Dispelling the Myth: Should Christians Stay Out of Politics?

there really something in the scriptures that says that Christians should not get involved in the political realm?

Many think that, but today we may dispel that myth on The Rap Report.

Welcome to The Rap Report with your host, Andrew Rapoport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application.

This is a ministry of striving for eternity and the Christian podcast community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

Well, welcome to another edition of The Rap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rapoport, the executive director of Striving for Eternity and the

Christian podcast community of which this podcast is a proud member. We are here giving you biblical interpretations and applications for the

Christian life, and we're gonna give some application, as I said in the intro, to things that people have a myth about, and that is

Christians in politics. I am with, well, I don't know, I'll say he's a friend.

He may decide to disagree with that. We'll see. But Branton Reiling, you and I met at,

I think it was Fight, Laugh, Feast conference. Yes. And so we were kind of online talking to each other a bit and got to know each other, and then you and I ended up having a conversation through a mutual friend, and I found out a little bit about some of the things you're involved in, and I was like, dude, when can you come on?

Let's talk about this. So introduce yourself to folks, let them know a little about you, and then there's really two areas, two things you're working on that we want to talk about.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, first and foremost, Andrew, I absolutely consider you a friend as well, so let's just make sure that's very clear.

But yeah, name's Branton Reiling. A little bit about me. I'm a pastor's kid and a missionary kid.

I live in central Virginia. Moved here about two years ago. I actually lived all over the country growing up, but we've found our roots here and we're very, very happy here.

We live about 30 minutes away from Liberty University, which a lot of people have heard of. And yeah, beyond that,

I attend a local CREC church, and I'm very involved in entrepreneurial ventures and efforts, and I'm very passionate about Christians taking dominion in every sphere of life, and that, of course, includes economics and politics.

And more and more projects that I'm getting involved with these days are very focused in those spheres.

Yeah, and this is something, again, folks, when I've said this before, we had, you know,

Gabe Wrenchon, who is one of the organizers of He's also with the same denomination that you're in, which folks may not be familiar with it.

It's a denomination that Doug Wilson's involved with. He's probably the biggest name, I think, that people know of with that.

And it'd be fair to say that, you know, your views, my views would be a bit different, just like Gabe's and mine.

And yet, folks, we could actually, I know this is crazy thought, we could actually talk, have good, friendly conversations, disagree theologically on things, and still work together and find ways we can serve

God. I know, crazy thought. Wild. But I say that not to cause issue where people go, oh, we shouldn't listen to someone, but the very reverse.

I'm so against, Brandon, the tribalism that I end up seeing, where, well, if you don't agree a hundred percent with me,

I got to throw you out. And then they wonder why the church is anemic in our culture.

Well, maybe because we're too busy fighting one another, and the world is happy to fight with us, against us, right?

So, so let's talk about some of the, some of the work you're doing, which is, you know, you're in two realms, right?

You're working in the realm of, of politics, but you're also, as you mentioned, entrepreneurialism, some things you, projects you've, and that's how you and I got to know each other, had someone you partnered with,

Chance, who was doing 16, he does, he's known for 1689 cigars, but he's doing the 1689 coin, and that's, we had him on talking about that, and that's how

I got to know you through, through the coin. So talk about some of, let's start with some of the entrepreneurial work, and then

I really want to hone in on the idea of whether Christians should, or, or even if the

Bible allows us to be involved in politics, because there's some that think the answer to that is no. Yeah, yeah, sure.

Yeah, well, I really kind of got my start into some of the projects I'm working on now, just by, two years ago, starting a marketing agency, and some guys, you and I are both very well acquainted, are involved in my agency.

As I was doing that, I started listening to more podcasts in the reform world, realizing there's all these great sponsors who share our convictions and our worldview.

And again, you know, sometimes some distinctions theologically, but I would say overall, the mission is so aligned, and so similar, even if the application sometimes varies, that realizing there's, there's a lot of room for work, to work together here.

And so what that ultimately led me to is a project I started about a year ago called the Reform Business Alliance. And that is meant to be a, it started out as a directory where all these cool companies that were sponsoring podcasts like yours, could be listed publicly on a directory that people could find.

So if you want to go spend your money on a company that makes soap that wants to glorify the Lord, you can find

Indigo Sundries on there, for example, instead of just buying soap from the grocery store. And it's very competitively priced, it's very high quality, it smells amazing, you know what

I mean? But so we've got almost 70 companies on there now, all different spheres, whether it's legal, whether it's contracting at the service level, whether it's a national retailer, you know, all chances brands are on there, all over the sphere.

And really, the goal there is for just to just to create networks and coalitions of men who are creating and growing businesses, so they can work together, whether it's to dominate their local industries, and to be the absolute best at what they do.

Or so they can perhaps even in some cases, pool resources to help drive policy in their local regions and even at the state level.

So a lot of that's still early, but it's growing quickly. And the platforms opened up tremendous networking opportunities to get to know guys all over the country to become friends with some of my heroes and find ways that I get to work with them.

So yeah, that's that's the Reform Business Alliance. So it's online directory, it's also private networks, you can make an account and go in there.

And there's a private social media platform in there, basically, where you can connect with guys and work together on various projects.

Is there a URL for that? Yep, it's just ReformBusinessAlliance .com. Pretty easy.

And when you say you have, you know, chances on there, it's like all 12, 13, 15, 18 companies he has or there's a new one every couple of weeks.

But yeah, for sure. It's a chance is kind of one of these guys like,

Oh, what are you doing this year? Oh, I created a new company. Yeah. Yeah, he's always he's always got something cool that he's working on and something that he's building.

And yeah, it's been it's been extremely rewarding. He's become a dear friend and somebody that I really enjoy getting to work with, both on a professional level, but also just on the friendship level.

Yeah. So, you know, when we think of when we as far as Christians, you know, there's a lot of folks who are

Christians who really don't think we should be investing time in entrepreneurial work because it does.

Look, being an entrepreneur takes time. It's not. I used to. I had a guy

I worked with when I worked at Bell Laboratories and he and I and a couple others, we'd go out for sushi once a month.

And typically what we do is one one of us would come up with an idea and we'd bang it around and we'd be like, this would be really good.

We work out a business plan. We'd sit there over sushi, talking back and forth. And and then at some point, one one of us would just turn and say,

OK, you really willing to sacrifice the family to go and do this? And we'd be like, yeah, no.

And then we'd drop it and then we'd watch people like I had the idea of what became Tevo about three years before Tevo.

And they they never had what I had. I actually had the idea of using us, you know, swappable hard drives so that you could just you could download everything onto a hard drive and you want to go to a friend's house, just pull your hard drive out, put it into their device or even, you know, take it from your hard drive to a flash drive, you know.

But the reality is it's a lot of time, you know. And and some people think like, well,

Christians should be more focused on just church and family and just get a job that's nine to five, which

I don't know if those actually exist anymore. I don't know anyone that's working nine to five anymore. But but I've I have heard people that talk of it like that when it comes to entrepreneurial type stuff with Christians.

So if someone was to make an argument like that to you, I know you're you're with your background, the idea taking dominion.

Right. So but do you think we have a call to more than just as as I'm going to say more men?

Because I personally think that men should be the ones working. I mean, but, you know, do we as men have have a responsibility if we're so gifted in the sense of not everyone can run a company?

Some can run it into a ground. But it should we be trying to do more than just working for someone else?

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, if someone were to try to make the argument to me that, look, you know, just focus on your family, focus on your church, just work a stable job.

Don't take any risks. You know, I would tell them that you you're you're not completely wrong in the sense that your family and your church should be an incredibly high priority.

Right. Those should be things that you care deeply about. Those should be probably your highest priority.

Definitely. Your family should be your highest priority outside of your walk with the Lord. But yeah, absolutely. You should take you should take the pouring into your children, pouring into your wife.

Those should be very, very high on your list. And there's there is always a tension there, especially if you are trying to build a company or companies.

In many cases, there are there are sacrifices that had to be made. But the thing is, those sacrifices can often be managed properly with good communication.

You know, I'm blessed to have an extremely supportive wife. She's always supportive of me when

I have to travel for my venture. She's supportive if I need to sacrifice time with the family to do things.

But we that took time to figure out. Right. That wasn't something we had figured out day one. It it took some some some kind of learning lessons to get there.

And we have a pretty good system now where, OK, we know this night's the week. I'm it's all about family. Right. When five p .m.

comes around, I shut down for the night, hang out with the wife, the kids, hang out with my wife after the kids go to bed.

And then a couple of nights a week, these are my work nights where I can put it in extra five, six hours after the kids go to bed, sometimes staying up till two, three a .m.

But but we were able to create some routine around it. So that way there's predictability. So I would just start by saying, like, yes, there are sacrifices that have to be made, but that doesn't mean that it's wrong.

And I think if we look at just the idea that you should only work a nine to five in an ultra stable environment where there's no risk involved,

I'd say, for one, there's still risk layoffs happen all the time. You know, I was talking to someone who

I respect deeply about this recently. And he's saying, like, well, why don't you just focus on a nine to five instead of building a business?

Because that could all collapse in one day. And I told him, it's like, well, I guess it could. But a nine to five job could just be suddenly taken from you as well.

And if you're running a business and building it up, there's usually going to be signs that are coming in the market and your your books and whatever that things might not be going so well.

So you can either pivot or you can make a plan to maybe exit if you need to. So in a lot of cases, there's actually more stability there once you've built it up.

And then on theological grounds, I just think it's unquestionable. Absolutely. Men should be doing everything they can with all of their skills, all their gifts to further

Christendom. Right. We want to see Christ exalted in politics, in the economy, in our in our local communities everywhere.

And I hate to say it, this is not a really pretty truth, but a lot of times politics, politics is downstream from economics and it's downstream from morality, which is the church's job to help that.

But the people who are getting funded for campaigns, that's coming from real people who are giving them real money. If you don't have any real money, you don't have the means to actually help finance the campaigns to get the right people in office who are actually going to advocate for Christ honoring laws and the actual enforcement of those laws.

So and it's very possible that the company you're working for, if it's a stable nine five, it's very likely that they're making money off of your labor and donate the things that do not honor

Christ. And how many times have we seen that? And so if if it's on a theological grounds, I would argue that in many cases it's more theologically right and good and true to build something where you control the flow of finances and the things that bring honor and glory to Christ, that bring additional tithe to your church, rather than just doing something that's, quote, safe for a big

Fortune 500 company who's absolutely funding things that go against everything you believe in. Yeah, because the reality is that.

So when I got when I had to ask my in -laws to marry my wife,

I was a contractor making good money, self self, you know, independent contractor.

And the agreement I had to make was that I would I would get an employee job. And I'm like,

I remember saying, do you realize that employees get fired before me? Yeah.

Right. It's not about like it's about being good at what you do. Right.

But my mother in law didn't understand that. And she was like, no, that was her rule. That was the one thing she wanted.

So I'm like, well, I want to marry her. This is what I'm going to do. So I did that, you know, but I still went out, still did other things and went out on my own.

And but the thing is, is that. I think that people think that they're going to have safety.

As you brought out, and there's no guarantee of that, in fact, one of the things you said is that if if you're a wise entrepreneur, wise businessman, right, you you're looking for the signs to figure out when to pivot.

But there is a flip side of that. There's a lot of people. That they may even see the signs, but refuse to accept because it's on they created.

Yeah. I think of there's a bunch of founders that come to mind, but right now I'm just thinking I listen to some podcasts on businesses and the guy who started,

I think it was Lululemon, which is a clothing company. And he basically almost ran it into the ground because he was making bad decisions because he he couldn't let go of it.

And it was like, you know, you can think of Apple, Steve Jobs. He ran that into the ground because he couldn't let go of his baby.

And it was only when it was taken away from him and really run into the ground that he came back. And but he had a totally different perspective when he came back.

Right. And so I think there is a flip side to it as well, is that we have to be cautious going into an entrepreneurial type of thing.

You got to look at the signs and know when to jump or pivot and not just say, well,

I can if I, because I think an advantage of of entrepreneurship. Right.

My son has his own business. He actually started it when he was 15. Wow. OK. Started it in high school just because I cut him off financially.

He he had expensive tastes. He's like, yeah, we gave him like we he goes to sneakers every year.

So it was like, all right, we'll give you 25 bucks for sneakers. Right. And he wanted name brand sneakers.

You don't get that for 25 bucks a year. Right. Right. So we just gave him all the money for the like we had set aside for clothes and sneakers.

Here you go. It's yours. You figure out how to make it work. Well, it didn't work. So he he started figuring out ways to make money.

And one of the things he ended up doing, he started fixing phones because everybody has phones that break. Well, he's turned that into a big business.

He's got employees in, I think, like three different states now. Wow. And so, you know, and he's making like three times what my wife and I made when when she used to work.

You know, both of us were working. The kids were out of the house. So it was like, um, I really can't complain that I paid for him to get a college degree that he hasn't used.

Right. But but the thing is, you got to know, you got to know when to change.

Like he's always taking on new things. He's he's trying different, you know, different types of businesses and trying to get into other things because he's like, hey, the economy, the phone's not doing well.

People aren't buying phones. OK, we'll do something else. Yeah. So, you know, with what you're trying to do with this alliance,

I mean, how can that help folks who say, you know, I do have ideas. I want to create business.

I want to because the nice thing about having a especially if you're a successful business, you're hiring other people.

You know, I mean, to those listening in the audience, just ask yourself, how many people do you know in your church that need a job?

And you're thinking of someone already, right? Wouldn't it be good to have someone that's in church who has a business, can hire them, and you're working for a fellow believer?

Right. Although if you do that, work double hard because you're working for a believer.

Don't be one of these Christians are like, oh, it's a believer. So I can I can be lazy. Right. So so how can how can your alliance how's that help out with folks?

Yeah, that's a great question. You know, and this actually comes down to something that an alliance member asked me about recently.

And he's saying he's a pretty prominent businessman in his area and he's got a company that hires people and he's saying,

I would love to be able to hire guys locally or guys from my church or find other people who are connected to this network in their church and hire them as well.

How can I do that? And so we actually started putting together functionality for that that mostly is live now, but where people can create what are called coalitions within the alliance.

And those coalitions can be regional. They could be topical. They could be industry specific. And it's a means by which you can basically pull together guys who are interested in that particular topic of that coalition and coordinate and talk to build relationships.

You know, the higher the trust and the more relationship there is there, it's you know, a lot of times it becomes an easier decision to potentially hire somebody or at least try try seeing how it goes.

So the the benefit of the alliance is it's a place where people can go. They can get involved. They can have access to other members in the network.

And they can put out posts and messages saying like, hey, looking for this kind of work, these are my skill sets or I'm offering this kind of a service for free.

Is anyone interested? Things like that. And they can start building out their portfolio, whether it's a new venture or if they're just looking to maybe find a new job.

We do also have job board functionality on there so people can post jobs to the job board and people can apply to those jobs from the job board.

So we're really trying to build out a full ecosystem of where employers can find employees, business leaders can connect with one another and work together.

And also, you know, they get a benefit from being on a public directory because Google likes that and Google likes those types of public directories.

And that provides some additional term called domain authority to their website, which helps them rank better in Google.

So there's a bit of a marketing benefit there as well. So I'm just curious with this because I hadn't thought about this question beforehand.

It's not in my notes of things, but I'm listening to you. I've had Gabe wrench on with his business makers network.

And so it seems like some of you guys are trying to do some same things with helping businesses in a different way, though.

Is there are you familiar with his network? Are there things you guys are doing that, you know, that that's kind of similar or that you can may even work together?

Yeah, I'm actually a member of his network through my marketing agency. So, yeah. So, no,

I'm part of it. I think the biggest difference between Business Makers Network and the Reform Business Alliance is that the

Reform Business Alliance is really targeting men of the reform tradition in its various expressions.

Right. But it's looking for guys who might subscribe to the 69 or the Heidelberg or the the

Westminster Confession of Faith, specifically Business Makers Network. My understanding is it's a little bit more of a

Big Ten approach. So it does require consistent church attendance. It does require that you would confess the the lordship of Jesus Christ.

And that's all great and wonderful. And I think it's actually substantially larger than the

Reform Business Alliance as well. It's been around for quite a bit longer. So they're way ahead of us in many fronts.

But Gabe's doing good work there. They're holding conferences. We haven't held a conference yet. We've also only been around for about a year or so.

But still, Reform Business Alliance is growing quickly and it's been exciting. So but yeah, so those are the main differences is

RBA is focusing more on confessional, covenantal expressions of the

Christian faith, where business makers is a bit more Big Ten. OK, now, so they would have to hold to the confessions because like would you have someone that is solid

Christian but doesn't hold? Well, like if you had someone like me who's dispensational, you know, would it would it be open to that?

I'm just curious if you were able to affirm the 68 -9 or the Heidelberg. Yes. Well, yeah, with I for the most part,

I can. Yeah. Right. I might have a kind of thing where it's like, look, you know, it's the kind of thing to where it's like if this is not something we police super strictly.

But if someone like you could look at that and say like, yeah, you know, I agree with like 85, 90 percent of the 69 confession.

I would say, generally speaking, with a bit of nuance, I'm on board. Then that would be fine. If you are like just strictly non -denominational in terms of like what your confessional view is, you don't like creeds, you don't like confessions.

You don't even consider yourself necessarily Calvinistic or reformed in any capacity. It's probably not the right place for you.

But if you generally find that you fall into that camp and you'd be willing to say that, generally speaking,

I affirm the 69 London Baptist confession, then that wouldn't be a problem. Yeah.

And I mean, I'm just and by the way, website reformed business alliance dot com.

Yeah. I mean, you have a map here. You got like 68 businesses that are that are here.

So it's not. And this is one of things Gabe said, like with his thing, it's it's hard to get going until you have enough businesses to really start working together.

It's hard to say, hey, we're going to, you know, we're here to help you work with other businesses when there's only three businesses.

Yeah, for sure. And that was the initial challenge, for sure. Yeah. And so it takes it's it seems like with them, just as I'm scanning through here, you have enough businesses, even if you exclude all the ones that chance started.

There's still a lot. We've got to give chance a hard time. But, you know, it is something where, you know, it starts to being able to have more of a benefit to folks to join if they have a business.

And when you say business, I'm just looking at me. Here's Trinity Painting. So it's not always an entrepreneurial thing of, you know, it's some of the, you know, like I'm looking at some of the others, but there's a physical therapy, you know, construction company.

So a lot of different multiple coffee companies. But, you know, I'm sorry to Lex Coffee, but Squirrelly Joe's.

It's just I even know I didn't try the other. I'm just saying Squirrelly Joe's is as a previous sponsor of this show.

They're superior. That's I'm just saying they are. They are both fantastic coffees.

I've had both. I have both in my house right now. I love them both. That's a line I have to walk carefully, because both of those men are men who

I highly admire and do fantastic work and are also both members. So I try to be fair in how

I promote them as members. But I do. I dearly love both of those companies and the guys that run them.

So that's where what you do is you do a coffee challenge and have both of them and get a whole bunch of people together at a conference, have both of them there to have a taste off that they both get to.

There are different kinds of coffee, though, like Squirrelly Joe's. It is an absolutely excellent, fantastic kind of all purpose coffee.

You know, it tastes great with a pour over. It tastes great in a coffee maker. Kind of, you know, you just take your typical with the coffee filter.

It tastes great there. Lux is a bit more artisan. They're more of like, I don't know if you heard the term third wave coffee, but everything is roasted in -house.

He imports his bean. He roasts them himself. It's a much it's just a different kind of approach to drinking coffee where he has a lot.

As far as I know, I could be wrong. I don't think Joe does his own roasting. Maybe I know he does.

Yeah. Oh, he does. Oh, OK. I'm wrong then. Yeah. He's OK. That's amazing. Yeah. Because he's he he's got it like he was because I had actually had him on and he explained it's all like timed and like to get the right flavor.

Yeah, I did not realize how much is we're totally off topic now, but how much is involved with making a good roasting, a good coffee?

Like he's got it. You know, it's got to be where it's the right temperature. They all you can't have it sit too long because it's got they have to be all get roasted, you know.

So there's there was a lot to it. Yeah, I've known a bunch of owners of coffee shops over the years, and I've seen them in the roasting process.

I've gotten to learn a little bit about it over the years, and it's very, very involved. But but yeah, needless to say, that's very cool that he roasts some beans.

I wish I knew that earlier. I feel dumb now. Well, my expertise, they're both fantastic companies that people should support.

My expertise is in drinking the coffee. That's that I can handle. So, all right, you get people who start their own business.

You mentioned earlier, you got to you got to arrange the time with family. And that's really important. Having, you know, especially setting it up.

If there's folks who are listening and they think they want to get started, I think something you said, you got to have agreements, especially with the spouse or with your wife to be like,

OK, like if we're doing it, we're doing it together because we're doing it together. Because it's going to be a big problem if she is the type who needs you home every night with her and because the time commitment in running your own business is a lot.

Yes. So as we look to that.

Like, what advice would you have for someone that's starting out, that's young, they think, hey, you know,

I can conquer the world and they just go out and start something. What advice would you have for a young person like that that wants to be an entrepreneur?

Yeah, well, the first thing I would say before you even go out and start something is do some market research, you know, and with the tools that we have available to us today, technologically speaking with A .I.

and things like that, I mean, there's no excuse not to anymore, but do some market research about what people are actually wanting and what they're willing to spend money on.

I've seen it many times. You'll have guys who they have an idea that they're excited about, and they will then pour enormous amounts of time, energy, money, the leverage of their entire network into trying to build something.

But it's not really something that the market is asking for. And what will happen is that they'll invest all this time and energy and money and leveraging their network and their resources.

And it just doesn't really go anywhere. Now, so that would be the first step is just make sure what you're doing.

There's a market demand for it. It's even OK if the market's somewhat crowded, because that just proves that there is a need for it.

But make sure when you go into it, it's something that's very unique, very different. But even within those intricacies, it's something that is needed or wanted, that people are willing to actually give you money for.

That's the first step beyond there. I would say, you know, you just you got to be willing to put in the time, you know, and this is where the tension comes in, especially if you have a family, little kids.

I've got two toddlers at home, and fortunately, you know, God's been kind to us. We can afford to live without my wife working and she can be home full time with our kiddos.

And she's an incredible mom and incredibly supportive wife. But you got to be willing to put in the hours.

And so what that means is you might be working a full time nine to five job and you might be building something on the side, which means you're getting up at four a .m.

You're putting in several hours of work, taking a shower and then going doing your nine to five. And then after you're done with your nine to five, putting in several more hours of work in the evening.

And that might be once or twice a week. That might be every single day. You know, it's not uncommon.

A couple of times a year, I just have to have a conversation with my wife and say, hey, I'm coming up on a big work stretch here where most evenings

I'm going to be tied up for about two or three weeks and then it will be done. And then we'll go back to our normal routine. She's totally fine with that as long as she has a little bit of notice and I follow through with that.

And it doesn't go from two, three weeks into two, three months because that's happened before, too. And I've had to course correct. So you have to have a good idea that people are actually willing to spend money on consistently.

And then you also have to be able to put in the work because you have to do the job of anywhere from two to six people for a while until you can afford to start bringing on help.

One of the best things that has happened to me in my my marketing agency is bringing another partner who's able to who's able to help dramatically adjust my workload and also be able to hire some some ten ninety nine staff as well who are able to get even more off of our workload.

So that way I can focus on running the business growth sales, you know, account management and less on all of that, plus the nitty gritty details of operations.

So find a good idea. Put in the work, communicate properly with your wife and then just go all in and do everything you can to make it happen.

Yeah, I mean, I remember when I started the ministry, I was putting in 40, 50 hours a week at a secular job,

Bell Laboratories, putting in about 60 hours a week in starting striving fraternity.

Still very active in church. I was in the leadership of the church, putting in probably 20 hours there and then being a father of young kids.

Yeah. The problem is I didn't sleep much. And yeah, I say it's a problem. Like, I mean, I used to go when my bride and I met and she actually made me her agree.

I told you my mother in law's what I had to do to get my mother in law to say yes. For my wife to say yes to marrying me.

The agreement was I had to sleep every night because I used to sleep every two, three nights and sleep could be as little as 15 minutes to as most as three hours.

It's impressive. I wish I could do that. Yeah. Well, I mean, I got a lot done, but I pay the price now. Right. And so I would say, don't you got it?

You got to make sure you get enough sleep. It is important. I'll just say that and say, you know, look, if if you are struggling, if you even if you're working, if you're not an entrepreneur, if you are, if you're realized, you know, you realize as you get older, how much important the sleep was when you were younger.

So let me just say this. If that's you, if you're like me, maybe what you could do is start by getting yourself a great pillow from my pillow, because that's where I get mine from and I get their mattress topper, which helps tremendously in getting a good night's sleep, because I could tell you and those who are regular listeners, you know that I talk about some of my health things that I've gone through.

Sleep is like the number one thing that people take for granted. And yet it is the biggest thing to help with your health.

And if you're going to get into being an entrepreneur, make sure like you got to plan out.

I mean, listen to what he's saying here, because this is the reality. You start a business.

You are doing the job of four or five people. You're putting in a hundred hour work weeks easily and having to build that, especially if you're expecting that this is going to pay bills or if it is the only job that's paying bills.

Maybe you don't have something where you can do. And this is a side gig until you can get it up and running.

And so sleep becomes very important. But if you if you're in that position,

I want to encourage you to get get a get some pillows, get some mattress toppers, get things that help you sleep from my pillow.

Use the promo code SFE because that will help them know that you heard about them from us so that they'll continue sponsoring us.

They'll help you get a better night's sleep. And I know some of you in the audience, you need the beauty sleep.

There's a reason this is an audio podcast, because I didn't get enough beauty sleep. And poor

Brayden's having it. He's got to look at this face as we're doing this. So he and I are seeing each other. But but, you know,

I want to switch into talking about politics, because this is another thing that you're doing.

There is this myth. I remember when I when I first started going to church and first starting going to church was

I was in my 20s because I didn't I wasn't raised in a church. So with that,

I remember in and I was in more fundamentalist Baptist circles.

And there were people that felt going into politics like somehow that was a wrong thing to do.

I remember hearing someone say that what when Mike Huckabee became governor.

Someone actually said that was a sinful act because he was a pastor and that was a higher calling.

So let me ask you, you know, let's I want to move into talking some of the political things you're doing.

So is what would be your response to someone that makes a claim like I heard?

And then what is it you're trying to do in the in the realm of politics to help people get into politics?

And why should they even consider it? Yeah. Yeah. Good question. So my response to that question would be.

I might try to be more tactful than I'm being right now, but I would just say that's silly, that's silly. That's an absurd notion that getting into politics is somehow inherently sinful, that a spiritual leader should never become a political leader.

God has ordained both of those offices, right? He has ordained the office of pastor and he's also ordained the office of the magistrate.

So to suggest that, you know, I would agree that I think that doing spiritual work and caring for the souls of the sheep is extremely high calling and perhaps perhaps is a higher calling than working in political office.

But that doesn't mean if a season changes in a man's life and he feels it's time to transition from being a pastor to a politician, that somehow he's sinning.

I don't I just don't I don't think there's any real scripture to support that. And I just think it's kind of a silly notion. I 100 percent believe that Christians should be involved in politics at every single level, even down to just being a voter who's aware of what's happening in your town council, your city council, your state legislature, all the way into actually pursuing elected office to try to rule well, it's something that the

Lord has called. And we want to see believers in charge who share our convictions.

Right. Because what's the alternative? It's to have the best case alternative to not having Christians in office is to have maybe a

Christless conservative in office. And that might be better than a a a a raging liberal in office who hates you and hates everything that you stand for.

But that's still not ideal. So, I mean, my ideal nation would have, you know, from from the most small local jurisdiction all the way up to the presidential office that you would have men of godly character who proclaim the lordship of Jesus Christ, who believe that he is the only way by which we are saved, but who affirm his literal death and literal resurrection, that he lived a perfect life, that believe the gospel, that live out the gospel and are seeking to create and pass and enforce laws that bring honor and glory to Christ.

I think that's what would be the absolute best thing for a nation to thrive. And I think that's what a lot of us are praying for.

Now, there's a lot of disagreement about some of the specifics of what that would look like, and I can appreciate that to a degree.

But ultimately, that's what we we want, because the alternative is to be ruled over by pagans who hate

Christ and oftentimes hate you. And I don't know about you. I mean, I'm assuming you and I are probably at least mostly on this.

I don't know about any of the listeners, but I want my kids to grow up in a nation by men who fear the

Lord and take their plans before him and seek to bring honor and glory to him and how they rule and how they lead the nation.

And I want that to be the nation that my children grow up in. And that's what in some small way I'm trying to help fight for.

Yeah, because I think the thing is, is that if we if we are going to step out of the political realm and this is the irony that I find found when

I when I was in the circles and someone made that comment about Huckabee, I I just turned back and said, because you think about it, what what did the the fundamentalists do in the early 1900s?

You think about what happened after the Scopes Monkey trial. Christians were involved in education.

What did they do? They got embarrassed because of a court case. So what they do, they just got out of it.

They said, well, we're going to do our own schools. And they pulled out of the public sphere. And the secularists were like, great.

We'll come in and fill that vacuum in a heartbeat. And so if we're going to sit there and say that and this was my argument back is if you're going to sit there and say we need to pull out of politics, who do you think is going to fill the vacuum?

Right. The secularists. And what do you think they're going to do with the Christians? They're not going to be going, oh, we should listen to these people.

No. Well, and you look at, you know, during the pandemic, there were polls coming out that showed roughly 50 percent of Democrats were totally supportive of taking separating families, taking children out of the custody of parents who didn't want to give their kid the vaccine, putting people into essentially concentration camps.

That's half the Democratic Party during that that time supported those kinds of policies. And you would

I would tell you that I believe that's supremely wicked under virtually no circumstances outside of like really clear examples of abuse.

Should a child be separated from their parents and especially not over medical decisions? You know, especially when we don't have to go too far into this, but when like the science is murky at best, you know, you shouldn't be separating families over that.

But yeah, I would agree. So to suggest that, you know, you're absolutely right, Andrew. If Christians leave the political space and they say, you know what?

We're just going to kind of try to circle the wagons. We're just going to try to hold on, you know, and and just wait and pray and hope things turn out

OK. What you're doing is creating a kind of a pietistic grounds by which you just surrender.

And I see the law. I see it's something that drives me crazy that I see even in the reform world. At times, it's sort of like pietism, this sort of false pietism that that what it really is is cowardice, but it hides behind the

Bible and then somehow acts like that's holier. And I would just say that's foolish. We're not called to be cowards.

We're called that we were called to let go of all of our fear and to be bold and to have faith. I mean, what did what did well, what was

Joshua's command? Be bold and courageous. How many times has that said to him? Be bold and courageous. That's our job as well.

That means taking risks. That means being willing to do what is right before the Lord, even at our own expense.

And if we're not willing to do that, there are others who will. And the others who will are our enemies in most case.

In many cases, they're not neutral. They hate us. And we cannot allow them to rule over us, especially, like you said, in a nation like America, where we have the legal means to recreate our government.

We have the legal means to bring reform to our nation without a revolution. So we'd be crazy just to surrender all of that power and all the influence to the to God's enemies.

I'll be a little bit stronger. I don't think that just that we have the means. I believe that in America we have a responsibility to a minimum to be voting, because the founders expected that as Christians, we would be doing that.

And so I get frustrated when I see people who just opt out because they don't have someone that's running for president who is qualified like a pastor.

It's like, well, he's not running for pastor. You're running for president. But there's still everyone downstream.

If you don't like any of the guys, then it's like I argue. This is one of the things you and I talked about on the phone, which is why

I was like, let's let's let's discuss this is I think local politics is more important in a lot of ways than president.

You know, you and I have a mutual friend, you know, from Dead Man Walking podcast, Greg, Greg Moore.

And he's he's in a local local politician. Right. And when

Covid happened. As someone who basically holds the purse springs for for his county and they tried to do some of this stuff, he just said no.

Yeah. And the sheriff's supported it. You know, I heard tons of examples of a local sheriff who was like, yeah,

I'm not enforcing that. I mean, in L .A. County, when they the the governor wanted them to come into Grace Community Church and arrest

MacArthur. The local law enforcement said no. God bless them.

And it ended right there. Nothing happened. Because, you know, it's like he they have an authority.

But at the more local level, you can have, I think, and I want to see what your thoughts are.

I think you have more of a ability to have an impact locally. Because as you go up that that food chain, there's a lot of more people you're kind of in, you know, in not emboldened that you're tied to that.

Yeah, you're you have to be careful what you what you're doing and your kickbacks and things you got to help people to help you.

And so how important local the local politics and what are you doing with the work you're doing to help folks get involved in that?

Yeah. So local politics are extremely important. I'm not someone who ever intends to run for office.

I don't I just I don't have any desire. I have a lot of friends who do. And I'm trying to we've done some various things to support them.

And we can talk about that. But local politics are critical. So let me give you just a very relevant example.

I live in the state of Virginia. If you've been paying attention to the news at all, you're very aware of our wicked governor.

No, no, no. She's a moderate. She ran as a she ran as a moderate. And then she bait and switch the raging liberal.

So that was the trick. And people fell for it, which is really unfortunate, you know, because in the middle of some of Trump's more aggressive policies, you know, that wigs some people out because a lot of people don't have the stomach for actual law enforcement.

And so she presented herself as this kind, gentle, moderate. And it's like, OK, well, she's a former

CIA spook. And she absolutely hates conservatives. And that's becoming very clear. So people would ask me, like, are you worried?

Are you worried? You live in Virginia. Are you worried? It's like, no, I'm not worried at all. It's like, why? Because the city of Lynchburg has already passed multiple resolutions saying we're not going to enforce any of this nonsense.

The county that I live in, same deal. The city council said we're not enforcing any of this. And the local sheriff said we're not enforcing any of this.

And guess what? I'm surrounded in counties, multiple counties deep on every side of where I live who have done the exact same thing, saying we are not complying.

We are not enforcing any of these silly laws. We are not going to punish those who have done no wrong.

It's that simple. And that's because we have good, godly people in charge in our local council.

I mean, the beginning of every Lynchburg city council, they pray. They go before the Lord. They ask for his wisdom and they seek to do right by him.

Are they perfect? No. They're sinners. Many of them know that. They know they need grace. They put their trust in Christ. But that makes a massive difference, right?

And, you know, we do still have some local liberal contingents who hate that and will throw a fit, but it doesn't matter because it's like, no, we're not going to appeal to you who doesn't have any standard of morality.

We're going to appeal to scripture and to Christ and seek to honor him and how we rule a city council election is a lot.

It's not saying it's easy. It's a lot more attainable than running for state Senate. It's a lot easier running for Senate at the federal level.

It's way more attainable. And a lot of people could actually pull off if they get just a little bit of funding.

They've got a good work ethic and they can build a coalition of people who are behind them. It's pretty amazing what can be done.

So local is extremely important. So to transition to the kind of work that I'm doing, I'm actually partnered up with a guy and we're building a platform called the

Local Watchman. It's in closed beta right now. The website's the local watchman dot com.

It's in closed beta. We haven't made it public yet. That's coming. But basically what this does is this pulls data points and meeting notes from local town councils, city councils, county councils, things like that.

Massive amounts of data, PDFs that are 200 pages long. It parses all the information to an easily digestible format so that any user can be totally up to date with what's going on in their local town or city council about with a time commitment of about five minutes per week.

That allows them to make sure they're aware of what's happening and that through the bureaucracy of the various levels of government in our country down to the local level, that wickedness isn't slipping in, that they're aware that, hey, they're passing this bill or they're trying to pass this bill.

We need to show up and show our opposition. We need to be writing to our elected officials locally.

Maybe one of us needs to actually run for office because their term's up in a year. Now is the time, things like that.

And that's really important. So we're just we're trying to build a platform. We're going to be launching it nationwide over time.

It's going to be a phased rollout. But basically, or anyone can just have an app on their phone, be aware of what's happening. Email, text message notifications, even a powered podcast if you want to listen to it while you drive.

And it's going to be like five bucks a month. But that will allow people to be actually aware of what's happening locally and give them more tools to advocate for good, godly, just laws, even as low as the county level of the town level in their councils.

Yeah, because this is something that for let's just deal with kind of take it from where we started with.

Right. This is something you do on the side of a regular job for most of most of the local, the real local stuff is not paying you enough to Yeah.

Live on that. Right. It's something you do as a side job. So take that with what we heard in the first part of this podcast, because when you get into the local level, the local politics, you know, and the higher up you go, the more you've got to work with people to, you know, to get things done.

But at the local level, you can do that. And, you know, just think about how many school councils you just think about during COVID when all the parents,

I really think you may disagree with me. I think COVID was a good thing in a lot of ways.

And one of them was all the parents suddenly realized what their kids were learning. Yeah. And what was in the schools and the books.

And I mean, people started showing up to their school councils and they were thrown out.

Like, I think it's amazing that parents were thrown out for reading the books that their elementary kids can get out of the library and the parents would read it and be thrown out of the council for obscenity.

Well, in some cases targeted by the feds for whatever, you know, in Virginia, we know, yeah, we know that there were cases during COVID where the

FBI was going after moms who are showing up at town or at local city council town council meetings.

It's like, how insane is that? How is that just? Yeah. Yeah. Because I just think that this is something that folks, if the

Lord puts it on your heart to consider doing this, I would encourage you to get a hold of Branton and see how to help.

You know, you can reach out to them through the website reformbusinessalliance .com,

which by the way, we didn't say this. You talked a little bit about membership, but if you got a business, it's as low as $15 a month.

Unless you pay for the whole year upfront, then it's only like $11 .25 a month is what it works out to across if you pay annually.

So that's like one cup of coffee at Starbucks, which you should just here's what you do.

Just stop going to Starbucks for your coffee and just buy something from Squirrelly Joe's, get some coffee there.

And then you can afford to be a member of his coalition. Get a hold of him.

See, I think that's a win win, right? Think about it. You're helping to support a fellow brother and his family with Squirrelly Joe's coffee.

You're getting, you know, good business help, right? You're getting people to work together in their business.

And you're probably getting better. Well, you definitely, if you're going to Starbucks, you're definitely getting better coffee. And you're probably saving money after that, because Starbucks probably is about $15 from one cup of coffee.

Just saying, you know, they take inflation too far. But I think that people would be able to get, is there a way people can get it?

If they want to get involved with the political side of it, is there a place they can go? Or should they reach out to the reformedbusinessalliance .com?

Yeah, best thing they could do, I think right now, is just go to reformedbusinessalliance .com. Go to contact that the emails that you can submit there will go directly to me.

And if they're interested in the local Watchman app that we're building to help test it or help me, you know, there's a lot they could do to help.

Feel free to mention that. They can also just email me, brenton at reformedbusinessalliance .com.

That will go straight to me and I'm happy to have a discussion with them. If you don't mind, I'd like to just plug a nonprofit that I'm not, that I've supported.

I don't have any ownership or direct involvement, other than I built their website for them. But if you're interested in pursuing a career in politics or building a political profile, you need to check out a group called the

Institute for Christian Statecraft. Their URL is instituteforchristianstatecraft .org. Go there.

They're putting together a basically a platform where they're going to be training the next generation of Christian leaders who want to go in and they want to help take over politics for Christ.

And so I'd recommend you go there. Their founder, Aaron's a phenomenal guy. I got to meet him in Franklin a few weeks ago at an event he's putting on through the

ICS. Also had my first run in with the Antifa in person. Chance was with me. That was fun.

But yeah, check them out. But yeah, if you want to contact me and hear more about what we're doing, yeah, just email me at brentonnetreformbusinessalliance .com.

Happy to answer any questions. Happy to tell you about other things I've got going on. I've got a lot going on. I'm trying to do my best to prioritize family time and sleep while also building like four or five different things at the same time.

The Lord's been kind. It's going well. But yeah, those would be the best ways to get ahold of me. Well, I think, let me just tell you what

I think you need. I think personally that you need to get two things.

One, and you're going to agree with this because I already know that. One, if you're going to try to do that, you need to be at your peak performance, right?

So we talked about getting sleep, but what you need to do is you need to get yourself first off a really good sauna.

So you can, because the saunas will help you go to sleep at night. Okay, so a sauna just before bed.

That's actually how I started getting more sleep because I started doing my sauna at night. And that just helped me just, you just get right into a nice deep sleep.

So you need to get a good sauna at night or even, you know, even if it's a less expensive one.

I got a less expensive one here in the house where I'm at. And, you know, but you want to get a high heat.

Then what you need is to get up in the morning and start off with a cold plunge, a nice cold plunge that keeps the temperature.

It will help you. Look, we talk about the coffee. If you start your day with a cold plunge, you're not going to need coffee.

You're just going to be awake the whole time. So let me, in light of that, let me tell you two places to go.

Two of our sponsors. You can go to strivingforeternity .org slash plunge.

Now, those are more expensive. That's that's my cold plunge that I have. It was a more expensive one. But strivingforeternity .org

slash plunge. They have some great products as far as a cold plunge. They have they have saunas, but I didn't get my sauna through them.

I went to someone else. If you want to get a cheaper cold plunge, cheaper saunas, but still one there, the sauna

I have is with Pod Company. They have a sauna that can get up to 185 degrees, but it's not infrared because the infrared can only get up to 140.

But you need it up to at least like 174, 175. And so there go to strivingforeternity .org

slash pod. And you can get yourself products there. So if you if you have the money, hey, if you're going to be doing this, you know, you're going to you're you you need to not just prepare for your, you know, retirement if there is such a thing.

But the best thing is to take care of your health now because you're young, because in all seriousness, you know, when

I had, you know, I had some guys on from Dominion Wealth Strategists.

And one of the things we talked about was most of the biggest thing in people's retirement when they get older, the thing that's going to suck up the most of their money is health.

You start taking care of health. That's why you start saunas. I mean, the saunas and cold plunging are tremendous things for health.

And, you know, three to five minutes in a cold plunge, you know, and get tons of health benefits, but you're wide awake and you're going to be you're going to be more interject the rest of the day to get everything done so you can be nice and focused for everything you do.

So that's that's what I think you need to do. I think you need to start your day in a nice cold plunge. End your day with a nice sauna.

It sounds great. So you're telling me there's better options than this copious amounts of caffeine and nicotine pouches for to protect my longterm health?

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, it's funny is that we're getting ready to finish our basement here in about a month.

And I'm seriously reconsidering the floor plan a little bit to see if we can find a way to work in a cold plunge and internal sauna.

I know my wife would be thrilled, too. So I'll definitely look into that. And I'm not even kidding, either. Yeah, no, the the

I had in in my house when I lived in Pennsylvania, I had in the basement, I had a sauna, a traditional sauna.

I put one of those in. It was way more expensive. I ended up selling it and buying a much more inexpensive one.

That is just I mean, it's it's a little bit wider than the chair I'm sitting in. So it's easy to set it up anywhere and it cleans up well.

So it's it's easy to maintain. So, yeah, that's the one I got. The song I got now is pretty neat because not a big footprint.

But if you want two people, then, yeah, you need you need something bigger. But they're great.

It's it's a great way to end the evening, to sit in the sauna with your with your spouse. And, you know, no kids involved.

They can't you can't hear them. You shut that door. Sounds great to me. Well, maybe

I'll have to expand where my home gym is going to be to include a cold plunge in an inside sauna. That'd be awesome. Yeah, well, that's why my cold plunge was outside.

It was like, how do you get water in? Because you do have to change the water. I'm in the process of doing that today in mine.

But you got to you got to change the water. And that's the one thing with the cold plunge is I got one. I got the one

I got because it has a good filter. So I'm only having to change the water, you know, twice a year.

Always. Yeah, because it does the filtering. And like that's the thing. There's a lot to into it that you want to check out. Right.

But but there is a thing you want to perform at your peak performance, whether in business or politics or in anything in life.

You know, I really think that if that taking care of your health is going to help you.

So, I mean, if you want to help sponsor, you know, help sponsor us there with the with the products that they have, just go to Striving Fraternity dot org slash plunge or the less expensive solution,

Striving Fraternity dot org slash pod. So you mentioned how folks can get a whole day.

Anything else that you want to talk about before we end the show? I just want to encourage anyone, especially any age man, but particularly young men.

If the Lord's put it on your heart to to go for it and to just pursue the greatness of his name, no matter where it is, he's called you to be whatever industry, whatever career path, just just to go do it.

Take that seriously. Take that fire inside of you seriously. Don't let anybody put it out.

Don't let people to tell you just to pursue safety and go after it and recognize that we stand on the shoulders of giants.

The world we get to enjoy today was fought for. It was bled for. It was died for by men who refused to allow that fire to be put out, who are willing to take extraordinary risks to allow you to live in just the, quite frankly, the abundance that we have today.

Now, I know that there's people who have hard times and struggle, and I'm not I'm not downplaying that. But broadly speaking, you know, at any income level in today's society, you're you're doing far better than anyone, even 100 years ago.

So take that seriously. View that as an inheritance to you by your fathers for what they fought for, for what they worked for, for what many cases they bled and died for.

Take that seriously on your fathers by by taking reclaiming that spirit and going out and taking dominion of every sphere of life for the glory of Christ Jesus.

Amen. And with that, folks, that's a wrap. This podcast is part of the

Striving for Eternity ministry. For more content or to request a speaker or seminar to your church, go to strivingforeternity .org