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
Don’t Stand for Social Justice with Dr. Calvin Beisner
What is meant by "social justice" today, and why do so many sincerely justice-loving Christians warn against it? Dr. Calvin Beisner of the Cornwall Alliance joins us to discuss social justice vs. biblical justice. We explore the complexities of justice, economic ethics, the flaws of socialism and capitalism, and the role of Christianity in addressing these global challenges. Dr. Beisner offers insights from his book Social Justice vs. Biblical Justice, where he refutes claims that the Bible advocates for wealth redistribution and builds a biblical framework for true justice. The discussion highlights the four criteria of biblical justice—impartiality, proportionality, rendering what is due, and conformity to God's law—while examining why some "rights" claimed in the name of social justice violate true, biblically defined rights. Don't miss this episode as this topic continues to be highly relevant and believers must have a solid biblical perspective in order to think rightly, form culture, and respond to the needs of our society.
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And what people don't realize is that the only possible way to equalize outcome among folks is to unequalize treatment.
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. My name is Scott Allen, I'm the president of the DNA and today, as always or as normal, I should say I'm joined by my dear friends and team members, Luke Allen, Dwight Vogt, and we're so happy to have back with us again our special guest, Dr Calvin Beisner. Back with us again, Our special guest, Dr Calvin Beisner. Calvin Beisner is the founder and president of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, and I'll talk a little bit more about that in just a second. Dr Beisner, so good to have you back with us today.
Calvin Beisner:Well, thanks very much to all three of you.
Scott Allen:Scott, dwight, luke really appreciate the opportunity all three of you Scott, dwight, luke really appreciate the opportunity. Yeah, luke was just sharing with you before we got on about how, the last time we were privileged to talk with you, it was one of the more listened to podcasts that we've had. And, just to remind our listeners, we were talking at that time about Dr Beisner's most recent book that he wrote with David Legates. I've got a copy of it in front of me. It's called Climate and Energy the Case for Realism. I highly recommend this book. If you have interest in issues of the environment, stewardship, care for the poor, just are concerned about all the climate alarmism that you're hearing and want to understand that better and more biblically, this is the best book for you, and so if you have a concern about any of those topics, this is the book that I really want you to avail yourselves of Before we get into our discussion today. If I could just give a little bit further introduction for new listeners or people that didn't tune into that last podcast. So, dr Beisner, you have just a really fascinating bio. I'll just read a little bit more of that and then you can fill in some blanks.
Scott Allen:As I mentioned, you're the founder and president of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation. That's a network of Christian theologians, scientists, economists and scholars that are working to educate the public on biblical earth stewardship, economic development, especially for the poor, and that's obviously a subject we care deeply about. We worked for many years at Food for the Hungry and the Proclamation of the Gospel. Dr Beisner has been a professor of historical theology at Knox Theological Seminary and also a professor of ethics and economics and government at Covenant College in Chattanooga, tennessee, beautiful campus there. He and his wife, debbie, have seven children Wow, good job and 18 grandchildren.
Scott Allen:He's written over 15 books, edited over 30, and contributed to over 35, published thousands of articles, etc. A couple other things. He's testified as an expert witness on the ethics and economics of climate change and climate energy policy before the United States Senate and the House of Representatives. And then this is one that I just I read from your bio up on the Cornwall Alliance. That really fascinated me that you have your doctorate, your PhD, in Scottish history, the history of political thought, from the University of St Andrews, scotland. I wish I could have my PhD in that, actually, because my name is.
Dwight Vogt:Scott, as you know.
Scott Allen:Scott.
Calvin Beisner:So anyways yeah yeah, well, what all? Of this means, of course, is that I'm an intellectual mongrel mixed breed because I've studied in so many different areas and my main work is not in the field of my PhD. But that's okay.
Scott Allen:But it sounds like you have a really broad interest and it sounds just really fascinating. I do yeah, Today we were going to focus our discussion on a previous book that you wrote. That's very similar to a book that I actually wrote. I thought it'd be kind of fun to talk about it with you.
Scott Allen:The title of that book is Social Justice vs Biblical Justice how Good Intentions Undermine the Gospel which you published in 2018. But before we jump into that, I just wanted to you know, hear any updates from you on your current work, the book that you have out recently, what's happening? What's going on right now?
Calvin Beisner:Well, I would say, probably the first thing I'd look at is tremendous blessing that the Cornwall Alliance has had from the influence of Megan Basham's new book Shepherds for Sale how evangelical leaders traded the truth for a leftist agenda. We have a very, very major role inside that book, not as one of those evangelical organizations that have traded the truth for a leftist agenda, but as one that refused to do that, and we've been just extremely grateful to Megan Basham for the way she's reported on us, reported on us. It's really sad that an awful lot of evangelical environmental organizations have essentially uncritically embraced the notions about environmental stewardship that are common to the secular and the neo-pagan environmentalist movements and have not really done excellent scientific and economic analysis, either of the actual claims of what's happening you know. Is, for example, climate change truly an existential threat to humanity, or is it instead something that, yeah, it will bring some problems but it will also bring some huge benefits? And life is full of trade-offs and we need to get accustomed to that and deal with it well. And then also, unfortunately, in many instances human thriving takes a backseat to nature in much environmental thought and sadly a lot of evangelical environmental organizations have kind of embraced that followed that kind of thinking.
Calvin Beisner:And the Cornwall Alliance, from our very start, 19 years ago now, has been convinced that God made his world in such a way that, while it is possible for us to do some harm to nature, well, let's put it this way a tiny, tiny change in atmospheric chemistry, carbon dioxide concentration increasing from 28 thousandths of one percent of the atmosphere to 56 thousandths of one percent of the atmosphere, which hasn't happened yet, by the way, we're still actually very, very low on CO2 in the atmosphere compared with the most verdant periods of global biological history. But the notion that that tiny, tiny change in atmospheric chemistry would cause a catastrophe to our climate and actually threaten human existence or at least greatly reduce human thriving, that just doesn't fit with a biblical understanding that an infinitely wise, infinitely powerful, infinitely faithful God designed, created and sustains the world and its climate system. So we try to do our best to bring biblical worldview, theology and ethics together with excellent science and economics to address these sorts of issues, and Megan Basham's book has been a tremendous boost to us. There's been a whole lot more attention to us because of that, and I'm a former journalist myself, son of a lifelong journalist, and I know that there are negative reviews of Basham's book out there, and I know that there are negative reviews of Bashan's book out there.
Calvin Beisner:If one reads them carefully, one recognizes that the complaints are basically about ticky-tack, tiny, tiny details here and there. None of them really jeopardizes the substance of what she's written about any of the various evangelical leaders and organizations whom she's criticized. So I think that's a very important book and it has brought much good new attention to the Cornwall Alliance, and this is making it so that we can see ourselves being able to achieve a whole lot more next year than we've ever done before. Thank God, a lot of people have come to CornwallAllianceorg and signed up to receive our email newsletters and to listen to our podcast Created to Rain, and they're following us now on X and Facebook and the like, and a fair number of them have become generous donors as well. So this all means that we're able now to, I think, do far more in coming years than we've done in years before.
Luke Allen:Hi, friends, I want to take a quick minute to tell you about our newest book here at the Disciple Nations Alliance. It's called Ten Words to Heal Our Broken World Restoring the True Meaning of Our Most Important Words, by Scott Allen. Why words, you ask. Well, if you're familiar with my dad's last book why Social Justice is Not Biblical Justice, or if you stick around for the rest of today's episode with Dr Beisner, you'll know that words are only as good as their definitions.
Luke Allen:Just because someone trumpets a quote-unquote biblical word, it does not mean that what they are saying is biblical, because definitions matter.
Luke Allen:For example, most of us can remember the conflicting definitions of justice that were being thrown around back in the summer of 2020 here in the US. During that time, many Christians found themselves extremely confused because they wanted to promote justice, but they didn't know who to listen to. This book, 10 Words to Heal Our Broken World, will equip you with the knowledge necessary to go out into your workspace to turn on the news or to talk with your friends and be able to recognize when a biblical word is being defined in an unbiblical manner. This is extremely practical for us as Christians, because if we don't know how to define these words according to God's word, then who's gonna defend them?
Luke Allen:If you, like us, are longing to see a revival in our culture that leads to a reformation in all areas of life, then we'll need to start by upholding the true definitions of at least these 10 culture-building words, because if you wanna heal a culture, you begin by aligning its language and principles with God's word. So again, don't miss our newest book, 10 Words to Heal Our Broken World, by Scott Allen. If you'd like to learn more, head to 10wordsbookorg. Again, that is 10wordsbookorg, or you can tap the link in the show notes.
Scott Allen:Oh, I'm so glad to hear that. That's really encouraging. And yeah, I was thrilled when I read that book, you know, a couple months ago, when I guess I got a copy right after it came out, and I was thrilled that she yeah, she mentioned you prominently in your organization, as you know, ones that were speaking kind of a counter to this mainstream narrative on climate and environment that so many evangelicals have gone along with or promoting. And she points out a lot of money from secular donors are behind that as well. And at the same time, you don't have George Soros funding the Cornwall Alliance. It's a small little organization that's doing its best.
Scott Allen:And so really really great, great for her and I'm really really happy to hear that. You know, I just am reading. By the way, as we speak, oz Guinness has a new book out right now and he makes a point on the environmental issue, the climate crisis issue. I thought that was really powerful. I'd love to get your reaction to it. He says that the people that are promoting that think of the World Economic Forum, klaus Schwab, bill Gates, some of these people that are really out in front pushing that hard. He says what they do, that group, let's say they start with problems and they create them to be so catastrophic and so large that, you know, the only possible way that you can begin to solve them is through. You know, any single organization or single nation isn't going to be able to do it. You need essentially a global government, you know.
Scott Allen:So and then his challenge to Christians is you know, see through that agenda. First of all, you know this is really in some ways it's a play for power that's using climate, you know, as a problem to gain kind of access to a lot of power. But then secondly, he says, as Christians we ought to be starting not with problems but with principles. What actually leads to human flourishing? What does it mean to be a steward of the environment? You know, we're going to do a lot better if we start with principles, biblical principles, and try to protect and defend those. And we are jumping on board the latest bandwagon of some global problem. I love your thoughts on that.
Calvin Beisner:Yeah, well, here's an old friend of mine and that book is quite good and he's right on target there.
Calvin Beisner:What so often happens is that, well, let's see, it was HL Mencken, the turn-of-the-20th-century, essentially muckraking journalist, but a brilliant man brilliant man who said, and I'm paraphrasing here you know that the main goal of all governments is to create fear of hobgoblins you know mythical hobgoblins to keep the populace under control. And I think that this is exactly what Udo has focused on here and, in terms of the climate change issue, that really has become the number one rationale in all sorts of different venues around the world, not just the World Economic Forum, but here in America, the Democratic Party and, for that matter, a fairly large part of the Republican Party in the governments of most West European nations and in Canada, and so on. This has become the number one rationale for tearing down national sovereignty, for substituting global government for national and provincial or state and local government, and for exchanging a free market, limited government, free trade, economic order, which is the order under which most of humanity has risen, from severe poverty being the routine for about 98% of humanity, to real prosperity. Real prosperity, this fear of catastrophic global warming driven by human activity, especially using fossil fuels, has become the primary rationale for trading a free market economy, economic order, free trade around the world for a socialist order, and that was made clear even back in 2015, early 2015. Christiana Figueres, who was at the time, the Secretary General of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change said that the Paris Climate Summit would be the first time that the world has the opportunity to turn away from the economic order that has reigned for the last 150 years or so to a new economic order.
Calvin Beisner:Now she didn't name what that new order would be, but she is a very well-known socialist. Her father was the socialist president of Costa Rica for a long time. She clearly wants global socialism and you know, history just tells us socialism has not lifted any nation out of poverty. It has taken many prosperous nations and pushed them back down into poverty and, frankly, Venezuela comes to my mind, as you're speaking right now yeah just an example Example, one here, and you, and I see that as a negative, as a of socialism.
Calvin Beisner:But if you think that human population is a threat to the natural world, and if you think that we need to protect the natural world at all costs, and if you think that population growth plus affluence, plus technology results in greater environmental impact this is a formula developed by I believe it was Paul Ehrlich back in the 1960s. I equals PAT, environmental impact, equals population times, affluence times, technology. Well, if you believe all of that stuff, then you really think that a shrinking human population is a very good thing. And so it's not surprising that the leaders of the top environmental organizations around the world tend to think that, oh, total human population of, say, 1 billion would be a whole lot better for the planet than the 8 billion that we now have, would be a whole lot better for the planet than the 8 billion that we now have. And so you know, socialism is great at impoverishing people, and poverty is great at shortening people's lives, and so if you want a smaller population, that's the way to go.
Scott Allen:Yeah, those are really good, good thoughts, you know. Back to Megan Basham for a second. I want to transition to the topic of your previous book and my book as well Social Justice, and one of the reasons that I you know I wrote that book is really the same reason that Megan wrote her book, in the sense that, you know, after, especially in the how can I say? It was before George Floyd and the 2020 riots you know, it was really at the beginning of the BLM movement, I think, in some ways, the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States, and I think, for me, one of the awakening moments was when I saw InterVarsity and Urbana, the Great Missions Conference. That had a huge impact on my life. You know, platform, a spokesperson for Black Lives Matter, and you know essentially say that this is a movement for the gospel.
Scott Allen:you know, and the little that I knew about Black Lives Matter. I thought you know these three young women that founded it are open about their convictions, their Marxist convictions. They're not Christians. And so I was stunned that InterVarsity, you know, which I have great respect for, you know, both as a publishing company, as a student ministry organization, the Missions Conference, all that they do I was stunned that they would do that. And then I started kind of looking into the ideology, you know, of what they were teaching.
Scott Allen:I had a lot of Christian friends in the Phoenix area who were on board with what their agenda was, you know, and I became alarmed by that. As I looked at it, I thought, you know, I have to kind of confess I hadn't thought a lot about Marxism really for a while. I have to kind of confess I hadn't thought a lot about Marxism really for a while, just because I kind of thought that it had largely died out after the fall of the Berlin Wall, you know, and I was sorely mistaken, you know that—I guess I knew that, yeah, it was still alive and well in our American universities, but I kind of thought it would stay there maybe, and I realized I was so wrong, you know that it actually had burst out and was now really taking over institutions in the society education, entertainment, government and it was using these groups like Black Lives Matter. But then, more alarming was that InterVarsity and then Crew, which I have a tremendous respect for many churches even I was looking at. I thought what's Tim Keller going to say about all this?
Scott Allen:Clearly, this ideology and the way that they posit things like good and evil, for example, they say the good and evil that exists in the world it's not because of fallen human hearts, it's because certain groups right, have gained leverage and power and oppress other people. And then, essentially, if you can overthrow those powerful groups, you know, then you're going to—that's the solution to the evil in the world and the injustice. And I thought that's such a completely unbiblical understanding of—I mean, it's not—of course right, you know there is oppression, evil in the world, etc. But to root it in groups like that or groups even based on things like skin color or gender, I thought this is so clearly unbiblical and, frankly, so clearly Marxist.
Scott Allen:I had to go back and remember what all that Marxism was, that I learned in university, that I was stunned that these Christians weren't speaking out. You know, tim Keller, you know I have great respect for him, but he wasn't speaking out and he was kind of straddling the fence, and so that was my kind of first awareness into what Megan was writing about in her book. Like, our leaders are kind of letting us down. They're not speaking clearly, if anything, they're kind of on board with these far-left agendas. What in the heck is going on? It didn't seem like it used to be that way, you know.
Scott Allen:So I mean in the sense that often, when bad ideas came out, you'd have some courageous leaders. You know Christian leaders, you know pastors or seminary professors raising the flag, and you know certainly John MacArthur. Others did, but for the most part people didn't. You know, and that's really the thesis of Megan's book, really isn't it? Yeah?
Calvin Beisner:It is, and you know we need to keep in mind. There's one book on the history of socialism as an economic theory. It's titled the Perennial Heresy. I forget the name of the author at the moment, but this is because, frankly, socialist notions have risen and fallen and risen and fallen over and over and over again throughout church history and history outside the church.
Calvin Beisner:Parts of Scripture, for instance Acts, chapters 2 and 4, where we read that, you know, the Christians in Jerusalem considered nothing to be just their own, but they shared things with each other. Well, that is easily read as a repudiation of private property, until you read a little more clearly, a little more closely, and you see in the beginning of chapter 5 that when Ananias and Sapphira sold a field and brought only part of the price to the apostles, but claimed to be bringing the whole price and of course Peter, you know, says Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit? You have not lied to men, but to God. Ananias then dropped dead. What Peter had also said was while you still own the field, wasn't it yours? And even after you sold it, you had control over the money.
Calvin Beisner:There was no challenge to private property rights here, and that's because private property rights are inherent to the very law of God in the Ten Commandments. The Eighth Commandment is you shall not steal. That makes no sense whatsoever if there's no such thing as private property rights. But that kind of thinking has cropped up again and again. And the strong social justice and I put air quotes around that because it's not justice at all but the strong social justice movement is something that goes back a couple of centuries and has had significant influence in evangelical circles, at least since the 1960s, with the evangelical left, people like Ron Sider, jim Wallace, sojourners and so on. And so what got me into looking at all of this stuff in the first place was back in I believe it was 1981, I read Sider's book Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger.
Scott Allen:That by the way, had a huge influence on my generation of Christians coming out of college. I mean that's part of the reason I got into ministry at Food for the Hungry, you know just a real big influence.
Calvin Beisner:Absolutely. In fact, a few years ago, christianity Today named it the most influential evangelical book of the past 50 years, which I think is tragic yeah it is tragic.
Calvin Beisner:Because you know what Sider was embracing in. There was basically a quasi-socialist way of dealing with hunger, and he was doing it based on some serious misuse of various passages of scripture, for example the sabbatical year, debt relief, law of Deuteronomy, chapter 15, and the jubilee year law of the return of land to original owners and the release of indentured servants from their bondage, and so on. I actually had a long talk with Ron about those very passages at the Oxford Conference on Christian Faith and Economics back in, I think it was 1990. We were sitting across from each other at a lunch table eating, and as I took him through the passages he admitted yeah, you're right, there's no redistribution of wealth going on here. Instead, the whole system was set up so that the loans basically were paid off by the intervening years of harvest or intervening years of work, and so by the time the sabbatical year, or especially the jubilee year, came along, those loans had been paid off and the collateral, meaning the land or the labor that had secured them, had to be returned to the collateral's owner.
Calvin Beisner:Well, that's not by any means wealth redistribution, but that's what got me into this was reading Sider's book and realizing a whole lot of people could, with the very best of motivations, really truly loving their neighbors. As far as we define love as well-wishing, you know I want you to do well right. Loving their neighbors they could embrace policies that would actually do far more harm than good, which is what led me to do my master's in economic ethics under the tutelage of the late Dr Russell Kirk, one of the great conservative political philosophers.
Scott Allen:Wow, is that right? Yeah, he's, wow. I recommend everyone.
Calvin Beisner:One of my heroes, russell.
Scott Allen:Kirk yeah, wow, that's amazing.
Calvin Beisner:One of my heroes, not only for all of his intellectual contributions but also because he and his wife match made my wife and me, but also because he and his wife Matt made my wife and me. But then I was asked by Marvin Alasky and Herb Schlossberg to write a volume on economics for the Crossway Turning Point Christian Worldview series that Crossway Books was publishing in the late 80s, series that Crossway Books was publishing in the late 80s and that became my book Prospects, prosperity and Poverty, the Compassionate Use of Resources in a World of Scarcity. And in my master's thesis and in that book I dealt at great length with the meaning of justice in scripture, because unfortunately, what goes by the name of justice in an awful lot of circles now, including among evangelical Christians who love their Bibles, is not at all what the Bible means by justice. I spent hundreds and hundreds of hours studying the full context of every single use, of every Hebrew and Greek term related to justice and rights and righteousness and so on, and I wound up coming up with a sort of a brief definition of justice. Now the briefest definition, which I think is good, is justice means rendering to everyone his due, rendering to everyone who's due.
Calvin Beisner:Okay, but the question is how do you determine what's due to people right?
Calvin Beisner:And so I expand on that a bit by looking at the different uses of the terms in Scripture and I wind up with the definition of justice as rendering impartially you know, play any favorites and proportionally.
Calvin Beisner:Punishment should fit the crime, reward should fit the performance. Right To everyone his due, that is what he has merited, what he has earned, right In accord with the righteous standard that is set forth in God's moral law, standard that is set forth in God's moral law. And if we see that, then we quickly realize that a whole lot of ideas about what is justice that require preferential treatment for certain segments of the population, favoritism towards certain people or opposition towards other people, or the forcible taking of property from some people and giving it to other people as distinct from charitable giving, which always stems from voluntary motivation driven by love kardis, the Greek word that is the root of our word charity those notions of justice requiring redistribution of wealth through forced expropriation of property from some and giving it to others, are actually the exact opposite of biblical justice. And though they may be driven by good intentions, we must all remember that one of the classic figures of speech is hell is paved with good intentions.
Scott Allen:Yeah the road to hell is paved with good intentions, that's right, yeah, is paved with good intentions. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, that's right, yeah. You know, in my own research on this Calvin, one of the things that was enlightening for me was when I looked at biblical justice, or just true justice is this Latin word for justice is similar to the word for straight. The word for straight and the idea of straight was kind of the idea of a plumb line, a standard, like you were saying. So biblical justice really, at the end of the day, is all about kind of alignment or conformity to a standard for what is right and good, and that standard itself is rooted in God's character. You know, god himself is utterly good, perfect, holy and just. So doing justice in this world is all about alignment to that standard. And when you talk about social justice.
Scott Allen:God isn't even in the picture, right. It kind of has atheistic roots. I mean, I know some Christians will argue against that, but largely, at least today anyways, it's been kind of co-opted by people with a Marxist and atheist background. So God's not in the picture. What is justice? It's that equality of outcome, you know. So those are very different ideas, kind of. You know, through a top-down kind of forced social engineering type of approach to kind of make sure that everyone is equal, engineering type of approach to kind of make sure that everyone is equal. And you know people we see this you know, very prominently through policies of DEI, right, you know diversity, equity and inclusion, where it doesn't, for example, matter what your SAT score is. If you've got a certain skin color, whatever it is, you're going to get into Harvard because we need to have equal numbers of you know different skin color groups, I guess you know to get into Harvard because we need to have equal numbers of you know different skin color groups, I guess you know, and so this is all over the place.
Scott Allen:People have experienced this. Anyways, I just say that because these are such different ideas and, again, I just think it's so important for Christians, even though the word is the same justice, you know, to be aware that these definitions are very different. Yeah, go ahead.
Calvin Beisner:That is certainly so, and you've mentioned the push for equality of outcome, and what people don't realize is that the only possible way to equalize outcome among folks is to unequalize treatment. If you have somebody who's very brilliant and very self-disciplined and a really hard worker, and somebody whose IQ is considerably below normal and who is undisciplined and not a hard worker, the only way that you can ensure that they will wind up with the same annual income is by treating the two very differently. Either you take from the former what he has earned and give some of that to the latter, or you prevent the former from doing all that he could do, you restrict his life, you restrict his actions and you interfere with his freedom. So that's part of the deal. I mean the only way. And, by the way, this is called leveling. Right Back in the 16th century England and early 17th century England, there was a movement called the Levelers, and this was part of the perennial heresy of socialism.
Calvin Beisner:We want to have equal wealth for all people, right? Well, the problem with leveling is that you cannot level up. You cannot make those with either inferior skills or inferior self-discipline. You cannot make them as productive as those with greater skills and greater self-discipline, other than by curbing the productivity of those with the greater skills.
Scott Allen:Let me give you one example. I'm six foot five.
Calvin Beisner:Let me give you one example I'm six foot five and so I always had a better chance of being a professional basketball player than my friend Dante at five foot two in middle school. The only way to prevent that advantage would have been to cut my legs off. People don't realize this, but, by the way too, we often think okay, so equality of outcome is bad, but we want equality of opportunity. But even that truly cannot be achieved because people are born at different times, in different places, to different parents in different places, to different parents, with different skills, with different aptitudes, with different values. People grow up in different locations. They have all kinds of different opportunities and encounters in their lives.
Calvin Beisner:You cannot equalize opportunities either. The only thing you can equalize is just application of all laws to all people, and that means fundamentally that we get rid of the notion that you have a right to some percentage of average income in your community. Instead, your right to property is not so much a right to get property as it is a negative right against theft. And that takes us to the fact that negative rights are real rights against harm. Positive rights, rights to benefits, are not real, because positive rights ultimately invariably wind up being internally contradictory. You cannot forcibly give some benefits to some people without taking them away from other people.
Scott Allen:Yeah, I was just going to say one of the kind of the craziest, but this is real examples I found in my research to express what you're saying had to do with, kind of the two-parent family, the traditional family, mother-father family, yes, so social scientists have done a whole slew of research on this and found that if you're raised in a two-parent family like I've been fortunate to be raised in, my parents never divorced, and there's a whole slew of positive benefits that come from that You're more likely to succeed in school, you're more likely to earn a higher income, you're less likely to end up in prison, et cetera, et cetera. It's just facts in terms of the social science data, et cetera. It's just facts in terms of the social science data. And because it leads so the two-parent traditional family, because it leads to unequal outcomes I literally were.
Scott Allen:I was reading articles that people were saying it's unjust and you had to tear it down. You know we have to tear down the family and it's like you say it doesn't, it doesn't? It always tears down, it doesn't actually, you know, I mean it's crazy what you should do is say, how do we strengthen the family so we give everyone an opportunity to do better?
Scott Allen:But no, can't have that, because these families are creating unjust outcomes, you know. Anyways, I just thought it's crazy, but it makes sense from. I mean, they're following the train of thought from their first principle there, I guess.
Dwight Vogt:I want to give thought to my niece's comment, if she was listening right now, which she won't be, but it would be okay. Theft is wrong. What if your wealth is because you stole it, and then they'll go back to colonialism, they'll go back to slavery, they'll go back to you know. Any thoughts on that, calvin?
Calvin Beisner:Well, scripture very, very clearly teaches that if somebody steals something, what he has stolen has to be given back to the one from whom he stole it, and some percentage of its value has to be added to that as punishment for his violating God's law. So there's no problem with recognizing that theft is unjust. It is the wrong way to get wealth. Scripture also teaches, though, that the children are not to be punished for their parents' sins, and it teaches that there needs to be a clear proof of guilt when accusations of sin or crime are leveled against somebody. That all of the wealth of, say you know to take one way of coming at this white Americans right comes from their having abused, oppressed, stolen from Native Americans, from African Americans, from other people. There are two big problems with that. One is well, actually three. One is that a whole lot of white Americans don't have any such background whatsoever.
Calvin Beisner:You know, my ancestors came over penniless as stowaways on a ship from Germany and made it up from there in the late 19th century with hard work. Let's see, my father was the first of my family to go to college. I was the first to get a graduate degree. This is, you know, we don't fit that description. But the next problem is that in many instances what is thought of as theft was not actually theft. There were agreements for the trade of land for various benefits, agreements for the trade of land for various benefits, and this often happened with the Native Americans, not always and there were total thefts that went on right.
Calvin Beisner:But then finally too, you can't penalize today's generation for something that several generations back three, four, five, seven generations back did. That is unjust as well, and Thomas Sowell has written about this sort of thing really wonderfully in his book the Quest for Cosmic Justice. We have to recognize that we do live in a fallen world, and though we could wish that it were possible to achieve perfect justice in this world, the very fact that it's a fallen world means that that will never happen. That is a utopian fallacy, and the pursuit of that can itself lead to greater injustice than the recognition that some unjust outcomes cannot be rectified without doing new injustice. So in part we're stuck.
Scott Allen:You're putting it too politely, I would say Calvin. Not only can it lead to injustice, it's led to the greatest injustices of you know. Just take the 20th century. If you were a property owner in Russia after the revolution, it didn't matter how good of a person you were, even if you were a generous Christian. Just the fact that you owned property meant you know that property was taken from you and you were put in a gulag up in Siberia.
Calvin Beisner:That's why you know and many of them died If you were lucky. If you were lucky, probably 30,000, pardon me, probably some 30 million Ukrainian kulaks starved to death.
Scott Allen:I just think that has to be understood, just how violent this quest for cosmic justice, this utopian idea. It's so bloody.
Dwight Vogt:And we just have to recognize that they all tried. So yeah, Thank you. Thank you, Calvin Great.
Scott Allen:I just had a question and I lost it.
Scott Allen:Oh, I was going to go back to yeah, I think yeah, your comment about how we live in an unjust world, and I think the question then becomes how do we respond to that, the injustice that has affected us? Maybe we've been wronged, you know, and earlier you were talking about Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, that book that had such an influence on me, and coming out of university that was my way of thinking. I deeply imbibed those thoughts and I thought, you know, the reason that there's poverty in the world, in places like Africa, is because we're in the West, we're rich, like we. You know, resources are kind of fixed and limited this is zero sum idea and we have more. Consequently, they have less. We've stolen from them, raped, pillaged, colonialism, etc. Like I. Really, that seemed very plausible to me and so I bought into that idea. I joined Food for the Hungry, worked as Dwight did for many years, and we traveled and spent time in Africa and some of the poorest communities in the world.
Calvin Beisner:And I did a lot of good by the way.
Scott Allen:I hope so, you know. Anyways, I recognize that that same mindset was—that shaped the mindset of a lot of the Africans, let's say Africa. You know that we were working with as well, that the reason they were poor is because white people were rich and owed them. You know white Europeans were rich They'd taken from them.
Scott Allen:And I thought you know this whole way of thinking is so destructive. First of all, there may be truth to it. There is truth to it. Okay, again, we live in an evil world, a fallen world. But what good does that do? What it does on the part of white people is it makes them kind of guilty and paternalistic, and on the part of people in Africa, it makes them passive and feel like there's nothing we can do. Until you do something for me, and I thought you're never going to come out of poverty unless you can say what can I do? What decisions can I make, given all the things that are against me.
Scott Allen:And that became the basis of our teaching is what can you do with what God has given you, no matter how small? What resources has he put in your hands that you can steward and begin to do something with? And we saw that once that mindset, that victimization mindset if you will, shifted, then the table was set for communities to actually come out of poverty.
Scott Allen:That was a huge lesson for me about how, like if you really want to see change in a broken community, dwight, you could speak to this more powerfully, but I thought this whole socialism, wealth redistribution, victimization mindset, it really is harming. Thoughts from you, dwight, or Calvin on either I like jumping on that.
Dwight Vogt:Calvin, I'd like to go back to you said your podcast was created to reign.
Calvin Beisner:Yeah.
Dwight Vogt:That takes us back to what Scott's talking about. Would you just talk about that pod? Do you host it and what do we unpack that? Just a bit.
Calvin Beisner:Well, both Dr David Gates, who is our Director of Research and Education, retired professor of climatology at the University of Delaware, and I we kind of trade off on doing the podcasts of Created to Rain. We address all kinds of issues related to environmental stewardship, economic development for the poor around the world, energy policy, climate policy and so on. So that's someplace where we do try to get these lessons across and so far that's been having some very good impact. I think a lot of people find that a good way to get introduced to these ideas. You know we mentioned that my PhD is in history.
Calvin Beisner:Great Harvard philosopher, george Santayana, said those who do not remember history are condemned to repeat it. And so, scott, as you were talking about colonialism, for example, I remembered immediately a number of books by the great English economist, lord Peter Bower. Several of them came out in the like that had had the most influence on them by colonial powers were the countries that had the highest standards of living, and the countries that had the least influence by colonial powers had the lowest standards of living. And the countries that gained their freedom first from colonial rule had the lowest standard of living. The countries that remained colonies the longest had the highest standards of living. So, in other words, colonialism, despite its problems and there were problems with it, there were ethical problems with much of the treatment of the colonized peoples Nonetheless it had a lot of good results.
Calvin Beisner:Our mutual friend, I think, vishal Mangalati, has written about how, in India, the British colonial rule for several centuries there transformed that country, and in fact he wrote a book called India, the Grand Experiment, in which his thesis is that the, aside from food and art, the only things about Indian culture that are worth preserving are the things brought to it by British colonial rule justice. So we do need to learn our history, and part of what we learn from history is that free market, limited government, entrepreneurial, free trade, trade, rule of law countries invariably prosper much better than do countries with large and intrusive government with restrictions on free trade other than to prohibit and punish fraud, theft and violence. People just do better. That's the lesson of history and we need to learn it. Frankly.
Scott Allen:I want to just I've got a couple things before we finish, calvin, because I know we're running out of time but just on that point, you know I get criticism a lot and I think deservedly. You know some of this is right. When I talk the way that you're just talking right now about free market capitalism, people will push back and they'll say you know, I understand your critique of socialism, I agree with that, but there's also a Christian critique for free market capitalism and I think that there's some truth to that. How would you respond to that? Is it just an unadulterated good biblically?
Calvin Beisner:Well, life is full of tradeoffs, right, we can never escape that fact. We don't live in an unfallen world, and so every sort of economic order has its positives and its negatives. Right, I think the positives of the free market economic order far outweigh the negatives, and I think the negatives of the socialist or communist world economic order far outweigh the positives. But we can also look carefully at how we're defining our terms. Some people will talk about unfettered capitalism. That's a sort of a favorite phrase of the critics.
Calvin Beisner:Well, no capitalist economist I'm aware of has ever argued in favor of unfettered capitalism. All have recognized that it is appropriate to have laws against fraud, against theft, against violence, against theft against violence, that it is appropriate to have regulations about the necessity of proper testing for safety before a product is marketed and so on, and that there has to be liability. But you know what it's when government gets involved in the marketplace that you see the reduction of liability and the protection of the corporate interests, as happened, for example, during the COVID situation. The pharmaceutical companies that developed the COVID vaccines did so under a specific regime put together by the US FDA that protected them from all liability, from harm that their vaccines might do Under a proper free market economy, they would have to be liable for harm that their vaccines might do.
Scott Allen:Yeah, let me run something by you, because this is my own thinking on this and I'd love your critique on it. I've often thought the problem with free market capitalism isn't anything in principle, like biblically. There's nothing wrong with it in principle.
Scott Allen:What's wrong with it is that it's run by sinners, you know fallen people who are greedy and you know if they can make a lot of money on pornography in a free market, they absolutely will, or you name it right. So that's the problem. It's the problem of human kind of evil. But there's a solution to that. You can. You know the gospel, and I mean people can become good. And the best of all systems is one where people not just through regulation, as you're talking about from the outside, but inside this internal self-government, people regulating themselves to do good in a free market. If you can put those two things together, then it's the most powerful of all systems.
Scott Allen:Now, socialism, in principle, biblically I'm speaking from a biblical standpoint it goes against the grain. You can't have it, even in principle. So the problem with socialism isn't bad people, fallen people, it's the system itself. It just there isn't a biblical principle that undergirds it from the very beginning Because, yeah, it's just based on faulty ideas of this equality of outcome and this perfection of society, apart from the gospel Thoughts on that.
Calvin Beisner:Couldn't say it better. Couldn't say it better.
Scott Allen:Yeah, I just think it's important for us to give a hat tip to the critique of capitalism too. You know, I just think it's important to say, yeah, it's biblically sound in principle, but it can be totally messed up. You're right. You're right, you know. People have experienced that, you know Right.
Calvin Beisner:And free market capitalists can readily embrace, for example, laws against pornography, laws against prostitution, laws against sex trafficking, laws against the marketing of poisons, things like that. That all fits within free market philosophy. But when socialism says, yes, it is the proper task of the government to take property from some to whom it belongs, just in principle is unbiblical, right there, yeah, yeah.
Scott Allen:Exactly. You just can't start there as a Christian, whereas there's no problem with the free market. Last question, if we could you talked about pendulum swinging on the issue of social justice. I feel like it's swinging right now. It's swinging in a positive way. I mean just the fact that you said your organization is getting a lot more attention. You know, black Lives Matter, for example, that caused so much consternation, has now been kind of shown to be a fraud, and you know I mean, but I know it's deeply embedded still a lot, especially in our government agencies. You know I mean the DEI regime and all of this is still deeply embedded. What's your take on where we are and where we're headed with this? Are you optimistic?
Calvin Beisner:We will always.
Calvin Beisner:We will always be fighting this battle.
Calvin Beisner:You know, back in the mid-1980s, about half a dozen different evangelical economists and philosophers and the like, including myself, more than half a dozen, probably a dozen different evangelical economists and philosophers and the like, including myself, more than half a dozen, probably a dozen wrote a number of critiques of Ron Sider's work and Jim Wallace's work and so on.
Calvin Beisner:The evangelical left and frankly, we won that battle from about 1986 to a little after 2000, the evangelical left was very, very quiet about economic theory, it's true, but then it started coming back and it found a ready audience, especially among young people, young people who don't tend to have a lot of historical experience. And they see folks suffering and they're told that they're suffering because of some oppression by the capitalist society. And, bingo, you know, you've got them because you've addressed their motives without their really understanding that you only do good when you combine good motives with actually just action. So over about the last 20 years we've seen a rebound of the evangelical left and now I think in the last oh, four, five, six years or so, we're seeing the pendulum headed the other direction. I think this will continue.
Calvin Beisner:We're not done, eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.
Scott Allen:Well, at least it's swinging in the right direction now. And just one humorous example. I told the guys about this. I like to watch NFL football and five years ago they were kneeling right and putting Black Lives Matter logos on their helmet, and now they're doing the Trump dance in the end zone after they score a touchdown.
Calvin Beisner:Yeah, which doesn't mean that Trump is magnificent.
Scott Allen:You're right. You're right. He's not the second coming of Jesus. I consider him the lesser of two evils.
Calvin Beisner:But you know, we Christians, the one thing that we have that nobody else has is the gospel. Amen. We Christians, the one thing that we have that nobody else has is the gospel, and this gospel tells us that people who trust in Jesus Christ can not only have their sins forgiven but also their hearts changed, so that then, instead of wanting to do injustice, they want to do justice. Injustice, they want to do justice, and they go to the scriptures to find out what justice truly is. And so then, by the changed hearts of people who've met Jesus Christ, we can see a changed world too. And you know, is it ever going to be a perfect world? Not till.
Calvin Beisner:Christ returns, but we can have a significant impact. Progress is possible and is why I wrote the book Social Justice vs Biblical Justice, which, by the way, is available through the online store at CornwallAllianceorg CornwallAllianceorg. Just click on the shop and you'll find the book there. And you'll find the book there. But it's also why the work of folks like you all with Discipling the Nations and Vishal Mangalati with his third education revolution, and so on this work is so important and I praise God that you all are doing it.
Scott Allen:Well, we are just thrilled to be able to have the relationship we have with you, calvin, and just so thrilled for the work that you all are doing it. Well, we are just thrilled to be able to have the relationship we have with you, calvin, and just so thrilled for the work that you're doing and the way that your influence is expanding. Again, as you mentioned, the book is Social Justice vs Biblical Justice how Good Intentions Undermine the Gospel and you can get a link to that book at the website Cornwall Alliance, and you can also avail yourselves there of a whole bunch of wonderful biblical resources, especially as it relates to issues of the environment, climate and many other things that Calvin's working on. Thank you so much for the time today. We're so grateful and, yeah, just really appreciate the work that you're doing.
Calvin Beisner:Well, I thank you as well and look forward to another time. We'll set that up. And to all of our listeners.
Scott Allen:once again, thank you for tuning into another episode of Ideas have Consequences. This is the podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance episode of Ideas have Consequences.
Luke Allen:This is the podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance. Thank you for joining us for this discussion with E Calvin Beisner. As always, to learn more about Dr Beisner and to find all of the resources that we mentioned during this discussion and more, please visit the episode landing page, which is linked in the show notes. If you've listened to the show for any amount of time, you'll know that Ideas have Consequences is the podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance and, as a nonprofit ministry, we are blessed to be able to provide all of our biblical worldview courses and this podcast to you completely for free, thanks to our generous supporters.
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