen:If we have a problem in our culture of all these people working too hard, where are they? Who are they? What I believe we have are a lot of people that have not been able to attach a tealoss to the things they're doing, and a church that is enabling this lack of tealoss, and not all the time. There's many, many pastors that are so solid on the issue, but I'm speaking broadly, on purpose, at a macro level, and I think that one of the most effective tools that they use to continue perpetrating this very soft view and, in my mind, an inadequate view of work is a sort of subtle demonization of ambition of those that are more career-minded, rather than celebrating it as what we ought to be doing, pursuing this rigorous commitment to excellence. The sermons don't sound to me like the book of Proverbs.
David Bahnsen:I do not read warnings in Scripture about people working too hard, I just don't. Now I read warnings about idolatry. I read plenty of warnings about mammon, but I think one of the great things Tim Keller did is book counterfeit God's I absolutely loved. We have to stop with this idea that there's only one idol, that the only thing people idolize is either money or sex. People can idolize their children, people can idolize their spouse. People can idolize friendships. They can idolize their nation. There's all sorts of false idols that may exist out there, but the idea of us realizing that we have an ontological relationship to our calling, that part of our being is God's creative order and creative intent that we cultivate and steward and grow as a byproduct of the very nature of our humanity. I think this has to lead to Christians having a stronger ambition in the marketplace.
Luke Allen:This is one of the most important courses here at the Disciple Nations Alliance, called Monday Church. The church is not a building or a Sunday morning activity. It is the body of Christ on mission in every sphere of society every day of the week. The Monday Church training program explores the greatest tool God has given us to impact the world our work. God intends our daily work to be for the service of man, the blessing of nations and the glory of God. The Monday Church provides a biblical framework for each of us to establish a meaningful, integrated understanding of our life and our work. Whatever your work or vocation, god calls you to a new way of living, fully in His presence and for His glory. To learn more about the Monday Church course, you can again head to the episode page or you can just search quorumdaocom and find the course there and sign up today for free. That course is also available in Spanish and Arabic.
Darrow Miller :Well, again, I think what you're reiterating here, david, is we need a strong theology of work being promoted in the church. I've been a believer for see 70 years, 65 years, something like that and there's probably only two times in my life where I've heard a sermon on work and what I mean the people in the pews. They work every day, but how often do you hear a sermon on work and what you're saying is so basic and fundamental and it is to lead to a celebration of life, and yet we don't have the foundations for it in the church today.
David Bahnsen:Well, and I think what you're saying is exactly right, and sometimes I almost wonder if it's even worse that either someone can be a believer for 70 years in American Christianity and hear a sermon twice on work, or they can hear a sermon 15 times on work, as I have, and 15 out of 15 times it's condemning work, it's talking down on work and I think that's the fear of the culture, it's a capitulation to the culture.
David Bahnsen:But also the point you made a moment ago I think is so pivotal it isn't rooted to a distinct theology. I don't believe that we have an awareness of what the word avodah means in the Scripture, we don't Of how many times it is uttered, of its synonymous nature with worship, that it's interchangeable with the way we work, the way we worship, that God chose to use the same Hebrew translation. I believe that some of the exegetical work that can be done here, just to fully unpack certain passages, is really problematic for the anti-work movement in evangelicalism that we are created to do good work and it is the same Greek word Ephesians 2-10, used to conjure up vocational context Vocation, occupation.
David Bahnsen:Not to do good works that are generic acts of service and being nice and gentle, fruits of the spirit, stuff which I'm fully for. That's just not what Ephesians 2-10 says.
Darrow Miller :And it's good doing excellent work, doing excellent vocation, doing excellent occupation. I love the word occupation because it's we are to occupy until Christ returns, and what my work is a place for my occupation and we are to do that well.
Scott Allen:In other words, we are to represent the King and his kingdom in the place that I work, and to do that we have to bring in these first principles of the Scripture, and that has to shape how I think about my work. Who is God, who am I? What's God doing in creation? All of these need to shape our understanding of work, and I think the thing that strikes me, david, is that in my experience at church, like you say, the church is on Sunday or filled with people in every kind of vocation Teachers, businessmen, plumbers, farmers, you name it but none of that is ever addressed, and I'm always struck by just what a myth that is.
Scott Allen:Because these people are there all over our culture and society to represent Christ and his kingdom, to be salt and light and an influence, but they don't have a connection between their faith and their work. They've just never been taught to think that way. Work for them is like you say it's something I do to put food on the table, that's good, it occupies my time or whatever it is, but they don't know how to think biblically about their work. They've just never been trained to, if you even ask them what the Bible has to say about a vocation like banking, they would say there is no connection. I learn about banking at USC or whatever it is, or economics. I learn about that through other sources, not the Bible, and that, to me, is just the glaring problem that we're facing right now in the church is that there's just that big separation. I don't know if you want to comment on that at all.
Dwight Vogt:I have an additional question how would you summarize a Biblical theology of work, whether it's a teacher, a plumber, a street sweeper or an investment banker?
David Bahnsen:Well, I would summarize by starting at creation and with the statement that God made us to be workers, because God is a worker and so that I Theologically believe in the notion that there are us being image-bearers of God. There are some things we share with him and some things we don't share, and in the category of things we don't share, there seems to be a lot of consensus. We are not omniscient, omnipotent or omnipresent. However, the things we do share are productivity, creativity and innovation, and that we are to. The reason we were made is not to stare lovingly in our spouse's eyes. I'm fully supportive of staring lovingly in our spouse's eyes. It is not what we were made for. It is an added blessing in the human experience. It's an added, you know, component of a fulfilling life, romance and relationships and commitment and marriage, all those things. But that what we were made for was that God wanted us to steward and cultivate and grow and all of these things that are impossible to describe without using the English word work, and so my theology of work starts with the garden and then, as all Christian theology does, you go from the understanding of creation to the doctrine of the fall, an original sin, to a doctrine of redemption and when people will say, well, god, start us in the garden. But then work was cursed. And I point out in the book that it's a very odd interpretation that work was cursed but children weren't. But what God said was to Eve you will have pains in childbirth, and Adam, you're gonna have pains in the field. Okay, but nobody ever says that children are a curse. But we recognize that, as a result of sin, that there was some additional pain and complexity brought into the process of childbirth. That was the curse, in the exact same context by which we now talk about the toil and snare of work.
David Bahnsen:And yet, if we do believe in this concept of redemption, why is work excluded from that? Is our kingdom building efforts inclusive of our vocational callings or not? Is God redeeming all of these components to himself, to a pre-fall like condition To a new heavens and new earth? Is that the point of Christian theology or not? Was that what the gospel looked forward to to the cross and now looks to the cross in the course of history? That to me, is a very fundamental component of Christian theology, and to leave our work on the side or treat it as if it were peripheral, that it is a kind of extra credit, but that the core basic is just soul-saving. I think that's done a lot of damage to our understanding of these things. Now there is a lot that has to be said beyond just the kind of basics of what I think are table stakes for Christian theology of work.
David Bahnsen:I would love to see a lot more about the application of this to finance, and I don't really believe that we can ever get all the way there if we want to stay away from economics. I think so often people say look, that's great day for you. You run a business, you've been financially successful, there's a socioeconomic benefit that has accrued to the corner office for you, but you can't really apply that. You can feel meaningful in your work, you're employing people, serving people, you're doing these big things. You can't really apply that to people cleaning toilets or maids that are cleaning hotel rooms, and I think a lot of that comes from a failure to understand economically that that maid in the hotel is getting paid because she is serving others, she is producing a value, and that there is absolute illogic to the idea that anybody would get paid for not producing goods and services that at some component, some stage in the process had value.
David Bahnsen:Now I also understand that there are some jobs that are going to be less rewarding than others, more remedial, that may serve as certain stepping stones and I want very much for people to recover a joy in all phases of those things. And I talk about this in the book quite a bit, this sort of focus on the journey versus the destination. I think as I now have the ability, having been around for a little while, to look backwards on certain milestones in my career, I look back with a real fondness for the challenges of the journey. Even before I entered a career in financial services I didn't like some of the remedial jobs I had, building to a point of survival. But I sure now am able to appreciate the character building it was doing and the sort of early formative skills I think people learning to get along with a manager they don't really like getting along with coworkers.
David Bahnsen:I think there's just a lot of benefit to these things and you don't always see it in the here and now. Sometimes it takes more clarity with hindsight to see those things later. But we're not giving ourselves the chance to have that perspective when we're focusing on the notion that work is either a curse, unattractive. It's getting in the way of our peace of mind, the world's new idea that what we really need is more yoga classes and more me time, and even in the matters of public policy. Eventually, I think, trying to adopt a 32-hour work week, to try to use the Department of Labor or employee unions to make our Christian understanding of work. So it says six days thou shalt work, and then, modeled in creation, god rested on the seventh day, and yet we talk about two breaks, leaving at five o'clock. All these different things that are clearly extra scriptural. They could be good practices, they may be wisdom in it, loosely held, but we make those things more doctrinal than the actual creation account of work.
Scott Allen:David, if I could have you comment on something I'm observing. This is in the broader culture, not so much the church, but there's all of this talk about how AI is going to make so many different kinds of jobs. It's going to be there for people and so we're going to have a huge problem with all of these people that aren't going to be able to find work. So we just need to pay them. Just pay them some kind of what is it called Universal basic income? Universal basic income, thank you, just pay them a universal basic income so they can sit on their couch and watch TV, I guess, and that's talked seriously about.
Scott Allen:People talk seriously about that and I'm always, when I hear that, I'm like that would be just a nightmare Because of what you're talking about how God has created human beings to work. It's just, it's so fundamental to who we are. Any thoughts that you have on just that? And this is where I think the church needs to be able to push back and have a counter to that and say, no, that's not it. That would be a horrible policy. Any thoughts?
David Bahnsen:from you on that. I have very strong thoughts on that. I fully expect my friends on the political right and conservative right to totally mess up in their opposition to the atrocity of universal basic income and start their argument against it by appealing to the unaffordability of it. We can't pay people not to work because we can't afford it. There isn't enough money, there's too much national debt, things like that, all of which are pretty much true, but it is not the fundamental reason to oppose universal basic income. The fundamental reason is because it's dehumanizing.
David Bahnsen:Amen yeah, it strips people of their God-given dignity as image-bearers of him. It takes away and what it does is it basically codifies an implication that there's a certain component of creation that was made to produce and then a whole second cast of creation that was made to merely consume, to live off the largesse of others. Yes, it's a dehumanizing idea.
Scott Allen:The challenges that they are. By the way, go ahead. I'm sorry. Yeah, I was just gonna say I think it makes sense and your starting point is this Darwinian worldview where we're primarily consumers and we can just sit out there and eat grass in a field or something like that, but if we're human beings and not animals, we've got to work. That's just part of who we are.
David Bahnsen:Well, even in Keynesian economic thought, that has basically become the orthodoxy of economics over the last 100 years, that the notion of economic growth comes from getting more demand, getting more consumption. Even Keynes was willing to just ignore the fact that you can't consume until someone else is first produced, there isn't anything to consume. And in fact, my argument is there's two parts production and one part consumption. I have to produce something to have the means to consume, and what I'm consuming has to have been produced by somebody else. And so the virtuous cycle of economic growth comes from a focus on production which is, to me, not merely an economic consequence, but it is rooted in the very created order. Artificial intelligence will cause some people to lose their jobs, and so did the cloud, and so did digital computing, and so did various components of automation and the notion of personal computing and the microprocessor and various elements of digital computing at large. They are not brand new. They're moving faster, they're doing more impressive things. But I would ask anyone who wants to look at a 50 year window of digital automation, computing and breathtaking advances in technology, do we have more jobs created or less jobs in the aftermath of this new technological world we live in. I think that we talked earlier about first principles. Did the industrial revolution create jobs or destroy jobs? Now I'm right on everything I'm saying and yet I still understand that there's a need for empathy. But this is not a macroeconomic problem. It's a macroeconomic blessing. It's a microeconomic problem because guys like us have to go talk to Billy and Tommy and Jenny about how it applies to them. So, on a micro level, billy might have to move to go work at his uncle's business in Texas and see if he could reinvent himself there, and Tommy might have to interview out of state for something, or Johnny might have to get a new skill because what he used to do has been replaced by something more automated. The dynamism that we're lacking in the labor force is the problem. Enhanced dynamism enables a reinvention and a labor force that could better adjust to what has already been there, which is evolving and changing technology.
David Bahnsen:So I do not believe in the fatalistic outcomes of AI and, by the way, if I did, would that motivate me to work harder or less hard? If I was worried that things were about to become more competitive, wouldn't that motivate me to want to be more special and more unique and more hybrible and more distinctly valuable. What can AI never, ever do? Or any computer, any technology or any automation? What is an irreplaceable component that only a human being has? First of all, people say AI can do certain levels of innovation and creativity that it can't even do. But even if we put that aside and pretend it can, it can't do virtue, the virtues that God expects us to have in the workplace, that employers like me want to have. I cannot hire virtue in a computer. So when you bring motivated, virtuous self to workplace, you are a hyrable and that's not going away.
Scott Allen:Wow, that's really profound. Yeah, that's not going away. That's good news for our younger people that are trying to find their way in this kind of complex world that we live in today. David, what do you want people to take away from your book? What are you hoping to contribute with this particular book? And let me just say the title again it's called Full Time Work and the Meeting of Life. I encourage you to go to Amazon or wherever books are sold and check it out. Get a copy. It's available today. But, david, yeah, what do you want to see people take away from your book?
David Bahnsen:I'll go real quickly because I mentioned earlier the generational differences here For folks that are in the senior years of their life. I do not want people to look at the last couple of decades God gives them as a 20 or 30 year vacation. We need your expertise. We need your experience. It is just simply untrue that retirement is something that is supposed to be the be all and end all Financial security. I'm all for Having greater margin, greater cushion, more time with grandkids, a few extra golf rounds I'm all for it. But going to live a life of separation from productivity is not prescribed and it is not only hurting, I think, a lot of retirees as they get removed from usefulness, but it's hurting me. I need their wisdom, I want their contributions. That's my lesson to the older generation, more middle-aged.
David Bahnsen:I think that so many people between ages of 40 and 60, this cliche concept of a midlife crisis the church has chosen to treat it by saying well, it's okay, now you have the opportunity to pivot your life from success to significance.
David Bahnsen:And they use this term half time, and that's where the title of my book came from. Full time is meant to be a counter theory of the case to the half time model. I believe that it is untrue that the things we did to build success were insignificant. I think it's a dualistic idea that pits two things against each other that ought not be at odds. I want 44-year-olds and 56-year-olds to take pride in what they've done and believe that it was significant to God's kingdom because it was. And then, third is to the younger generation to adopt a pro-work ethic and a pro-work philosophy, that they can see a T-loss, that they can have a very fulfilling life Filled with all sorts of valuable relationships, meaningful commitments, friends, children, future grandchildren, romantic relationship, marital commitment all of those things that add so much meaning and joy in our lives. And yet the career can be a central part of our identity because God made it to be so. So there's a sort of three distinct applications generationally around a common message about a theology of work.
Scott Allen:I love all those messages so much. I think those are all really, really important and I like the way you broke it down into the three age groups. Yeah, the middle group that I'm a part of that you were talking about, yeah, that very much. That message is one I'm very familiar with, that you strive, you work hard, you have material success and then at halftime then you can do something important with your life. That really makes a difference, that message. So I appreciate you pushing back against that.
David Bahnsen:I think it needs to be pushed back on. I hope I did it gracefully with some winsomeness, but it's a dangerous message and I think a lot of it may have been well-intentioned. I do not think all the people are explicit Gnostics, but I think they fall into a Gnostic trap of believing that there's some sort of a inherent superior value in the things that are spiritual and material and a lesser priority on the things that are physical, and that's just simply not the incarnational truth of the gospel. God deeply cares about this physical world. He made us embodied humans. We most certainly have souls and eternal destinies, but we also have bodies and a physical world to cultivate.
Scott Allen:That's what he made us for. And you know, all of these areas of vocation, they're all gonna be shaped by a particular worldview, a particular understanding of reality, and I think the problem for the church is that we haven't fully appreciated that If it's not biblical first principles about what it means to who God is and who we are, et cetera it's gonna be some other belief systems first principles, and that's exactly what's happening. So you've got education, economics and all of these different areas, entertainment, business. They're all being shaped by, essentially, today, principles that aren't biblical. And then Christians, of course, are working in those fields and they just adopt those non-Christian principles. They're not used to thinking about biblical first principles and their kind of work, and so we're not. This is why we're the Disciple Nations Alliance. We're trying to have that kind of significant Christian influence in our culture that we're not having because we're not used to even thinking biblically about whatever it is that we're doing.
David Bahnsen:So Well, I agree and I think that this is sort of the idea of those of us who believe in the concept of a biblical worldview is that before you can know what you are to do, then you have to first know how to believe about things, how to think about things, how to understand, and then at that point you get to ask that majestic question that Francis Schaefer asked how should we then live? But before we can know how to live, we have to know how to think and understand and view the world, and to me, a lot of these things are just very important logical and theological applications of that, that key understanding, and that understanding isn't all that complicated. Christ is Lord overall. That's it.
Scott Allen:Yeah, well, I really appreciate your you know specifically your bringing in biblical first principles and clear biblical thinking in terms of this area that you're involved in, in finance and economics. You know, from what I've listened to, I just have so appreciated that and I, if you're in that area, if this is your area, if you're a financial advisor, if you're in business, economics of any sort, I really want to encourage you to listen to what David is teaching in that area, listen to his podcast, read his books, because he's helping you think biblically about that area. And if you're not thinking biblically, you're functioning based on some other first principles. You know without knowing it, and that's not what we need to be doing as the church. We're not called to just mimic the culture around us, but to be salt and light and to be counter-cultural. Amen, guys. Any final questions as we wrap up? David, we're so grateful for the time today. Dwight, do you have any? No, yeah.
Dwight Vogt:Oh, you're just waiting. Okay, that's great. Thank you so much. No, david, thank you.
Darrow Miller :It's so good to meet you this way. So much of what you've shared are the things that are on our hearts. I only wish we had more time. I know your time is, it's time for us to break for your schedule, but this discussion could go on for hours, and thank you so much for taking the time with us.
David Bahnsen:Well, thank you for saying that. I'd love to do it again. I really appreciate your guys thoughtful questions. It sounds like we're very well aligned. I look forward to developing a relationship together.
Scott Allen:Thanks, David. We do as well, and it's just nice to meet somebody who's part of your same family that you've never met before anyways, so it's terrific Guys. I just want to encourage all of you check out the book Full Time Work and the Meaning of Life by David Bonson, available today. David, thanks for your service to the church and for putting this book out and for the teaching that you're doing. We're really grateful.
David Bahnsen:Thanks so much.
Scott Allen:And just want to thank you all again for listening to another episode of ideas have consequences. This is the podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance.
Luke Allen:Thank you for listening to this episode with David Bonson. If you'd like to learn more about David or any of the resources that we mentioned today, just head to this episodes page on our website and to visit that page, just click on the link in the show notes below. The ideas have consequences podcast is brought to you by the Disciple Nations Alliance. To learn more about our ministry, you can find us on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube or on our website, which is DiscipleNationsorg. Thanks again for joining us. Please share the show with a friend and I hope you're able to join us here next week on ideas have consequences.
