Dead Men Walking Podcast & the Commercialization of Christianity: Conley Owens The Dorean Principle

Hello, Jason. How's it going, Mr. Greg? Good, how are you doing, man? Doing awesome, man. Started doing something this evening that is a, it's just a great time for me. What's that? We were just going through some closets, getting rid of some stuff.

Yeah, we talked about how you're a minimalist. I absolutely love it, man. I love getting in there, getting rid of stuff that's just sitting around and you're just like, what is it? Why is this even in the closet?

You know, like, I mean, I kind of get stressed out when I walk in your backyard. I mean, I see the shed, I see the barn, I see the, you know, the other garage. I'm like, oh, it's very clean, yeah, for sure.

But I would always go, what was inside of those things? I need to get rid of, you know, like it would stress me out.

I'll tell you what, when we all have to run to the hills and survive on solar panels and clean brook water, I'm gonna come to you because you know how to live.

With just four things. I mean, it's common, but no, I'm joking. It could be. Oh, well. But yeah, man, so anyway, what'd you do today? Oh, you worked on a door, wasn't it?

You know, you try, you want to rest on the Lord's day. Yeah. Didn't do any real estate stuff, but I did look at this pocket door that had come unlatched. I said, I'm gonna attack that. Yeah. I'm gonna take off some trim and I got about three and a half hours into it.

Yeah. And I went, why did I do this to myself? But I got it done about an hour before you came over. Somebody out there is like,.

He was working on the pocket door for three and a half. Look at him. I'm not a craftsman. Okay. I'm a talker. I'm a salesman. I sell the product. I don't fix the product. There you go.

Okay. I like it. But I got it done. Got a few other things around the house done. So that's good, man. Awesome. Cool. So we have on the line today, he's a pastor of Silicon Valley Reform Baptist Church.

He has a new book out called the Dorian Principle. Or are we supposed to say it like, kind of like Greek, like Dorian? Dorian. I've heard both. Or is it just Dorian? Dorian. Doreen? Doreen. Doreen? Like Doreen Virtue?

Yeah. But it just, it was such a cool subject matter. He reached out to me and I had seen him on some other podcasts and went, yeah, that'd be great to have him on here. So on the line right now is Pastor Connolly Owens.

How are you, sir? I'm fine. Thanks. Yeah. And I'm, like you said, a pastor at Silicon Valley Reform Baptist Church and it's Silicon, not silicone. Silicone is Southern California. Oh, Silicon. I'm so sorry.

Silicon is Northern California. Oh, I think that's the difference between like a building material too, right? No, it's, yeah. It's not just pronunciation. I'm joking that they do a lot of plastic surgery in Southern California.

Yeah. And there we go. There it is. California jokes. Yeah, yeah. California. Oh, man. So yeah, we're gonna have to get into a little bit how you're holding up there in California. Sure. With, you know, with your governor out there.

What did they call him? Mussolini? Yeah, Mussolini. Mussolini? Yeah, well. We got little Mussolini out here in Gretch. Yeah, well. Yeah. The Miss Gretchen Wilson. Yeah. But before we do that, we're gonna get into a little newsy news.

Connolly, feel free to jump in. We might even throw it over to you if you wanna comment. Wanna do it, Jay?

Yeah. Let's go. News, the news, the newsy newsy news, the news, the news, the newsy newsy news.

We got some news! Yes, we do. Yeah, some Tom Askell approved newsy news. And I will keep saying that every time. Every episode? Every episode. Okay, let's check it. As long as that clip from Reformed Funny Means keeps racking up views.

It is pretty cool, though. It is pretty cool. I mean, Tom Askell. Our listeners probably get sick of me saying it. All right, so let's get to the first one. I'm gonna start out here. This is serious, but we've talked about this gentleman on the podcast quite a bit over the last few weeks.

I think you've seen him in Reformed Campery, which is a Christian camp that isn't into that wacky, insane faith-healing stuff you kinda talk about. But just this last week, faith-healer, I'm using your quotes, Todd White, on a three-month bed rest for serious heart condition that's taken him out of commission for his ministry.

Now, I remember you and I jokingly said when we started this podcast in the middle of COVID, we said, where's Kenneth Copeland and Todd White? Right, right. Send him to the front lines. Go ahead and send him to the front lines.

Heal everyone in COVID. Let's do this, man. Well, actually, Kenneth Copeland did, right? Or Kenneth did. You remember?

Oh, yeah. He blew on COVID. And we said it kinda tongue-in-cheek. And of course, all those churches shut down for six months, ran and hid. It was kinda crazy. Shut down their healing rooms? Shut down the healing rooms for COVID.

They're growing out legs, but can't grow back lungs, I guess. I don't know. Sorry, that sounds a little harsh. So he's on bed rest for three months. So, you know. We're praying for him. We've grown a little bit over this podcast.

We'd probably launch into a five to eight minute bit on Todd White, but we'd say we're praying for him. We hope he sees God in this. I hope God uses this exactly how it needs to be used. I don't hope, I know God well.

Oh, yeah, oh, yeah. But it's always just a little ironical. Is that a word? Can I say ironic? Ironic? It's a little bit ironic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't you think? When you're It's like, ray! Sorry, sorry.

We're not going back to the nineties. We're not doing the latest version. You know, when you have a faith healer that says, hey, look it, every single person should be physically healed. Todd said that multiple times.

We know we've talked about Bill Johnson at Bethel saying that multiple times. And then, you know, Bill Johnson, who has glasses, we take health advice, you know. Right. Heal your eyes then. Throw your glasses away.

But, you know, just kind of be watching that situation. I know last year, remember, Todd had a brush with Charles Spurgeon. And we thought he might've turned the corner on something, but boy, did he go back in quick.

Came back. What do you think, Connolly? What do you think of when the faith healers come down with the illness and they can't do anything about? Do they not have enough faith? Well, you know, if you have the right faith, eventually you will be completely physically well for all eternity.

But I agree with you. For now, we should send them to the front lines. A mic drop.

There you go. Amen. You got anything on that, Jay? What do you think? Yeah, yeah, no, I'm there with you guys, man. I really, you know, I have a heart for Todd. I mean, Todd was, at first, when I first got regenerated, I'll be honest, like for six months, I accidentally dove into the NAR and Todd was one of those teachers that, you know, was teaching me that different kind of doctrine.

And then I was, you know, I found reformed teaching and, you know, got set straight. But, you know, I still have a heart for Todd and I just pray that he comes out of this well and that hopefully, yeah, like you said.

Which is odd because, I mean, the apostle Paul talked about fire tunnels and grave soaking all the time. I know, every day. I think Connolly's gonna get into it for us. All good, yeah, yeah.

Let's move on to the second story. What else you got, Jason? What we got here is, in a first, man receives a heart from a genetically altered pig. What? Yeah, the breakthrough may lead one day to new supplies of animal organs for transplant into human patients.

A 57-year-old man with life-threatening heart disease has received a heart from a genetically modified pig, a groundbreaking procedure that offers hope to hundreds of thousands of patients with failing organs.

It is the first successful transplant of a pig's heart into a human being. The eight-hour operation took place in Baltimore on Friday and the patient, David Bennett Sr. of Maryland, was doing well on Monday, according to surgeons at the University of Maryland Medical Center.

Yeah, I mean, they go on, but I guess it's working just like a heart is supposed to, I mean, for his body.

Okay, first of all, that freaks me out a little bit. Yeah, yeah, for sure. There's gotta be some side effects. I mean, a heart of a young pig, I mean, is he just eating roast beef all the way home? Yeah, I don't know.

It has like a taste for Can you actually have bacon and stuff then? Because, I mean, you know, it's like, yeah, I mean, it's No, but more seriously,.

Like where do Christians draw the line on that when you start, you know, modifying DNA and having heart transplants of other animals? I mean, that stuff is, it can get really freaky, really quick. You know, we talk about Elon Musk a lot on this podcast, well, not a lot, but it's been brought up.

He's looking at doing things with technology. Well, playing God. Playing God, essentially. What do you think, Connolly? Would you take a pig's heart if you needed one, or would you just keep your maker?

Well, I would enjoy going to see him, but yeah, I don't see this as substantially different than a skin graft or a robot heart, right? Which a lot of people have had that for a while now. Yeah, it's when you start, yeah, doing more creative things with embryos and DNA and stuff that, yeah, I'd be more concerned.

Yeah. No, there is a difference between sustaining life, I would say, and trying to create. Right, exactly.

Oh, cool. Give me a couple of horse legs so I can be a little bit taller, you know? She was a little bit taller.

She was a baller. Man, we are going back to that. We're not a great first impression of the past, but let's keep it on the up and up.

I'm gonna have to talk to my elders about this one. All right, this one here,.

This is gonna be our last story, but I just thought it was interesting because if you go back in our video archive and audio archive, we talked a lot about, you know, in the very beginning about that free money and what was gonna happen and the economics of it and inflation.

And now we're seeing it in Breitbart, which it just happened to come across this. I don't really read them, but I saw it pop up on my feed. The prices of cars and trucks continue to soar in December. Data released Wednesday showed the Department of Labor's Consumer Price Index showed that the prices of new cars and trucks jumped higher in December, rising 1 for the month compared to 12 months ago.

Prices are up 12 on new cars. Prices are up 25 to 37 in some areas on used cars. And people are complaining about bread,.

The price of bread. Right. It's like, but then they run out and grab a brand new truck for 80 grand. You're just like, I don't like.

Yeah, me neither. Oh my gosh, could you imagine spending 80 grand on a liability?

No, I couldn't, but yeah. I like my $3 ,000 minivan. That's paid off.

Hey baby. I don't care. I think there's a lot of Proverbs about being wise and steward of your money and frugal and discerning. We're definitely gonna get into all that. And I think it's good. And I think people with that attitude are gonna have to, with that just kind of spend it attitude is really gonna have to start looking at some stuff because I think economically, we have some rough times ahead.

When you see, this is technically hyperinflation. Now they don't call it that because the mainstream media does have some agendas that they have to get across. But anytime something increases 25 to 40 within a few months, that is a form of hyperinflation.

Well, the data that came out,.

I really think they definitely skew the numbers for sure. I mean, month over month, they said it went up like 0 .3 or something, but there's no way. I mean, especially with what's been going on in the grocery stores, in the bread aisle, you know?

Yeah. You can see it there.

So Connelly out in California, how's the supply chain and the COVID stuff? How's the gas prices? Oh yeah. It's pretty bad. I mean, well, gas has always been bad. And now it's worse. I mean, I just stopped looking at gas prices a long time ago.

It's just so ridiculous. But I went to get Japanese food the other day and tried to order Udon and they didn't have Udon for the past two months because they couldn't get a truck driver to deliver it.

So it is pretty wild. Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. That sounds just like a California problem, doesn't it? Oh man. They didn't have the sushi I wanted. I love Udon. Yeah, Udon is good though. Oh, it's so good.

Yeah. I guess it's a little first world problems, but still it's bad news. Look at Connelly. I mean, the supply chain is affecting us all differently. Some people are going without heat and water. You couldn't get your sushi.

That's, you know, I get it. Yeah. It's pretty unjust to take other people's money and give it to other people. A lot of people, because I have a lot of kids, you know, I have seven kids. A lot of people assume that I was gonna get a lot out of this and they would ask me, I was like, you know, that's not how it works.

I have another job that pays well. So outside of being a pastor. So yeah, I didn't get any of it. Well, yeah, I think it's unconstitutional. You know, the constitution gives Congress the right to coin money.

It never gives Congress the right to, it gives anyone the right to print money. And I said, Congress, it gives the government the right, whatever, yeah, whichever entity. Right. No, absolutely. So let's get into that.

We all done with those? Yeah, yeah, we're good. Awesome. And that was the Newsy News. Cool. So Pastor Connelly Owens on the podcast tonight has a new book out called The Dorian Principle, talking about the commercialization of the church, of Christianity, of religion.

And Pastor, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself? I know you just got into, yet you have kids, you're out in California, but give us a little bio of yourself so listeners know who you are.

Sure, yeah. My name's Connelly Owens. I came from Virginia, but I've been here in Sunnyvale, California for the past 11 years, almost 12 years. I live with my wife and seven kids here. And I'm also a software engineer at Google, which Lord willing, I'll be able to pursue full-time ministry.

But as for now, that's not the Lord's providence. Awesome. And what, let's just get it, let's get it rolling right off the top. What made you write this book or why did you want to write about this subject?

And what is it about? Give us the overview. Sure. So just a little bit of backstory. I've been involved in software for a long time. And if anyone in your audience is familiar with software and open source software, there's a lot of creative and innovative things that have been done with software licensing.

Because any other engineering field, you're allowed to reverse engineer things. You can open up the hood of your truck, see how it works, put it back together. If you do that with software, in the process you create a copy and then you violate copyright law.

So software has always been really inhibited in that sense until people started making open source software where you were allowed to use it in this way. And so having this idea that you could take different approaches to copyright made me pretty dissatisfied with the way a lot of ministers approach copyright, using it in order to capitalize on this product that they're making, this teaching.

And for a long time, I felt like this was just my own private opinion that it should be done differently. It's not really something I could bind other people's consciences with. But then I started seeing in scripture, the Bible has a lot to say about the way ministries need to approach money.

And that was kind of the reason I think my eyes were fairly ready to see what scripture had to say about the matter. So what does scripture say about the matter? What are you seeing in the modern Christian church that you would say?

And I'm assuming the title of the book, is that from like the Matthew 10, eight, where it's like freely you've received, so freely give. Is that kind of the, just the Correct. Yes, yes. Dorian is the Greek adverb that means freely.

So it comes from that verse and another verse in second Corinthians 11, where Paul says a very similar thing. Both Jesus and Paul use this word to refer to preaching freely, preaching without charging for it.

So I think Bible clearly that teaches should be teaching without exchanging that teaching for money. Now in the very next breath, Jesus says in Matthew 10, nine through 10, that the worker is worthy of his food.

So it's about how do you hold those two truths together? Because a lot of people never really try to resolve it or they try to resolve it and they do a poor job or maybe they do a good job. And then they don't necessarily draw all the logical implications of that resolution.

So I very simply, I believe that Jesus is saying on one hand, it is wrong to accept reciprocity where you're exchanging the gospel for money. It is right to accept funds as co-labor where you have other people in God's kingdom working alongside of you for the purpose of the gospel.

And what do you think would be the dividing line for that though? Because you could, you have a lot of, let's say seeker friendly or emerging church or kind of the evangelicals out there going, look at all this money I'm bringing in, it's going to the kingdom.

It's co-laboring with me. You know, you're co-laboring with me. So I can go to speaking events and I can fly here and do this and that. So how do we look into the word and then divide that and say, okay, this is appropriate.

This isn't appropriate. Do you approach that at all in the book? Right, well, there's lots of examples scripture gives. You know, Paul refuses money lots of times and he accepts money or anticipates accepting money other times and not just money, but hospitality or any kind of material support.

So you have these examples that give you ideas of when this is reciprocity, when this is the church paying him back for something versus co-laboring alongside of him. And just to give some of those examples, you have him in first and second Corinthians, both times saying he will never accept this money that the Corinthians have tried to give him.

And I believe that's in the context of him having planted the church. But in both of those letters, you also have him saying that he's hoping to come to them in order that they can support him on his journey to Macedonia.

So using the Greek word propempo, which implies financially support. So here you have him saying that, you know, he wants to come to them so they can help him with this mission. And here you also have him saying that he will not, he'll never accept their money in exchange for what he has done for them.

Yeah, I went to a college in Jackson, Tennessee. It was a Christian liberal arts college. And that college was very expensive. And I just remember people going through ministry, you know, the ministry program.

And actually you brought up some good points in your introduction in your book. Just the fact that somebody goes through college to learn about the word of God, spends 60 grand and gets ends up, you know, with 60 grand in, you know, debt, and then they go to seminary and then there's an extra 60 grand.

It's like, you know, it's like, how are we misusing that, you know, just the education of scripture, you know, with the financial side? I mean, what are you seeing in that? I'd really like to hear you pick that apart a little bit.

Sure, so when it comes to colleges, we might need to parse that out a bit more because, you know, sometimes that's a lot, that's more of a general education than specifically a biblical education, but just focusing on seminaries for the moment.

Yeah, you have, and it's wild because usually these are funded by churches sending people to it. So it would really take a minimal restructuring to just raise that money beforehand, not in exchange for something, but together.

And then you also have so many seminaries that are operating with almost zero church oversight, you know, as this total parachurch thing that's off there on their own. This would kind of force them to work with associations or denominations so that there would be church oversight.

So I think there could be just a lot of good in just restructuring how these things are funded. Yeah. Wow, yeah. No, that's good. But to go back to the point right before too, so you're almost saying the co-laboring, and correct me if I'm wrong, would almost be more church-based too then.

I mean, there's a big difference between a congregation providing for its pastor, whether it be pay or housing or food, versus a, I don't know, you can throw any evangelical out there right now, Stephen Furtick showing up at a Hillsong event and charging 150 ,000 for him to say a 15 minute, hey, you know, kind of let's juice up this worship conference type thing.

That's a pretty extreme difference, but that's kind of what we're talking about here, correct? Right, yeah. And it doesn't necessarily have to do with the amount of money, but that amount of money does communicate that you aren't just working alongside of him.

You're really making an exchange. And I think it's perfectly appropriate for a pastor to be paid by their church. You have this gathering of people. One of them ought to quit their job so they can dedicate themselves to prayer and the ministry of the word, as it says in Acts 6 .4.

Now, who's going to do that? Who's going to quit their job and live in poverty? But if we all work together, right, and some of us forego the fruit of our labor, you know, that's just co-labor. And I think it's perfectly appropriate for pastors who are traveling to receive honorariums.

You have a suggestion of that in 1 Corinthians 9, when Paul mentions Peter saying, you know, do we not also like Peter have the freedom to take a wife, implying that Peter is more of a financial burden as he would have come to Corinth.

And so, yeah, there's nothing wrong with honorariums, but what happens when these speakers won't come to you unless you pay them this really ridiculous amount of money that's more than just what's needed is, you know, they understand that they've got this service that they're providing and they're exchanging it for money.

It's very different than the honorariums that would be co-labor oriented. So outside of the kind of the pastoral or the speaker that we just touched on, what else in the Dorian principle are you focusing on in that book when you're talking about the commercialization of Christianity?

Sure, there's conferences, there's books. I think that the Christian publishing industry is the biggest one. And you asked a question just a second ago that I didn't completely answer, which was this would be more church-based if we were operating in a co-labor model.

Yes, it would. And the reason that that is is because you already have the weekly giving of the saints, right, the weekly contributions where we are working together. And it's parachurch organizations which aren't necessarily always doing something wrong, but because they don't have that regular form of giving, they have to get more creative about how they're going to raise support.

And so they usually end up selling something, either selling conference tickets, selling books, selling tuition, whatever it is. So if you are working together with a church or it's a church doing this ministry, it doesn't have to worry about where's the money gonna come from because you already have this weekly support given by the congregation.

Yeah, just a little pushback here. This is me being a little bit of a devil's advocate, whatever, but what would you say if someone would say, well, you don't know what we do with our finances. You have no idea.

How can you paint this huge brushstroke and just say that we're using our funds for X, Y, and Z, even though some pastors, you see what they're doing with their money.

But anyway, yeah. Yeah, well, that's kind of one of the things I point out to people because usually a lot of times people already have their own issue with the way money is used in churches and they bring that to the book.

And so they read in a lot of things that I'm not actually saying. I actually don't say anything about how people use the money. It's how they get the money I care about. So if you have been honored by a church with this money, you ought to have the freedom to use your own funds the way you would.

Now you want to avoid the appearance of sin. And I think there's something wrong with getting so decked out and drip that you Yeah, yeah.

Buying shoes as possible, taking pictures of them on Instagram.

Yeah, there's ways that you could bring dishonor to Christ by doing those sorts of things. But if it's your money, if it's been given to you, you should have the freedom to use it. My issue is not with the spending of it once it's been received, it's with the receiving of it, whether it's received as co-labor or as reciprocity.

Yeah, I had a friend talk to me one time about, he called it the spirit of mammon. And he was just like, whenever I give, I'm just battling that spirit. And obviously, kind of more Pentecostal charismatic.

But anyway, he was just like, I don't even care if the pastor takes it to the casino and puts it in the slot machine. And I was just like, really? You don't care if your pastor? But I mean, I don't know.

I guess I never really thought about it until he said that, but yeah.

Well, I don't know about that. I mean, if it's in your congregation, your pastor, your elders, everyone has accountability. And if they're doing something with it that isn't Christ-like, then they need to be held accountable.

That's what I would say. Right, now my father instilled in me, look at if you give, now outside of giving to the church, but if you give something to someone, you have no claim or right to say what they can do with it.

You give freely, right? And you give openly. But I think that would be a difference. Yeah, I don't know if I would just give and say, well, whatever they do with it, well, inside of a church setting with elders,.

You know, with church discipline and things like that. Right, and he could have been using a very extreme, you know, example, but you know.

So, I mean, this is pretty prevalent though in the church, Connelly. I mean, it is like, there's conferences everywhere. There's worship or, you know, praise concerts. There's churches that do all kinds of extracurricular things.

Oh, the entertainment industry. Entertainment and their auditoriums and, you know, all these things. And, you know, it smells a little bit to me of, you know, Jesus flipping some tables. It's kind of in that vein when I look at that.

But like I said, it's also, you know, money itself isn't bad, right? Having clothes and material things are needed. Christ had them when he was here as fully God and fully man. And so did the apostles and the early church fathers.

Capitalism. Right, I'm a red-blooded American capitalist. Hold on. That's right. But we use it for the correct things. We steward it wisely, right? So for me, it's just like parsing that out and going, okay, biblically, like what can and what can't we?

And I'm not saying you're the definite answer on all this, but the book is really approaching that. And it kind of reads almost as if you're just giving scriptural references for these things. And you kind of really left it up to me in the first few chapters.

You said, hey, look at this. I'm telling you what the Bible says, which I like. That's what Christ did. Hey, have you heard, you've heard it said? I mean, he just put down the truth. Didn't argue. Didn't try to make a point.

He just said, this is what God says. Have you not read? Have you not read, right? But I mean, we're so, it's just so, it's everywhere now. So what do we do? What's like the Christian response to this or the biblical response to this when we just see money changing hands left and right in just about the majority of our Western Christian churches?

Yeah, well, that is one common criticism of the book and it's under the first. Yeah, I spent about 10 chapters, just establishing the principle. And then the last four chapters talking about application.

Now there's a lot of application, but it's quick and covers a very large landscape of what there is to cover. And really to talk about all the ins and outs of the things you would wanna consider would take a whole book in itself.

So yeah, I don't have all the answers to that. I'm hoping that other people can kind of help me figure out some of those things. But once you have this principle, yeah, I think the way forward just involves people considering the biblical texts.

First of all, maybe you've been using this book, taking it to a pastor, having him think through this. And I think that as people think through it, that's the first step. And that is a sufficient table turning at this point.

Yeah, have you had pushback on this? Could you give some examples of the pushback?

Sure, so a lot of pushback comes in identifying the fact that there are a lot of gray areas because I'm making this distinction between co-labor and reciprocity. So at what point does something become co-labor and reciprocity, for example?

Or at what point does something become gospel ministry or not gospel ministry? Right, if I sell you a Bible, like a paper Bible, that's the word of God. But now I make it like this luxury leather Bible.

Like at what point did that switch from the essence of this being me giving you the word of God to me giving you like paper, ink, and leather? I don't know the answer to a lot of these questions. And you get into some kind of stoic question of how many grains of sand does it take to make a hill of sand?

Right. So the fact that I can't parse out all the gray areas doesn't really undo the principle. In the regular principle of worship, you have a distinction between forms and elements. You have the forms of worship, which can change, whether you're standing or sitting, whether you have two songs or three songs.

You have the elements of worship that cannot change. You can't add or remove from reading the word of God, prayer, singing. So you have all kinds of people who agree on this principle, but then disagree about whether or not something's a form or an element.

Is instrumental music, is that a form or is it an element? I would say it's a form. There are other people who would say it's an element. You can't add that. So I don't think that that undoes it. Another criticism that people have pointed out is that it's very subjective.

Am I saying that someone is sinning based on the thoughts in another person's heart? If this person, how do I know whether or not they're giving with a co-laboring spirit or whether they're thinking that they're doing it in exchange for something?

I don't think that's what I'm really saying. I'm just saying that we need to do due diligence in the way that we receive money. So you have all kinds of other situations in life, counseling, preaching, speaking to a friend where you do due diligence to make sure that you are understood correctly with your words and gestures.

And so this is talking about what are the words and gestures of ministry fundraising to make sure we're doing due diligence?

Right, so I mean, Chick-fil-A, they sell chicken sandwiches, right? Like they're not selling the gospel per se, but they might have a, yeah, the bend towards it because of the CEO. Yeah, no, absolutely.

And I agree with both you guys. And what you just said, Connelly, too, is like we can look at something and go, okay, we know. We look at the $85 million jet and the guy who says he can't fly commercial because it's a tube full of demons and he doesn't want anyone talking to him or praying with him.

Okay, we can clearly say there's some issues there. And then on the other side, we can see someone who co-labors and go, okay, that's right. But it's those gray areas that get a little bit confusing.

It's like co-laboring. And then, you know, the biggest one for me is what you mentioned at the top of the show is like publishing. Like Christian publishing is like a, just a huge mega, it just creates so much money, okay?

And for what? For something that's relatively inexpensive now to create. I mean, I have your digital copy of your book and you can distribute that probably very low cost. Obviously, we want everyone to go out and buy a paper copy as well, too.

But it's like Yeah, and the paper, just so people know, the paper copy is free. And the publisher even covers shipping. Wow, geez. That's awesome. That's a heck of a deal. So it's like, what do we do about publishing where I think almost, I don't know, I don't know any Christian that I talked to that wouldn't agree that, yeah, 150 or $250 for a leather-bound Bible just because it has a certain, you know, material to it or someone's name in the front of it is a little outrageous.

Like, what do we do about publishing? Because that's, I mean, well, we're all reformed here. Books is all I got, man. Right, right, yeah. I got way too many books. Yeah, well, I think books need to be offered freely.

So yeah, I won't comment on luxury, like I mentioned, you know, luxury Bibles. I think that there's room for a market for those kinds of things if someone wants to, in a secular sense, you know, have a business where they're selling craftsman Bibles.

But yeah, when it comes to, when the essence of the thing is the word of God, why aren't the digital copies of things free? Well, it's because they're selling you teaching. And then everything that attends to gospel ministry should be free as well.