Reformed Dissenters: How Young Men Take Dominion For God In The Marketplace

Dead Men Walking

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Exploring theology, doctrine, and all of the fascinating subjects in between, broadcasting from an undisclosed location,

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Dead Men Walking starts now. Well hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of Dead Men Walking podcast.

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Thanks for being here, thanks for telling a friend, thanks for checking us out at dmwpodcast .com and commenting and retweeting and doing all those things on social media, trying to bring glory to God.

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Remember, dead in our sins and trespasses without Christ, and we are all dead men walking without him, but now been raised to heavenly and priestly places, thank

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God. Guys, usually I spend a few minutes talking about the week, talking about what's going on.

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All you need to know is that the snow has melted yet again and spring is around the corner, so I am in my studio right now staring out my window looking at my camper, and I'm ready to get in it and get to Lake Michigan, Lake Superior, Lake Huron, get up early in the morning, have that Bible study, and like I said, be watching because we're gonna do some live podcasts from the shores of either

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Lake Michigan or Lake Huron this year, so if you watch on YouTube you will at least get to see the beautiful nature.

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Hopefully the sound quality will be good. We're gonna take some recording equipment with us and do that.

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I got inspired by Dr. James White. He's out there in a fifth wheel just driving around doing dividing line episodes, and I was like, hey,

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I go on eight or nine camping trips a year. I can do that too. I'm not gonna let the old man beat me, and I hope he hears that.

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No, it's Dr. James White. It's not the old man. Shame on me, but yeah, so be watching out for that this summer, but let's jump right into it.

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I've got two brothers out here. Met him down at Fight Lab Feast last year. I think

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I actually might have ran into him, and unfortunately I didn't remember in South Dakota. I think they were out there too, now that I think back.

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That's right about the time I came back with a really nice case of COVID, so it was kind of fuzzy the last few days, but these guys are the hosts of the

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Reform Dissenters podcast. If you're not listening to them, and if you're listening to this podcast right now, pause it.

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We'll wait. Go subscribe the Reform Dissenters. Start listening to their three episodes a week.

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All right, you guys are back. All right, cool. You're back. You're subscribed to the Reform Dissenters. We can go on with our show.

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It is Bruce and Jacob Johnson. How are you guys doing today? Good. All right. Doing really well.

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Yeah, absolutely. So introduce yourself to our guests. I know you talked a little bit about it when you were on about a 10 or 15 minute episode last

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October. You guys can go back for those listening and go through the archives and check that out, but just reintroduce us a couple minutes, each of you, who you are, what you're all about, and give us a little bio.

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Sweet. Yeah, well, my name is Bruce Johnson. I am obviously one of the co -hosts on the

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Reform Dissenters show. I'm a software engineer by trade, but I just have a ton of different hobbies.

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I was homeschooled my whole life and very much into theology and started really delving into all sorts of those sorts of topics and applying scripture to all of life.

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So about a year and a half ago, my brother Jake and I decided to start a show. We were like, hey, we sit around our kitchen table discussing these sorts of things.

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Why don't we why don't we record ourselves while we do that? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Part of the experience.

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Yeah. Say that again. You said you were homeschooled. Yep. Yep. All right.

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There we go. You get the homeschool horn when you come to get the homeschool horn when you come on the show.

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Jacob, how about you, brother? Yeah, well, my name is Jacob Johnson, as it's been said several times now.

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But yeah, I am 19 years old, working as a chef in restaurants and stuff, hopefully going to culinary soon, culinary school soon.

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But yeah, I've joined this, not joined this podcast, Bruce and I both started this podcast probably a year ago, year and a half ago at this point.

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But yeah. Yeah. Very cool. So let's get right into it, because you guys have been doing a series on your podcast about, you know, working on to the

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Lord, finding jobs and careers that glorify the Lord, hobbies that glorify the

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Lord, obviously for fulfilling the dominion mandate. And I want to talk to you guys about that a little bit.

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One, because you guys had some really good content on those episodes about it.

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So maybe we can rehash a little bit of that here. For those who hadn't heard it on your podcast.

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And two, I like to have that perspective from homeschoolers as well, because I was homeschooled myself.

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And that was back in the day. I'm much older than you. Well, oh, geez, what am

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I doing? I think I just found a new producer for our podcast.

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Thank you for reminding me. See, I get talking and I forget

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I need to have producer here. But also to get that perspective, I was homeschooled and it was back when you would get social services.

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You know, they showed up at our door like, hey, we want to throw you parents in jail because why is it why isn't your kid in public school?

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And then now I'm homeschooling all fathers through the 80s that were literally thrown in jail for homeschooling children.

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Yeah, because it was like a really more rare and kind of weird thing. And then I homeschooled my three children.

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So also I still get pushed back to this day with people that aren't familiar with homeschooling or maybe they're really pro public school and they just say, oh, well, homeschoolers, you know, they can't find jobs.

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There's not a career path. They're not they're not social. What about art and all these things?

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And listen, we can get in later if we want to talk statistics. I will outstatistic anyone in homeschoolers.

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They outperform their public school counterparts in the ninety six percentile in every single educational dynamic.

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So don't get me started on that. And now you're also talking to three people who were homeschooled who now have very successful podcasts and we have a very active social life.

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We're talking to lots of people all the time. So I like to get that perspective from you guys as young brothers in the

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Lord that are also homeschooled and go, OK, so let's talk about career paths. Let's talk about dominion.

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Let's talk about glorifying the Lord in everything we do. Give us an overview of what you guys have been talking about the last few weeks on the podcast in that aspect.

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Yeah, I mean, so we do three episodes a week, like you said initially. And we have those are savages.

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Well, Ali, how do you find time to do anything else? Sometimes I don't know, but so we do current events.

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So we one episode, then we have literature for one episode and then we have a discussion topic, which is usually when we discuss all sorts of things and we have guests on the show and all that.

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So for our literature episode, quite a few months ago, this was like early half of last year.

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We read a book called How to Find a Job You Can Love by Ralph Madsen. And that kind of really kicked off this whole discussion around, well, oh, look at this.

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The Bible actually tells us how to find a job we can love and talks about a lot of things pertaining to working.

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So so then we met a lot of people. We met Brandon Raby, who is a Christian video gamer at the

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FLF conference. We met people like John Brannion. Yep, yep. Kyle Hessler.

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Yeah, Campus Preacher, Keith Darrell, all sorts of different people. Yeah, there's the

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Keith, yeah. Who were active in all of these areas, all of these fields.

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And we wanted to know, well, what is your vision? What's your goal? Because these are all we talk about the kingdom of God all the time.

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But what is that? What does that actually mean? What is the kingdom of God? And so we called our series Building a Christian Culture because we believe that's the kingdom of God is building a

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Christian culture. It's not just collecting a few souls here or there from a few nations. No, no, no. It's discipling the entire nation from the bottom up, from individuals doing their jobs as unto the

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Lord all the way up to the civil government. And kind of like talking about it, a lot of people, you know, try and we're wondering, like, what does what does practically building the kingdom look like?

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So we talk all the time that we need to be building God's kingdom. We need to be working for the kingdom.

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We need to be doing all these things. But, you know, people are wondering, what does that actually practically look like?

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And it means that our jobs and everything that we do in our lives, as as we say in our outro of our show, in all that you do, do it as unto the

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Lord in everything that we work towards and everything that we do. And for for men, that is majority of us working in the workplace, working in the workforce in in whatever job you're doing, that we're doing that job as best we can as unto the

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Lord. So what do you believe in the patriarchy or something? What the heck? Right.

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So so you said, what does that look like practically or pragmatically? And by the way,

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I love your guys in our outro, because, you know, First Corinthians ten thirty one is one of my favorite verses just because it's so all encompassing.

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I feel like sometimes in the evangelical church or the Western Christian church, we want to separate out things that we believe are, air quote,

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Christian. And these things are not Christian. I think we're in a really bad place. Yeah, I think we're in a really bad place right now, even within the arts, because in the 70s and 80s and 90s, we decided, well, there's certain things that Christians should do and certain things that will just leave to the world.

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When, in fact, we've said on this podcast many times, right, art belongs to God and it's to glorify him.

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So what does it look like pragmatically or practically to glorify God in everything that you do, including your work?

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I mean, I'll just I'll just touch on that. Unbriefly, we talked about the homeschooling aspect of that before on our show.

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We call government schools, government indoctrination camps because that's pretty much what they are. Yeah. You know, the passage,

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I think it's in Ephesians. Train up your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. That that word that we translate, the

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King James translates admonition. But the Greek word is paideia, which actually means enculturation. So it's it's not just instruction in a few ideas and maybe just philosophy, right?

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Or maybe just ethics or maybe it's just how we worship. Right. But no, it's it's enculturation.

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It's literally you can't escape enculturation. Enculturation is literally a fact of life.

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And it's what you live in your life from the time you are born to the time you die.

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So what we should be looking for is an enculturation of the

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Lord. We should be immersed, so immersed in the enculturation of the Lord that literally everything we think about, everything we do pertains or is derived from scripture.

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And so a huge, huge part of that is like Jake was saying, work. So in our series, you know, one thing we brought up was productivity by Doug Wilson, really, really good book.

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Very, very practical. He starts out the book by talking about, hey, there's a lot of like productivity books out there, but they offer all of these things that are like, hey, get rich fast or make your life more productive in 10 quick steps.

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And his whole point is, no, it's not that easy. It's, you know, like it's the 11 step, 11 simple steps to save the world.

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Yeah, it might be simple, but it's not easy. It's you're plodding along.

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This is an everyday sort of thing where you have to be diligent and to be that diligent, to have the energy to thrive.

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And to work as hard as you need to, you need to have a higher motivation. You need a motivation that's external to you.

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You try to motivate yourself to work harder and be more diligent and not be lazy. That's not going to work.

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You being motivated by God, by an external force, by God saying, hey, I'm commanding you to be diligent in your work, to do it as unto the

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Lord and not as for men. That's what's going to drive you forward. No, that's really good, too, because it's it trickles down into everything.

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So when you when you are when you are grateful, when I wake up every day, grateful that the

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Lord saved me, knowing that it was undeserved. Now he says, even my daily life, even my work, my hobbies, my profession, my family, how

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I love my wife and my child and children and all those things. I have to do all those things onto the

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Lord with the gratefulness I have for him also saving me. I think what happens, too, and maybe you guys can comment on this, is

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I've seen the flesh in the depravity of man takes a godly principle and then perverts it as well.

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So, for instance, I look at hustle culture, right, which is very easy for a young man who has work ethic to fall into his work ethic.

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Bad. Absolutely not. In fact, the Bible says if you don't work, you don't eat. But on the other side of that, hustle culture says work as hard as you can at any cost, prioritize goals in monetary gains and things like that.

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When in fact, the Lord commands us to rest, to prioritize him. Right. So we see a godly principle in work ethic that is is a very good thing.

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Let's not be lazy. Let's not be the sluggard. Let's be wise and discerning within our business, either that we work out or that we own.

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But the hustle culture says take it to the next level, prioritize, you know, goods and services and all those things over the things that God tells us to.

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And then we get into a situation to where I even see some Christians arguing for hustle culture and going, well, the

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Lord wants me to provide for my family. The Lord wants me to have, you know, do these things. Yeah. And it's just a perversion.

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So so there's a fine line, I think, between making sure we don't even take a godly principle and pervert it by taking it out of priority.

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And that's one of the great things I really like about Ralph Mattson's book. And Jake has a great example, especially in his career of this.

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So I'll let him speak to this in a second as well. But the the Ralph Mattson book focuses the majority of the book is on discovering what are your unique gifts and talents?

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You know, we're told we're all given gifts, we're all given abilities and we're supposed to use those abilities for the kingdom of God.

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And so the the order of operations, if you will, of discovering, well, what what career should

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I go into? Step one is what are the gifts and abilities that God gave me? Step two is how do

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I use those to make money? So it's not I need to get a job because I need to make money.

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No, no, no. It's I've been given unique gifts and abilities by God. I've been saved to work for him and his kingdom.

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Now, let me get to work doing that. And then I need money to live. So money's part of it.

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Sure. But that's not the priority. And I know Jake has a lot he talks about on that topic. Well, I don't necessarily know what you're talking about there,

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Bruce. But oh, great. All right. I enjoy things, you know. But I mean, you know, we first of all, first of all, we've talked about this on our show before.

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We actually just recently did a did a whole two part series on talking about overworking and stuff like that and talking about how we've created.

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And if we don't have God as our God, if we're not following God and everything, we're making something else our

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God. And, you know, that goes against the myth of neutrality. Well, yeah, it's the myth of neutrality saying that, well, you know, you don't have to believe in a religion.

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No, there will always be a religion that you believe in. You will always have a belief, faith. And and so if you don't have

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God controlling everything in your life, you will have something else. And in this case, it's it's money.

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And so you're you're following money. You're following the pursuit of that. And I what

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Bruce was saying just just before he finished, he was talking about and it brought up a verse that we've explained on the show before is that we must seek first the kingdom of God and all these things shall be added unto you.

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And all those things that it's talking about earlier in the verse, it talks about all of the belongings, all of your clothing, what you shall eat.

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And it's talking about money as well. Our first thought and our first seeking should be of the kingdom.

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We should be seeking the kingdom first and then money and and then feeding your family.

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And then all these things will be added unto you. Yeah. Once you realize that that kingdom is so much broader than just collecting a few, saving a few souls from a few countries.

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Right. Once you realize the breadth of the kingdom of God, it's literally every area of life.

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It's Christ's command to go and make disciples of the nations, make the nations into disciples for Christ.

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Then it's like, oh, my goodness, we got to work it out for us. Yeah. Yeah. So much we have to do here.

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But on the other side of that, too, and this is and tell me what you guys think about this. I think in the last probably 70 years within the

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Western church, we have forgotten that God is a generational God, that he works also generationally.

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Right. And we look through Proverbs when we see a wise man leaves an inheritance for his children and his children's children.

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Right. Even in those Proverbs, we see generational and God is generationally.

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Exactly. As promised to generations. Right. So we also sometimes get overwhelmed and go, oh, geez, this is a lifelong mission here to disciple the nations.

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How am I going to accomplish that? Oh, well, you probably won't, because not only is it your lifelong, but it's generationally right.

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Yeah. Then we have to shift that thinking now into our profession and into businesses.

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And this might get us into our second topic of Kingdom Dominion in business.

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And we've talked about this before in the podcast. So now we have to think generationally and what we're doing with either the business we own, the business we're an influencer at, what our profession is.

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How do we do that pragmatically as well, too? And I just want to say I enjoy talking to you guys about this because you guys are from the next generation.

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You're a little bit younger. You fit 50 percent of my demographic who listens on this podcast under the age of 25.

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So I want you to speak to them, too, as young men who are going, you know, like a Jacob who says, look at I have, you know, my life ahead of me and I'm going to culinary school.

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And you're making those decisions based on the kingdom. But how do we look at that also generationally, too? Yeah, so I think for that particular demographic, the hard thing right now,

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I one. This is going to get very, very practical, little detailed. But I love it.

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Let's do it. I'll keep it brief. I promise. Go as long as you want. OK. But one of the nice things that's occurred over the last,

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I would say, five to six years is a push away from college. You know, you had this massive push.

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I don't know when it started. 70 years ago, maybe 50 years ago. You know, go to college, get a degree.

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You know, that was the thing, you know, like you have to go to college or you're not going to get a job. You have to get the certificate that allows you to work.

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And it's like, but I don't need a degree or I'm going to college and I don't know what degree

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I want to get. I'm going to college to figure out what to get a degree. And meanwhile, I'm wasting thousands of dollars on courses that with information

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I'll never need. That's mostly a lie. Anyways, let's be honest. It's full of indoctrination.

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Or skewed towards an agenda. Exactly. Yep. Completely biased. So so anyways, all of that, thankfully, we're pushing now away.

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I can give my experience. I went to college for two years online through a

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Christian college. And so I have two years of a computer science degree, bachelor's degree in computer science.

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But at the same time, I was offered an internship because I was that I was 17.

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I was doing dual enrollment through high school. But I was offered an internship by a local a local company because four years prior to that,

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I'd started my own company teaching kids and adults software engineering and robotics and circuitry and soldering and all that kind of stuff.

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So that put me on the radar of a local company, offered me an internship. I went through them. Then they paid for me to go through a nine month long, super rigorous boot camp that took up all my evening hours.

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And anyways, that that was huge, huge amount. I learned more in that course. I learned basically the equivalent of a four year degree in computer science in a nine year boot camp.

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That was a quarter of the cost. And so after that, I ended up that was four years ago.

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I'm on my second job. I've gone to another company now, you know, was able to interview.

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Didn't need the college degree on my resume. And I actually talked to my college advisor and he he was like, yeah, you don't need this degree.

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I recommend you don't continue because you don't need this. So, yeah, we need more kids be.

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And I say all of that. To inspire people. And Jacob can talk to his his position as well, because he's kind of taking the same sort of route, going to go a slightly different way, but the same sort of thing.

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We you don't need to look to college as your way to figure out what you're good at, especially if you're homeschooled.

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The cool thing about being homeschooled is that your parents should know you better than your teachers ever will.

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They know what your gifts and abilities are. They know your personality. They know what you enjoy doing, because what's really cool.

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What book is How to Be a Man? How to be a man by it was Michael Foster.

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Really? It's good to be a man. It's good to be a man. That's what is really, really good book. Talks about this as well.

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But then also Ralph Madsen in his book, How to Find a Job You Can Love, talks about that. It's God puts experiences in your life where you will find what you're good at.

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So let's say, for instance, you know, God put in my life. I was given a book on programming and I started going through that book and I found out

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I really enjoyed it. I loved building this game at 12 years old that I got to code and I got to see, you know, typing code that the computer understands and have it do something.

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And I was like, wow, this is so cool. So I kept going with it and turned out, yeah, this is something I really enjoy doing.

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So God puts experiences in your life that hopefully the people around you will recognize.

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Hey, he's he's really enjoying that. You know what? I wonder if he could turn that into a job. And most often you can't.

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Yeah. So it just comes down to, hey, what is it you really enjoy in your life? What do you think you're good at?

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Then work at that, develop that, and then money will come secondary. Money will be something you'll figure out later.

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Well, OK, so I have this skill that I've honed in over the years. Now, let me try and figure out how to make money with it.

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Yeah. And and it's not necessarily something I think you're given several different gifts and abilities, and you just have to hone in on one of them,

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I think, as Bruce was saying. And and like totally go into it as your career.

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For me, you know, there are lots of different things that I could have done. But for some reason that I was cooking dinners with my mom and stuff and, you know, doing all that type of stuff in it,

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I really enjoyed doing that. And so I was put into a cooking class where, you know, there were a bunch of other kids there learning how to cook as well.

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And around one of the first few classes, she the the person directing it, the person running it, she said,

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I'm going to give you a whole bunch of ingredients. I want you guys to come up with a meal, a recipe. Go, go and do it.

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And people were running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Everybody was running around. Right.

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And and so she stopped everybody and said, OK, you guys need someone to lead this.

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Pick one person, vote on them as your head chef. And it was basically a unanimous decision.

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That day that I was the head chef, I was the one telling everybody what to do, delegating. And by the end of that class, both the person running it and a couple other people around were saying, you really have good leadership skills to be able to manage people and run run people.

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And they were like, you should go and become a become a head chef. Now, at this point, it was already my kind of a goal to kind of become a chef.

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But to Bruce's point of college and everything, I shared my own personal story.

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But now now to speak to the broader argument here is of college. I don't want to go to college.

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I'm going to culinary school. And it's actually different than most other culinary schools. I think.

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This this culinary school that I'm going to, first of all, is online. It's completely and totally online.

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So I'm planning on doing culinary school while at home. So I don't have to go to an actual college.

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And it it's like it makes doesn't make a whole lot of sense for like culinary for me to be doing culinary online.

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But they figured out a way to do it. They've learned how to do it. And it's really amazing how how they actually do it.

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But I'm also not going into into college or culinary school to try and figure out what job

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I want to do. I already know what job I want to do. I already know where I want to go. And for for me, knowing what

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I want to do with my life going forward, I assessed and figured out I do need a little bit more education than just working in restaurants.

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If if you are a Christian chef who's trying to learn to be a Christian chef, if you if you want to be out there and just be a head chef in a restaurant or just like be a chef in a restaurant, then you do not need to go to culinary school.

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It is purely for the very fact that I want to own my own restaurant that I'm planning on going to culinary school.

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Otherwise, I wouldn't advise chefs to go to culinary school. Um, but. But, yeah, so.

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Yeah, no, those are two very good points. And I would just say, since we're on this subject to a few things

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I've learned over the years as well, too, and I've always said this. Look, I want my kids to have two things, a work ethic and to be curious.

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And if there are those two things there, there isn't a job that they wouldn't excel at as long as they're asking questions like why or how and then also having a godly work ethic.

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But that being said, too, I would also maybe add in there to both of your guys's points, anyone listening that is maybe at your age.

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Two things. One, when you graduate high school, let's say even early 16, 17, 18 years old, there's a lot of pressure to go right into that thing.

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OK, and when you're that age. All right. It feels like, hey, I need to get moving here. I'm out of high school.

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Let's get started on this, you know, track of whatever it is, whether it's finding a wife or starting a profession.

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It is so important to where if you are undecided still at that point, one year, two years, even three years into your early 20s, getting that foundation of of knowing exactly what skills and abilities the

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Lord has given you and fine tuning those. You can't get back the five years wasted between 18 and 23 of pursuing something that isn't what

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God had for you to pursue over taking that extra time, even if it's a year or two to go,

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OK, this is exactly I know what I want to do now. With that being said, there isn't anything wrong with career changes.

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Two is having a plan B and a plan C. Too many times

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I've seen young guys put everything, all their eggs in one basket, as they say. There is nothing wrong with pursuing culinary, pursuing coding, all those things, but also going.

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I also need to be. I also need to be grooming my my other skills for plan

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B and plan C. There might be a day when the culinary business isn't doing exactly what

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I need, need it to do or a downturn in the economy or coding or software engineering or whatever it is.

29:34

There is nothing wrong with having multiple streams of revenue or multiple streams, you know, plans that you can fall back on.

29:44

That's the cool thing about being homeschooled, too, is I can use my life as an example.

29:50

I mean, we played baseball growing up. We played we did karate. I earned my black belt when

29:56

I was 18. You know, like we did all sorts of music I teach at a local music school.

30:01

I teach guitar, cello, violin, upright bass, mandolin, a whole bunch of instruments that I learned through homeschooling, you know, like so when you're homeschooled,

30:11

I love it. You have the opportunity to learn all sorts of skills. You have the time because you're not waiting for everyone else in your class to be caught up to where you are or you're not having to do homework at night unless you didn't get it done during the day.

30:27

But, you know, your your homework is what you do. So you have your evening hours now to devote to learning music, devote to building a business when you're 12, you know, devote to all of these different things that you just don't have the opportunities to do in school.

30:43

Now, they try to do those in government indoctrination camps. They try to provide the extracurriculars.

30:48

They try to do all that. Yeah, it doesn't usually work. Yeah, it doesn't usually work. Because why? Why do they do it?

30:54

They don't do it because they what some of them, I'm sure, genuinely care about the kids. But the majority of them are doing it for the cash.

31:01

The majority of them are doing it because if they say, hey, we've got this program, it'll attract more parents, which means more kids, which means more money for them.

31:10

And B, they'll be able to get special grants because, yay, we get to we have to we have to build this stadium.

31:17

Right. And so that means we need we need grants or we we want this arts program. And so that means we need we need a special arts grant from the city or whatever.

31:27

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so like in the state of Michigan, it's price per pupil. So if they can show that they're providing some type of service, they can get a little bit higher price per pupil or they can dip into what's called millages, which is an additional tax on a property tax.

31:42

Like here in Monroe County, we have what's called a technology millage where they get an extra two point five million dollars or something every year to provide every student a

31:52

Chromebook and some other some other different things. But yeah, so here's the problem.

31:58

We're going to go two hours on this podcast if we start talking homeschool versus government indoctrination camps.

32:03

And I'm probably going to turn off some of the listeners, which is fine, because I think I've pretty much after two and a half years, it's all pro homeschoolers, pro reform about this podcast.

32:12

But just for just so you guys know where I'm coming from. I was homeschooled up to my sophomore year at high school and due to some family issues, went junior and senior year in public school.

32:23

So I saw what it was like the last two years. First of all, it was insane how far ahead I was stepping in in my junior year.

32:29

The classes they wanted me to take, I take it in sixth and seventh grade. Right. So I did the dual enrollment.

32:34

I had enough credits to graduate from a college with an associates by the time I graduated high school.

32:40

All those things. And I think it sounds like you guys are doing the same thing. Also, what you just said about having time to do all those extracurricular things, you teach music, you, you know, you do all these different things.

32:55

That isn't the exception to homeschoolers. When I talk to homeschoolers, that's usually the rule.

33:00

That's why, like I said earlier in this episode, we outperform public school now, charter and private.

33:07

It's a little bit closer, but we still outperform public charter and private in every single category at every single level in the 96 percentile.

33:17

That's insanity. If you're just looking at it from a cost effective point of view. Right. If you were like a

33:23

CPA and you said for one one hundredth of the cost, I can have 200 percent return.

33:29

That's insane. Why wouldn't we be doing that? Right. Also, too, I think, obviously, when you have a when you have a family, when you have a mother, presumably in the home, when you have a parent in the home at home and not working, not a dual income family that in and of itself makes it totally different on test scores.

33:50

Average income. That's another thing, too. If we want to get into that average income of a homeschooler is 40 percent greater than a public school.

33:58

OK, 40 percent, they earning 40 percent more, 10, 20, 30 years down the road in whatever avenue they're in.

34:04

So you're talking about money coming later. Don't worry about money. I would make an argument for anyone listening.

34:09

That's sending your child to a public school. And you're a believer. How about you reevaluate that?

34:15

Not only because it's it's the godly thing to do to raise up your child the way that they should go, but the educational benefits, but also the monetary benefits as well, too.

34:24

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I would say you guys are proof of that. I'm proof of that. You guys are proof of that. And what makes me really upset, maybe we'll round this out because I know we talked about it pre show.

34:33

We had Jen Wilkins, I believe, from the Village Church. I think it was the

34:39

Gospel Coalition debate. They have these like informal debates where they sit around in linen shirts and flip flops and talk about,

34:47

I don't know. It's not even a real debate, right? Like a real debate is like moderated. It's ridiculous.

34:54

But they're having a discussion. And she and we can I'll link this up to the to the program.

35:01

So you guys can look at it. I didn't have time to upload it so we could watch it right now. But essentially says something like, hey, you have to send your kids to public school because it affects the community.

35:10

You know, and we always hear the missionary argument, right? Oh, they're like little missionaries. I would argue your children are the mission field when you're raising them.

35:17

But, you know, yes. Heaven forbid, I quote the Bible. We've given the example of it's like you're sending a private to two months into the military with no armor, no weapons, no tanks and no backup onto the biggest battlefield that they ever fought in.

35:34

Yeah, let's just let's just drop off ten privates on Normandy. Yeah, you know what I mean? Yeah. There's also an argument to say that, you know, oh, you train them all the way up until high school and then send them into into the school during high school.

35:47

I think Bruce and I still even have a problem with that because I do, too. And so think of think of the most formative years of a child's life that that would be.

35:58

Well, I think up until 18, it's all formative. It's all a very formative year years.

36:04

But even the male does not stop firing synapses until 27 years old. So you could make an argument for a true adulthood being into your 20s.

36:14

But go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. Well, even those years, you have purity and going through several different emotional changes.

36:22

And it is probably some of the worst time to be sending a Christian into the public school in order to evangelize, which how much of that is actually going on and happening?

36:36

So, yeah. So what? So so what are Christians even thinking? What are we doing here when I have to have a conversation with a

36:42

Christian that looks me in the eye and says and says, oh, well, it's their mission field.

36:47

I'm going to send them to Rome for 12 hours a day, five days a week. More than that with extracurricular activities.

36:53

And they'll be OK because they go to youth group once a week and have a slice of pizza and listen to a and watch a

37:00

Christian movie. Like I'm pissed at Christian parents that talk that way. I used to be, well, you know, squishy on it.

37:07

Maybe you can send to maybe get. No, we're over. You know, it's done. Have you seen what's going on in public schools right now?

37:14

Like, what do we do with Christians that have those blinders on that don't understand their indoctrination camps, that don't understand their 13 year old daughter is going to see male genitalia in in the locker room that doesn't understand that they teach subjective morality every single day?

37:29

There is no God. They're God haters. 12 hours a day. What are we what are we doing? What do we say to those? I mean,

37:34

Christians, what I think we're looking at right now, and it helps to step back and look at how did we get here?

37:41

We're what we're looking at is the result of a century and a half of erosion, not just culturally, but in the church.

37:48

Doug Wilson in his book, Mother Kirk says, as goes the pulpit, so goes the nation. So, yeah,

37:53

I mean, where where your pulpit goes, where the church pulpit goes, that's the prow of the ship.

37:58

The rest of the ship is going to follow. And so when we have effeminate men now, you have he was talking about when was he?

38:08

Oh, he you know what? Doug Wilson gave a speech at New St. Andrews College a couple of weeks back. Was really, really good about pastors and about men in the pulpit.

38:17

There's this huge debate, especially in the SBC right now regards to women pastors in the pulpit.

38:24

Right. And here's the funny thing. He talked about how the pulpit has morphed.

38:31

We've morphed now into an effeminate position, basically. So it actually makes more sense for women to be in the church as a pastor right now because they better fulfill the role of the pastor.

38:42

As we've set it up right now. Why would you put men in the church, men in control who are by nature, competitive, more aggressive, who are going to push for progress, who are going to push for things instead of being super empathetic and emotional?

38:57

And let's sit down and have a talk. And let's do. Yeah, that's men don't excel at that. Generally, that's such a that's such a good point, because it's

39:05

I mean, look at any even most evangelical church services. It's Jesus is my boyfriend.

39:10

Worship songs. Right. Then it's a 20 minute sermon that doesn't offend anyone. That's very emotionally protective of your emotions.

39:19

You know, it's maybe a little light comedy. Generally, when the pastor, if it is male talking, he's self deprecating.

39:25

Oh, I'm just he takes this. He takes the sitcom approach. Just the dumb dad, the dumb father, the dumb guy.

39:31

My wife, she's smoking hot and she's smarter than me. And look at I get that. Wives are wise and and they're help mates.

39:38

And absolutely. But I literally heard I literally heard a pastor say, well,

39:43

I'm the head of the house, but the head's connected to the neck and the neck turns the head. And it's like, well, OK, what are we what are we trying to say there?

39:50

So you're absolutely right. We're sitting in an effeminate church for me. We aren't.

39:56

But I'm saying we as the general population of Western Christian church generally. Right. So, yeah, it makes more sense.

40:02

Why not have female pastors? Why not be an effeminate church when we're when we've been that way the last 50 years?

40:08

Yeah. And so what that led to was the church is meant to be the pillar and ground of truth, right? The church is meant to be the cultural center of holding on to truth while everything outside of it wants to erode it and go back to Satan's kingdom.

40:23

We say, no, yeah, we're in God's kingdom right now. Satan is not well on this earth. Christ is reigning.

40:29

Satan is bound. And so let's act like it. But the other side doesn't want to act like that because there's some natures want to drive the other way.

40:35

So so churches, churches should be holding them back. But now we've allowed dispensationalism.

40:42

We've allowed the non variety of historic premillennialism, the modern dispensational premillennialism.

40:49

We've allowed Arminianism. We've allowed liberalism. We've allowed all of these things to creep up in the last century and a half. Now, I'm not going to pretend that they didn't exist before, but they weren't nearly as prominent as they are today.

40:59

And I believe huge. All of that is just an erosion of scripture.

41:04

Now, if you erode scripture to the point where you don't know what's true, what's not a liberal theology says, hey, it's not inspired.

41:12

Right. We can just take it however we want to. It's just a nice book that gives me some warm feelings. Right. So so all of that leads to objective, like you were saying, objective morality, objective truth, which then leads to, well, why is my why is your worldview better than my worldview?

41:27

None of us can say. Right. Leads to modernism and now postmodernism and whatever we're in now, post postmodernism.

41:33

Right. Right. But but all of that together culminates to now a totally different world.

41:40

Couple that to the Industrial Revolution and you get mothers who are now not doing anything.

41:46

Right. Because it's like, oh, out of the Industrial Revolution, we need factory workers. So let's develop government schools where we make cookie cutter people that are all the same, put them in factories so that they do what they're told.

41:58

And that's how they live their lives. There's just a cog in the machine, if you will. Right. So all of that together, you can give a lot of different reasons.

42:07

But I personally, I believe and I trace it back to the church not remaining strong, not defending the word of God from the attackers.

42:19

And in the same way that, you know, when we fence the table for communion, are we defending the table or are we defending ourselves from the table?

42:28

We're defending ourselves, right? We're saying the judgment will come on you. That's what that's what the church should be doing with the word of God.

42:34

Hey, you take the word of God and you twist it. Judgment is going to come on you. And we're seeing that now instead of defending the word of God and saying, hey, don't twist this judgment will come on you.

42:45

We said, do whatever you want with it. We let effeminate men reign and they didn't guard the word.

42:51

They didn't guard people from misusing the word. And so now you get all of these distortions. Yeah, no.

42:57

So good. Did you have anything there? No, I do not. I did not. You look like you want to say something.

43:04

Oh, sorry. No. All right. Well, let's wrap this up. I know you guys are busy. You got other things to do today.

43:11

So, yeah. So let's take it out on this. So you guys are kind of in that stage of your life where you are in the beginning of your careers.

43:21

You know, you're looking at this this dominion mandate. So as we go out here, what would be something you might want to tell listeners that are saying, how can

43:32

I practically, pragmatically fulfill the dominion mandate in my profession as a man, as a young man?

43:40

So so actually, I do have something to say. Oh, he has something to say on that one. All right. Yeah, I think

43:46

I think Bruce will know exactly where I'm going with this in the myth of sacred versus secular. And I have said this several times on the show is

43:56

I I hate it when people use the term or the phrase that God's word does not tell us how to buy a car or God's word does not tell us what color car we should buy.

44:10

I hate that phrase because it's not true. When when we're buying a car,

44:16

God's word tells us to be thrifty, to be wise with our money. Are we buying a car that is super expensive and then we can't fully pay off?

44:26

Are we going to go into massive amounts of debt in order to buy this certain car? There we go. Now God's word is telling us how to buy a car.

44:35

To even so painting your car, not painting your car, buying a color car. God's word does talk about buying what color car you should buy, because is that color car going to be more expensive than another?

44:47

Again, going back to the thriftiness. But also. Are we buying that color car as a showy thing?

44:56

Are we buying that so other people will look at it and say, oh, that's a cool car? Are we buying it because of that?

45:03

And we can that is that is jealousy, that is pride. And again, the Bible does talk about that.

45:09

And I move this into the work area to say that all of what we do should be governed by the word of God.

45:20

Yeah, that's good. Speaking about specifically in my instance of the job that I do, you can apply this to whatever job you're doing.

45:31

Let's talk about onions. How do you cut onions is unto the Lord. How do you do that?

45:36

It it seems OK. You cut an onion the same way anybody else would cut an onion.

45:43

And yes, that may be true. You you cut that onion the same way. But you have a different mindset going into it.

45:49

When you're when a Christian goes to cut an onion, he should be doing it differently than when an unbeliever cuts an onion.

45:57

And at least that is in mentality and thinking in the smallest sense. When you're going to cut an onion, obviously you want to cut that onion in a way that is pleasing in that dish.

46:11

I'm not going to make a soup and cut the onions this this thick so that when someone eats a soup, they're going to bite into a huge piece of onion.

46:21

And in that there is the difference between the Christian versus the unbeliever in cutting an onion.

46:28

Now, there are several, several chefs who are unbelievers who will know how to cut an onion in that way.

46:37

But they won't go at it with the mindset of, well, I'm doing this as unto the

46:42

Lord. I want to make sure that this is going to be the best that I can make it for the glory of God.

46:48

They're doing it for a paycheck. They're doing it so that they can say, all right,

46:54

I'm pushing the soup out and then I'll I'll get some money for either for working for so many hours or just if they own the business, then they're getting money from from the customers.

47:06

However, a Christian looks at it. I want to be hospitable to these people. I want them to enjoy their experience here because God tells me that I should.

47:16

God tells me that I should want them to be happy and I should be hospitable. And and that is why you cut an onion differently as a

47:25

Christian. And this applies to so many different areas, so many different subsections of your job.

47:33

Something that I've said on our show before is that go through your job when you're working in your job at at any moment.

47:41

As soon as you think of what I'm saying right now, stop and think about exactly what you're doing.

47:47

What what are you doing at that current moment? And then how can you do what you're doing at that current moment to the glory of God?

47:54

How can you do it? That is Christian. That is purely Christian. What if you're walking at the time, how do you walk as unto the

48:04

Lord and think about that? What what are the verses that talk about that? What what do we what do we do with that?

48:12

And just every single aspect, just stop and think, why are you doing what you do and how can you do it to glorify

48:19

God? Yeah. Yeah, that's really good. And I would just tack on to the end of that just for a little explanation for those listening to,

48:25

I would say, you know, when we're talking about do everything unto the glory of God, well, how do we glorify God?

48:30

We reflect his character. What is the character of God? Well, then we're doing things with quality, with excellence, with justice, with with all those things in mind, the care with duty, the character of God reflected in our work.

48:44

So in those examples you just gave, which were really two good examples, even the minute things of chopping an onion, walking, speaking to a coworker, completing a report, doing a task, we're saying we're doing it for the glory of God, OK, which is a general command.

48:59

But in that, what is the glory of God? Well, it is to reflect who God is and everything that we do in his character are all those things that we just listed.

49:06

So keeping those in mind, like you saying in those daily tasks that I'm one of the really great lost more recently is is this appreciation for beauty that we used to have.

49:18

And we're going through angels in the architecture book right now, which is really great book talking about medieval

49:25

Protestantism. You know, we look at early days of America and we think, oh, that was like a

49:31

Christian nation. And yeah, it was. But where did that come from?

49:37

Well, it came from Israel. Yeah, it did. It did. Yes. But we think America was one of the first cultures or societies to be

49:45

Christianized. And we couldn't be farther from the truth. We're like the fifth or sixth in line. There are so many before us that succeeded at that.

49:52

And we need to look at those examples. So anyways, angels in the architecture looks at medieval Protestantism, the richness of their society, the richness of biblical understanding in the medieval mind was incredibly astounding.

50:07

And from that period, you get incredible music. We're still analyzing today. You get art.

50:13

We're still analyzing today. You get poems that we still read today. And we're just like, wow, I wish people today wrote like that.

50:19

You know, you get all of these things because these people, they didn't just have a duty. They didn't just say, all right,

50:25

I'm a robot created by God. I will do what I'm commanded. They weren't just robots. They were

50:31

I want to worship God. I want to use beauty. I want to use art.

50:36

I want to use emotion. I want to use all of my being on a cultural level to worship

50:42

God and do everything for his glory. So they created beautiful music for God.

50:47

They created beautiful poems, art, architecture, the cathedrals we still have from that period of time.

50:55

I mean, just and we've lost so much of that because today we're pietistic Gnostics, basically.

51:01

I mean, yeah, we're the we're the frozen chosen who are just like building these tin can looking churches that are so boring to look at.

51:12

But we could have spent a few years saving up, building a beautiful cathedral like what they're doing in Moscow, Idaho.

51:17

It took them 30 years, but they're building this massive, beautiful cathedral that Christ Church is going to be in within,

51:24

I guess, a couple of years. But they're really taking their time. They built this beautiful layout. It's it's going to be a beautiful cathedral like what they used to build, because that's not to say that's why we hold this balance between idolatry.

51:38

We don't want idolatry. We don't want to worship the things of this world, but also who created the things of this world. Yeah. And and who commanded us to use those things for his glory and to use them well, so.

51:52

No, no, it's very good. All right. So let's let's let's head out here. So final thoughts from both

51:58

Bruce and Jacob, if you guys have one and then make sure you throw out and we'll link all this up where people can find the website, where they can listen to the podcast and anything you got going on.

52:10

Awesome. Yeah, well, I guess final thoughts would be we were created to work.

52:16

You know, that's part of the dominion mandate is we were created to work. We were created to take dominion over this earth.

52:22

Work was before the fall. It's not a result of the fall. So don't despise work and and study that.

52:30

Look at how the Bible, the Bible has so much to say about how you should work. So that's just kind of my final thoughts.

52:36

We we have the reformer centers has a website, TRD show dot net. And so we have a list of links to all the platforms we're on on that website.

52:46

So that's probably just the easiest way. We're on Facebook, Instagram, Gap, Getter, Rumble. YouTube is not letting us post content this month.

52:53

So we have two strikes. So watch our content on Gab TV and Rumble.

53:00

And then also we have a whole bunch of podcasting platforms, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, all the usual ones.

53:06

So, yeah, I guess I guess my final thoughts would be kind of a call to action in a sense would be the same as our our outro for our show and making sure that in everything that we do, we do it as unto the

53:20

Lord and and that we are searching through the scriptures to figure out what that means, that in everything and everything that we're doing, like like I was saying before, stopping through your work and looking at what you're doing and trying to figure out how you can do it in a biblical way.

53:36

Make sure you're using scripture to figure that out. We're not just using our own brains here. Our hearts are deceitful above all else who can know it.

53:46

And so we have to go to God and we have to figure out wisdom by using the fear of the

53:51

Lord. We have to fear the Lord first before we can understand wisdom and knowledge. Yeah, that's good stuff, guys.

53:58

Guys, Bruce, Jacob, thank you so much for being here, taking some extra time with us today on the podcast.

54:04

Guys, for those listening, make sure you check them out. I know I keep saying young guys, but I'm saying

54:10

I'm not saying it like to keep pointing out the age difference, because there is probably 18, 20 years between us.

54:17

But the fact is, if you go listen to them, they are the next generation coming up.

54:22

You can listen to my podcast. You're not going to be listening to things of, oh, well, I have a personal story about something

54:28

I did in college. I'm past that. So there are some very there are some very specific things that these guys talk about for young men that are listening to this podcast that it would really encourage you to go listen to them, because not only are they godly young men of God, but they are talking about things in that age group that that need to be talked about that aren't being talked about that often for guys their age or that stage in their life.

54:54

So I really appreciate what you got, what you two are doing on the podcast and what you're talking about.

55:00

I think it's very needed. I think that's why you have such a following and and why people are listening to what you're saying, because you're putting

55:07

God first in everything that you do. So I appreciate you being here, talking with us. Thank you. And hopefully we can hear those episodes coming out for years and years to come.

55:16

How you do three a week, I'll never know. God bless you. You just have to have that energy.

55:22

But guys, thanks so much for listening. As always, you can check out DMW podcast dot com to find out more about us.

55:27

Bruce, Jacob, thanks so much for being here. As always, guys, chief and demand is to glorify

55:33

God. Enjoy him forever. God bless. Be sure to follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Dead Man Walking Podcast for full video podcast episodes and clips or email us at dead men walking podcast at Gmail dot com.