Ideas Have Consequences

Crisis of Responsibility: Our Cultural Addiction to Blame and How You Can Cure It with David Bahnsen

• Disciple Nations Alliance • Season 2 • Episode 47

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The world is witnessing a revolt against elitism, with growing resistance to big government, media, banks, and institutions. But what comes after these “bogeymen” are toppled? Is opposing corruption, bias, and cronyism enough, or is there a deeper issue at play?

In this episode, leading financial advisor and author David Bahnsen discusses the crisis of responsibility in a culture increasingly defined by blame and victimhood. He argues that true prosperity requires a return to personal accountability and virtue, with a focus on creating institutions that foster responsibility, rather than relying on external solutions.

Drawing on creational insights, Bahnsen explores the concept of imago Dei and its implications for human dignity and societal well-being. He critiques victim mentality, cultural Marxism, and calls for principled leadership over and above anti-elitism. This episode is a call to action for cultivating a society led by responsible, empowered individuals.

David Bahnsen:

But the idea of viewing life from the vantage point of being a victim and then trying to look at some external force who can free you from the victim, that would be the mentality that I wrote the book about that I very much disagree with and that I disagree with not because of its impact on public policy, but because of its impact on the souls and the well-being and the dignity of individual people. I think it is starving people of the fullness of life.

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 her mission 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. I'm Scott Allen and I'm the president of the DNA, and I'm joined today by friends and co-workers Luke Allen, dwight Vogt, and we are so grateful to have back with us again David Bonson. Hi, david, thanks for joining us today.

David Bahnsen:

Thanks so much for having me Wonderful to be with you.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, and just for those of you who don't know who David is, just a quick introduction and we'll get into our discussion. David is the founder and the managing partner and chief investment officer of the Bonson Group, which is a national private wealth management firm, has offices around the United States, including where I'm at here in Bend, Oregon. David has over $4 billion in investment from his clients. He's consistently named as one of the top financial advisors in America by Barron's, forbes and the Financial Times. He's a frequent guest on Bloomberg and Fox News and Fox Business and a regular contributor to National Review. He's the author of many books, including his most recent book, which we talked about last time.

Scott Allen:

You were on David Full-Time Work and the Meaning of Life Fantastic book, and we wanted to talk today, david, about your book. That came out prior to that. So we're going to go back just a little bit to 2018 and the title of that book, which really resonated with us here at the DNA. The title is Crisis of Responsibility Our Cultural Addiction to Blame and how you Can Cure it, and how you can cure it. So, david, again thanks for joining us to have this talk about biblical worldview, just worldview and this important topic of freedom and responsibility and a kind of culture that leads to that fruit and ones that don't that lead to the fruit of victimization. David, as I was going through the book, I noticed that what jumped out at me was you. In your introduction you talked about well, you wrote this. You said there's three kind of points that you made. You said number one a new era is upon us and the political, social, economic effects are just beginning. Our path forward must reject the institutional arrogance and elitism of top-down control. We have to recognize our cultural addiction to blame, properly understand the key issues and forge a culture of responsibility in which free people become virtuous people and virtuous people become productive people. I thought that'd be such a good kind of jump-off place for our discussion today those three points and especially, just maybe we could start with this new era which is upon us Now.

Scott Allen:

You wrote this in 2018. That was, you know, that was before COVID. I think that was right, kind of in the years following Brexit and Trump's first victory. We're actually having this discussion the morning after Trump's amazing second victory, election victory, which is on our mind. But you also wrote you know there's been a lot of changes since 2016 or 2018. When you wrote this, you know again COVID the 2020 Antifa BLM riots. So much has changed. It seems in some way you were talking, though, about that new era has changed. It seems in some way you were talking, though, about that new era. I'm just curious if your thoughts have changed. Do you still feel like we're in this new era?

David Bahnsen:

Talk a little bit about what that era looks like.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, so first I want to make sure that clients don't believe I've lost $2.5 billion of their money, so we are managing six and a half billion dollars.

David Bahnsen:

Okay, I'm a little behind. Well, and also, this book came out in the very beginning.

David Bahnsen:

The book you're referring to is my first book that ever came out and you're right, it did come out in very early 2018, but I really was writing it in 16 and 17. And so there is quite a bit of time that's gone by, and so it's really very interesting to reflect on what might have changed and how things have evolved in that very same issue that I was sort of describing many, many years ago. My view is not that it has gotten better. My view is not that some of the big cultural or historical moments that have happened have pushed things in the right direction. It's largely that we are still stuck in a very similar mode, and my view is that the solutions, the things I would put forward as potential resolutions to this crisis, are still very much the same, that they are largely non-governmental, that they are largely spiritual, moral, cultural, and then what the book does is focus on both personal and individual things that one can do, and then issues that are more external, social, maybe matters of public policy, more collective.

David Bahnsen:

I am one who believes that the latter has to come from the former, that we're not going to get greater individual, we're not going to get greater collective responsibility before we have greater individual responsibility and the blame casting the overall culture that looks to explain the things that we find to be shortcoming in our lives, as by, basically, who did something wrong to us.

David Bahnsen:

It's at the essence of critical theory, it's at the essence of cultural Marxism. But even when you're not going that progressive and that far left, that oppressed versus oppressor mentality is very often prevalent today, even from folks on the right. It's very different. Who they believe is the oppressor, who they believe is holding them back. But the idea of viewing life from the vantage point of being a victim and then trying to look at some external force who can free you from the victim, that would be the mentality that I wrote the book about, that I very much disagree with and that I disagree with not because of its impact on public policy, but because of its impact on the souls and the well-being and the dignity of individual people. I think it is starving people of the fullness of life.

Luke Allen:

Hi, friends, I wanted to take a quick minute to tell you about our newest book here at the DNA 10 Words to Heal Our Broken World, restoring the True Meanings of Our Most Important Words, by Scott Allen, which will be out next week. That's right, next week, november 19th, is the big day. Like it or not, call it what you want, but in the US and many nations around the world right now we are in a culture war, one that, at its very essence, is a battle over the meanings of a few culture-building words. Why words, you ask? Well, because if you want to change a culture, you begin by changing language. Or, as a philosopher, peter Kreeft wisely put it control language and you control thought, control thought and you control action. Control action and you control the world.

Luke Allen:

The enemies of the gospel understand this strategy all too well. For years they have been working behind the scenes, redefining our most fundamental words, embedding their altered definitions in our institutions, law and curricula, to reshape society according to their harmful, anti-christian agendas. Think I'm being hyperbolic. Well, take a minute to think about these popular phrases, and particularly how they misuse and manipulate biblical words, phrases like reproductive freedom, love is love, social justice or just the word truth, that can mean apparently anything nowadays. So how do we, as followers of Jesus Christ, respond? By recovering and defending the true biblical definitions of at least 10 critical words, words like truth, human sex, marriage, freedom, justice, authority, faith, beauty and love. These words are the building blocks of a healthy society, and cultural revival and reformation won't happen without reclaiming their true meanings. So again, don't miss our newest book, coming out November 19th 10 Words to Heal Our Broken World Restoring the True Meanings of Our Most Important Words, and again, that is by Scott Allen. If you'd like to learn more about this book, go to 10wordsbookorg. Again, that is 10wordsbookorg.

Scott Allen:

Well, yeah, I'd like to just follow up with that, because when we talk about things like responsibility which is to me, it's the corollary of freedom, you know, free choices, taking responsibility for the choices that you make. I don't know if you agree with that, but to me those are tightly bound together, those two ideas.

Scott Allen:

Sure is, when we talk about culture, you know, here at the DNA we talk a lot about culture and we describe culture as being downstream from worship, from religion, from deep belief systems. Right, you kind of create a culture in the image of the God that you worship, so to speak. And for, you know, for many, many years in the West, you know that was the Judeo-Christian belief system, you know the God of the Bible, and it led to a culture that you know upheld a degree of freedom and responsibility and even to the point where, you know, to cast yourself as a victim was looked down on right. You know that wasn't something you ought to do, even if you had reason to do it maybe. I was wondering if you agree with that and if you do, what were those ideas? Those ideas, those deeper principles from the Bible that upheld or bore the fruit of freedom and responsibility? Any thoughts on that?

David Bahnsen:

held or bore the fruit of freedom and responsibility. Any thoughts on that?

Dwight Vogt:

Well, it's summarized in the biblical and creational concept of Imigo Dei.

David Bahnsen:

When one believes that mankind was made in an image and likeness of God and was made different from the animal kingdom, the plant kingdom and the raw materials of the earth, but was made with an eternal destiny and was made with a soul and was made with an elevated responsibility for stewardship, then you invite all at once this elevation, this dignity, this prestigious status in the created order and you invite responsibility for that. And this is why creational normatives are vital for any Christian trying to do theology. I don't really think Christians need to be theologians to do theology, but they do need to understand creational norms. As you know from our last discussion, my basis for my belief in full-time work, in the meaning of life, about a very high view of work, is rooted to a creational theology. So is my belief about individual responsibility.

David Bahnsen:

Now then, after the fall, god in his infinite wisdom and grace and through his redemptive plan to restore the conditions for fellowship that he made us in, in the whole gospel message, god provided a way of living that he expects of his people and permeated throughout Old Testament law, the wisdom literature, book of Proverbs, the gospel accounts, the Pauline epistles. This is really whole counsel of God, stuff. There is ethical stipulations about how humans are to be and not be. Yes, and self-pity doesn't fit well in there, right, and many of the things that drive. I mean. First of all, the very first sin was one of casting blame on to others. You know the woman made me do it, you know I was tempted of this and that the serpent, the woman, the man, you know, pointing fingers all around, they couldn't even get through their first sin without not only sinning but needing to blame their sin on others.

Scott Allen:

That's a really good point, david, and you know I'm thinking too of Cain and Abel. You know Jordan Peterson's recently made a big deal out of the story of Cain and Abel, you know, as he looks at the culture and says that so much of this kind of victimization culture goes back to that story.

David Bahnsen:

You know, so you know where you have Cain blaming God right, you know and casting himself as the victim. You know, one of the things that's interesting about blame casting in the Bible, from Peter to Paul to David, cain and Abel, these different stories it's very rare that someone was out and out lying. There was often prima facie support, in other words, there was a kernel of truth to some degree of what they were doing, and yet it was wholly inadequate, wholly unjustifiable, and it's a huge part of what I try to say in my Crisis of Responsibility book that you're asking me about is I do not suggest that people sometimes do not have bad things happen to them.

David Bahnsen:

I do not suggest that they are sometimes wronged. I do happen to believe we're often wronged less than we think we are and that sometimes we play a role in certain individual conflicts and issues that we're not necessarily being fully self-aware about. But no, there's no doubt that there are very traumatic things that happen in life where we play no role.

Scott Allen:

There are real victims, right. We can think of the parable of the Good Samaritan, for example, the man beaten up, left to die on the side of the road. I mean you probably say, yeah, he's a genuine victim. And there's people like that all around us today.

David Bahnsen:

And children that are wronged by their parents, abandoned and abused and whatnot. I mean, these are horrible things that are part of the sinful world we live in. And yet I can't get myself to say anything different, because I care for those people who have been traumatized so much I really do. The only advice I can give them is to not compound the trauma by continuing to wallow in it. Mm-hmm, yeah that there is a good life available, and it does sometimes require you to do very painful things to get through those moments when you were hurt by others. This can be interpersonal we're talking about really awful things with families and desertion and abuse.

David Bahnsen:

But, it can even be in the public square. There's a lot of really bad government square. There's a lot of really bad government policies. There's a lot of employers that have done someone wrong, business deals that have gone astray and, like I said, there's some times where people have their own part in it, but there's other times where they were just victimized. And yet victimhood is not about what happened to you. It's about what you do post facto.

Scott Allen:

What you do the choices that you make kind of regardless of what's happened to you and I've been thinking a lot of late about freedom and choice and responsibility, about these things that you're writing about here and we're talking about, and it seems to me that there's no other worldview, there's no other belief system or religion that upholds human freedom and choice and responsibility in the same way at all that Christianity does. You know that God made us not to be robots. You know that he gave us this choice and then holds us accountable for the choices that we make. It's really a unique feature, I think, of Judeo-Christian belief system, as you say at the very beginning.

David Bahnsen:

I agree entirely, and it is also one that's accompanied by the law of God. That is not a burden, it is a blessing. Yes.

David Bahnsen:

You know this is the thing is we have ethical requirements put on us and other religions. I think particularly of Islam, whereby it is really a burden one has to carry to try to obey, where the Bible is very clear that God did not give us his law because he hates us Right. He gave it because he loves us. That's right. And for us to be able to walk humbly and serve man and obey God and know that he is God. These are things that lead to the good life. That's right. When I talk, as an economist, about human flourishing and the material well-being that is very important to God. He made us in a garden where we're going to spend eternity, in a city. Jesus was incarnate as fully God and fully man. There is a physical component to our lives that matters, but I also believe that there's a spiritual and immaterial component that matters, and the things that really enable a flourishing in that category of life involve obedience.

Scott Allen:

Yes.

David Bahnsen:

Well, yeah.

Scott Allen:

I think of the. You know the famous book of Deuteronomy and you know, on the plains, there, in front of the promised land, moses talking to his people and you know, talking about the law and then essentially saying I put you, you know, before you life and death. You know blessings and curses. Choose life right. Make you know, you choose, you choose Blessings and curses. Choose life right, you choose, you choose. So, david, I want to keep continuing to talk about worldviews, though I wrote a book, I think you know, on kind of this worldview of social justice, the ideology of social justice that has its roots in critical theory, the Frankfurt School, and one of the things that struck me as I was doing my research on that book was that you know that's a belief system that isn't obviously coming out of Judeo-Christian you know roots at all. It's atheistic and one of the fruits of it is this demeaning of freedom.

Scott Allen:

People you know that advocate for those beliefs. They often talk about freedom, as you know, something that powerful oppressors you know have used and weaponized for their advantage, and they have this idea that human beings aren't really responsible. They're part of groups that have been victimized and whatever happens to them is a result of their situation, kind of within this framework of oppressors and oppressed and in that kind of framework, there is no such thing as personal responsibility. That really struck me and I thought it was like you say, it was very dehumanizing because it left people kind of in a very hopeless place. What can you do? Right, I'm just this victim of and you know, dwight, you can speak to this too.

Scott Allen:

In our work in Food for the Hungry and Christian Relief and Development, a lot of the paradigm of Christian relief and poverty is you see, around the world is, you know, we're helpless, we're poor, there's nothing we can do, we've been victimized by colonial oppressors. I mean, that's a mindset that's very common all over the world and it's one that we fought against. Because as long as you think that way and there may, like you say, david, be truth to it but as long as you think that way, you'll never change, you'll never take the steps that you need to to get out of that poverty that you're in.

David Bahnsen:

And that's why the question when I say that my feelings on the subject are driven by genuine care for those, I think people have a choice to make about how they're caring for their neighbor most behaviors and circumstances that generate human flourishing or is it by them facilitating, sometimes, the tough decisions that lead to a far better outcome? When a nation in the West tries to create a dependency relationship with another nation out of alleged guilt for things that may have happened 100, 200, 300, 500 years ago, are they loving that nation better really, or are they in fact doing ongoing damage to a nation that in fact, according to their own historical ideology, they already damaged previously? We are not helping victims by continuing to hurt victims. Now that's when you're dealing with nation versus nation situations, but even in individual circumstances, a lot of it can be the same.

David Bahnsen:

But I think it's just so important, in the way you laid out the case about the Frankfurt School, to understand the absolutely inseparable connection to classic Marxism that, while Marx and Engels were obsessed with the role of the worker as an oppressed and a proletariat and an entrepreneur, a capitalist as an oppressor, the fundamental connectivity to cultural Marxism, whether it be in race, gender or, in Marxist case class is identical, that we are inescapably defined by a box we are in, whereby we are either an oppressed or an oppressor. There's no redemption, there's no hope and there's a wrong diagnosis to begin with. Other than that, how was the play, mrs Lincoln?

Scott Allen:

They get everything wrong, everything I saw. An example of this that I came across when I was doing my research was it came out of Minnesota public schools, where there was a disparity between blacks and white students in terms of the percent of students that were being expelled, and there was a higher percent relative to the total number of black students being expelled than white students. And that, for the administrators of the school, was a problem. That disparity was a problem, but the framing of it in their mind was that it took away any personal responsibility on the part of the student. The fact that they were being expelled had to be explained by them being victimized by white racism. You know, unconscious or whatever it was, the school system was racist against these black students. So when they framed it that way, the solution was we have to, you know, we have to repent of our racism and we have to expel less black students or expel more white students in order to kind of have an equal outcome there. And that's actually what they did.

Scott Allen:

It didn't help anybody. It made the thing much worse, the situation much worse. It was just. I just shook my head when I read that. I thought but that's the power of ideas and worldviews, you know.

David Bahnsen:

Yeah, but it's also the inverse of that is the power of the worldview that birthed America, the classical liberalism that values the individual. And you value the individual why? Because the individual is made in the image of God, and the most illiberal thing I've ever heard is saying that we want to treat people by a class based on evening out behavioral discipline in a classroom. That is ridiculous to the individual of people, the individuality of people involved.

David Bahnsen:

Yes, that's right and much like the Me Too movement in 2017, 18, whenever it was, where clearly a lot of very bad behavior had happened and needed to stop. But one of the things said out of the movement was believe all women, yes, but who in the world, including women, thinks that's true? Women, yes, but who in the world, including women, thinks that's true? But what it did is allowed, much like your example of the collective way of dealing with people in the classroom. It dehumanized individual women. It dehumanized individual men.

David Bahnsen:

And this classroom activity this is part of a liberal society, liberal being used here in a very positive and constructive way is that because, theologically, we believe all mankind was made in the image of God and that they derive their dignity from their status as being an image bearer of him, not a member of a collective, not being a member of the second grade at a school in Minnesota, not being a member of a gender that may have had men come on to them in the workforce. Their dignity comes from their individuality and so does our agency and so does our responsibility, and that's why I view the worldview that I'm taking in the book as very consistent with not only creational theology but really the kind of bedrock of the American founding.

Scott Allen:

I'd like to invite I'm hogging the conversation I'd like to invite Luke and Dwight into this. I'm sure you guys have some questions and some reactions.

Dwight Vogt:

I'd actually like to turn the topic from critical theory for a second to something I heard this week. It was a podcast between Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, and Larry Arnn, president of Hillsdale College, and they were talking about this topic of victimization or dependency, or individual responsibility, and the point was made that, well, the problem is big government, that the government just keeps getting bigger and bigger, and so that's sapping away the individual responsibility of the individual. And then the question was what's the chicken and what's the egg? Are we causing this or is government causing it? Is science and reliance on science causing it? But it was a really interesting discussion and I guess my question to you is what do you think and really, what's the solution? What do you say? How do you preach individual responsibility?

Scott Allen:

How do we?

Dwight Vogt:

recover this culture.

Scott Allen:

Yeah right.

David Bahnsen:

So this is what the entire subject of chapter 10 of my book, Crisis of Responsibility is about, where I say it's probably the number one biggest disagreement I have with my friends on the right, and in this case, both Larry and Kevin are included in that list. First of all, I do not believe chicken or egg wise, that big government was the problem for individuals, but I think individual irresponsibility gave birth to big government. So if I were interested in armchairing what went first, I always and forever believe that the people wanted a king, 1 Samuel 16, 7. Not that the king wanted a people, okay, and so there's a biblical cause and effect, and I believe that most of the things, especially statism and I have the founding fathers on my side here that statism fills a vacuum and the vacuum is caused by individuals having poor self-governance.

David Bahnsen:

Ok, now what is the solution? Because where Larry and Kevin and I fully agree is, even if there's disagreement about what caused what, who went first, all that kind of stuff, there's a negative feedback loop now. So the more irresponsible individuals, families and communities are, the more big government we get, and the more big government we get, the more irresponsible people, families and communities will be. Rinse and repeat All of life works this way. All of life is self reinforcing mechanisms. The only question is whether they will be virtuous or vicious.

Dwight Vogt:

Wow, and this is a vicious one, hmm and so what is the solution?

David Bahnsen:

what is it? People on the right, what would friends like Kevin and Larry say to a family that's dysfunctional and there was abuse? Would they say, well, as long as you were abused first, you should be abusive back to others. Or would they say you've got to break the cycle? That's the only solution. We have to break the cycle, and when we have stronger individuals that are members of stronger families, that are active in stronger churches, that are present and visible in stronger communities, where there is back to my last book stronger vocational and marketplace dominion, you won't need big government. But it's not going anywhere until those other things play out.

Scott Allen:

Wow, I totally agree with that.

Dwight Vogt:

I feel like I'm in a Pentecostal church. Amen, amen, that's really well said.

Luke Allen:

Yeah, and when we break this cycle, there's an opportunity there, because in a world where your default reaction is always to cast blame when something happens to you to be the better man to break that cycle, there's an opportunity there to and I'd like to hear your answer to this do what? Not just withhold blame, but there's actually an opportunity there to do something else that can even shine more light on the fact that we fear someone higher than the people around us.

David Bahnsen:

To do justice, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. You know, I happen to be talking to three men right now, and I happen to have a very high degree of confidence that my wife is not going to be listening to this podcast or video, so let me just share a little something. As a married man, I often have to move on. In marriage. Even though I don't really think I was wrong, I really kind of think something was her fault, but the right thing to do is to be humble, to be selfless, to swallow wrongs done against us. There are things we just simply have to do that everyone in a marriage knows, because you can't have a successful marriage if you don't, if you're keeping score. It won't be a productive marriage, and I think we all intuitively know this.

David Bahnsen:

The way in which we live our lives ought not to be very different. Now, this is not to say that the government taxing us too much should be allowed to persist because we're just supposed to get over it. Taxing us too much should be allowed to persist because we're just supposed to get over it, or that unfair educational policies or waste, fraud, corruption, all injustice should be addressed. What we're talking about here, though, is the decision to how it's going to define us and our side of the street that we will overcome adversity. This is a fallen world. There will be bad things, to the extent that we are dealing with a very monumental problem with the size of government, and this is where Kevin and Larry are so right that there's no solution in a chapter of my book as to how we're going to right-size government in one election cycle. I frankly wish that conservatives would stop talking that way, as if and this is ironic as we're recording a day after a major presidential election but I don't have a messianic view of politics, and so, just like I don't believe that we're going to save all these things and fix all these things by government doing that, I don't think we're going to save or fix it by getting government out right away either.

David Bahnsen:

It's going to take time, and there are very few things I've seen that get fixed. If it took 50 years to break something, it doesn't usually take 50 minutes to fix it, and that's why I'm an incrementalist is I think we have to incrementally improve things. We incrementally sometimes have to improve our relationships, our marriages, our, our careers, our skills, our spiritual life. It's a day by day endeavor. This will take a generation or two, and um, and, and, and that's something that we have to be faithful and commit ourselves to.

Luke Allen:

Yeah, that's such a good reminder right now, especially after the events of last night. Is it's so easy for us as Christians, with our call, our command to go and make disciples of all nations, to cast that off to someone else, or to blame our lack of doing so on someone else? Oh, it's the culture, oh it's politics. It's not letting us disciple our nations as well as we want to. Or you cast expectations that, oh, they'll just do it for me, and when they don't, then you blame them. And it's a good reminder that we can't put too much hope in the political system, in any system, but God and his church, and to not, instead of casting blame, to look at what we can do each and every day.

Scott Allen:

David, I just want to thank you for your analogy in marriage is so helpful because, you know, when you bring these things down to just basic interpersonal relationships, especially important ones like marriage, it becomes quite clear. I think, right, if you choose to cast yourself always as the victim and your spouse as the victimizer and there's a temptation there in our fallen hearts right, because right, we do live in a fallen world and we are offending and hurting people in different ways but if you do that, if you choose to do that, your relationship will, will be destroyed. And I think it shows the damage of this belief in victimization. And just, if you choose to kind of keep casting yourself in that, nothing good can come out of that, even if there's truth to it, like you were saying, maybe there was truth to the fact, but I've got to make a choice. And it reminds me of what Jesus taught.

Scott Allen:

You know Jesus said, you know, when Peter says to him how often should I forgive somebody who actually harmed me? You know, seven times Jesus. You know Jesus had that revolutionary teaching on that no, 70 times seven. You know, and he's right. Nothing good comes if we just wallow in this sense of I'm hurt, I'm, you know I'm offended, I'm harmed. You know Forgive and move forward. You know turn that cycle around, you know. So I just think it's true on that individual level, or the marriage level, or any relationship, and it's true of an entire culture. But it becomes clearer, I think, when you bring it down to that level.

David Bahnsen:

So thank you for doing that In personal ethics and individual relationships there's an old cliche that living in that kind of wallowing self-pity of resentment is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. Look for those who just don't have it in them right now to hear a message of self-sacrifice and self-denial. I will give a very selfish plea for what you and I are arguing. One of the great reasons to go through the hard work of repudiating victimhood is you will be better off for it.

David Bahnsen:

And and ultimately, I think the people who live in a self-pitying, wallowing context are never, ever hurting the people they're upset with or the institutions that they are upset with they feel have wronged them. The person who hurts the most is always them. Person who hurts the most is always them, and that seems to me to be a very anti-selfish thing to do. You are compounding the problem, and so I think those who want a happy life, those who want a shalom, owe it to themselves to cast aside this mentality of victimhood. It is not always easy. I understand that, and when we get out of the personal, interpersonal context and we're talking about our functioning within society, there are people that don't know they're doing it. Within society, there are people that don't know they're doing it that wake up every day thinking there's some big corporation out there that's out to get them.

David Bahnsen:

And I talk about this in an early chapter in the book, about why this rhetoric is done on purpose. It's nebulous Because when you can just say Wall Street or big government or the media, without any real identification and specificity, it allows you to get into a comfort zone of us versus them. But when your feet touch the grass and you have to identify. Well, wait, what people are exactly trying to get me? And when people say Goldman Sachs is taking our jobs and I go, do you think anyone at Goldman Sachs has any idea who you are? But it's easier just to think of big evil, nebulous abstracts. And now the left has theirs a company or markets or Western civilization or whatever and the right has theirs with government, media. What have you? All of these entities do bad things. All of these things require better policy. All of these things require improvement in society. None of these things are determinative in the type of peace and contentment and joy we're going to have in our lives.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, I just so appreciate your perspective on this, david, I think. I mean, at the same time I struggle a little bit, I guess, because I do here. Let me go back to that second point that I read earlier. Yeah, you talked about how our path forward must reject institutional arrogance and elitism of top-down control. This idea of big right, big media, big government, top-down control, I do think is a huge problem. So you're right, I mean, I think, in the sense that I can't cast myself as a victim of that. That's not going to be necessarily the best way to go forward, but it is a problem nevertheless. And I do think it in some ways was repudiated a little bit in this election that happened last night. Any thoughts from you on that? That, the that, what part do you think was repudiated on the part of? Well, there is an institutional elite in Washington DC that really does want to continue to have its hands on the levers of power and control of the culture.

David Bahnsen:

Well, there, sure is, there sure is. Yeah, and I think that's what I say.

Scott Allen:

There's lots of people that want to be that and that's what I think was kind of, in a sense, repudiated, which I'm still kind of stunned by, because I think for me I don't mean to turn it to the election, but I was like there's such incredible propaganda there is.

David Bahnsen:

I would caution those, though, who mistake anti-incumbency from anti-elitism. Most of the time when I hear anti-elitism, what I'm hearing is the desire for their elites to be gone and our elites to be in, because I don't really believe anyone is anti-elite if we define elite properly as people who are good at what they do.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, there's always going to be elites, I agree. Yeah, there is be elites.

David Bahnsen:

I agree, yeah, there is yes, and I have seen people that get sick or have someone in their family get sick, and they always seem to want an elite doctor, not a non-elite doctor. I've noticed that.

David Bahnsen:

Yeah. So elites in business, you know, did Trump win anti-elite? Did the right decide we wanted anti-elite? Or did they say we're going to bring Elon Musk in and we're going to bring in, you know? In other words, there was a lot of pro-elite, but it was. We're going to do it better, right? I don't think the issue is elites. I think the issue is dissatisfaction with the people who have been doing things and doing them wrongly.

David Bahnsen:

I agree with this particular group of elites and their beliefs, right, yeah, I think that's correct, and yet the problem with populism is it confuses these things by saying I want to replace one group of elites with a different group, and yet believing that what you're saying is anyone in charge is bad. I don't think anyone in charge is bad. I think people who are in charge are bad when they're doing a bad job, and so there is, to me, a category error at play. We want competence, we want character, we want proficiency, we want piety, we want technique from those that are in positions of power, but do I believe that we should have a society that doesn't have people in positions of power, people in influence? Is a really large financial institution inherently wrong? Is really competent corporate governance inherently wrong? A media profile and influence inherently wrong? Are institutions that have a brand name inherently wrong? No, I don't think they are. I think we all feel comfort in being critical of them.

Scott Allen:

So yeah, I think you're correct on all of that and it makes me wonder you know the way that our current political kind of system is cast right now. Is this kind of war between elites and populists right? You know these are the two movements and I think you're right in saying, hey, maybe that's not actually what's happening. It's not, you know, because you know, I think a lot of people that would get cast as populists aren't necessarily saying no elites, they're just saying not these elites.

David Bahnsen:

Well, and yet here's the thing. As someone who works on Wall Street and in financial markets, I would like to believe that theory is true. That all people are dissatisfied with is what these elites have done. But because I've seen it throughout history in the way people view finance, and because I believe the 10th commandment of thou shalt not covet is rooted in a real, genuine condition of the human heart. To look, it's not. You see a musician who's playing coffee shops Friday night, and there's the band that's playing arenas. How often do they intuitively say I love that band? They usually have something negative to say about the band that's more popular than them. It's just how humans are somewhat wired. And that might be a sillier analogy. To make the same point, make the same point.

David Bahnsen:

But most people have a very comfortable predisposition to repudiating, for example, goldman Sachs or Wall Street, with absolutely no ability to connect any dots whatsoever to what Wall Street has done to make their life worse. And upon 30 seconds of introspection, would realize oh wait, their work in capital markets has actually made my life better. That's how I got my small business loan, or that's how we got our mortgage, or that's where some of these good performances in our 401k have come from or whatnot, but the basic presupposition is suspicion and cynicism. If all we were talking about is post-COVID, we think the public health officials let us down. That's a very rational reaction. But would I take the reaction that I have, and maybe you have, and that many others have, against the COVID debacle and say that all people in any position of power and influence are to be loathed or held in contempt? I would not.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, neither would I. Well, David, listen. You've been so gracious with your time and I just want to thank you. It's such incredibly stimulating discussions and just for your wisdom, and I love the way you tie, you know, your Christian beliefs, your clear understanding of biblical worldview, biblical worldview principles, to very practical living, you know, in the area of business and finance and every other area as well. The book we're talking about is Crisis of Responsibility, our Cultural Addiction to Blame and how you Can Cure it. I highly recommend it, and David's other, newer book too is a great one to check out Full-Time Work and the Meaning of Life. David, keep up the great work. We'd love to have you back again. We're blessed to have you on the podcast today.

David Bahnsen:

Thank you so much, really enjoyed the time very much.

Scott Allen:

All right, and thank you all for listening to another episode of Ideas have Consequences. This is the podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance.

Luke Allen:

Thank you for joining us for this discussion with David Bonson. As always, for more information about our guests and to find all of the resources that we mentioned during the discussion, please visit the episode page, which is linked in the show notes and is right there on the homepage of our website, disciplenationsorg and, by the way, you can also learn more about the 10 words book that I mentioned during the break on that page as well. If this is your first time listening to this show, ideas have Consequences, it is brought to you by the ministry, the Disciple Nations Alliance, which is a ministry that has worked around the world for the last 27 years, training over a million people in over 90 nations with the transformative power of a biblical worldview. If you'd like to learn more about this ministry, you can find us on Instagram, facebook and YouTube or on our website, which is again disciplenationsorg. Thanks again for joining us, guys, and we'll catch you here next week again on Ideas have Consequences.