Encouragement for 2020, SBC's "MLK Day of Service," and "The People's Republic of Walmart"

Conversations That Matter

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Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris and it is 2020 now.

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This is the first episode of the year. It's January 8th and I've been waiting actually. President Trump was supposed to make an announcement on what happened last night regarding the missile attack on one of our bases in Iraq from Iran.

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And you know, there's a lot of change going on. 2020 is taking us by storm. I am trying to hit the ground running, but I'll be honest,

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I'm still in the Christmas fog a bit. I still have sugar and soda from Christmas and hopefully I'll eliminate it by next week, but I'm just not ready.

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You know what I mean? I'm not ready to start the new year in a way, but I have to be because it's coming. And you know, maybe you feel like that.

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Maybe you're like me, you don't like change that much. I tend to love adventure, but I wanna come home and know that everything is the way that it was before.

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And that's just not how life works. Especially in the last 150 years, we've had so many technological advances.

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We're in uncharted waters. We don't know what this is doing to our culture. I mean, in some ways we do, and it's not all good.

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Some of it is good. And there's kind of like two kinds of people that I've noticed. There's the kind of people that just embrace technology.

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They love it. They love, not just technology, any new advancement, any new system, if it's new, it's shiny, they love it.

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And then I tend to be in this camp of, let's proceed with caution. Let's make sure that this is really what we should be doing.

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I mean, if you knew how many years I held out on the smartphone issue, even with my wife saying,

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I need a smartphone. No, I don't. You know, that's kind of who I am. That's where I came from.

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I will embrace things that I can see make life, you know, better in the sense of more efficient, but I just,

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I really wanna make sure it's not having negative implications. I wanna look towards the wisdom of the past through tradition.

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And I wanna make sure it's like Chesterton's fence. I wanna make sure we don't move something we shouldn't. And that's fine.

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There's different kinds of people. And that is totally fine. If you're someone who likes to embrace the new. But here's the mistake that we can't make.

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We can't make the mistake of thinking that morality and technology run along the same path. Just because technology is advancing, it doesn't mean morality is.

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And I've had some time to reflect as things have slowed down over the holidays. And sometimes

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I wake up and I wonder what happened to my country? What happened to my community? What happened to my church?

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And just all the things that were familiar to me, what happened to them? When did they change?

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Why is it so different? And I don't wanna, I sound like an old man, right? And I'm not,

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I'm only 30. But I look back, I remember as a kid, I remember the way people dressed up for church.

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I remember the attendance on a Sunday evening. Those things are gone in many ways.

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I mean, there's some churches that still have held to some of these traditions, but things change. Things change.

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It's not all good. It's not all bad, but it happens. And I think one of the things that has many conservatives especially, both political conservatives and traditional religious conservatives feeling like they're a foreigner in their land is some of the moral changes that have happened.

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And I wanna give you some encouragement this morning. There's a lot of talk show hosts that will just lament.

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I can't believe what's happening to our culture. And we need to do something political and we do.

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We do need to try to elect good godly leaders if possible. But it's cultural more than political.

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And while we should fight the good fight, even if it's a rear guard action, we have to remember who's ultimately in control of this.

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This whole story of human history is not ours. We can shape it by God's grace where we're at, but it's not really our story ultimately.

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It's God's story. And he will accomplish what he wants to have done. And it's going to work out for the best for those who love

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God and are called according to his purpose. So I wanna give you some encouragement. Let's start off with just a few things that I've just noticed, a few things in the news.

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So this is a quote from the Golden Globes. Michelle Williams is the actress,

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I guess. And she said that she is grateful to have lived in a moment in our society where choice exists because as women and as girls, things can happen to our bodies that are not our choice.

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So I assume she's talking about rape there or an unwanted pregnancy of some kind. And then she says,

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I've tried my very best to make a life of my own making. I'm the master of my fate is what she's saying.

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She says, I wouldn't have been able to do this without employing a woman's right to choose, to choose when to have children and with whom.

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That's an interesting statement. This is autonomy, displayed, promoted.

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I mean, she got an ovation for that from all the other folks in Hollywood. And that shouldn't maybe surprise us.

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But to specifically, when you're getting a word, single out abortion as what you're actually grateful for, accrediting abortion with how you got to where you are.

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That's just amazing. When did that happen? When did we wake up and prominent, prominent actress is praising abortion and crediting it.

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I mean, this is where God is supposed to be praised. Generally, I mean, traditionally it's been, thank you to the fans, my family.

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They're the ones I credit with putting me where I am. Thank you to God because he, that's gone.

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I mean, I'm not saying it's totally gone. I mean, you would probably watch the country music awards or something. You're gonna have someone thank God, but it's leaving.

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It's leaving and in its place, human autonomy. She's saying, I think myself is what she's saying.

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I think myself that I had the foresight and the wisdom to murder a child so I could produce entertainment for you.

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It's disgusting. It's morally backwards, but we have to embrace the fact that this is where we're going.

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This is where the ship's heading. And there's gonna be a lot of changes

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I think to come. We haven't hit rock bottom yet in this regard. Some other things that has me feeling like change is happening.

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I just saw this the other day. Hundreds of Southern Baptist churches are subpoenaed in a sex abuse lawsuit.

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Now, I'm not gonna get into that whole issue right now of sex abuse in the

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Southern Baptist Convention because I think it's been way overplayed. It's been way used by the Me Too movement, not diminishing the cases there are because there are cases.

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I'm not saying that, but you ever just think of like waking up in the morning and seeing a headline like that?

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Did you ever think of it before you saw the headline that maybe I'll see a headline like that? That just never crossed my mind that that would be even in the news.

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What about, here's something for Southerners especially. I've said this before, but I grew up mostly in the

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Northeast. I had a lot of family though in the deep, deep South and would go down and visit them and I could see the contrasts.

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So being familiar with Southern culture, their military tradition, their love of firearms for self -defense and hunting, it just surprised me to wake up and see a headline in a

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Southern state, Virginia. I live in Virginia in a still a Southern area. Maybe Northern Virginia is not that way, but never thought

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I'd see in Virginia the government trying to infringe on Virginia's constitution and its guarantee of right to bear arms.

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This isn't even a federal issue. It's not second amendment issue. This is within Virginia. That's the shocking part. Feds aren't coming in and telling

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Virginians what to do. There's a plan in the works in Virginia itself.

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Never thought I'd see that. Never thought I'd see a lot of the changes that are happening in the South. There's a good article.

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I would recommend it. I'll put it in the info section. The Left's Marks Through Southern Institutions by James Arnold Kennedy. There's a picture there.

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Sports Illustrated, I think it's 1956. College football team in the South and the cheerleaders waving a

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Confederate naval jack, which that would never happen today. And the thing that really makes me wanna recommend this article is it's shocking in a way.

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It's sobering really is the word. It's sobering because it's not just the heroes and the symbols that are being washed away in the

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South. It's very fundamental basic values that Southerners have held for a long time, like marriage being between a man and a woman, like basic stuff, manners.

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Those things are being washed away. And Dr. Kennedy, actually, I don't think he's a doctor, but the author, James Kennedy, he really catalogs this.

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And if the South is in stage four cancer or cultural genocide, losing their identity of who they are, then the greater

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American culture is in stage two. And that's why this is important. We have a looking glass. We can see what's happening in the

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South. Maybe you're not from the South. Maybe you don't care. You're from Minnesota and I don't care what they do with a Confederate monument.

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That's fine. You live in Minnesota. Hopefully you don't want them going after the symbols of your state, right?

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But that may happen. That may happen. Your heroes will also be washed away. And James Kennedy points out, he said, it's starting.

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It's starting full -fledged. The war is on. It's on Washington. It's on Jefferson.

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It's on McKinley. I think it was a monument was taken away from McKinley. Recently, there's a

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John Wayne airport. So you can't name an airport after John Wayne. He's a racist. I mean, stuff is happening, guys.

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And it's happening quick. And one of the things that I noticed, I'm gonna play for you in a minute, a very short clip from Lord of the

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Rings. My wife and I started watching the Lord of the Rings Extended Editions.

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I had never seen all the Extended Editions. And I remembered when we were watching this that there's a scene in the first one.

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So I was like 12, I think, when it came out. And it's a decapitation of this gruesome

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Araki figure. And Aragon cuts off his head. And it's disgusting in a way.

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It shocked the audience. I remember being in the theater. There was a gasp, a gasp from the audience.

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And I don't know, 12, 13 years later, one of the Hobbit movies has come out and I'm in the theater again. And there's a worse decapitation scene.

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It's more gruesome, more bloody. And you know what happens? The audience laughs.

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The audience laughs. Culture had coarsened that much in, what, 12 years?

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Coarsened that much. And it's happening in every area.

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We're becoming a more violent culture, more sexually violent.

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And this is hard, I think, for some of us who have watched this change, especially those older than me.

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I'm not that old. And here's what we need to remember in all this. Yeah, the

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Methodist church may be splitting over homosexuality. Maybe you're in the Methodist church. Yep, this is the headline when I started.

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Trump is gonna talk about what just happened. Are we gonna go to war with Iran? There were some missiles launched. It's a scary thing.

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But you know what? Here's the thing. We don't have control over all of that. We have a vote.

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We can talk to people. We can pray. But we don't have control over all of this. You know who does? God. I'm gonna read for you

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Genesis 50, verse 20. As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result to preserve many people.

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Who spoke that? That was Joseph. Story of Joseph, if you're not familiar, I've been reading through the Bible. I'm actually almost to this point now doing the whole

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Bible in ear thing. Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers. He did not do anything wrong.

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He just told them some dreams he had, made him jealous, sold him into slavery. He's in Potiphar's house. And he's a good slave to Potiphar.

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And Potiphar rewards him for it until Potiphar's wife accuses him of adultery. He never committed it. He had the opportunity.

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He didn't commit it. Goes to prison. What do you think he's thinking there? And he's sitting in prison. God, why?

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No, it doesn't say that. He was faithful even in prison. And God raised him up, made him second in command in Egypt.

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His brothers come later because there's a drought and they have food in Egypt. And his brothers find out that Joseph is who he is.

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And Joseph has the power to kill them. And that's what he says to them. You meant it for evil. God meant it for good.

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God had a higher purpose in this. I think the woke crowd misses this.

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I think the social justice crowd doesn't understand this. They look at things, sometimes manufactured things, sometimes there's actually some oppression that has taken place.

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They look at those things. You know, take that slavery. Joseph was sold into slavery, right? Take American slavery even.

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Are they able to say, along with Booker T. Washington, who said the same thing in Up From Slavery, are they able to say what was meant for evil,

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God used for good? Brought me to this country. I learned the gospel here. I would never have learned it in Africa.

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Brought my people here. Are they able to say what Booker T. Washington, a slave himself, was able to say?

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No, they can't see that. And, you know, a lot of these guys claim they're Calvinists.

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They're neo -Calvinists. And I don't see where they're trusting God's sovereignty and his providence.

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We need to get back to providence. And that is the encouragement that we have, guys. God is in control.

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And even, I have to preach this myself. I can get despondent about the changes I see, especially in the church, but God is in control.

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Listen to this. This is from Isaiah 46 .8. Remember this and be assured. Recall it to your mind, you transgressors.

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Remember the former. Things long past for I am God and there is no other. I am God and there is no one like me declaring the end from the beginning.

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And from ancient times, things which have not been done. Saying my purpose will be established and I will accomplish all my good pleasure.

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Calling a bird of prey from the east. The man of my purpose from a far country. Truly I have spoken.

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Truly I will bring it to pass. I have surely planned it. Surely I will do it.

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What does this mean for the believer? Well, what does Romans 8 say? And we know that God works together for good to those who love

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God. Those who are called according to his purpose. The word of God is very clear.

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These are just a sample of verses. I could have picked many. God is in control. He's sovereign.

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It's his story. He's writing it. I mean, think about Joseph, right? His story ended well. Our stories don't always end that way in a temporary sense.

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But think about what happened after Joseph. I mean, he loved his family, brought him to Egypt. Pharaoh rose, he didn't remember

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Joseph. And next thing you know is his sons and his daughters, you know, they're sold into slavery and brutal slavery.

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And then God delivers them. What's God doing? God is making his own story. And it's to glorify himself.

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And I'm not gonna claim that I always understand it. I don't understand what's happening with Iran. Are we gonna go to war with Iran?

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I don't know. But God does. And if we're faithful to him, the things we can control, which does include being informed.

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It does include voting. It does include praying. But if we're faithful to him, then he will take care of us.

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And so we need to concern ourselves, I think, more with the kingdom of God, as much as we possibly can.

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I mean, that's our charge we're given, to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. Not to worry about the things of this earth if we're seeking that first.

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And it's harder said than done, I know that. But I just wanna encourage you. God is in control and we can hit 2020 running knowing we serve a sovereign

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God. So there's my little pep talk for you. Now, here's Gandalf's pep talk for you.

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This is one of my favorite scenes of all time from any movie. This is when Gandalf talks to Frodo in the

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Mines of Moria. Frodo is upset. How could the ring have come to me? Why did this happen? Why didn't

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Bilbo kill this Smeagol character? And this is what Gandalf says to him. And I'm not giving a full endorsement of everything

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Lord of the Rings. I'm not. I realize it's a fantasy, but I just love this scene.

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I think it just communicates well. Just the concept that Joseph was trying to communicate to his brother.

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So here we go. Many that live deserve death. Some that die do not be too eager to deal with very wise consumed ends.

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My heart tells me that Gollum has some part to do with you.

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Before this is over, the pity of Bilbo.

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I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.

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So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.

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There are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, besides the good of Evil. Bilbo was meant to find the ring.

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In which case, you also were meant to. And that is an encouraging thought.

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Now you are all going to wanna go watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy again, but we can't talk about that. That's getting a little off the path.

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I just thought I'd share that with you. Switching gears, let's talk about what you have come to expect from me, which is the social justice movement in the church stuff.

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And I have some things to highlight here. Oh, before I do, before I do, real quick. I wanna end my encouragement with this.

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I'm thankful for all the emails and Facebook messages y 'all send me. And just some of your stories make me wanna weep, but I get so many encouraging things.

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And there's a lot of really encouraging things happening. I mean, I have to blink when I think about some of the things I'm involved with, especially in regards to the

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SBC this year. I never thought I'd be in the position I'm in. I haven't spent a dime trying to promote myself.

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I'm not trying to get famous. I'm just concerned. I'm just a guy who's concerned about what I see happening in the church.

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And there are a number of other godly men who are very concerned. And behind the scenes, I've been in some discussions.

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I can't reveal the nature of them quite yet, but I just wanna say there's some very encouraging things happening. I want you to know that.

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And your support has made some of this possible. Things that you'd probably be surprised about if you heard. So we'll see what 2020 holds.

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I have some very hard -hitting content coming soon. I don't ever ask you all to share videos. I don't think I've done that.

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But I am gonna ask you now. Some of these videos that I'm gonna be sharing the next few days, next week, they're gonna be hard -hitting.

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And I've tried to go through proper channels to express concerns. That time is over. It's time to reveal some things.

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And so I'm gonna ask you to consider sharing these things. Please pray for those who are going to be exposed.

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And please send them this material because it's done in the spirit of correction, but there's always a spirit of compassion and a longing that repentance would take place.

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So I'm not looking to whack anyone unnecessarily. But yeah, there's some really good things happening.

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And it's thanks to your support. Rachel Denhollander. Let's get into the social justice stuff. She has become the lightning rod for the

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Me Too movement in the SBC. And here's what she said. She is deeply grateful for Susan Condon, some person on Twitter.

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Her voice and her stand. I share grief, she says, and deep concern about Paige Patterson's appearance.

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Here's what we can do. So Susan Condon, I guess is how you pronounce it. I don't know. She is highlighting that Paige Patterson is scheduled to speak at this certain church and we need to protest.

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We need to write an email to the pastors of that church and say, we don't want Paige Patterson speaking there.

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Rachel Denhollander says, yep, she's right. She's right. Now here's why

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I'm bringing this up. Let's put the Paige Patterson thing on the shelf for a moment.

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Even if Paige Patterson is a rapist, which no one's accusing him of that, but I'm just saying, even if he's the worst villain for Me Too, why is it that the

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SBC has such an infatuation with Martin Luther King Jr.?

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I mean, you could use the logic, right? You say, well, Paige Patterson's written some good commentaries. Paige Patterson led the conservative resurgence.

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I mean, he's a hero. He's a hero. Yes, portraits are taken down from Southeastern now, but he had a

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Patterson Hall there. He had pictures of himself there. He was very honored. And now he's been

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Me Too'd. Me Too truck has driven over him, his legacy. And I wanna know why

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MLK isn't subject to the same criticism. And I've asked this of Rachel Denhollander. This is the second time I tweeted a response.

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And I said, when are you gonna condemn this? Send relief. Send as part of NAM, North American Mission Board, Southern Baptist Convention.

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They're having an MLK Day of Service, January 20th. Martin Luther King Jr. Day has become a time, not only to celebrate his legacy, but to use it as an opportunity to help people in need and celebrate his legacy.

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They do in the Southern Baptist Convention. I highlighted this last year. There's a whole article about how all the different SBC seminaries are celebrating

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MLK Day. I'm sure they'll do it again this year. They were very involved. I told you all that when

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I was at Southeastern, you got three credits for attending the MLK 50 Conference.

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They love MLK. He wasn't a Southern Baptist, but they are trying to chain his legacy to their train, hook them up.

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He's part of them. And of course, everyone wants to do that with MLK because now he's such a big hero to the culture.

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This is a re -founding of America, by the way. In case you're, you see the names that are being taken down and the names that are being put up.

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MLK is a hero. And I went through, you can watch a whole episode

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I did a year ago on MLK and my opinion of MLK. There's some real, I love the

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I Have a Dream speech. There's some really good things to say about MLK, but there's also some really, really dangerous things about MLK.

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One of them is, well, the guy, I mean, it's pretty, it's proven. I haven't had anyone contest this with me.

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He's a rapist. He was a rapist in some ways. Yes, he's a plagiarist.

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He was a heretic. I don't think these things are really up for grabs. I'm willing to have a discussion on them, but the evidence is piled so high.

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It's very hard to get around these things, but the SBC will participate in his legacy and giving a whole day of honor to MLK at their seminaries and now participating, using his legacy to motivate them to go out and do this relief effort when he should be their biggest villain, if they're going to be true to the

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Me Too stuff, which they're trying to be with Paige Patterson. So there's some big hypocrisy going on here.

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Now, here's more hypocrisy for you. This is SEND Institute's leadership. So affiliated with the other, well, it's part of the same, it's part of NAM, but the

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SEND Relief. So this is the SEND Institute. Ed Stetzer, Jeff Christofferson, Daniel Yang, right?

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These are the directors of the SEND Institute. Now, what do they say? Daniel Yang says,

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Christians need to work hard at keeping patriotic feelings within proper bounds. There is nothing wrong with loving my country simply because it is my country, just as I love my parents simply because they are my parents, but this does not put my country beyond criticism.

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I mean, look, and I don't necessarily disagree with that in principle, but all three of them are going very hard after misplaced patriotism in their mind.

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Here's Ed Stetzer. By the way, I got this from Think Progress. Think Progress likes what

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Ed Stetzer said here. Ed Stetzer, it says in this Think Progress article, he wrote two

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Christianity Today op -eds denouncing those who make faith -based excuses for Trump's mistakes.

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He calls it 21st century idolatry and warned against the dangers, both scripturally and historically of honoring a country over God.

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Here's Jeff Christofferson. He wrote an article called Kingdom Patriotism.

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When we are captivated by the great treasure of Christ and his kingdom, we're positioned to winsomely invite others to join us.

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Perhaps the most insidious error of the church in the North America has little to do with liberalism and conservatism and far more to do with exchanging our spiritual identity with Christ for a cobbled, syncretistic mixture of patriotism, consumerism, and political influence.

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These guys are very skeptical of patriotism and nationalism.

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They do not want you taking your love for your country too far, all right?

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I looked, I did a brief search on SENT. I'm like, do they ever get involved in like, you know, 4th of July stuff,

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Memorial Day? Like, are there other civic holidays, like patriotic holidays that they're like getting? No, I didn't find anything at least.

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I'm willing to stand corrected if someone knows of something but they're not being loud about it if they are. But they're gonna get involved in this

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MLK thing. Now, here's the hypocrisy. Is MLK Day not a national holiday?

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Is there not a patriotic element? That, you know, a love for the fact that, look at the progress our country has made in regards to race relations and look at how

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MLK was this formative figure in this and kind of like a messianic figure to be honest with, to the extent some have taken him.

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I mean, he's practically worshiped by this country but that's not a problem for some reason.

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Like we're just gonna, we're gonna bring MLK in. There seems to be a double standard going on and MLK is an exception to the

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Me Too movement and to this really kind of unhinged fear that the

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Ascend Institute and the greater evangelical world has of patriotism. So I'm pointing this out.

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I'm not saying it's wrong to get involved with the service day. Not saying that it's, you know, I, look, I was part of a church that we would march in civic holidays that were patriotic.

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You know, my dad is a pastor. He would use to give the invocations at, you know, patriotic

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Memorial Day, Veterans Day celebrations. We never thought that that was a mixture of the kingdom of God with the kingdom of the world.

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That was just because we're Americans, we live in this country and we're good citizens and the nation whose people is the

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Lord is blessed. And we are trying to be salt and light in this culture as much as possible.

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So, you know, I agree that there's potential for that. Look, I took a Holocaust course last semester.

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I know, I can see how it's possible for a idolatrous love of country, which really was more love of the state in Nazi Germany, but an idolatrous love of the state can certainly infringe on core doctrines.

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And they did in some churches in Germany and it was a mess. And yeah, that can happen. It can happen. But is that what

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Ed Stetzer is talking about? Is that really what he's describing? What's he concerned about?

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And why is MLK an exception? The thing about MLK is you cannot separate his civic action from his heretical theology.

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Some will say, oh, he became Orthodox. He said heretical things in seminary, but later on, you know, he was Orthodox. Well, here's what he said at the end of his life.

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In to make the wounded whole 1968, he said, we have the power to make the church that institution that even young people who feel temporarily separated from it can respect.

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We can even get them to have a new loyalty because they'll know we are in the battle line for them. And they'll come to see that Jesus Christ was not a white man.

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Who does that sound like? James Cone? Yeah. He says, Christianity is not just a Western religion. We can make the church recapture its authentic ring.

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We have power to change America and give a kind of new vitality to the religion of Jesus Christ.

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He goes on to say that Jesus started Operation Breadbasket. He motivated the first sit -in movement. He had the glow of the divine.

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And people who understand liberal theology know what that means. It wasn't God, he had the glow of the divine.

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This is MLK, guys. I'm sorry to break it to you. This is MLK at the end of his life.

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And you can forget about his seminary papers, which are heretical. Look at how he lived. He went to India, said, yeah, the people of India, they're really spiritual, they're

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Hindus. He loved Gandhi. He marches with Jews and Catholics and said, it is a great awakening.

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It's the third great awakening in this country. He loved Rauschenbusch.

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He never strayed from Rauschenbusch. Rauschenbusch motivated what he did. Social gospel, that's

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Rauschenbusch. He's a heretic, guys. And if you're gonna be a faith organization,

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I mean, what's worse? Celebrating the 4th of July, waving the American flag, having it displayed at your church, or doing a day of service motivated by this guy?

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You need to be careful. I'm not saying not to do it. Not saying not to do any of that. I'm fine with the church getting involved, being good citizens, using civic holidays to go out and be involved in the community.

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But you gotta be careful that your messaging needs to be motivated by the gospel. And that's my concern.

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And hypocrisy is just overwhelming to me. So that's all

30:04

I had to say about MLK. I wanted to share with you a little bit about a book that I read.

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I don't usually do this, but I'm gonna do it. I just read a book called

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The People's Republic of Walmart. I don't usually talk about books I'm reading, but I'm making an exception because this book annoyed me and intrigued me at the same time and deceived me.

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It's called The People's Republic of Walmart, How the World's Biggest Corporations Are Laying the Foundation for Socialism.

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And I thought, when I looked at this, that man, that's true, right? I mean, corporations are laying the groundwork for socialism.

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They're pushing big government left -wing policies. Now, why is that? I think I know possibly why, but I'd much rather find out from someone who's done the research and knows more than me.

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Not what this book was. Not in the least what this book was about. You cannot always judge a book by its cover.

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This book was written by two communists. When I say communists, like legit, they were praising

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Karl Marx in the book. And here's one of them.

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His name is Lee Phillips, and he's from Great Britain, I believe. Writes for a number of publications, Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, but also

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The Jacobin. And Mikhail Rozvorsky also writes for a number of publications where he's from in Canada, including

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The Jacobin. So, you have two authors that are Marxists getting together, writing

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The People's Republic of Walmart. Now, why do you care? Why am I sharing this? Well, you may hear this argument at some point, so I want you to be ready for it if you do.

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I hadn't really heard this before, at least not framed in the way they framed it. And here's the argument.

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Don't laugh. Walmart and Amazon and other big corporations, they are going to show us how to do socialism.

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That's right, Walmart is going to show us how to do socialism. And the reason for that is because Walmart operates on such a huge, massive scale.

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And they're efficient. And it takes central planning to make an operation like Walmart work.

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And because there's central planning, because there's efficiency in the way that they conduct their business, the systems they have, the technology they use to figure out what customers want,

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Amazon does the same thing, there's algorithms involved. Because of all that, governments should take their cues from Walmart on how to be productive and efficient.

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Now, they posit, the authors, democratic socialism. Sound familiar, right?

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Like Bernie Sanders type socialism. They say, dictatorships won't work. And here's why. Every example they give in the book of a socialist country that they wanna, they sort of like half put them out there as examples.

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Like they'll say, hey, the Soviet Union was winning the space race before American government got involved and created

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NASA. But they were winning it. They're efficient. The reason that they got in trouble though,

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I mean, and one of the downsides was the gulags and the mass killings and starvations, was because they were a dictatorship.

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And every other example they bring up of an ideal socialist state, not really an ideal, but the closest we've come to an ideal, it fell short because it was a dictatorship.

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So they don't have any example to point to to say this is the ideal. This is democratic socialism on display.

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All they have to say is Walmart can show us the way. So this is a desperate attempt by two people who aren't economists anyways.

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It doesn't appear from their bios, but even if they are, this is a desperate attempt to try to point to something that says socialism is gonna work.

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And I mean, can you think of a more pathetic attempt than pointing to Walmart, a massive company as your example?

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So here's my suggestion. If Walmart is so great and so efficient and central planning works, why not just give the country to Walmart?

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The United States can be run completely by Walmart. And the more corporations run the country, the more we should rejoice, right?

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Isn't that a good thing? Why do leftists hate it then, if that's the case? I mean, you can see where this is going. The authors probably would object to that, but I mean,

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I don't understand how you would escape the logic. So in case you hear this argument,

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I have written, took me about five minutes, I just sat down, I wrote a non -exhaustive list of reasons why this argument is stupid.

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And I put on the shelf the biblical reasons, but I'll just briefly say, look, socialism is not a biblical concept.

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The concept of private property springs right out of scripture. And it's not private in the sense that we have ultimate ownership of anything.

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God owns everything, we're stewards of it, but we own it, we steward it under our creator who owns everything.

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And you see this concept from Genesis forward, it's protected in the Mosaic law. I mean, the concept of theft relies on the concept of private property.

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Even in areas in the scripture where people try to make an argument for socialism,

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I think of the early church in Acts, you still see private property being championed. For instance, when Ananias and Sapphira come to Peter and they say, hey, we sold our property, and they lied about how much, and Peter strikes them dead, they lied to the

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Holy Spirit, what does he say to them? He says, was it not yours when you owned it, when you had it, was it not yours?

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So even in Acts, in the early church, the concept of private property is still established.

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And you look at the parables of Christ, parable of the talents, parable of the vineyard, you know, entrepreneurship, ownership of business,

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I mean, these are things that are just assumed in scripture. Now, here are some other reasons why the argument that we're just gonna take our cues from Walmart and learn how to run a government is stupid.

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There's a difference between a company and a country, first of all. Well, what are those differences? Number one, competition. Walmart has to compete against other companies.

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It's one of the reasons that they are efficient. They can't just survive on their own inertia. They don't have a monopoly where people are forced to go to Walmart.

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You might feel like that in some small towns, I don't know. I mean, hey, you probably got your dollar general at least, right? So Walmart does have competition.

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So that's going to drive efficiency. It's going to make prices come down and that's a factor that would not exist if the whole country was just Walmart.

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They have the ability at Walmart to cut waste by punishing a lack of productivity.

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So if you have an employee who's not being productive, that employee can be fired. If the whole country was absorbed in Walmart, you couldn't fire people like that.

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They're part of the system, whether you want it or not. At least with a company like Walmart, they have a system whereby they can actually get rid of waste.

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They can cut departments that aren't being successful. There is a motive at Walmart to earn a profit.

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All right, that motive is eliminated once you get rid of competition and everyone just gets the same wage.

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You don't have that. I think the authors failed to understand what government central planning is.

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Because what they're saying is that the central planning that goes into running a business and the kind of planning that goes into running a socialist state are the same.

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And they're really not exactly the same. Because like I said, there's market forces at work when you run a corporation.

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You have to navigate those market forces. You can get lazy. You don't have to navigate those things if you're running a state.

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Even in the USSR, they had a first class military, right? You hear this a lot.

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They had a first class military in a third world country, essentially. They focused, they prioritized what the elites at the top wanted.

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If you put everything into your space program and your military, then you might have some results.

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But you're taking them from somewhere else and long term, it's not gonna be sustainable. There's no,

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I said this sort of already, but there's no real positive example that exists of a government adopting what these authors want.

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That's why they have to point, they're forced to point to something like Walmart. And when they do try to point to a positive example in government, like the space race or World War II, they end up pointing towards something that required all hands on deck for the sake of survival.

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A lot of times today, people don't realize this, but during the Cold War, the space race was a big deal.

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People were afraid of nuclear war. They were afraid that the communists would gain a technological advancement over the

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United States and the Western world, and that motivated you, right? So there's this idea that we need to find something that's the moral equivalent of war, that war brings everyone together.

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Everyone's on the same team, and they're efficient, yeah, because they're trying to survive. But when we're not having a war, when we're not motivated by those things, it's more difficult.

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One of the examples that comes to my mind in the book, it was some country in Northern Europe, the authors referenced, where there's common grazing land.

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And the authors use this to say, see, you can have a commonly shared land in this case, but it could be something else.

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It could be a utility, and people can steward it well. Well, yeah, that is possible, that is possible.

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There's certain cultures that you can do that. In the example they gave, it was like, it had been thousands of years or something like that where this was a grazing land, and the shepherds all treated it with care and respect.

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Well, yeah, number one, your livelihood depends on it. Number two, there's probably a tradition there, and you probably have the same culture.

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You know one another, you respect one another. Harder in a multicultural context. And the more selfish a culture is, the more hard that is.

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So, but that's not an argument for it. What if it was privately owned? Maybe it would even be more efficient.

40:09

So it fails to prove what it's trying to. Here's some good points though that I think the book made.

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Technology is making things more efficient by invading privacy, in a sense, and we're allowing it to happen. It's not even maybe an invasion in every sense of the word because we're allowing it.

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We're voluntarily giving information, giving our DNA to ancestry .com

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even. I think 10 or 20 years ago, people would have thought, giving your

40:39

DNA away? But now we just do it. And so we're very free with our information in the information age.

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And there might be some concerns we should look at with that. Now the authors think this is a good thing. This is a good thing.

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Look how efficient things are. I'm looking at that and I'm thinking, yeah, that might not be a good thing. Maybe we don't want all our information in the hands of someone who could abuse that information.

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And I thought of the DMV. The DMV has access to huge amounts of information, and yet they are known for inefficiency.

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So just because a system has a lot of information doesn't mean they're necessarily going to be efficient.

41:18

So a robotic utopia, which is what the authors are envisioning. And this is why

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I wanted to talk about this. This is sort of futuristic. We're on the cusp of this. We're maybe even in this to some extent.

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But a futuristic world where robots run everything and all information is publicly available.

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And so, I mean, they know what you want before you'll buy it and they give it to you so you don't have to think about it. That kind of a thing, which the authors would probably say, that's great.

41:46

Amazon's doing that kind of thing already. We should just have the socialist government do it. Now, here's the thing about that.

41:54

The thing that concerns me is governments are responsible for justice. That's what, in scripture, government is a ministry of justice, right?

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Do you really want Amazon meting out justice? Deciding who goes to jail and who doesn't, who pays a fine and who doesn't?

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Do you really want Amazon who has control of your information, in some cases, has robots in your house listening, the

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Alexa app, for instance, to what you're saying? Do you want them responsible for carrying out justice?

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Maybe they could figure out if you had a thought crime based on what you are searching for on the internet.

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Or who knows? I don't know, technology's advancing so fast. This could create 1984 really quick.

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And these guys seem to think that's a good thing. I'm not so optimistic.

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And I think if you're a biblical Christian, you can't be. You have to realize that man is innately evil and robots don't have a moral function.

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They have an input. They're designed by humans. They're extensions of humans, right?

42:55

So they're not going to be able to determine right or wrong. They're amoral, they're machines. And so that's part of the concern here is that big tech, big tech,

43:07

I think, can be concerning for definitely. And the reason they're concerning though is how much they can influence a government.

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How much cooperation they can have with the government. Those are the things that concern me. When they start their business aspect gets involved with shaping the culture with Silicon Valley wants to do.

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I mean, they're in San Francisco. They're being taxed to death, it would seem like, right? They should get out of there, but they're ideologues.

43:32

They're not just about making a profit. This is one of the misnomers conservatives have sometimes. Big tech companies, big corporations are not always about making a profit.

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When you get into that elitist world where you're running companies, you're probably, you have family members that are probably in politics at that level and in Hollywood perhaps, the entertainment industry.

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When you're at that level, there's other things that are important to you. It's not just about the bottom line all the time and making a profit.

43:59

So those are my reasons, one of my reasons for being concerned about that. Some of the things that liberals point to and it happened in this book.

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They said Walmart's a great example of what we could be doing efficiently, but at the same time, they treat their employees terrible and we don't like that and if only they didn't do that.

44:16

Well, what do you think makes them as productive as they are and successful as they are?

44:22

It's probably the fact that they do pay lower wages. That's part of it and if you don't like it, you can go work somewhere else.

44:29

Look, in the free market, you have options. If everything's Walmart and those at the top decide, yeah, we're not going to pay high wages, you don't have much of a choice at that point.

44:39

It's like the authors didn't think through that. But the danger with a big corporation can be, if it's all robotic, if it's all a machine, you could be treated like a machine.

44:50

I've actually had some experience with this. I'm not gonna say the corporation I worked for, this was years ago, but I worked in one of those picking centers and I think it was a good experience for all two weeks

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I was there. I found another job really quick. It motivated me, I did not like it. No windows,

45:09

I did not like the conditions exactly. But they were fine, they treated their employees fine, it's just the job kind of stunk and everything was about you being fast and competing with others in the building and making sure that you,

45:22

I mean, it was grueling. It was grueling in a way and I say that as a spoiled kid, perhaps, because I live in the

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United States of America and I don't know probably what real grueling is. But it was just manual labor and I was bored by it.

45:35

I like farm manual labor, which actually, in a sense, that was actually more grueling, but I liked, I don't know, I was outside, but that's just me.

45:42

All that to say, most people don't like factory jobs like that, right? And part of the reason is it feels impersonal.

45:49

You're a number sometimes. It's so big, you kind of lose the sense of human scale. You might know the people around you, but you don't really know those who are above you in the higher strata of the corporation.

46:02

And I worked for several different companies over the years. Some of them have been bigger and actually have really been intentional about the president coming and cooking dinner or cooking breakfast during the holidays and getting to know the people underneath.

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And some companies are really good at this. Others are not. And that's one of the things that I think is a problem.

46:22

And it's not a thing, I don't want to correct it with socialism. I don't want to bring socialism in, but I think it is good for companies to be intentional about that.

46:30

And I tend to be a localist. I tend to like knowing who I'm doing business with and knowing whose family, when

46:39

I purchase a product, knowing it's going to a particular family, if someone I know, I mean, I like that.

46:44

I like the small town feel. I realize that's not always possible everywhere. I realize everyone's moving everywhere. I realize that multi -generational businesses are in some ways being washed away.

46:56

I realize that. I know that's all that happened. I'm not trying to fight all that through government intervention or socialism.

47:02

That's not the way to do it. I think though that on a local level, you can be intentional about who you're, if it is your choice as a consumer, you can be intentional about who you, what you value and who you want to purchase from.

47:13

And if you value that kind of thing, if you value the hometown feel, the honesty that comes with knowing who you're purchasing from and who you're purchasing to, then

47:23

I'd say go for it. Think local, act local. There's a lot of leftists even, conservatives and leftists, that are both getting into this lately.

47:31

Even with a gentrification craze, I've seen that local markets are being established, local produce, think local, act local is becoming a popular thing.

47:42

And I like that in many ways. I think that's a great thing. I think you should invest in your local community. You should care about your front porch, perhaps more than the front porch of someone, somewhere else in the world.

47:53

Not that you shouldn't care about that, but you're more directly responsible and it affects your life more when it's your local community, your front porch, the people you know, you are more personally invested, directly involved there.

48:05

And so anyways, that's my little, my spiel about think local, act local. And I think some of the agrarians, writers,

48:13

Southern agrarian writers have a lot of good things to say in their critiques of modern modernity and the kind of capitalism, the commercialism that has been wrought from modernity.

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But we don't need Marxism. We don't need socialism. Those things make it even worse.

48:31

You're more a part of the machine. It aggravates all those problems a thousand times.

48:38

And I just think this book called the

48:44

People's Republic of Walmart just stinks. And so I had to tell everyone about it in case you ever hear that argument.

48:51

Now you know what to say and you know what I think about it. So there you go. So I recorded that segment a few nights ago after I had finished reading that book.

49:01

And I just wanted to share that with you. And by the way, I just looked at the headline and it looks like Donald Trump just made a speech and that there were no casualties, thank

49:10

God. And that Iran appears to be standing down. So hopefully we are not going to war anytime soon for those.

49:17

I mean, some of you are saying, yeah, we knew that, we weren't going to. But for those who were concerned about it, but that's all

49:24

I have for today. Please be on the lookout. I have another video dropping this Saturday. You're not gonna wanna miss it.

49:30

I got another one, another two, I think dropping next week. They're gonna be kind of hard hitting. So fasten your seatbelts, be ready.

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We are in 2020 now and looking forward to it. God bless you. Hope that helped. And I'll see you next week.