Before we dive into the content for this episode, I want to give a quick shout out to our sponsor, High Bridge Books. If you're a Christian and you want to write, publish, and sell a book, you really need to contact us. In fact, you can contact me directly because this is my company. You can reach me at Darren at highbridgebooks.com. Our authors have sold many tens of thousands of life-changing books for the glory of God, and we're always looking for more Christian thought leaders to work with. You can take a look at our publishing package and some of the other services we offer at highbridgebooks.com. And you can also learn about some of our incredible authors and their books. So go to highbridgebooks.com. All right, let's jump into this amazing episode. Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Theology of Business Podcast. I'm your host, Darren Shear, and this is the show where we as marketplace Christians explore and apply God's will for business. On this episode, we're joined by Jerry Boyer. Jerry is the chief economist of Vidant Financial, editor of Town Hall Finance, and president of Boyer Research. He is also resident economist with Kingdom Advisors and serves on the editorial board of Salem Communications. He's been on Forbes.com, he's been a columnist there and a frequent commentator on Fox Business News, Fox News, and CNBC. And he's been a contributing editor of National Review Online, the New York Sun and Town Hall magazine, and has written for the Wall Street Journal and numerous other publications as well. And he's got a new publication, a new book that is coming out pretty much at the time of this recording. He can talk more about the details of the release. But that book is titled The Maker versus the Takers, what Jesus Really Said About Social Justice and Economics. Jerry, welcome to the show.
SPEAKER_03Darren, a pleasure to uh be with you and thank you for the invitation.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. Well, I love your research and and your writing. The the things that you're communicating are right in line with what we're trying to bring out into the into the culture and into the church. So you're certainly one of the key guests that I wanted to have on. Jerry, as an economist, you have a gift to be able to interpret the Bible from an economic perspective, which most people just don't have. And as we were talking before, you certainly didn't get that in seminaries and and and your churches. One example of this is you said Jesus' enemies didn't kill him because they didn't like his theology. They killed him because he threatened their money. What do you mean by that?
SPEAKER_03Well, what I mean by that is that Jesus had uh three years of ministry um in which he wasn't murdered. Um and he did a lot of talking about theology during that period of time. But what we see, this is especially clear in Luke's gospel, um, which is like the last third largely is devoted to his trip to Jerusalem, to the temple, is that as he gets closer in proximity geographically to Jerusalem and closer in proximity socially to dealing with people who were members of the ruling class, his message about economics and wealth gets more pointed and more confrontational. And finally, he tells a parable um which is about economic exploitation, the parable of the unfaithful vineyard workers who want the inheritance, so they kill the son. And the religious leaders, uh, Luke tells us, discerned that they were talking about that he was talking about them, and then set out to destroy him. Um the other triggering event was when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, um, the chief priest begins to set in motion um the uh begins to set in motion the plot to kill Jesus. And he does that because um, if Jesus is allowed to live, we will quote unquote lose our place, a Greek word that kind of implies your position, not your physical place. So he's essentially saying we're going to lose our place in the social and economic hierarchy. Uh but the leader, so he so he actually likes starts to put the plan into place. But the ruling class decides to kill Jesus when they finally figure out how much his parables are about them and about their economic exploitation. That's the trigger event. Um, so up until then, there's a lot of debates, and they're shamed or they're angry or they're outraged. But the murderousness, that you know, the actual plot uh to murder him that succeeds, um, it does not occur until his economic message becomes so clear that um that they even they can those even those who are blind and deaf, Jesus is like, okay, here's the two by four. You're gonna understand this parable. And then they understand that parable, they know it's about them, and then they set out to destroy him.
SPEAKER_01And and just going off on a little bit of a tangent here, fast forward to Martin Luther, and he's kind of continuing that that same tradition, like Jesus, of undermining the economic system of the the wealthy and powerful exploiters of society. It wasn't so much that they just had a problem with with his theology, but it was that Martin Luther was undermining their economic system. Can you talk just a little bit about that as well?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, just a quick historical observation. Um, most of Luther's 95 theses are about economics. They're not mostly about um specifically and exclusively theological topics. Um, and um I think that's important to understand. Now, I when I started to talk to a friend of mine who is in an academic context, who who now my friend gets it, right? But he is in seminary world, right? Um, so he's very economically aware. When I started to talk to him about this research, he kind of told me what they'll say, right? And what they'll say, when I talk about this, Jesus' confrontations with the temple as an instrument of economic exploitation, what they'll say is, no, no, no, Jerry, this is about false teaching, this is about false doctrine. This is, yeah, Jesus, Jesus is upset about their doctrine of salvation by works. Um, and that because that's what the theological conversation has been about, uh, you know, essentially since Luther to now, right? The Protestant side of the theological conversation has been the focus on that. Um, to which I said, why in the world would we think that those are different things that are in conflict with one another? They are utterly dependent on one another. The idea of salvation by good works, especially financial contributions to a religious hierarchy is a wonderful buttress to a system of economic exploitation. And if I teach a doctrine that says, in order to get to God, I'm between you and God, and you have to come through me. Um, I have to clean you in some way. Um, you, I, I'm I'm the gateway. I mean, even if I'm making an honest mistake, you know, just misreading the scriptures, um, the the next person in line is going to at some point, and it won't take long, someone's gonna figure out that that's a great way to get people's credit card number.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_03So um, what's called Pelagianism in theology, the idea of the, you know, um, it's a version of salvation by works or legalism, et cetera. I mean, there's different versions. I don't want to get too technical, but the idea that your salvation uh is by good works is inherently economically exploitative, and they always appear together in history. Therefore, the gospel teaching about grace is always financially and economically destructive to the pagan or corrupt Christian system that it confronts.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And just the idea that for Jesus and the reason they kill him, that it was it was more of a doctrinal thing versus uh economic thing, or saying the same thing about Martin Luther, that it wasn't so much the economic thing, it was the doctrinal thing. I mean, it it's it's still kind of playing to that religious ruling class. It's like, well, who's to say what is doctrinally correct? Well, it's the religious ruling class, or the ones that really kind of decide on, you know, what is what is correct and and what's not. And and so I think that's that's probably a big part of why we don't hear this very much, this this economic perspective on the message of Jesus. Would you agree?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and and and I think it doesn't just mess with the money of the Roman Catholic hierarchy of the 15th century. Um, I mean, I I wish that this was only historically a Catholic problem. There are definitely Protestant versions of this. Um, you know, there's various forms of the prosperity gospel, etc., that are in essence the monetization of bad doctrine, right? So this is something that is uh nearly universal. And I think there's a sense that, you know, that sometimes some of the clergy have, um, not all of them. My pastor's great. I'm an I'm an economist, I'm an economist, and he said, teach me economics, and he was willing to learn. Um, but there's almost a sense of hostility from church hierarchies, uh also political hierarchies, towards the entrepreneurial function. And you know, part of the point of this book is to show that every single one of Jesus' confrontations over wealth occur in physical proximity to Jerusalem, but more importantly, occur with people whose occupations involve them in being part of the ruling class, whether it's the mostly religious branch or the mostly political branch. So whether it's the rich young ruler, or whether it's Zacchaeus, the arch governing tax collector, or whether it's the Pharisees, the scribes, and lawyers who love money, he's confronting, or whether it's the money changers at the temple or the very temple itself, the people who devour widows' houses. Jesus, when he's poking the pointy stick about money, he's pointing the pointy stick at people in government and religious hierarchies. And so my point is anybody can be greedy, and God loves all of us. But what I see mostly is that people in politics or people in church hierarchies like to point the accusing finger at entrepreneurs when it comes to greed. And what I want to say to that is yes, absolutely, entrepreneurs can be greedy. Anyone can be greedy, but I want you to point out that when you Jesus, just by his choice of who to confront about greed, confronted members of those of those groups. Yeah He confronted the politicians and the people in the religious hierarchy about their wealth, and never once confronts an entrepreneur in the Gospels about their wealth.
SPEAKER_01Was this rich young ruler like you know, does he equate to like a modern, successful entrepreneur? Like what was going on in this passage?
SPEAKER_03Not remotely. I mean, and and Luke makes the point of telling us that he's an archone, a ruler. Um rough, rough uh translation might be a senator, almost certainly a member of the Sanhedrin. So he is a government official. Um, I think there's a lot going on there. Um, but I just wonder why so often Jesus's confrontations with rulers um are used by rulers um to confront entrepreneurs. Um, you know, now it's it's in it's in that context that Jesus says it's harder for a rich man to go through the uh to enter the kingdom of heaven. Doesn't say to enter heaven, that's a different matter entirely than it is for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. And I think we have to realize Jesus doesn't say that to everybody. Now, there's a kind of an evangelical version of this, which is everything is your heart attitude. So whenever I start to talk about this story, someone will interrupt me and say, Oh, yes, Jesus knew that he was an idolater of money in his heart. So that's why Jesus told him to give away all his money and give it to the poor, whereas he didn't tell that to other people. Except the gospel tells us when that happens. The gospel tells us when Jesus uses his divine powers to discern the heart. None of the gospel accounts say that Jesus did this with the rich young ruler. Jesus already knew he was crooked based on who he was, um, which is why, in one of the versions of the synoptic gospels, when they're talking about the commandments, you know the commandments, and Jesus repeats the commandments, basically the second table of the Ten Commandments, Jesus adds, do not defraud. So what's going on there, right? You're not supposed to kill, you're not supposed to commit adultery. He says, Don't steal. He says, you know, don't bear false witness, but he adds a commandment, do not defraud. So does that mean Jesus has forgotten his ten commandments? No. The reason that Jesus is explicitly going out of his way to essentially double down on don't steal and don't bear false witness in the form of do not defraud is because defrauding was essentially the business model of the members of the Sanhedrin, like this rich young ruler. Uh, that it was the business model of the ruling class. How do we know that? Well, we know it for lots of reasons, but one of the reasons we know it is that when Jesus' younger brother James, later on, let's say 20 years later or whatever, writes a letter, he criticizes the poor Christians in Jerusalem for sucking up to the ruling class who were using the court system against them. And he says, Do not the rich men defraud you and drag you before the magistrate. So this was emblematic of the group. So this was a defrauding occupation, a defrauding class, and that's why Jesus has that tougage. So to kind of like turn that around and make them the Bill Gates of his time, um, I think is pretty ridiculous. Now, you there are people like that. Jesus grew up around wealthy people. We don't realize this. Now, I I can understand throughout church history us not knowing this because we don't have a lot of biblical archaeology before the 20th century. But for the past 40 years, we've been building up, we've been digging up, you know, Galilee in and around Nazareth. Um, Nazareth. We know that Nazareth was essentially an exurb of the financial center of Galilee, which is Sepphoris. And we have mansions there. Jesus was in walking distance of people with mansions. Jesus, there was a building boom in Sepphoris during Jesus' young adult years. He would almost certainly, as a skilled builder, I mean, there's no way that Joseph and son would only work on a couple of doors in a village of a hundred households in Nazareth and some yokes, right? I mean, it would have been impossible for them to make their living without traveling to where these building booms are. And we know that's how that's how tectons, um carpenters, that's what they did. They would travel to building sites. So there's this huge building boom during Jesus' lifetime. But what's what's going on in Sepphix? It's a marketplace center and it's a trading center and it's a financial center. So Jesus knew rich people. There were rich people around, but he doesn't confront any of the wealthy people in Galilee, which was largely an entrepreneurial economy, largely decentralized. He waits until he goes to Jerusalem, where your wealth is tied to your political power and proximity to the high priest and to Herod, and then he revs that up. So there were people like the Bill Gates of their time around Jesus. I think the closest might be Joseph of Arimathea, who was a wealthy man. But Jesus doesn't confront Joseph, the tin merchant, the import-export tin merchant, about his wealth, their friends. You know, why not? Because he was a trader. He was like the faithful steward, you know, that's described in the parable, where he's going out there and buying and selling and uh making money for himself or for his clients. So I really think that's a distortion. I am weary of clergy who use these things as cudgels against entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs. We can get into it, you know, again, the story of the rich fool who is portrayed as a successful businessman when I think the evidence is overwhelming that we're talking about a government official and that the barn is for tax collection. Oh, wow. Uh not for production. Um, and I have a chapter on that in the book. And it's been misread as just yet another attack on wealth in general, uh, which uh which ignores whether you made that wealth by performing services to people that they valued, or whether you made that wealth by sending thugs to beat it out of people.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, I'm I'm curious, what is some of the evidence that that's a government official there in the parable the rich fool?
SPEAKER_03Well, there's a lot, but the the I think the biggest the the one that started to get me looking at this um is an observation made by David uh Finese, who's a friend of mine who is um written the leading books on the archaeology of Galilee, uh or edited, written a short book and then edited, the two large volumes that had appeared recently, is that the structure described in that parable, we have no archaeological record of any structure like that, except um the granaries uh that were owned by Caesar, or more specifically, probably most alike, is the granary um that's um owned by Queen Bernicet later. She got it from Herod. She's part of the Herod family. So we have a structure like that in the archaeological record, but it is a tax storage structure, not a simple storage of economic productivity. Now, there's more like that. Like there's a lot of translational decisions that are made, like the land of his, you know, was fruitful. Well, chora there is used for land, but generally the word chora is province. Like, for instance, in the Greek, you know this because you're seminary grad, in the Greek version of the Old Testament, um the Septuagint, that word is used for the province of Babylon or the provinces of Persia. So this word, you know, if we didn't have a bias already that this is a farmer, um, then the land would be something more like province or territory, would be more a default translation. Um, so I mean, and there's lots of others. There's like five or six major points like that. And also the the the parable of the um of the rich uh of Lazarus and the rich man. Um, I have a lot of detail here on this, and we can get into as much detail as you want. The evidence is overwhelming that he's talking about the high priest. Um, and yet I've had I've heard so many people say it's like an executive or whatever who you know puts money in his 401k. I'm sorry, no, it's not like that. Um, this is this has all these little details that are very pointedly um looking at the uh the high priest.
SPEAKER_01Well, well, for those who are uh disappointed, shall we say, that uh Jesus wasn't beating up on business people, which that's not people listening to this show, but um being facetious here, they would they would still be confident that when Jesus went in to clear the temple, that this was uh uh this was an example of how much he didn't like business people and doing business, especially doing business in the temple. What was going on there? Uh and and particularly why did he go after the dove merchants? In particular.
SPEAKER_03I love that you asked both of those questions because this one has been abused so much. FDR's first inaugural address cites this passage as a way to beat up on bankers and money changers in the temple of democracy. Jesus passed a lot of money changers on the way to the temple whose tables he didn't overturn. And as I mentioned, Jesus grew up in close proximity to the financial capital of Galilee, which was Sepphoris. Jesus tells parables about finance, in which invariably the good guy, the stand-in for God, is the owner who is allocating capital. So it's really a stretch to say that Jesus is, you know, that Jesus has a problem with finance. I mean, we need to take Jesus at his word. What does he call them? A den of robbers. Right? So how do we get from that to, you know, just money is illegitimate? It's no, the problem is that they were robbers. I mean, he's not playing around here.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_03They were engaged engaging in thie. Okay. What kind of thievery? Uh they this was on temple grounds. The temple, it's Herod's temple, and it's controlled by the high priest and the Sanhedrin. So anybody who's there is part of that system and they get that permission. The prices were fixed and it was taxed. So you have monopoly, price fixing, and taxing. In addition, the price fixing was set in a way which ripped people off. And this is a little detail that people really miss is that, you know, like if you go to Canada and you exchange your US money for Canada, it's exchanged at market rate, right? Um, or, you know, international investing. That's kind of that's one of my fields. You get a market rate for a currency transaction. But most people they travel to, they they go to Niagara Falls for their honeymoon and you know, they get Canadian money. Um, and there's an honest transaction, maybe a really tiny little fee for doing that translation. Um, the rules had been rewritten. This is why Jesus says, hey, you lawyers, I'm talking about you too. The rules had been rewritten so that the parity between the you know, the quote unquote pagan money, the Didrachma or the starter, and the shekel, which is what you used in the temple, was a 100% upsell. So when you took your pagan silver coin, when you took your Roman or Greek silver coins to the money changers, it's like you go to the ATM and you put in $10 and you get out $5. Or you put in $100 and you get out $50. It's a double charge on a crooked currency transaction. Um, now there's detail in the book on that, and it just so happens this week I went out and found more detail, you know, looking at um how the Septuagint, you know, the Septuagint translates shekel with a Didrachma, but by the time of Jesus, a Didrachma is half a shekel, Josephus says. So he sends Peter to go get something for the temple tax. And if you look at the what a starter is, two didrachmas, they're paying double the actual equivalent in silver. Um so, you know, there was an upsell. You know, so it's like it's like I think the I think this is theory on my side, that the kind of religious rhetoric is, well, the temple's holy, and everything in the temple has to be holy. So our shekel has to be twice as big as another shekel. You know, I've heard people suggest that, and I got to go out and research that more for myself to confirm it, but I think that's what's going on. That's how it's justified. So they are literally ripping people off. Okay, so why does Jesus single out dove merchants? Well, under the Torah, um, dove merch uh dove merchants were people who were selling to the poor. So if he's singling out dove merchants as opposed to the other vendors, that is highly suggestive that he's talking about the economically exploitative measure of this. I can't see any theological reason why dove merchants are worse than lamb merchants, right? So what is that? Well, there's an economic difference.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_03And the economic difference is if I'm going to charge you an upsell, it is a regressive taxation. If it if uh even if the even if the upsell is 100% for everybody, 100% markup for the rich doesn't hurt as much as a 100% markup for the poor. So I think, I mean, someone's got to explain to me if there's not economics going on here, why he over and over again singles out the dove merchants, those who are most economically exploitative, and why he uses economic language then of thieves.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah. And because the the poor, they couldn't afford to buy a lamb for the sacrifice. And so the doves, as you were saying, were were uh uh that was an an acceptable sacrifice from the poor because they didn't cost as much. And and so it makes sense that that's why he went after the dove merchants who were um uh exploiting the poor. And in addition to that, isn't it true that a lot of the priests actually owned uh the some of the farms where the sacrifices were coming from?
SPEAKER_03Um yeah, there's a lot of overlap between the ownership class and the religious elites, Sanhedrin members. So we've got a senate here. So who's on the senate? Priests, especially those who are in close proximity to the high priest, civil officials like magistrates. So when James says, do not rich men drag you before the magistrates, we're talking largely about Sanhedrin members, right? People like the rich young ruler, right? And what you see is when you go up to Galilee, you don't have priests up in Galilee. You have some itinerant Pharisee rabbis, but you don't have priests. I'm not saying no priest ever goes there, but you're just not having it's you it's just not a priestly center. The priestly center is Jerusalem, and for those who can't afford the, you know, the rich priestly neighborhood of the temple quarter in Jerusalem, um, then you have Jericho. Um, so that's basically your bedroom community. So if you can't afford the downtown Washington, D.C. thing, then you go to Tyson's Corner or something, like you're like an exurb in Alexandria, Virginia, right? So that's a bedroom community. That's not a 100% thing, but that's something that's in the literature. Um, uh, for instance, John Wesley talks about that. So I'm going to distinguish between things I can point to a hard first, you know, source piece of material, um, like the upsell on the temple versus things that are are believed but and and and likely but not certain. So what you have in Jesus' area is the the typical farm is 40 acres, 15 to 40 acres, and they're freehold, meaning the person who works the farm owns the farm. But as you go south, you begin to what you begin to run into gigantic farms, 100,000 acres, that are parceled out based on political uh uh proximity to Herod or Caesar or the religious elites. So they're given out as presents. And Jesus has parables about people like that where you have absentee landlord. You know, some some soldier kills or some official kills Herod's, you know, uh enemies or rivals. And Herod said, that's great. Here, I'm gonna give you a hundred thousand-acre farm. I don't know how to farm, it smells. Don't worry. You never have to go there. You know, you can live in Jerusalem or you can live in Rome, you can just collect the checks. Um, so that's absentee. So you that so the structure of farming is extremely different in Galilee versus down there in the south. Um, so you you have members of the ruling class. Now, I don't have a specific example of a priest that owned a large farm, but I know that generally that class, they're members of that class. And by the way, some priests were poor. There were like, there were like priests who were really faithful when they were poor. Um, and a lot of those become members of the early church. Uh, but there is a priestly elite that's like close to the, I was gonna say close to the archbishop, uh, or you know, close to the to the chief priest. Um, by the way, I'm I'm I'm a member of a hierarchical church, so I'm not I'm not bashing necessarily the existence of bishops or archbishops, different discussion. But the the those at the top, yes, um, tended to be wealthy. They kept their money on deposit with the temple. The temple was a bank. Um, when Jesus says to the rich young ruler, you'll have treasure in heaven, he's saying you'll have a thesacerus in heaven. He's using the word that's used for the deposit room in the temple where the elite kept their money.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And there is a lot of value in this model of a rabbi having a business, being a being a business person to be able to disciple people in business matters, right? Because discipleship wasn't just let me teach you doctrine. It was let me let me show you how to live life in all facets of life. And and so is it that there was just they gave in to these conflicts of interest and just kind of went away from what the the calling was as a as a rabbi was to uh uh invite people to come and follow them and show them how to how to live life and in all these various facets.
SPEAKER_03Well, that's a good question. So you're talking about the rabbis now, right? And that's a different faction.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Right? Um, so what's going on in Jesus' time is that the rabbis, and they're of the Pharisee faction, right? Um, and Galilee was a hotbed of that. So Jesus' environment would have been Pharisee. He would have grown up in and around Phariseeism. I mean, I think most people would have thought of him as a Pharisee, right? Um, in terms of his social background. Uh, rabbis have a different thing going on. So there was a tradition where rabbis had to get day jobs. Um, and I think that I think there's a lot of wisdom in that tradition. Um, and the pharisaic teaching was not hostile compared to pagan teaching, to entrepreneurship and physical work. But you also have something going on where it's beginning to get toxified along two forms. One is some of the Pharisees are getting bought off by the hierarchy. So in Jesus' time, well, it's all Jesus' time, but in Jesus' earthly sojourn um on earth during those three years and the time before that, you're beginning to see influential Pharisees getting seats in the Senate as a kind of co-opting. Um the other thing you're seeing is Pharisees are essentially monetizing the religious guilt. So, oh, maybe you don't know this, but you're unclean. But don't worry. Give me your credit card number and I'll consult with you on how you can become clean.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_03Um, so that's a different there's a different thing going on. Go ahead.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, indulgences, right?
SPEAKER_03Indulgences. And might I say, uh this one's probably going to trigger something, but I deal a lot in the Christian financial industry. This is not true of everyone in this industry, but I've seen some abuse coming in where um in the form of sin screen type vendors who are like saying things like, you know, you know, show us your portfolio and we'll show you where it's unclean. And then you can buy our fund and we'll show you how to be clean. Um now, I I that's a trigger event. And so I am working hard to be at peace with people who screen because I think there are legitimate and righteous forms of screening investments. But there is no doubt in my mind that I have heard and seen people who use the Pharisees' argument in order to market products, uh uh, you know, essentially, again, monetizing your uncleanness. Well, you're unclean because there's sin in your portfolio. Uh, but here, we can help you with that. And, you know, we'll charge whatever five, 10 extra basis points. I think that's a kind of a similar thing. So I don't, I don't, I don't want to just pick on medieval Roman Catholics. We have evangelical and fundamentalist versions of this ourselves that are very actively engaged.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And and Paul, uh, being of you know, from from coming from this Pharisee tradition, I mean, he was an entrepreneur as well, right? I mean, and he's carrying on this tradition as a tent maker on his ministry, too. Have you done much research on that, Paul as an entrepreneur?
SPEAKER_03Yes, and he's part of that Phariseal tradition. I think that's a good thing. I mean, there's something really interesting going on in that you have the um the rabbis were they were rich for the most part. So they were members of the elite who got an education and then took on these jobs, these skills, um, stonemasons or whatever, um, voluntarily as part of being a rabbi. Uh, so members of the elite could become rabbis, they could become artisans. Artisans did not become rabbis. Chris Keith's book on this is terrific. Um, and he is arguing, um, I think very persuasively, that Jesus' confrontation with the rabbis is not mainly about money, it is um and and not even in some sense mainly about cleanness or uncleanness or doctrine, but about authority, that the rabbis are essentially saying he's a carpenter. So why is he teaching that he lacked the certification to be a rabbi? So there is a crisis of authority here. So Jesus has to beat them in debate so that they're ashamed to confront him. So I think that um that sort of thing is going on. So uh I think Paul is part of that tradition. By the way, I think that's a good tradition. I'm not saying that no pastor ought to have a you know a day job other than that. Um, I can tell you that I'm an ordained clergyman who works as a volunteer on Sunday, and I have a day job. I like that model. I'm not going to legalistically assist on that model. Uh so we have to avoid legalism. And I want to just make sure everyone understands that what I just said about sin screening is there are non-legalistic versions of that. Do not miss that. But there are, but there is a tendency among evangelicals also to fall into a legalism which they would decry among the Pharisees or decry among the Roman Catholic clergy of the high middle ages, but have elements of amongst ourselves.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well said. And so you've you've talked about this uh from time to time during this interview, Jesus as an artisan. So can you help our listeners understand what that meant in kind of in the social hierarchy and how that would have positioned him in the society?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I'd say at the social hierarchy, obviously at the top you have the ruling class. Um and uh I'm very uh again, Finese was really helpful for me in this. Um, uh Christian Origins and the Ancient Economy, I think is the title of his book. Um, about 3% would typically be members of the ruling class. About another 2% or 3% would be their bailiffs, their retinue, the people who work for the man, right? So we see these people, you know, in uh in the parables, right? They're like stewards who are answering to somebody, right? Then maybe another 4%, 5% merchant class. Um, so they are not part of the ruling elite, but they're fairly well off. So that's basically your top 10 or 15% in terms of income, depending on how you calculate this. Right after that would be skilled artisans. So your skilled artisans would be in your 85th to 90th percentile, according to calculations I make in the book. And if people want to improve on them, that's fine. But they're certainly not like in your bottom 10 or 20 percent. Um they're not laborers, that's a different, they're not unskilled laborers, that's a different part. They're not peasants, and they're certainly not the uh you know, the unlanded poor. Uh, so they were of there, it's interesting that the um the artisan class was they were unusual in that they were respected to some degree in the city, but also in the country. So one historian who's not writing in a theological context, even in a biblical context, described artisans in the ancient Mediterranean as a mediating class. Isn't that interesting? I mean, Jesus um is the mediator between God and man. And when God sent him, sent his son, when the son sent himself to be a human being and walk among us as a mediator, he appropriately enough was put in an occupation raised in a mediating class. So an artisan would go to the big city and they would talk to the rich guy and build the mansion or the bank or the amphitheater, or they might talk to the uh Greek architect or the Roman overseer. But they'd also go back out into the country and they'd buy stone or they'd buy wood and they'd be talking to farmers or they'd be talking to people in the quarry. Um, and this is unusual. The evidence is that Galilee is unusual in that there was more reciprocity between city and rural. Um, if you read the pagan literature around the Mediterranean, essentially, you know, the literature about urban people about about rural people is that they're, I think one writer says lizards. You know, and to city elites, people in the in the country were subhuman. They were like, they looked like lizards to them because of their skin being scaly, you know, because of the calluses. Right? It's interesting later on, uh the Roman Emperor, I think it was Nero, brings Jesus' relatives to his court because he wants to know whether, you know, you know, Jesus is gone, but are we going to have other people from Jesus' family rise up and challenge me? And they say, and they say, you know, your emperor, your excellency, look at our hands. And he sees their hands and their hands are callous, and he says, okay, these people are no threat. So um these artisans were of reasonably high income. I wouldn't say I'm not affluent, I think that would be the wrong word. Um, but they were an upwardly mobile class. And at this time, you have a building boom. First century is building boom after building boom. So there was a shortage of artisans. Um uh uh and and Jesus would have been a member of that class, and you have two building booms during Jesus' working years before he becomes um, you know, a minister in public. You have a building boom in Sepphoris, which is quite near to Nazareth, and then you have a building boom in Tiberias, which is only a little bit further. So he would have been in and around city folk, in and around wealthy people, but also in and around poor people. He was a man who could transcend class differences very easily.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and I heard the the author that you've cited a couple of times in this interview, uh, when you were interviewing him, he he mentioned that uh almost all of the the revolutionaries in these these uh that were leading these rebellions at this time came from this artisan class.
SPEAKER_03Yes, because um and I'm I I thank you so much for all the preparation you've done uh uh for this interview. I really appreciate that. That's not what always happens.
SPEAKER_01Well, I love this stuff. So this is, I mean, what regardless of who's listening, I mean, this is for me.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, we're having a conversation in the presence of God in which we're delving into his wisdom. That's what counts.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_03I hope some people are benefiting, but this is a thing, this is an act of a vote of worship in and of itself.
SPEAKER_02Amen.
SPEAKER_03Um, so yes, you tended to have artisans, um, even up into the Middle Ages, because they were respected enough by the peasants that the peasants would follow them, but could but they could speak the language of the city. They could go into the city and talk about economic exploitation and talk about violations of the law. Uh, they could go there and say you're devouring widows' houses. They could go there and say that you've taken the commandments of God and twisted them into the commandments of man so that you're no longer honoring the commandment, honor your father and your mother, because you love money. So Jesus. Can Jesus can duke it out in the rabbinical court? Jesus can duke it out with the scribes and Pharisees. He can talk city talk. He can go down to the university and handle them. But he can also, isn't there something in um uh Kipling if if you can walk with kings nor lose the common touch? Um and um I can't remember the exact line, but there's a great line in Kipling about you know what it is to be a man is to be able to walk with kings and still be able to, you know, talk to ordinary people and talk to ordinary people, but also not get caught up right in a mob mentality. Um Jesus was able to do that, and you can say Jesus was able to do that because he's God, but Jesus, but and he was God and still is God, but he's fully human. So Jesus still nursed, Jesus still was taught to read, Jesus still learned. And what he would have learned as Joseph's foster son, one of the things he would have learned is how to deal with all these different kinds of people, um, and speak to the city folks and the country folks and cross those borders and barriers.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And a lot of the the other zealots, they they tried to exploit that position, uh, not for God's agenda, but for their own agenda, or maybe what they thought was God's agenda, but uh Jesus, he leveraged it uh the uh the way that that he needed to, and the way that his father wanted him to. And and it's just this is something that I love that that you do is you're you're admonishing us, and and for some people, this is the first time they really even considered it, that we need to understand the geographical locations of where Jesus was doing these different teachings and uh and and even just the the social position that he had and how uh why God made him a mediator in that in that particular profession. And then you also mentioned that uh he was born in Bethlehem. What was the significance of Jesus being? I mean, of of course, now you you mentioned in your article that we think of Christmas pageants when we think of Bethlehem, but when they thought of Bethlehem back in uh Jesus' day, what did they think of?
SPEAKER_03Well, they didn't think of cookies, you know, and mums and little kids dressed up as sheep and parents with video recorders. Um Bethlehem had a history of being troubled, right? It's near the place where Rachel died. The prophets refer to it, you know, as whoa, Rachel weeping for her children because they were no more. Um, it's the place of um Boaz and Ruth, but when that's a nice story, but remember that story starts with a famine, right? They leave because of a famine. So Bethlehem was not um a high status place. Bethlehem is very interesting. So I'm glad you talked about um about location names. We skim over those, right? So Jesus went from Bibley Soundy Town to other Bibley Soundy town, and then he said to the publican, or whatever, I don't know what a publican is, and now, oh, now we're gonna get to the main point, right? Right when it says something doctrinal. Um, it's all the main point. Um, so we need to pay attention to location because the Bible pays a lot of attention to location. The Bible is filled with not just he went to this town, but you know, as it is said, Galilee of the Gentiles, those who walked in darkness, that over and over again, when we see these place names mentioned, it's not just place name, but it is, you know, that it is that it's intentionally chosen, right? Um, that God intentionally chose Galilee, he intentionally chose Nazareth, he intentionally chose Bethlehem, Bethlehem, the house of bread. Every one of these cities had an economic base. Jericho, probably priest bedroom community, also intake valve for people coming in from Perea, right? So um, and you know, Capernalam and Bethesda, they all had industries. Cana, they've all had industries. They all had an economic base. And the original readers of these gospels, except for Luke, um, which is why Luke throws in details sometimes that the other synoptics don't, because he's writing to a pagan audience and they don't know all the Jewish stuff. Um so, but but you know, Matthew and Mark, more you know, uh focused on Jews, they knew all that stuff. They knew what Bethany was about and they knew what Bethlehem was about. So what industry was Bethlehem based on? It wasn't based on cookies and Christmas ornaments. Bethlehem was, you probably won't be surprised to learn, was a center of sheep herding, because shepherds are prominently mentioned in the story, but that doesn't quite get at everything. What's so interesting that's going on here is that shepherding under the legalistic tradition of the Pharisees had become essentially a forbidden or morally suspect profession. Why? Because sheep are apt to wander and they might wander onto someone else's property and eat their grass, right? So basically, the Pharisees, the traditions were saying, if you're a shepherd, you can't be sure that you're not a thief. Which, of course, you know, that's their problem. Like thieving is wrong, but the biblical admonition isn't that don't choose an occupation where it's impossible, right? I mean, if there's an act of theft, then you give rec, you know, you give restitution. You don't build hedges, right? Um, so shepherds were viewed as a morally illegitimate occupation. But there's a problem. The temple ran on sheep, right? That was that was part of, there were, you know, sacrifices, lambs sacrificed as part of the temple. You needed lambs for the sacrifice and for Passover. So Bethlehem was the place, according to Alfred Edderim, the scholar who's quoting the Midrash, which was written in the first century in Galilee, maybe about 50 years after Jesus' ministry. Bethlehem was the place where the shepherds who bred sheep for the temple bred their sheep. So there's a tower, Mygda Ader, where as you're leaving Bethlehem, you go under this tower, and then people can look down, and it's like on the way to Jerusalem. So the sheep would be marched from Bethlehem to Jerusalem, and over the tower you'd look down and see, are these sheep any good, or are they, you know, are they bad sheep? So Jesus, the Lamb of God, was born in the town where lambs of God were bred for the sacrifice. I I'm sorry, I'm just not gonna, you know, like chalk that up to, oh, that's just a coincidence, nothing to see here. The null hypothesis, the nothing to see here hypothesis is really taking it on the on the chin if we think that the you know the occupation and the location don't matter.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Wow, thank you for pointing that out and and and just the whole approach that you're taking to helping us understand Jesus in uh in a new way that's really not new. We're just kind of you know rediscovering what what God had in mind and how God implemented his plan, his his rescue mission for humanity. Um so the book is the maker versus the takers.
SPEAKER_03Hey, can I say something about new for a moment? Would that be okay? Yes, please. I have friends who say have a saying, if it's new, it's not true, and if it's true, it's not new, right? Um, and what I would say to them is in the 1300s, almost nobody had a Greek copy of the New Testament. So everyone was dependent on the Latin copy, the Vulgate, which had translational errors. And what happens is they start to get Greek copies of the New Testament. Luther gets it, Erasmus gets it, and these start to, and then we go and say, oh, Paul doesn't say penance here. He says repentance. That, you know, that the that the um, you know, God bless Saint Jerome for translating it, but um, you know, he he made mistakes, right? Um, in translating from Greek to Latin, and it's generally believed that his Hebrew was quite weak. So there's we so we got new material in the form of Greek translations, right? Then about a century later, we start to get Hebrew texts, you know, from rabbis who are fleeing um, you know, like persecution in the Catholic countries, and they're going up to the Netherlands. And I think that's why modern capitalism starts in the Netherlands, and we got these Hebrew texts. So is it new? There's like these new doctrines about how much God has positive things to say about property rights and contracts. And they're learning from these rabbis and from the Hebrew text. So it's new, but it's really a rediscovery of something old that had been lost. And I would say that, you know, which of my fundamentalist friends who says nothing new can be trusted would say, let's throw out the fruit of the Reformation that comes when we got actual Greek texts rather than tradition. Well, something happens in the 1950s where there's all this unearthing of the Dead Sea scrolls. And so then we get all this new material about what was going on in Jesus' world. And then something happens in the 70s and especially the 80s. We start digging up Galilee like crazy. There's an explosion of biblical archaeology. So now we know whether Jesus lived in a poor town or not. Now we know whether Nazareth was a slum or an excerb. We know more. So is that new? No, that's old stuff buried under sand. Um, but we have it now. How can our exegesis not change when there's so much more evidence that sheds light on the text?
SPEAKER_01Yes. Yeah, and that's uh more than fair question. And I I think this interview in and of itself is gonna help people to take another look at some of these passages that we've just been glossing over and kind of taking the the the preacher's word for it. And and there's uh a whole lot of that that it needs to get uh a new um infusion of evidence, as you're saying.
SPEAKER_03New evidence, ad fontes, that's what they said in the reformation, to the font, to the originals. We have more originals. I know you have another question you want to ask. I want to make another point about new and theology. Yeah. Nothing I'm saying conflicts in the slightest with Orthodox Christian theology. We've raised our children on the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed and the Athanasian Creed and the Chalcedonian Creed, you know, um the that we've taken them through the catechisms, the Protestant catechisms. There is nothing here that changes any of the, in my opinion, uh nothing I've found. I'm not trying to change any theological system. Um it's more like the Bible is a pop-up book. And so when you open it, other dimensions come out. Now, that base theological doctrinal, none of those pages, I'm not tearing any of those pages out. Um, but there's a social dimension that we've missed. And I would argue not only does this not get crossways with traditional Christian doctrine, but that it's somebody who wants to deny the importance of historical details, who is crosswise with the doctrine of the inspiration and infallibility of Scripture, and crosswise with the doctrine of the incarnation, which says that Jesus is fully God and fully human, in all ways like us, except without sin. So Jesus doesn't just take on a human body, he takes on a human mind and soul, reasonable soul, the Athanasian creed says, but he takes on a family, an ethnicity, a village, an economic status. If you really believe in the incarnation, then you would more highly weight the historical details of Jesus' life, because that's part of the incarnation, that he came to a certain place at a certain time. And it's not like, oh, he could have been an Eskimo, it would have been all the same. God could have incarnated him as an Eskimo. Nothing against Eskimos, but that wasn't the right place for him. This was the right place for him.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And I think for a lot of people, it'll it'll come across like a no-brainer. I mean, of course, these social and economic issues were in play and so much more prominent than we've, I think, previously thought. I mean, you I heard you mention on uh on an interview that it's not so much that people are afraid of hell, they're afraid of poverty. I mean, like in people's everyday lives, they're not necessarily walking around like afraid that they're gonna go to hell. What they're really afraid of is that they're gonna lose their job or they're gonna lose their income and not be able to put food on the table. I mean, the the economic issue is is such a a prominent issue in these uh in these passages.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, or that they're gonna lose their lives, right? Or lose their country. I mean, in in my circles, the anxiety that I'm hearing from people the most, I mean, partly it's about the coronavirus, et cetera, but mainly it's what's happening to our nation. You know, is our nation gonna burn to the ground? Is our nation going to be destroyed? Um, and I argue in the book that Jesus is giving warnings, he gives what I think are undeniable warnings to the ruling class that if you continue to exploit the take the makers, if the takers continue to exploit the makers, uh, for instance, putting them in debt bondage using oppressive uh misreadings of the Torah, that it will destroy them. And that is exactly what happens. I told you about that building boom. That building boom ends in 65 AD. 40,000 artisans are laid off, the debt levels had become unsustainable, and really uh a key moment in the chain of events that leads to the destruction of Jerusalem is that the zealots uh go and murder the high priest and his family, and they burn down the house of public records. And the historian Josephus said they did that because there were because of debt, because they wanted to um gain favor with the you know the plurality or the some word that there's a lot of them, you know, with all these all these debtors. So Jesus is warning. I know Jesus is warning about hell, I understand that, but he's also warning his own people that if you don't stop this economic thing, which is I'm gonna use the law to tax you or exploit you, you can't pay, so it becomes debt. We're gonna create a workaround so the debt isn't written off according to the Jubilee law. So your debt is just gonna grow and grow and grow. We're gonna find a way around the usury laws. Eventually, Jesus says, Don't cry, don't cry for me, women of Jerusalem. This is what happens when the wood is wet. What's gonna happen when it's dry? 40 years of economic exploitation later, the wood is dry and all of Jerusalem goes up in flames. Um, and so this economic message of Jesus is very relevant to us now. If you don't want an America that goes up in flames, then let's take Jesus' social justice message. And don't do not take, do not take the phrase social justice and say, oh no, liberals say that, so we can't use it. First of all, conservative Christians coined the phrase social justice. So I don't want it taken by Marxists. Um, Jesus has a message and it's about justice and it's social, but it sure isn't the message that people who use the phrase social justice use. But it is a genuine warning to our nation.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So, Jerry, you've been very clear who the makers and the takers are in uh in the gospels. Who are the makers and takers today?
SPEAKER_03I would say it's become more political now. In Jesus' day, there's a real intermixture of makers and takers between religious leaders and politicians. We have separated in America our religious hierarchy from our political hierarchy. Um, you know, I understand there's overlaps and et cetera, but you just you just don't have the same, you know, it's not the same group, right? It's not the same, like they were a unitary society, right? We're not. We have a stronger separation of church and state. So I'm not saying that religious leaders don't rip people off. I'm just saying they don't have the legal authority. The high priest, if you didn't pay your tithe, the high priest had the legal right, according to the lawyers, not in the Torah, to you know, send thugs to go and beat you with sticks until you paid your tithe. Okay. Um, I don't know any pastor who has that authority. Um, they might beat you up rhetorically, right, but they don't have that. So I say there is there is a manipulation element sometimes um with with religious hierarchies. But I would say in terms of actual physical coercion, in our world, the state has exclusive rights to physical coercion. Um so yeah, the mafia, whatever, but that's not the big taker now, in my opinion, is the political ruling class. Uh and that's tied up with our Sanhedrin, the Senate, uh, and with the House. Um, I think it's tied up with a ruling class that sort of goes in and out of government, like somebody's a cabinet officer, then the party's out of favor, so they're a lobbyist. Um, and then their party comes back in, and then they're in the cabinet again. And so there's like an influence pedaling kind of back and forth thing. I think that's tied up in central banking to a large degree. Um, a little aside, when Jesus, if Jesus gives the Sermon on the Mount and the Sermon on the Plain, the Sermon on the Plain, where he says, Woe to you who are rich, is given to Judeans and those from Tyre and Sidon. Tyre and Sidon was the banking, uh, they were the bankers for Jerusalem. Um the Herods didn't have, they didn't they the Rome said you can't have your own central bank. So I think that whole central bank thing, along with the government, along with, dare I say, the deep state, I know the deep state is now like a Trumpy thing. I'm not trying endorsing Trump by using the phrase deep state. That's a phrase that goes back decades. There's a there's a kind of a group of people, sometimes they're in government, then they're out, then they're back in, or one of them's in government, like one of them's the governor, and the other, the brother, maybe is the CEO of the public utility company because they're regulated. There's a lot of that stuff going on. I mean, there's something wrong where people go into Congress thousandaires and come out of Congress millionaires, yeah, you know, or decamillionaires. There's there's there's a problem there. And there's something wrong that their nephews and nieces and sons end up, you know, consulting with Ukraine or consulting with Russia or consulting with China or something like that. There's that's a system. And I think that's that system is our is the taker system. And I think it stands under the taker condemnation. Now, Jesus loves everybody. What does it say about the rich young ruler? It says Jesus loves him.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So Jesus loves them. Um, Jesus loves the deep state or the ruling class or the establishment, different people have different names, but he doesn't love that system. So we in some ways he's trying to rescue the rich young ruler from a system which will destroy is already destroying his soul and will end up destroying actually his life because if he's too tied to the land, he won't be able to flee the Roman, you know, the Roman violence. I mean, a guy like the rich young ruler is the kind of guy who gets stabbed. Um, so um I think that's I think that the the takers are essentially the ruling class of any nation.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So you're saying the system has to be changed. It's not just uh, you know, like people say you can't legislate morality, um but but so that churches need to just focus on, you know, um discipling people to have stronger Christian character and everything. And yet there's there are these systems in our society that have to be uh completely revamped. Is that what you're saying?
SPEAKER_03Yes. Um, and I think I'm saying also I don't think we have a lot of power to revamp them. Um, I mean, I vote for less power, right? Pattern. But I think that, you know, mainly what Jesus did with his disciples is he warned them not to get caught up in that. And he basically is telling them to create a different community, a network. I mean, I think what Jesus is doing is taking the best of what Galilee had to offer. His father put him in Galilee. He took the best of the Galilean culture, decentralization, not being a hireling, being responsible, being close to your responsibility, having strong community ties, not having social a lot of social status and hierarchy. And he takes that and creates a model out of it, which he then make go and then makes go viral throughout the Mediterranean, where you have decentralized networks of people. And some of them are former members of the ruling class, and some of them are current members of the ruling class. But they tend to be more entrepreneurial, upwardly mobile people. We can talk about that. I mean, I had so many details here. It tends to be that group, but it is a problem-solving, decentralized, non-hierarchical, biblically based wisdom community, which is essentially there as an alternative to people as they see the old system rotting. And as a network, which is almost like a safety net, when Jerusalem falls, there's it the church is something they can fall into. Right? The refugees, there's something better. So God shakes it. You know, I'm not depending on my vote, although I vote. I'm not depending that much on my vote to change the world. What I'm depending on is being part of a community to be an alternative, so that when God does the heavy lifting in providence, then we have an alternative out there that we should strengthen. A network of Galileans. See, I I know enough about your podcast and your writing to know that most of the people listening to us right now are Galileans, you know, in a very real sense, no matter where they were born. And um, I'm saying that that that we need to imitate Jesus's Galilean peasant wisdom because he took it and rolled it up into his teaching. It wasn't an accident of birth.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And and then as an artisan, I mean, he was in a position of of great influence um that just grew and grew. And and so that's that's not to say you have to go become uh you know a carpenter or something like that, but you know, fulfill the the calling that God is uh has assigned to you. But he he does uh want us ultimately to be able to be in positions to influence and and uh and to change these systems in whatever ways that we have that influence, whatever measure it is.
SPEAKER_03Yes, yeah, I agree. We should grab we should try to gravitate towards situations where we can be border crossers.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Where we can we can cross class borders and geographical and ideological and cultural borders.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Well, Jerry, I I've done I think over 170 interviews now, and this is for sure the longest one without a doubt. That's on me.
SPEAKER_03That's on me. I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_01No, it's actually not because I I can easily uh you know cut things off as I need to, but this one I have just wanted to go on and on and on. Uh, I'm looking forward to to doing it again because I know that we're obviously not gonna be able to do more than scratch the surface here. Uh, but uh thank you for this. The book is The Maker versus the Takers, what Jesus Really Said About Social Justice and Economics. Uh, Jerry, anything else you want to say about how people can connect with you when the book is gonna be available?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, the uh the audiobook um is available now. The hardback is scheduled for September 15th. And I think the Kindle is then too, but I'm not 100% sure. Um uh bookstores, I mean, you can go to a bookstore um if you can find one and order it there, or you can get it from Amazon. Um you can reach out to me. I'm I'm all over social media. So Twitter, Facebook, uh, LinkedIn, um, and you can just reach out to me. Um, I can get people discounts on like a box of books. We can get it for almost half off if they want to buy a box. What I'm seeing is a lot of um professionals, like Christian financial advisors, are saying, I want to buy a box and give it to my clients. So I'm seeing that. Um I'm I'm good with that. Um, I I don't I didn't write this book to make money because I don't think it has a mass audience which can make it a bestseller. This I'm aiming at reaching a certain group of people. I'm aiming at the Galileans. I want to reach them, I want to give them this. Um so that's that's the idea. So I just want to know, yeah, you know, I'm not like selling this hard. Um, but uh if you if you want to get it, you can get it. It's um it's Fidelis Press, F-I-D-E-L-I-S. So you can go to Fidelis and get it. Post Hill Press um is the parent company. Reach out to me on on social media and I can point you to to that link. Or if you want to talk about getting a box, I can give you the link to get a bulk discount. And um I hope I hope you enjoy it. And if you read it, I want to hear what you have what you have to say about it and ways that you can improve it. Um mainly what I hope is that you um that it empowers you and that it shifts. My my goal for I think most people listening is that if you're a Christian and you're an entrepreneur, most of your life you felt like an outsider to church world. And that church world has said to you, said to you, as a business person, you are guilty until proven innocent. Um you're you you're yeah, you can be saved, but you're probably greedy. Um and I want to reverse that, that people's that Jesus is affirming the core, the emotional, psychological core of the entrepreneurial mindset. You are it is the religious hierarchy and the political hierarchy that can come into the kingdom, but hey, you know, let's talk to us about whether you're a taker or not. Um, and I I would really love to see people's spiritual and emotional energy know in their deepest core of core that if there's somebody who does something useful for another person that they're paid for, that that is inherently a good thing and and is at the very core of Jesus's personality as well.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well said, Jerry. Uh so enjoyed this, and I'm looking forward, as I said, uh to bringing you back on. Affluentinvestor.com is the website, and I'll have that in the show notes. And as Jerry said, you can get the audio book. Actually, the by the time this comes out, the uh we'll we'll wait until September 15th, Jerry. This will uh this will come out on September 15th, and that way people can go ahead and get the get the hardcover or get the audio book. And uh, we sure appreciate the the wisdom you shared with us, Jerry. Thanks again for your time.
SPEAKER_03I appreciate your preparation and your receptivity. God bless you.
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