Woke Economics with Nate Fischer

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When the scribes and Pharisees asked our Lord about the greatest commandment, He replied, You shall love the

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Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.

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So, why do we hear some of today's most prominent pastors saying things like this? It had everything to do with how we talk about the

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Bible, and specifically, or along with that, what we point to as the foundation of faith, which for most

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Christians, unfortunately, is the Bible. We need to do better.

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We need to love God with all our hearts, and stand unashamedly on the rock of His Word. We need to love the

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Lord with all of our souls, and respond to the worldview issues of our day with the wisdom and discernment that comes only from Him.

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We need to love the Lord with our minds, and understand the calling of God's people in every area of life in God's world.

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We need to love the Lord our God with all our strength, and face the work of building a life -giving, God -honouring culture.

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Join us for 10 days at the Runner Academy for Cultural Leadership, as we consider how the gospel influences all of life and culture, and the role that we have to play in applying foundational

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Christian thinking to every area of life. This is the

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Academy. I am Eli Ayala of Revealed Apologetics, and I will be bringing a six -part series on presuppositional apologetics.

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What is this called, the Apology Academy? It's just called The Academy. Okay. What's up, everybody?

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My name is Pastor Jeff Durbin, and you're watching Collision Today. I'm gonna be interacting with an atheist on TikTok.

01:46

So here we go. Unsupervised and unhinged. Welcome back to Cultus the

01:52

Aftermath. Hey, everybody.

02:00

Welcome back to another episode of Ask Me Anything. You are watching Apologia Radio's after show exclusively for all access.

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Non -rockabodas must stop. I don't want to rock the boat. I want to sink it. Are you gonna bark all day, little doggie, or are you gonna bite?

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We're being delusional. Delusional? Yeah. Delusional's okay in your worldview. I'm an animal. You don't chastise chickens for being delusional.

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You don't chastise pigs for being delusional. So you calling me delusional using your worldview is perfectly okay. It doesn't really hurt.

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She hung up on me! Yes! What? What? Desperate times call for faithful men and not for careful men.

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The careful men come later and write the biographies of the faithful men, lauding them for their courage.

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Go into all the world and make disciples. Not go into the world and make buddies. Not to make brosives. Don't go into the world and make homies.

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Disciples. I got a bit of a jiggle neck. That's a joke, pasta.

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When we have the real message of truth, we cannot let somebody say they're speaking truth when they're not.

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Bread gained by deceit is sweet to a man, but afterward his mouth will be full of gravel.

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Plans are established by counsel, by wise guidance wage war. Whoever goes about slandering reveals secrets.

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Therefore, do not associate with a simple babbler. If one curses his father or his mother, his lamp will be put out in utter darkness.

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An inheritance gained hastily in the beginning will not be blessed in the end. Do not say, I will repay evil weight for the

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Lord and he will deliver you. Unequal weights are an abomination to the Lord and false scales are not good.

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That is Proverbs 20, 17 to 23. What is up, everyone?

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Welcome back to another episode of Apology Radio. Pastor Jeff is out of town this week, and so I am back in the saddle.

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This is an unusual lineup. This is definitely a first lineup. On my right here,

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I got, what are they calling you, Extra Time Banegas? They call me Extra Time, but I was thinking it'd be more appropriate to call me

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Extra Innings. Because I'm a baseball fan. Okay.

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And so I was thinking it'd just be more... You're not allowed to name yourself Extra Innings. Well, that's the thing. I was telling Jeff that you guys,

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I feel as though you have these... I didn't name myself. Who named you? Jeff. Okay, well, maybe

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I'm wrong. But I do feel like Jeff named himself. He says that it was people in high school, but... Yeah.

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I didn't call him the Ninja. I never called him the Ninja. Personally, I don't know anybody who calls him the

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Ninja. I don't either. Just himself. Right. Yeah, so I'm here co -hosting here with Luke.

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I'm getting another of, I guess, what, my 15 minutes of fame here on Apology Radio? Yeah, dude. Maybe even 16, if you're lucky.

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Yeah, at some point, maybe I can host again. I don't know. Let us know. Do you like it when I host? Do you like it when

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Luke hosts? Do you like it when Jeff hosts? Well, I can tell you half the time I'm hosting, people tune in and they're like,

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Oh, Jeff's not on there, and they tune in and I'm like... Oh, yeah. No, I can understand that.

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But we love Jeff. Unfortunately, he can't be with us today. Like you said, he's out of town. But I'm excited for this episode.

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I think we have some pretty cool stuff lined up. Yeah, so I'll just get right into it. I had another guest lined up this week and they had to cancel on Monday.

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And so it worked out well because last week, our friend

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Gabe Rensch from CrossPolitik and Fight Left Feast, he had messaged me and was like, Hey, I got this awesome dude that I'm representing.

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He's going to be in Phoenix next week. He has time for an interview. Can you interview him? At the time, I was like,

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Oh, I'm already booked, unfortunately. But it worked out well. The timing was well. So we just literally just met.

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This is Nate Fisher, everyone, by the way. Super excited for the show. So yeah, today

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I'm hoping to... Nate's kind of a... You know a lot about a lot. There's a lot.

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I know something about a lot. But there's some topics that he's very keen on, like woke economics is what

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I want to start with. So yeah, so Nate, welcome. Just tell us about yourself and what you're up to.

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And we'll go from there. Well, thanks. And great to be here. Glad the timing worked out. Glad I could join for this.

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So a couple of things I'm involved in, and I've actually been focusing these. In some ways,

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I felt like I jumped into a movement, started a lot of things, got involved in a lot, or threw a lot out there, and have been actually focusing on the things that clearly fit from a product standpoint.

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So new founding, principal business. My background, first of all, is business. I was in business for about eight years before I got into this space, which is really at the intersection of business and the world we're in here.

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You could call it the Christian and political world. And my principal organization is

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New Founding, which is a venture firm focused on backing, building, and investing in companies that are at the intersections of these worlds.

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Increasingly, there's an opportunity for Christians to build businesses that capitalize on, in many cases, an alienated customer base.

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A lot of people who have been offended by mainstream brands. A lot of people who want something different. And that's been a really growing movement over the last couple of years.

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And we are focused on that at the venture level. So we work with those companies. We advise them. We have a lot of connections in the space.

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We understand the moment. We understand a lot of the trends. We understand a lot of the paradigm shift happening.

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And use that both to identify opportunities and to work with and guide companies there.

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And New Founding does a couple other things. It does talent placement, where we'll help people get out of woke companies into non -woke companies.

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That's still sort of an earlier stage product. But at the same time, there's enormous demand for that. Probably at this point, more on the talent side.

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There's a lot of people in our network. Increasingly, we're out there working with companies. And we do that sort of engineer, professional, executive level roles.

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So our focus is really helping move, often, the sort of people that smaller businesses couldn't have attracted 20 years ago, 10 years ago.

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Those people are now ready to move. So that's a big part of it. And then, finally, American Reformer.

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So this is a non -profit that we founded alongside New Founding. In many ways, if you're building anything in venture, if you're building businesses, it's essential that you have a vision of what you're building to, or at least some guiding principles.

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And the dominant ones in Silicon Valley are not good. That's a big part of the problem. And, unfortunately,

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I think the evangelical world is, its focus has not, as strongly as it should be,

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I think, been an alternative positive vision. So American Reformer was founded with Aaron Ren.

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And the goal is draw on historical,

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Protestant, cultural, and political thought, and really restore those in the church today.

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And then, similarly, go on the offense to actually fight for Christian institutions. I think there's a tendency to abandon institutions as they go, as they drift to the left, as has happened throughout

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American history. Our view is we shouldn't just reflexively abandon and leave and start a new one.

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It's actually good to have institutions that Christians control. And if we built something, if there's a

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Christian college, then actually if it's going in the wrong direction, figure out what the playbook looks like to actually try to bring it back, to work with them, either positively offering vision or perhaps organizing people to actually push back.

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So American Reformer, and American Reformer has a journal. That's probably where it would be best known for most people. We write a lot of articles on these topics.

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You could think of it as roughly in the same category as, you could think of it as a

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Protestant First Things. You could think of it in some ways in the same category as a Gospel Coalition, although with a very different viewpoint on that.

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But that's been a great organization. It's had some great leaders. Josh Abatoy is running that and that's grown a lot over the last couple of years.

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Awesome. I don't want to get too far into this too fast, but I was just thinking as you were talking about positive alternatives,

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I think you're absolutely right. So many Christians are like, oh, this company's doing this, this company's doing that, and we just pull away from those and abandon those, which isn't necessarily the wrong answer, but you're right in that there's not been enough

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Christians saying, well, why don't we start something that is positive, that is based on Scripture, that is

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Christian, and we definitely need more of that, especially in the business world. So I appreciate you coming from that direction, for sure.

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So I know before we get too far, I know Isaac really wanted to talk about some of your upbringing and your background, so I'll let you go with that.

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Right, because I was thinking where I wanted to kind of at least go with the conversation for me, a lot of the stuff I think that you're the some things you know about a lot of things, some of those things, you definitely know more about it than a lot of us do.

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And so for me, when I was listening to... Especially you. Especially me. But I was thinking, what are some things that I can contribute to this conversation?

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Not necessarily contribute, but things that I'd like to hear. Because I was listening to an interview that you were on recently, and you mentioned your upbringing, that you're homeschooled.

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As I heard you talk, honestly, I was like, I like the way this guy thinks.

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I think it's a healthy way for Christians to think. And my question was your upbringing, that type of cultivation, was there anything that you can remember that had a significant impact on you?

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And what kind of set you in this path as far as how you see the world from a Christian perspective? Yeah, so I've given huge credit to my mother, who was an early, one of the early homeschool...

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I could say pioneer. Certainly I started in the I think around the late 80s, 89 or 90, which was early.

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And her approach to homeschooling was one that was...

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She used a curriculum called Konos, which sort of was built on this idea that God is at the top of everything and every subject is shaped through a

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Christian worldview. And it was also in some ways a sort of multidisciplinary approach to learning a lot of things.

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There were... We would touch on a lot of subjects together. And so what

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I think that did is it was in some ways the opposite of a very memorization -based approach that you see in a lot of schooling, or a very segmented, discipline -specific approach.

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And it was something that I think helped appreciate relationships between different disciplines, broader themes across that, and I think that was certainly that approach.

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That's also I think the way my mind naturally works. So I tend toward...

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I would say I'm not great at specific memorization, but I do look at things from a mental model level and learn a model and then see the ability to apply that to another model.

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And what I would say is that's very helpful in a time like we're in where there's a lot of paradigm shift happening.

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There's a lot of things changing, and the old models don't work. And I think that...

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So I think it was the approach of homeschooling. I also think it was a very... it was actually an approach that involved just a lot of freedom.

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We probably, I think, studied about three hours a day, and then would run around in our woods.

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It was in upstate New York. We had six acres of mostly swampland, and a brother about my age, a sister a little bit younger, and it was sort of a paradise for running around and declaring wars on each other and all that stuff.

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And I think that actually, too much rigid studying, I think, is not conducive to...

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It sort of stultifies the mind, actually, in many ways. Or it can. I mean, there's people who learned well that way.

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I think I benefited from something that was pretty open in that approach.

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So where we find ourselves today, you mentioned this kind of paradigm shift.

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We were, before the show, talking about the negative world. So a couple of things.

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Can you kind of lay that out as far as that paradigm shift as far as the...

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I forgot how you mentioned it as far as neutral, negative world, but how do you see education playing a part in the paradigm shift?

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I don't know if you can kind of... Sure. So the framework, the negative world framework was introduced by Aaron Wren, who co -founded

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American Reformer with me, and really inspired a lot of the vision for what needed to happen there.

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And Aaron... Sort of what made him famous in the space that he became well -known in is this concept, this framework of how pre...

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And he sort of roughly says pre -94, our society was a positive society for Christianity.

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It was viewed positively. If you're a public figure, if you're a figure at all, it was viewed positively for you to be a

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Christian. And certainly that was the era where there was a plausible claim to a moral majority.

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We actually were on... The conservatives were a majority in the country. It was a world where even if you weren't a very good

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Christian, if you're running for elected office, you would pretend to be a good Christian. And then what Aaron says is the sort of...

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Starting around 94, up through about 2014 was what he called the neutral world, where the world was neutral toward Christianity, and they'll reason with you.

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They'll treat you respectfully. It was the world where Keller's model really became prominent, where Tim Keller would be winsome, and he would winsomely engage people, and they would respect...

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The New York Times could give him a respectful interview and talk to him and engage. And they don't necessarily believe it, and there's not necessarily sort of a need to pretend to be a

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Christian if you're running for office as an example, but it's not a plus or a minus. And then...

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And so much of, I think, the evangelical model, the dominant model in a lot of institutions we live in, was shaped during that neutral world.

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Keller's influence being one example, but many, many other successful institutions grew out of that. And what we're in, as Aaron says, around 2014, really

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I think Obergefell is the best measure of that, is a world that is sharply negative to Christianity fundamentally.

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If you are an Orthodox Christian, you will... It doesn't matter how nice you are, how winsome you are, how reasonable you are, you will be...

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You'll be regarded as hateful for that. You will be treated as... It will be a liability. And in many ways, even though that's about eight years, nine years ago,

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I think nine years ago now, I don't think that the model for the

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Church in that world in America has been well -developed. I mean, that's a pretty sharp departure from what really was decades and decades at least of that sort of positive world mentality, and then this neutral world.

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So you have this paradigm shift where the world's become hostile to Christianity. With that,

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I think there's sort of an implicit... There is a sense of actually a cultural revolution, because so much of our culture was shaped by Christianity and was influenced by Christianity.

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So if you reject Christianity, you really need to reject many, many, many other elements of our culture, elements of our society, elements of our law.

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It's become something that's sort of starkly illiberal, in a sense. So from a political standpoint, during the neutral world, there was a broad sort of...

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There was a broad valuing by the Church of liberal norms, like classical liberal norms, following rules of free speech, following rules like that, because they protected us.

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I think now we're seeing a world where people are becoming skeptical of whether those are enough when corporations will censor you for your

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Christian viewpoints, when essentially you'll have the entire society going against you, or a large share of dominant society going against you.

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So that's a shift that has profound implications across business, across politics, across Christianity, and how does the

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Church, and particularly how do Christians respond to that world, is the big question that we are working on addressing.

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So someone in the chat asked what happened in 94. Now I'm a few years older than you guys. I was 13 in 94.

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That was a year into Bill Clinton's presidency. I mean, I remember that shift.

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I'm old enough that I remember feeling that shift. So I want you to answer that question more thoroughly, but I remember things.

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And it's funny, because now looking back at some of the stuff that Clinton did, which seemed so extreme then, seems so tame compared to what

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Biden's regime is doing. So anyways, why 94? Why was there such a shift during that time?

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Again, Aaron Wren was the one who developed this, and so I don't want to speak too strongly. I think that's a little rougher of a one than,

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Obergefell was a very clear event, but I think it was what you see during Clinton's era. I mean, I think sometime around then

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Don't Ask, Don't Tell came out. That's a great example, if you're moving from one where society acknowledges that there is a norm, and a violation of that norm, and they're willing to enforce that, to one where we, at the very least, we sort of live and let live to some extent.

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And I, again, I was, I think I was 9 or 10 at that age, and a very sheltered homeschooler in some ways, so I may not have seen those patterns.

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But I would say that was a broader one. That would happen more and more in different cities and things.

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Probably some cities were much color, for instance, already been in New York, and I think that was well along by that time.

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Other parts of the country were probably slower, so I think it was more of a sort of rough inflection point, whereas I think you saw around 2014, around a couple years there, really a sharp change at many, many,

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I mean, I even talked to people at law school, people who had been at the same law school I had been at, and they said there was sort of a sharp turn against conservatives during that point.

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It became a much more intolerant place. Did you want to add some more questions? No, and I don't know if this is, like you said, maybe your specific area, but I'd like to get your thoughts.

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Do you see that theologically the church had something to do with that? I mean, looking back and kind of just what you've studied now, outside of being let's say kind of that sheltered homeschooler, was there something theologically?

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So let's say we move into that neutral realm. Was there something theologically that got us there as a whole?

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I know you mentioned kind of Caller and that influence, but I think he started, he planted his church in New York I think in 88.

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Was there something already brewing theologically that moved us into the neutral realm? And then my next question would be when it was neutral, was there something the church could have done to then prevent it from going into the negative?

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So these are hard, hard counterfactuals, and I would be, I can't say anything with confidence here.

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What I will say is I don't think Keller moved us to the neutral in many ways.

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What this refers to is really how the society treats Christians rather than how

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Christians behave. So Keller's model I think was a natural outgrowth in a society that already viewed

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Christians that way. He was doing it in a place where it was not even a center of influence of Christianity.

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I think if I had to guess, and again

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I the biggest challenge I think the evangelical church has had in many ways is a fairly shallow a shallow and very personalized individualized view that has prevented it from substantively engaging politics and culture.

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And so you look at a lot of the criticisms of I was just talking to someone actually who was involved in one of these large moral majority organizations and his point was they were criticizing

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Bill Clinton. They said you can't vote for Bill Clinton because he's immoral. Obviously change your opinion on Trump. I would say the position on Trump actually reflects a much more sophisticated and traditionally

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Protestant political culture where your vote is a prudential decision given the options in front of you.

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Whereas against Bill Clinton it was sort of framed in a very moralist way. Well that's very easily exposed to charges of hypocrisy if anything happens.

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So I think that more moralist approach was a, it was not a strong foundation for Christianity to defend the goodness of its norms.

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Another example given is why he said something like why should why should gay marriage be illegal?

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Because the Bible prohibits it. Well, the Bible prohibits a lot of things and they're not.

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Some are illegal, some are not illegal. Again, I think that it was not a there was not a well developed

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Christian political philosophy of how you're going to approach a lot of these real questions of governing.

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And again when you have something like that it's just not a serious contender to defend the standard defend essentially its role as the norm setter in society.

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Right. So you went to Calvin College and I know you have some thoughts as far as kind of where that institution went.

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Is that kind of reflective of kind of like what you're referring to when it comes to Yes.

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And that's actually a really good, that's probably the bigger issue to bring up and I think that Calvin reflects

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Calvin's ills were pervasive ills in the church that reflect certainly why it lost following the neutral world during the neutral world approach.

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Calvin was a place that was built on this Christian reform

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Dutch background, Dutch reform background just deep intellectual tradition. One of the great intellectual traditions, the reform tradition fundamentally is the tradition that founded the greatest, the sort of most elite institutions in our society today,

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Harvard, Yale and yet there was a profound lack of self -confidence at Calvin and it was sort of a reflexive lack of self -confidence.

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You could see it in our background. We don't want to be across the board there was the sense that we don't want to be like those sort of narrow parochial

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Christians that reflect our, the background the sort of conservative background of the denomination.

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They wanted to seem reasonable to mainstream academia. Mainstream academia is not reasonable.

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They reject God, they reject all sorts of things and trying to seem reasonable to them just led to a lack of self -confidence at Calvin.

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So I think you had a, you saw that in many evangelical institutions, particularly the colleges and when you have that lack of self -confidence that loses out to a very very self -confident and assertive left.

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I mean the Wilkes will assert their views absolutely unquestionably and demand that you agree with them.

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And meanwhile you have these Christians who are constantly cavitying everything they say. They're throwing their own ancestors under the bus and Calvin was a little ahead of the curve over, compared to many evangelical institutions, but I I think reflected that viewpoint.

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So could we be confident in saying that maybe what moved us into that neutral round was not to stand firm on our convictions as Christians and then what's brought us into the negative is that during that neutral time the same thing.

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It just, we're not willing to just be blatantly Christian. There's a qualification, like you said, there's a winsomeness as far as trying to, you know, operate within certain boundaries that let's say the left or the worldly system allows us to operate in.

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But it's interesting to me because a lot of Christians, like today we have a certain boundary that the world has established for us.

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When I say world I say the worldly system. Like let's say if you want to call it the left, whatever it may be. Any anti -Christian mindset.

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They establish for us a certain boundary for us to kind of operate within and we're okay as long as we kind of stay within those boundaries.

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A lot of times we don't want to go outside those boundaries because if we do they're going to think of us a certain way. But it always intrigues me that Christians don't understand that those boundaries are just going to continue to get smaller and smaller.

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At some point there's going to be a line that's going to be drawn that even the people that we could say that are kind of giving into the culture are going to have to take a stance.

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Because it's only going to become narrower and narrower. I see kind of that what you're saying in that kind of period of time was just not standing on Christian convictions to just say, hey,

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I'm a Christian. This is my heritage. This is what the Word of God says. Of course we're always very careful to be labeled as like fundamentalists.

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But in a sense there is a fundamental belief that we have as Christians and to kind of stand firm on that. I do see a shift, and I don't know if you see this too, but even with the things you're doing and you're talking about some of the alternative approaches, is that kind of what we're getting back to is just we're strictly

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Christian in the sense of the fundamental sense and we're going to stand on that ground.

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So what it certainly is to me is a rejection of the line that is set by non -Christians, by the secular world.

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We no longer accept the boundaries of acceptable discourse. And that I think has been one of the governing principles of American reformer.

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I would say I don't know that everyone, I don't know that winsomeness is a stance and a tone and you're trying to be reasonable.

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It's less about, I think you can be winsome and you can be extremely orthodox and you can stand firm. I would view whether to be how winsome versus let's say boldly prophetic or whatever.

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How aggressive. To be somewhat of a sort of a tactical decision.

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I don't think it's right or wrong. I think that you look at examples in the Bible and there are plenty of examples of both approaches being taken depending on the context.

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It's sort of a tactic. Whether you let your whether you let your discourse be governed by the boundaries set by secular society is a very different story.

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You could be winsome and you could be orthodox and many were. And you're not going to compromise. I would say largely

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I think Keller fell into that category. I think many of Keller's progeny who followed that actually they drifted much further and they sort of emphasized the non -conflict part.

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But I think the point, the bigger point about the negative world is in a negative world being winsome is not going to be enough to keep you.

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In a more neutral world you can actually by being winsome potentially stay within the sort of boundaries of discourse.

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Now that circle's gotten a lot smaller and it doesn't matter what your tone is.

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If your view is many orthodox Christian views. You're going to get rejected.

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That's sort of a strategic point but I think it's very significant. Once you're out of that box.

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Once you're saying things that are going to get you labeled a racist, a sexist, whatever. All those things. I mean basically that's how you're punished for stepping outside of that bound of acceptable discourse.

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The Overton window would be what we often call it. Then there's a very different calculus over even what tone is going to be the effective one to get through.

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Why sacrifice clarity for winsomeness, for instance, if you're going to be labeled a racist anyway.

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That's where homophobe, all that stuff. That's where I think we need to re -evaluate and I don't think there's a clear answer.

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It doesn't mean you go out and necessarily stand on the street corner and yell at everyone that they're going to hell.

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Everyone who looks possibly like their lifestyle conflicts with Christian principles. But a much more assertive, much more prophetic approach might be the valid one.

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I also think there's a lot of intellectual questions of why did we? Your question is the big one.

32:46

I can't answer that easily. Why did we move from positive to neutral, neutral to negative?

32:53

But obviously there were things that we did that we want to reconsider.

32:59

There were traditional norms of how Christians engaged that we want to reconsider. A lot of what we're looking at is outside that Overton window in terms of strategy and tactics, in terms of range of thought.

33:11

Do we need to reconsider our alliance with classical liberalism to some extent? Is this idea of a neutral public square where Christians have a role, is that necessarily the right paradigm if that failed to protect many of the norms that we have?

33:30

I think there's a lot of fruitful debate happening over both that theological stance toward things like politics and culture and then the question of how bold and direct to be.

33:45

I have some thoughts. I appreciate you got me thinking. I have some thoughts on your question.

33:50

I think, again, living through that, being 12 when Clinton got elected and kind of becoming a man through this neutral time period we're talking about.

34:01

I think part of the problem was Christians in the church. This is how I was raised. You said up until that point,

34:09

Christianity was considered the majority and even conservative Republican Party, you expected them to be running on Christian morals, biblical principles.

34:21

I think the church has got too confident in conservatism, in the

34:29

Republican Party. We stopped being prophetic like you're talking. When we kind of hit this neutral spot starting with Clinton, I remember as a teenager thinking like,

34:42

Republicans are going to come to their rescue. We're going to fix this. We just got to wait this out or whatever.

34:50

There was too much faith in the Republican Party, not enough in Christ, not enough in God's word.

34:57

I think that's what kind of led into that neutral thing is the church literally became neutral like you're saying.

35:03

Instead of being prophetic, instead of proclaiming Christ and him crucified in his law, we just kept waiting for the

35:11

Republican Party to fix things. Then George Bush gets elected after Clinton and he kind of ...

35:20

This obviously isn't all on the presidents. I'm just trying to think through this.

35:27

It lines up well with the presidents. I remember he kind of corrected some of that stuff that Clinton had done.

35:33

I can remember being like, for someone that claims to be a

35:38

Christian and is a Republican, he didn't really stand for things like I thought he should have.

35:45

Then of course we get Obama and then Trump. Trump even corrected a lot of things economically, but morally, no.

36:01

Some things, yes, but you see what I'm getting at. Again, we're not standing on God's word.

36:08

We're not being prophetic. We're relying on the Republican Party to fix things. Now we are where we are with this regime.

36:17

To me, that makes perfect sense, what you're saying, and just with the church. Now we're in this place where, like you're saying, if we're going to get out of this box that they've placed us in, we have to stand on God's word.

36:30

We have to be prophetic and we have to speak into the culture. Otherwise, this box is going to get smaller and smaller.

36:38

I really appreciate it. Hopefully that kind of answers the question. Of course, segue into new founding.

36:48

You mentioned it at the beginning, too, as far as the approach, but can you go into that a little bit more based on what we've said?

36:54

What is new founding doing now in the negative realm?

37:02

As a venture org, we work with new companies. We work with ventures. It's a pretty broad term, but we'll work with companies that are doing something where there's a specific political or cultural angle or a way in which our viewpoint has a significant impact in the company.

37:28

That's not just a company with a Christian owner, for instance. A company with a Christian owner might be great, but if they just make widgets, we don't necessarily have a ton to add to change how they do business.

37:36

If it's a company that is explicitly selling to customers on the right, people who have been alienated, there's a huge customer base open.

37:43

Understanding the themes that resonate with them today is a big part of that. We will work with those companies. We're starting a company.

37:50

We're starting a few. We've started a few companies in that space. Then I think there's really a couple of key differentiators here in how we approach that.

38:01

That can include consumer products you want to buy from companies that don't hate you. It could be business services or business software.

38:09

You really, if you're a Christian organization, conservative organization, or just someone who doesn't want to be subject to someone else's rules, you really need services from a company that is not going to cancel you.

38:21

You don't want sales force to come along. We've encountered that a few times. It's becoming a critical need.

38:29

We would invest in and work with companies that are providing alternative services. Then I think there's a lot of opportunity taking the other side of ESG, for instance.

38:40

ESG is cutting off capital to large segments. I own an ammunition manufacturer, for instance.

38:47

There's a space that's pretty disfavored by ESG. We're very well aware of the shortages there. There's going to be opportunities there.

38:54

Going to the big differentiator for how I approach this. Maybe this even gets to your question about why did we go from positive to neutral?

39:01

Why did we lose the culture? We need to be, as Christians, and I'll give a little critique of how conservative business often operates.

39:12

Maybe it's the conservative mindset. It's either a negative filter. We're just going to cut out.

39:18

We do business roughly the same way, but we don't support abortion. We don't support. We cut out some things that we would see as problematic.

39:26

Otherwise, we don't really have a significantly different view of business. Alternatively, when people do decide to build something for Christians, it's often overly ghettoized, in a sense.

39:45

You think of the stereotypical Christian movies, and they're building something that they're not even trying to make something that's competitive nationally.

39:53

It's just for Christians. Or that even honors God. They'll accept a lower quality. They'll accept a lower quality standard.

40:00

Anytime you build a copycat business, conventionally in business, that's just never the recipe for winning.

40:07

That's a recipe for it best carving out a little niche. I think that's a problem. I think that's a problem in our mentality. We need an alternative positive vision.

40:14

We need a differentiated positive vision. We need to look for ways to win. Ultimately, we believe our approach is right.

40:24

We believe our approach is better. If that's the case, why should we not go for the crown? If you're building a business, why should you not go for the dominant business?

40:32

Where I see the major opportunities, there's really two approaches. One is

40:39

Christians as early adopters. Conservatives and Christians as early adopters.

40:45

If you're building, let's call it a new software platform, biggest thing you need is often those early customers.

40:50

It's what builds the network effect. It's what lets the product take off. It's maybe that first institutional customer that allows you to gain the credibility and keep improving your product.

40:59

If you think about it, let's say you have better technology, but you need that. Well, who better to attract than a particularly dissatisfied group with the current lineup?

41:14

Who's dissatisfied right now? It's going to be conservative Christians. They dislike the values of the existing ones.

41:22

They don't trust the existing ones. They'll be willing to take that jump over to a new product or a new platform sooner than other people.

41:29

That's a huge advantage if you can get those. That's not new. We talked about homeschooling earlier. Who were the early adopters of the homeschooling movement when it was sort of riskiest and scariest?

41:39

Conservative Christians, because they were the most dissatisfied with the status quo. Who were the first people to settle America really as a community and start building that?

41:47

It was the sort of libertarian individualists like the trappers and the traders, more akin maybe to the people who are in crypto right now.

41:57

The first ones to move as a community were deeply religious, profoundly dissatisfied people like the

42:03

Puritans or the Quakers. If you can attract that community, that's often the edge you need to get your business off the ground.

42:09

If it's a better piece of technology, if it's a better piece of software, there may be a clear path from that point to disrupting the incumbent, taking over a market segment.

42:20

That's sort of one of the key angles. Another one I really look at is where do we have a different viewpoint on the world? Christianity is not just a different set of values.

42:28

I think this was perhaps a big central mistake of how Christianity was boiled down to in that positive world era.

42:36

It was really just a different set of values, positive and maybe neutral as well. We sort of look at the world the same way, but we think this is good.

42:45

You think this is bad. Well, I don't think that's true. I think Christianity offers, in many cases, a substantially different view of reality.

42:53

We actually understand important facts that the other side doesn't understand. And it's being very clear during COVID, we're not just people with different values.

43:02

There's really different realities that the different sides are looking at. I would say it's very important in the technology world when you look at things like AI.

43:11

AI has all sorts of implications for potential implications for what types of work are automated.

43:22

I would say many in Silicon Valley have a very pessimistic view of humanity.

43:28

They really believe that we're on track to being replaced by AI. Sam Altman of OpenAI is...

43:34

I don't think he would even mind if people were replaced by AI. They have a negative view of the person. Certainly of most people, up to and including themselves, though.

43:42

We as Christians have a very different view of people. I believe that there's something special about people that is distinct, that is very different from anything that AI is going to produce.

43:52

They're not going to go away. If you are building a startup that is in this space, you are going to build a very different...

44:00

You're going to bet on a very different piece of technology if you believe that people can be replaced by AI and if you don't.

44:08

You might build software to replace people if you believe people are replaceable. If you don't, you're going to build software to serve and compliment people.

44:15

If we're right and they're wrong, this company should be way more successful. It should be the winning player in a space, the company that ultimately is complimenting people.

44:26

That could be the next Facebook, the next Google. It could be the next trillion dollar company if you're taking a big enough swing and you're right about something important where most people in Silicon Valley are wrong.

44:38

I believe there's tremendous opportunities and if we know that we know things the other side doesn't know, then it's crazy not to make big business bets on the basis of that.

44:52

Excellent. I appreciate your point that it's about worldview.

44:57

It's not just a set of values because your values are a part of your worldview but there's much more encompassing to it than just your values.

45:07

I appreciate that thought. We're coming down to the end of an hour here already. I want you to define what woke economics is and then we can just finish on that discussion.

45:19

I think the woke economics is it's almost a contradiction there.

45:28

They're very disconnected from reality. I would say what it ends up looking like is it ends up looking like managerial bureaucratic administration of the business world.

45:42

It's just like you see managerial bureaucratic administration of our government.

45:47

Our government is run by bureaucrats, not even run by politicians anymore really. Very evident obviously during COVID where it was these sort of anointed experts who made all the decisions.

45:57

In many ways you've seen that same group of people take over business.

46:02

They've taken over the allocation of capital. BlackRock is not even something that has a bunch of people with skin in the game where they're even rewarded for the performance they're taking a risk.

46:13

It's a bunch of people who are involved in allocation of trillions of dollars of capital who really have no downside if they lose money.

46:21

They have very little upside if they make money and they essentially move toward allocating capital in sort of formulaic ways.

46:29

You essentially come up with some sort of formula you can tweak and allocate across society. Very much the opposite of entrepreneurial economics where a capital allocation decision is, it might be a bet, it's a risk you're taking.

46:43

If you're investing in someone you're taking a risk and you're doing something that can't necessarily be totally justified.

46:49

The best way to think of it is a bond or even an apartment. You buy a sort of apartment building and it's a very predictable outcome.

46:55

You invest in a person and there's a much bigger risk. There's a much bigger range. Managerial economics will always tend to move toward the predictable, toward something that can be penciled out on a spreadsheet that non -entrepreneurial managers can run.

47:11

I think you see our businesses taking over at all levels. I think MBAs effectively operate that way.

47:18

Most MBAs operate that way. You'll see them operate meaningfully differently than often the sort of person who builds a business like that when that person takes over.

47:29

HR departments metastasize inside these companies and really replace any sort of organic human approach to hiring, to management of teams with very bureaucratized and this is where the woke comes in.

47:47

I think a natural compliment to that is one that is actually leftist in its viewpoint toward the person.

47:56

If you think about it, it sort of strips what the wokes do is they strip humans of any attachment that would be that would

48:08

I guess influence their decisions meaningfully. If you're a woman and you get pregnant, pay for them to go out and get an abortion.

48:16

Now she's a more predictable person, easier to manage by spreadsheet exactly as I described. If you have strong family or cultural attachments, those are going to shape your behavior in significant ways.

48:27

The more you can be stripped of those, the more we can turn people essentially into interchangeable cogs, the easier it is to manage hundreds of thousands of people across a global organization essentially by centrally managing them by spreadsheet.

48:41

I think wokeness naturally compliments this managerial approach to economics by morally justifying this stripping people out of any sort of organic human community or relationship and turning them into the sort of cogs that fit well in a large organization.

48:59

That's really interesting. I want to ask you if you think woke economics work.

49:07

I'm of the mindset, and I feel like we're witnessing this, and I want to hear your thoughts on this, but I feel like it's not working.

49:15

It worked for a minute, especially woke because it was a very cool thing. It was like the end thing.

49:21

I feel like we're starting to come out of that now where these companies that have tried to go that direction, it's not working financially for them.

49:30

We just saw this with Bud Light. We've seen Target lost like a billion dollars in one week. Even Disney, all these big companies that have tried that, it seems like it's not working.

49:44

I'm just curious what your thoughts are on that. Obviously, we would say from a biblical worldview, it can't work, but just economically speaking,

49:55

I'd like to hear your thoughts on that. I would say it's very encouraging pushback we're seeing there.

50:01

I would say it wasn't working even before that. Love it. There's been a broad sense across the board of a stagnation, a economic stagnation, stagnation of opportunity.

50:12

This is really, I think, part of what drove the Trump revolution. If you think about the ways of allocating capital, you think of managerial bureaucrats versus entrepreneurs.

50:26

Managerial bureaucrats, they can be good at increasing efficiency. They can take something over, and they can make it run a little more efficiently sometimes.

50:35

That's the competent ones. Increasingly, I think we're seeing a decline of competence as well.

50:40

This is where wokeness really does metastasize and eat away at its host because it undermines even the competence necessary to make a managerial system efficient.

50:52

At best, they can squeeze out some efficiencies, but what it does is it kills the dynamism. It kills the entrepreneurial initiative.

50:59

That bet on a person, if I bet on another person in a way that goes beyond what could be justified exhaustively by resume and spreadsheet, those are the bets that often produce the biggest returns.

51:11

Those are the ones where those are the entrepreneurial, whether it's a bet on another person or that person himself taking a bet as an entrepreneurial innovation.

51:21

In many ways, we've seen those die off. Even in Silicon Valley, I think it was often reduced to things like enterprise software, which is good for efficiencies and good for maybe making a system run slightly more productively, but not that quantum leap in terms of a really innovative technology.

51:40

Even if you think of Facebook and what is the algorithm best known for is all they can optimize for because they don't have any objective sense of a greater good.

51:48

It's just keeping you engaged and hooked on the page as long as possible. That's a very low level engineering level optimization.

51:57

You have an economy where that is all you see across the world. It's all you see on Wall Street. It's largely what you see in Silicon Valley. It's what managers, often private equity -backed managers, do when they take over a company is they try to squeeze out those efficiencies.

52:09

That runs out over time. As you kill the innovation, you kill the dynamism that I think has made the

52:15

American economy great. I would say it was never working. It was already at the end of its rope in terms of innovation.

52:25

The wokeness was destroying even the competence needed to keep it running at the pace it had been.

52:34

That is a good thought. We're going to wind down here. We'll bring

52:39

Nate back in on the after show. I think maybe we'll get into how do we build positive alternatives to that.

52:49

Maybe we can get into some AI conversation with that. I think that's a good tie -in there. Thank you, everyone, for tuning in again this week.

52:57

For your support, you keep the lights on. You can go to Apologia All Access and subscribe to that.

53:05

Why don't you tell them about some of the cool content we've got coming up? Isaac's in charge of it. That's why

53:11

I asked him. If you go to ApologiaStudios .com, sign up for All Access.

53:16

We have a lot of exclusive content. It allows you to support us because we're completely supported by you, our listeners, but it also gives us a way to bless you, too, for that support.

53:27

We're always trying to figure out ways that we can continue to not only produce content but good quality content that's going to be informative for the era we find ourselves in and helping equip you, the listener, how to engage the culture.

53:45

But I think it shows like this that I appreciate. I mean, there's a lot of things you're saying, Nate, like I said, that for me

53:52

I need to kind of catch up to as far as kind of how some of these things work, but I know a lot of our listeners are going to be extremely blessed by this type of conversation because it is somewhat an alternate conversation.

54:06

Even being a Christian, these type of conversations, you really don't hear often as far as there's an alternative approach that's not alternative to Christianity, but it's using our

54:19

Christian heritage, using the authority of Scripture to establish a worldview -type thinking that's all encompassing.

54:26

So I think conversations like this are a blessing, but like I said, with All Access, that's what we're trying to do is just equip you guys to engage the culture at a much more profound level.

54:38

But, you know, it starts in the home. It starts with establishing and building godly families, standing on the principles of our

54:46

Christian worldview, standing on the principles of the Scriptures, and I think that's the way forward.

54:54

But yeah, we're going to continue the conversation, I think, even with the woke economics too. Time goes by so fast, and so I want to hear kind of more about that.

55:02

We're going to maybe talk about some AI. So if you guys want to catch us on the other side on the After Show, the link is in the description, and yeah, we'll see you on the other side.

55:11

Luke? Yep, so also I was going to mention I know we're working on some really cool stuff for End of Worship now, so be looking for that.

55:21

Carmen, who's we kind of got a skeleton crew going on this week. A lot of people are gone. Zach Conover's in, where is he?

55:28

Atlanta. Yeah, doing some stuff for End of Worship now, and at the OSA National Conference, and Gabe's on vacation, and so Carmen's filling in for us today, and he's been working on some stuff for End of Worship now, so we also always need your support.

55:43

You can sign up there, get your church signed up with End of Worship now. We'll throw some links in the description too for you,

55:49

Nate, where people can kind of find you. Oh yes, where do you want people to find you at? Sure, so I'm most active on Twitter at Nate A.

55:57

Fisher F -I -S -C -H -E -R find my name there, and then

56:03

New Founding. You can follow New Founding on Twitter. We also, you can go to our website, newfounding .com

56:09

and then American Reformer, I think for many people here particularly interested in the discussions of politics and culture from a

56:19

Christian perspective, how Christians should think of this, as well as theology, is at americanreformer .org

56:24

and would love to have you following that signed up. We've got a lot of great articles, a lot of up -and -coming young, or maybe lesser -known authors are producing just some incredible content at American Reformer, so.

56:39

Okay. Praise God. Well, thanks again everyone. We will be back next week, so peace out.