Ep 260: Wealth and the New Testament | A Response to John Barclay

In this episode I respond to John Barclay’s contribution to the book New Testament Ethics (out now on Eerdmans) entitled Wealth: The Deep Challenge of the New Testament. Much of Barclay’s arguments are excellent. He contends that the question of wealth is a major theme in the New Testament which has been overlooked by Western scholars and that the treatment of wealth is a distinctive feature of Christian discipleship. He argues that wealth is inherently dangerous and can compromise Christian faithfulness and result in injustice, and that the writers of the New Testament were operating within an eschatological framework which calls for a radical disinvestment of wealth, using it for the sake of the kingdom, which is a sharing in the grace of God. While I agree wholeheartedly with Barclay’s assessment, he overstates his conclusions. He argues that the only good wealth is given or shared and implies that believers should not be concerned about financial management, passing wealth onto children, investments, or savings. I think he pushes these conclusions too far, and I respond by discussing how capital accumulation is the most effective method for alleviating poverty, the problem of the Jerusalem church in the New Testament, the many characters in the New Testament that do not give all of their wealth, and the responsibility for work and financial stewardship found in passages such as 1 Thessalonians 4 and 2 Thessalonians 3. I suggest that the great churchman John Wesley has a better model for thinking about wealth; while recognizing the dangers of wealth, it is also an effective means of building the kingdom when used for God’s glory. Wesley suggested that believers earn all they can, save all they can, and give all they can, and that Wesley’s approach to wealth corresponds with the Biblical witness and is the proper response to the otherwise excellent scholarship in Barclay’s contribution. 

Media Referenced:

1 Thessalonians 4 episode: https://libertarianchristians.com/episode/ep-186-work-with-your-hands-1-thessalonians-49-12/

2 Thessalonians 3 episode: https://libertarianchristians.com/episode/ep-187-no-work-no-food-2-thessalonians-36-13/

Jesus and Capitalism: https://libertarianchristians.com/episode/ep-180-jesus-and-capitalism/

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Transcript

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This is the Protestant Libertarian Podcast, a project of the Libertarian Christian Institute and part of the Christians for Liberty Network. I really hope that you guys enjoy today's show. All right, guys, welcome to another episode of the Protestant Libertarian Podcast. Recording once again from my brand new studio with my new computer and my new microphone. So we should be looking a lot better in 1080 and sounding exactly the same as we did before, but still, the podcast is looking up. So I want to talk to you guys today about a contribution to a book that I read recently that I thought was extremely relevant for the economic themes that we discuss on this show. The book is right behind me. Nope, other side. New Testament Ethics. It's new on Eardman's. I'm not sure if it's out yet, but probably by the time this comes out, it will be. And I was able to get an advanced copy of it from the publisher. And in there was an article titled Wealth: The Deep Challenge of the New Testament by John Barclay. Now, Eerdman's has been really good to me over the years. They've given me a lot of, like I've gotten a lot of advanced books from them, and they have done such a great job of hooking me up with the authors. And a lot of the best interviews I've done on the show have been with Eerdmans authors. There have been other, other publishers that are great to work with as well, but Eardman's has been particularly good to me. And I have another interview scheduled for this book with two contributors that will be in June. One of them lives in Europe, and so we had to work around his schedule. But I reached out to the publisher and asked if John Barclay, the author of Wealth, The Deep Challenge of the New Testament, wanted to come on. And the publisher said he was just too busy to fit into a schedule, which I totally understand. John Barclay is a very prolific New Testament scholar. I think he teaches at the University of Durham in England. And I actually believe that he took over James Dunn's seat after Dunn passed away or when Dunn retired. So uh Barclay is a great guy. I've read a couple of his articles before and I've heard him appear in interviews, and I really like his work. He published this massive book, I think, in 2016 or maybe 2017 called Paul and the Gift, which is about Paul's concept of grace, which I've had my Amazon wish list or on my Amazon wish list ever since it came out. However, it's like $50, and since I get advanced copies of books, I don't like spending that much money on a book. But he did release a more popular level version of like a 200-page version of it a couple of years back, which I purchased after reading this article or this contribution in the book because I thought it was so well done. Uh, I wanted to see what he had to say. Now, with this chapter, I want to offer a response to it. And a part of me after reading the chapter was like, well, maybe I should make this one of my Ludwig von Mises versus a Christian scholar episodes, which I've only done three of in the 260 episodes I have of the show, but I swear I'm gonna do more because that's a really fun mini-series that I have going on. But I realize that I actually agree with most of what John Barclay has to say about wealth and our attitude towards wealth as Christians and the way that wealth is presented in the New Testament. There's not a lot to disagree with. I do think that he overstates some of his conclusions. And so I want to, in a very friendly way, respond to that. But I the article is extremely challenging and it calls us as Christians to reassess our commitment to our possessions and to our wealth. And there's there's a lot going on for it. Now, we're in a new era of the Protestant Libertarian Podcast, where instead of me talking into a microphone and reading from notes that I have taken before the show, I actually am developing slides that we will look through if you're watching on YouTube. Uh and again, like I said, we're we're more organized here than ever before. We're looking better than ever before. I got slideshows. Yes, my slideshows are in black and white. Um, and there's nothing fancy about them. But I personally am someone who doesn't need the aesthetics. I kind of like simplicity. So this slideshow works for me. I hope that it works for you too. So we're gonna go through some of these slides today. So if you're watching on YouTube, you can follow along. I'll have the passages on the screen, I'll have some of his main points on the screen. But if you're like the majority, the vast majority of my listeners who listen on the RSS feed, well, you can just enjoy listening to this episode as well. And if you want the references and the uh the images, you can go and check this out on YouTube. Again, I do very much encourage you to go to YouTube and subscribe to my show or just subscribe to my channel. It's at Pro Liberty Pod over on YouTube. Uh, I have a strike against my channel, and I have only recorded in 720 until like three episodes ago. So I need as much help as I can get. All right, so uh it's at Pro Liberty Pod on YouTube. Even if you don't regularly watch on YouTube, just give me a subscription or subscribe over there. That would really help out. So, anyways, enough about that. Let's get into the topic of today's conversation, which is wealth, the deep challenge of the New Testament. This is my response to John Barclay's article, which we will be diving into right now. So, John Barclay has a couple of foundational claims at the opening of his article that I think are really, really, really important for us to consider. And again, I know that we are libertarians and we believe in free markets, and we believe that free markets create an environment in which people can rationally save and make economic calculations and make responsible financial decisions, and that in free markets, people tend to save more than they consume and they tend to fall into debt at a much slower rate. So, again, all of that aside, we're we're we we know that free markets work as libertarians. And if you're not a libertarian listening to this episode, that's fine. Wait until the end. I'll address some of this stuff in in more detail towards the end. But we're gonna put all of that to the side and we're going to think about the way that we as Christians need to respond to wealth and possessions. And one of the foundational claims that Barclay makes at the very beginning of his contribution to this book is that wealth is an issue which is often overlooked by economically comfortable Western scholars and lay readers. And he's absolutely right about that. I remember being in a class in college where the professor made the point that the New Testament says a lot more about wealth and possessions than it does about sex. But we seem to have a lot of conversations about sex and sexuality in the Western Christian world. We don't have as many about possessions and about what we should do with our wealth and about the morality of wealth. And so I think he's absolutely right. There's not been, according to Barclay, a ton of scholarship done on this particular issue. There are some really great works out there, but not nearly as much as there should be. And it's very, very foundational to the way that the writers of the New Testament think about Christian disciples. And then, of course, when we get into churches, uh, you know, we place a much higher stigma on sexual sins, but we're okay with pastors living in gated communities and multimillion dollar houses, and we don't see seem to think that that is somehow morally impermissible. And I think that there are a lot of Americans that are very comfortable with wealth and decadence and with the debt that it often takes to get there and the consumption that it often takes to get there, that we've almost taken this issue and moved it to the side, even though, as Barclay correctly argues, it is extremely foundational for the writers of the New Testament. He also makes the point at the beginning of his article, and this is something I talk about in my book, which I think is really important for us to consider, the historic, economic, and cultural context of the New Testament is a lot different than our own. In fact, it's radically different than our own. And so we cannot superficially read what the writers of the New Testament say about wealth and possessions without trying to situate their commentary in their own historical context. We have to understand that the conversation has shifted. And this is exactly why I have made the claim on the show repeatedly and write a very long section in my book about the fact that socialism and capitalism and modern economic concepts are products of the Enlightenment and therefore not necessarily good heuristic tools for interpreting the New Testament because people in the ancient world would not have thought about economics in the same way that we do in the modern world. So we have to take that into consideration. And in fact, this is something that when I respond to some of the shortcomings or maybe overstatements that I think that Barclay makes in this contribution, we'll come back around to this, but I appreciated that at the outset of his work, he makes that point that we have to understand that the ancient economic context is radically different than the one that we are used to in the modern world. And Barclay also makes the point, and I think that this is absolutely correct, that this is a wedge issue for Christians. So this book that is behind me, New Testament Ethics, is a response to, or not it's not a response. It is a reconsideration, sounds too negative. Um, I guess really, it's a celebration of Richard Hayes' work on New Testament ethics that he wrote 20 or 25 years ago. And I gotta be honest, I never read the whole thing. I read a couple of chapters out of it. It's it's really great stuff. I didn't read the whole book, but I do like Richard Hayes a lot and I've read a lot of his work. I think he's he's great on a lot of issues, not so great on others. But Richard Hayes makes the argument in that book that non-violence is a make or break issue for Christian discipleship. Like Christians that engage in the initiation of violence cannot be Christians. Now, I don't think that Hayes ever did what libertarians know we should do and take that all the way to its logical conclusion and apply that to political and economic structures. I think that Hayes was plenty well fine with using arbitrary violence against peaceful people if it came to accomplishing political or economic ends. Um, but I appreciate that scholars like Hayes are at least putting it out there that nonviolence is a major issue for Christians. And Barclay is going to make the same point about the way that we treat wealth. And in fact, I have a quote directly from his article here where he says it is an utterly distinct feature of Christian discipleship. The way that we conceptualize and manage our wealth as Christians is, as Barclay says to repeat, an utterly distinct feature of Christian discipleship and something that should mark us out from the rest of the world. The way that we handle our possessions and the way that we handle our resources should distinguish us from those in the predominant culture and that there are actual limits to what Christians can and cannot do with their wealth and their possessions. I totally agree with that. And I think even if we're looking just at the foundational claims that Barclay is making here at the outset of his article, we have to agree that this is a challenge to a lot of modern American Christians and even a lot of modern American Christian libertarians, right? I think we tend to celebrate wealth. We tend to think that wealth is always a blessing. We tend to think that it's okay to want to acquire more wealth and to hold on to our possessions. But the New Testament has a different perspective than that. And that doesn't mean, also at the outset, that possessions are inherently bad, but it does mean that as Christians, we're responsible for checking our attitude with respect to wealth. So I wanted to get that out of the way because I agree with these foundational claims that Barclay makes at the outset of his article. Now, he's also going to set the way that he interprets possessions in the New Testament within an eschatological framework. And this is really appealing to me because, as I have argued at length, the writers of the New Testament all unanimously operate within a framework of inaugurated eschatology. It's this idea that the end has come into the present because of the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus. Because Jesus currently sits over the throne, many of the promises in the Old Testament are in the process of being fulfilled. Again, I'm not a full preterist. I don't believe that they have already been fulfilled. I think that they're in the process of being fulfilled. And so our eschatological convictions that we are living at the end of history has to shape our wealth. And the writers in the New Testament definitely believe that they were living at the end of history, that the ends of the ages had appeared. I want to read this section from his book, which I hope I'm not violating copyright law here. So Eerdmans, if I'm doing something I'm not supposed to do by showing bits and pieces of this, please email me and let me know. But uh, but here's a little section from his book. He says, um basically, in fact, what follows in his article may be read as calling out Christian hypocrisy, including my own, because the New Testament is, I believe, a lot more radical regarding wealth than we prefer to recognize. Totally agree with that. Barclay goes on. That has to do with its norm-shattering eschatology, sorry, and the way it figures the present as a crumbling reality from which we should disinvest in order to practice our investment in a very different future. As Paul puts it, the form of this world is passing away, 1 Corinthians 7.31, and a central part of that form is wealth, what you buy and what you keep, 1 Corinthians 7.30. Unless we recognize this eschatology, which points persistently to a future yet to arrive, and unless we grapple with it theologically, we are apt to misconstrue the New Testament material as a simple call for charity or stewardship, or alternatively, as a lightly Christianized version of Marxist materialism. In fact, something more interesting is going on that threatens to alter our coordinates at a fundamental level. I couldn't agree with what he says there more. Eschatology has to be at the front and center of everything that we do. And I don't know exactly how Barclay articulates his conception of New Testament eschatology, but you know, longtime listeners, that this is an issue we circle back to in pretty much every episode. In fact, I think two weeks maybe, um, the the episode that came out two weeks before this, we talked about Paul's commentary in 1 Corinthians 2, 6 through 8, where Paul says that the rulers of this age are passing away. And then also his statement in Romans, I'm sorry, in 1 Corinthians 10, 11, where he says, We are those upon whom the ends of the ages have come. So Paul is clearly operating within a framework of inaugurated eschatology. The kingdom has already arrived, even though it is yet to be fully consummated on the final day. Therefore, that should affect the way that Christians behave in the here and now, and that must necessarily impact the way that we understand our relationship with our possessions. So again, keeping eschatology in mind as we go through this is incredibly significant because the writers of the New Testament really had that belief. It's amazing how many Americans, it's not amazing because I think Western eschatology has been very flattened out and one-sided, and we have not really done justice to all of the dynamics of biblical eschatology. But in the West, we're used to thinking that the end is something that happens entirely in the future. And that is not at all what the writers of the New Testament think. And there's a very significant moral component to that issue, and that includes obviously well. So eschatological reorientation, very important part of Barclay's argument. Now, he is going to open up a section of his contribution with a recitation of 1 Timothy 6. In particular, I think he references verse 9. And I want to read this entire passage because I have a large section on this in my forthcoming book. And I think it's a really important passage and something that, regardless of your economic and political philosophy, right, regardless of whether you're a conservative socialism, a progressive socialism, or a free market libertarian, we all have to be aware that there are dangers to wealth. This has nothing to do with the means of production and who should own them and how to alleviate poverty and create prosperity. This is about morality, right? And what 1 Timothy 6 or what uh Paul is saying in 1 Timothy 6, 6 through 10 is something that Christians at all times and in all places must be must take into consideration. So here's what here's what Paul says, starting in verse 6. But godliness actually is a means for great gain when accompanied by contentment. So he introduces the idea of contentment. For we have brought nothing into the world, so we cannot take anything out of it either. If we have food and covering, with these we shall be content. But those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a snare, and many foolish and harmful desires, which plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some, by longing for it, have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. Now, you've heard in popular level sermons or in Christians who have been lifelong Christians, but maybe they're not as rooted in the Bible as they ought to be. You've heard people make the claim that money is the root of all evil and that that's a biblical concept, but it's not. What Paul says here in 1 Timothy 6 10 is that the love of money is the root of all sorts of evil. Sorry about that. That does not at all soften what Paul is saying here. He's saying that money can lead to some of the worst evil, and that many have longed for it and wandered away from the faith. So Paul clearly has in mind some specific individuals that were once a part of the faith that wandered away from the faith because of money. And going back to verse 9, which I left in bold on the slideshow, Paul says those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful desires, which plunge men into ruin and destruction. The restless drive to acquire wealth at all cost, putting one's focus and hope on becoming rich is a terrible temptation that will ruin your faith. And as Christians, we should learn to be content with what we have. Now, obviously, contentment looks different in the first century than it does in the modern industrialized 21st century. But that doesn't mean that what Paul is saying here is no less of a challenge to us today. I think that a lot of us, myself included, and Bar Barclay even has a comment on his own part in this problem at the beginning of the contribution, as we looked at before. We're all kind of complicit in this as modern Westerners. We have all in some ways chased after wealth and possessions that we don't really need. And that has led us away from our faith. That that has led us to focus on something other than the love of God and the love of other people. So he's, I mean, by quoting 1 Timothy at the beginning of his his contribution, he's making an incredibly important point. I think that every conversation about wealth, possessions, and Christian ethics should start with this passage. This is a very important one. Those who want to get rich will fall into temptation and absolutely destroy their lives. And I want you to think about that. I am sure that you guys know so many people, maybe not so many, but I'm sure you guys know at least a handful of people that have wasted their entire life working a job, like wrecked relationships with friends and family, given up everything they had just so that they could make money. And Paul says, we can't do that. So when Barclay claims that the way that we handle wealth and material possessions is an essential aspect of Christian discipleship, this is what he's talking about. That's a challenge there. And I I love that he I love that he introduces that at the beginning. So he identifies, Barclay does, three problems that the dangers of wealth can create. And I think that each of these problems is significant. So number one, he says that wealth constrains the freedom of disciples to do things that disciples ought to do. Number two, he says that wealth is a competing source of security and attachment, attachment. And then number three, wealth is likely to result from and lead to injustice. So I want to cover all of these in detail before we move on to Barclay's claim, which I just uh highlighted for those of you that are watching on YouTube, before I go on to Barclay's claim about how we should possess wealth. So all three of these are absolutely true. And I want to take a look at number one, that wealth constrains the freedom of disciples. And that is absolutely true. I mean, it's just a fact. Um, and again, in a modern industrialized world, we all have to work jobs. And you know, Paul says it multiple places in his letters, uh, 1 Thessalonians 4 and 2 Thessalonians 3, that Christians need to work. And I guess you'd throw, you'd even throw in 1 Timothy 5 for that matter, right? The Christians need to provide for themselves first, right? So we have to work. However, the higher up we get in the latter, the more work demands our attention. And the less time that we have for people, the less time that we have for church, the less time that we have for our family, the less time that we have to do things that lead to discipleship and that advance the kingdom of God. So the pursuit of the acquisition of wealth constrains our freedom to go and do things. Like if you are spending 70 hours a week at work, you can't go and serve at a food pantry. You can't be in a literacy group that helps kids learn how to read. You can't lead a small group. You just can't do that. And so the acquisition of wealth can constrain your freedom. And here's something that I think a lot of us deal with, like a lot of us understand this. The more wealth you have, the more you have to maintain that wealth. So it's great to have a large house and everything. Actually, I don't really think it is great to have a house that is larger than what you need. Um, but the larger your house is, the larger your property is, the more time you're gonna have to spend cleaning and maintaining and fixing. And that also takes away from your ability to surf others and build the kingdom. The more entertainment options you have, the more video game consoles you have, the more televisions you have, like all of this wealth, the things we have, the more vehicles that you have, right? Like all of these things constrain our freedom as disciples to go and build the kingdom of God. Now, I'm gonna argue at the end that like we need to have these things, um, but we should be very careful and moderate in what we have, and we should not allow our possessions to constrain our freedom. Look, I know I like my wife and I, we live in a fairly small three bedroom ranch home on like a half an acre of property. We have two vehicles, right? I would say that we're in terms of historical. Like in terms of historical levels of wealth and in terms of global levels of wealth, like we're doing extremely well for ourselves. But we don't have much compared to, or we don't have, we don't have as much as many other Americans have. Like we're not living the quintessential American dream of having a massive house and nice cars and all of that kind of stuff. But even with the little bit that we have, it takes way more time for me to maintain all this than I would like. And so I have to reckon with that. This wealth that I have does constrain my freedom. And so that's something that we have to grapple with. And Barclay's right to point that out and highlight it. He also talks, number two, about how wealth is a competing source of security and attachment. Like we are supposed to be secure in our relationship with God, our sense of value, our sense of purpose, our sense of worth. This should come from the relationship that we have with God and our participation in God's family, the family of Abraham, the church. We're united to each other through the Spirit. And that should be the foundation of our identity. But the problem is that it's very easy for us to think that because we have a nice job, that because we drive a nice car, because we live in a nice house, because we have nice things, that we're secure, that we have everything that we need. And it becomes a lot easier to be attached to our material possessions than it is to God and his church. And again, if you're trying to manage everything that you own, the more and more that you own, the more by necessity, by default, you're going to have to be attached to the things that you love. So wealth is always going to be a competing source of security and attachment. And there's the temptation to idolatry there that we as believers might actually wind up putting our hope in what we have instead of putting our hope in God and his Messiah and the mission of the church. Also, number three, wealth is likely to result from and lead to injustice. Now, thankfully, we live in a world where there are at least a few glimmers of the free market left. So people can become very wealthy in the modern world simply by providing a good or a service that makes people's lives better that they voluntarily purchase. Absolutely true. And there are a lot of people that become wealthy that way. And I think that's great for them because that's the market rewarding them for providing us with things that make our lives better. That's awesome. But we all know, especially as libertarians, that there are a lot of people that become wealthy because of their connections to injust systems. Think about the people that work for the military-industrial complex. If you're getting a paycheck from Raytheon or Boeing or Lockheed Martin, and your job is literally to prop up the warfare state, you might be wealthy, but your wealth is a result of injustice. You're not building the kingdom of God, you're tearing it down in a very brutal and barbaric manner. It's the same thing for really all public employees. And I look, I'm a public employee too. This is something that I wrestle with morally and um and philosophically. Uh, if you're a public employee and you're not providing any value to the public, then you're just taking their money from them, right? That's all unjust. And in the ancient world, as I've explained, or I as I'm going to explain in my book when you guys buy it and read it, in the ancient world, the majority of those that were wealthy were not wealthy because of the free markets. It wasn't because they were providing goods and services that were awesome that people wanted to buy. It was because they used the power of the state to appropriate and expropriate material resources from people that were living just above subsistence level, right? So wealth is, and in the modern world, we know that this is what happens. It's no accident that the wealthiest counties in the country are all around Washington, D.C. Wealth is all is often a result of injustice. And this does happen in the private sector too. I'm not saying that capitalism is beautiful and that it uh, I mean, I do think capitalism is beautiful in its own way, but capitalism is not perfect because human beings are not perfect in our experience are not perfect. There are plenty of businesses that are built through injustice, through lying, through taking advantage of their employees, uh, by breaking contracts or making nebulous contracts, by cooking the books. Like there are all kinds of ways that people become wealthy from unjust means. And a lot of wealth also leads to injustice. People that become very wealthy often like to maintain that wealth. And so they will do whatever it takes to maintain it. And if they have to lie, cheat, steal, even kill, whatever it takes to maintain their wealth, they will do it. And this isn't just true of corporate executives, it is true of government bureaucrats. And I would say it's even more true of government bureaucrats in a lot of ways. Government bureaucrats will sell themselves out for a much smaller price point than their private sector counterparts, right? I've unfortunately, being in education, known a lot of people that get promoted to the bureaucracy and then sell their entire soul so that they can make a little over six figures a year. It's pretty sad. And then they wind up perpetuating systems that are harmful to the people that they're supposed to help. It's it's Barclay's right, basically is the point that I'm trying to make is that wealth is likely to result from and lead to injustice. And any analysis of wealth must take that into consideration. So Barclay is going to go on to argue that the only good wealth is wealth that is either given or shared. Here's where we're going to start to get into the area of his argument. We're going to offer a little pushback. I like the intention of what he's saying here. And I'm going to read it to you in just a second, especially if you're listening on the RSS feed. I like the intention of what he's saying, but I think he might overstate his case a little bit. Here's what Barclay says: the only good wealth is wealth given or shared. It is only after we have heard this loud alarm concerning the dangers of wealth, which I just talked about, that we can properly appreciate what the New Testament says about the uses of wealth. Although it offers multiple examples of ways in which wealth might be dispersed and shared, it is united on one thing. Wealth is not to be increased, hoarded, or even simply enjoyed. It is to be given to or shared with others. Commentators rightly know that there is no single matter for how this should take place, no rule or template for all people in all circumstances. And again, the New Testament has a very diverse witness for how people should respond to their wealth, but I think he's pretty much right that wealth is something that should be given and shared. Um Barclay goes on, but what is frequently left unobserved is what is absent. There is no encouragement to acquire more wealth, to build up supplies for the future, to pass on a good legacy to one's children, to enhance one's standard of living, or even just to enjoy all the good things that money can buy. Money is good for only one thing, it is to be given or shared. From what we have seen above, we can understand why there is nothing positive about wealth other than this. But as we shall see now in the dispersal and sharing of wealth, what is at stake is not just the distribution of something inherently dangerous to keep, but also a positive value, the opportunity to participate in the self-sharing grace of God. So there's a lot of good here, and there's a lot that I want to push back on and will push back on once we get to the very end of his argument here in just a minute. But what I really take issue with is what, if you're watching at home, comes between the two passages that I underlined where he says that there's no encouragement to acquire more wealth, build supplies for the future, pass a good legacy onto one's children to enhance one's standard of living, or even just to enjoy all the good things that money can buy. I do think there are some issues there. We at least need to nuance that in a way to reflect on how we should positively and responsibly manage our wealth. I do think that he gets some of this a little bit wrong, or he might even maybe overstate his case a little bit. And we're going to circle back to that here in just a minute. But I wanted to leave that as an indicator. I agree with everything he said up to this point. I think he might be pushing his argument just a little too far there. So basically, as he goes to summarize his points that, or as he goes to summarize his conclusions there, that the only good wealth is wealth given or shared. Here are the two main points that he makes. Again, to steel man the argument that Barclay is putting forward in this contribution. Number one, believers are called to renunciate wealth. Um, and the evidence that he provides is spans the entire New Testament canon from the Gospels, Acts, Paul, and beyond. It demonstrates that, to quote Barclay, everybody is depicted as making whatever they possess accessible to others. I agree with that. Believers are called to renunciate wealth, right? What we have is a gift from God, and we must always use it with the idea that we are using it to serve other people. I totally agree with that. And this is going to be one of the corollaries to the points that he made above on the previous slide. He also says that giving and sharing is a participation in the grace of God, which I also completely agree with that. Um, he says one of his sub points is that charity is primarily but not exclusively directed towards fellow believers. That is a really important concept to consider. Uh, that the witness of the New Testament, if you look at the book of Acts, Acts chapter two and Acts chapter four, if you look at 1 Timothy 5, if you look at 1 Corinthians 8, uh, if you look at 1 Corinthians 16, I'm sorry, that should say uh 2 Corinthians 8. There's another another typo. Here we go. This that should say 2 Corinthians 8 and 1 Corinthians 16, we will see that among the earliest believers, their primary responsibility was other members in the church, that charity should be distributed primarily to those. Giving itself, this is going to be the second sub point under two, giving itself is an act of embodied cruciform grace. Now, I added the term cruciform, but the idea is that we are basing our giving and our wealth renunciation and our attitude towards our possessions on the cruciform, sacrificial example of Jesus. So giving is in itself an act of embodied cruciform grace. By giving, we are being an example of and a witness to Christ's sacrifice for us on the cross, the sacrificial mentality of Jesus. So giving is making our translating our faith into this observable sign of what Jesus did for us. We're setting, we're showing the example of Christ on the cross by renouncing our wealth and giving to others. And of course, one of the passages that bring this together, uh, 2 Corinthians 8, 8.1 in particular, where he Paul uses the term grace, but 2 Corinthians 8, 1 through 5, here's what Paul says. And I think this corresponds with his two main points. Now, brethren, we wish to make known to you the grace of God, which has been given in the churches of Macedonia, that in a great ordeal of affliction, their abundance of joy and their deep poverty overflowed in the wealth of their liberality. For I testify that according to their ability and beyond their ability, they gave of their own accord, begging us with much urging for the favor of participation and the support of the saints in this, not as we had expected, but they first gave themselves to the Lord and to us by the will of God. So we can see a lot of these ideas coming together here, that the believers in Macedonia did not have very much. Paul's talking about the contribution to the Beleaguer Church in Jerusalem. So this is what's this is the historical background of that. A large part of Paul's ministry that often goes unnoticed, interestingly enough, is that when Paul was traveling around the Mediterranean, he was making a collection for the church in Jerusalem who is suffering severe poverty, uh, most likely as the result of a famine. And his intent was to take that collection back to the church in Jerusalem to benefit the church in Jerusalem. And in fact, that's why he winds up in Jerusalem and gets himself arrested in Acts. We we we've often missed that part of the story, but he's trying to encourage the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians 8 to make good on a promise that they had previously made to Paul that they would give uh amount of money to help out the church in Jerusalem. And so he is writing to the Corinthians and he uses the Macedonian church, a group of believers that was to the north of Corinth, as an example of what true giving should look like. In the church in Macedonia, they were not wealthy at all. They gave to Paul beyond their ability, and not because Paul asked them to give, but because they wanted to participate in supporting the saints. Um, and then Paul says in verse 5, they first gave themselves to the Lord and then to us by the will of God, and then they gave their gift to help out the church in Jerusalem. And Paul refers to this in 8.1 as the grace of God. So the gift that these believers gave was an extension, an example of the grace of God, the Macedonian offering to the Jerusalem church. So again, what Barclay says here in his two main points, or the two main points that we get from his concept that the only good wealth is wealth given or shared, I entirely agree with them. Believers are called to renunciate wealth. Our wealth should always be given for a higher purpose, used for a higher purpose. And if we have it, we should be willing to use it when needs arise. And giving and sharing is a participation in the grace of God. We show others the grace of God, we show his love for us, we show um others the sacrifice that Christ made on the cross by having a giving attitude. So giving and sharing is a participation in God's grace. I think he's correct about all of these points. So I want to emphasize that. So I think that all of this is really good. And then, of course, I'm gonna read Barclay's conclusion here before we move on to my critique. Again, critique seems like a very strong word because I agree with a lot of what he's saying here, but I think it needs to be nuanced and I want to push back on some areas that I think that he overstates. So he says this in his conclusion the New Testament authors really believe that the forms of this world are passing away and we're prepared to surrender their money, their homes, their families, and their lives in the hope of something better. It is only on this basis, I think, that we can understand why they were so unconcerned about, often even hostile towards, the accumulation, investment, or good management of wealth. The only good use of wealth, in their view, is gift, because only there can the ultimate and lasting values of divine love or compassion be realized. They envisaged many, they envisage many different forms in which this giving, sharing, pooling, or loaning of resources could take place. And they identified many practical and theological reasons why this was the appropriate use of wealth. This was more than merely an attitude of detachment or the unevidenced claim that one's highest loyalty is to God. It required regular practices of disbursement and sharing if it was to be authentic at all. Again, there's really nothing that is offensive or uh offensive, again, offensive is not the right word. There's really nothing objectionable about his conclusion here. I do agree broadly with Barclay that this is what the writers of the New Testament believed. Now, the section in parentheses that they were hostile towards the accumulation, investment, or good management of wealth. I don't agree with that. But I do agree with what he says about how Christians should be willing to surrender their material possessions for the sake of others, and that we have to demonstrate that we are not holding on to our possessions by regularly giving to those in need. You have to regularly practice disbursement if you are authentically committed to the New Testament's conception of shared wealth. The only good wealth is shared wealth, according to Barclay, right? So all of this is good. Um he, since this is a Protestant libertarian podcast, relies on three passages to back up his claim. And I want to read through these passages because they are really important. And as we start to think about the relationship between Christianity, discipleship, and wealth, these are three passages that we should take into consideration. So I'm going to read them real quick and then we're going to circle back finally to maybe giving a little bit of pushback to Barclay on some of the comments that he made that I thought went a little too far. So James 2, 14 through 17, James says, What use is it, my brethren, if someone says he has faith, but he has no works, can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, Go in peace, be warned, and be filled, and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that? Even so, faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself. Okay, great, love it. First John 3, 16 through 18, John says, We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoever has the world's goods and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him? Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but indeed and truth. Going back to what Barclay was saying earlier about enacted disbursement. If we see that there is somebody in need and we have something and we don't help them out, then we don't really love them like God loves us, right? So by giving, we're emulating the love of God. And then of course there's Matthew 25. Uh, this is just a piece of Matthew 25, but he's talking in in this passage, Jesus is talking about the eschatological judgment. And like everything in the like everything in Jesus' final week, in the the the passion narratives and the temple narratives at the end of the synoptic gospels. This is directed primarily at the leadership in Jerusalem, but I do think it's something that we need to consider in the modern world because I do think that this is a moral imperative for us. And Jesus says in Matthew 5, let your righteousness surpass that of the Pharisees and scribes. And so even though this is leveled at the Pharisees and the scribes, our righteousness just should surpass them. So we should be doing this. So here's what Jesus says is Matthew 25, 31 through 46. Then the king will say, This is about the eschatological judgment. Then the king will say to those on his right, Come, you who are blessed of my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, naked and you clothed me. I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me. Then the righteous will answer him, Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you or thirsty and give you something to drink? And when did we see you a stranger and invite you in or naked and clothe you? When did we see you sick or imprisoned and come to you? And then here's the punchline: the king will answer and say to them, Truly I say to you, the to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of mine, even the least of them, you did it to me. So by offering charity towards other people, we are serving God. There's that whole idea of the vertical and horizontal aspects of our faith. We can only ever really love God by loving other people. And Matthew brings this all together when he's talking about radical charity in Matthew 25. So these passages Barclay uh appeals to in order to justify his conclusions beforehand. And I agree with so much of what he says, so much of what he says. But I want to offer a little bit of a response here. And there are essentially four points to my response that I have up here on the screen for those of you guys that are um that are watching. Oops, sorry. Um here. And the first one is that I think that well, that Barclay, and this is very consistent in New Testament scholarship. And in fact, I a large, a large thesis, or a large part of the thesis of my book is that New Testament scholarship is it often operates without reference to solid economic concepts. So New Testament scholarship is quite rightly concerned with issues of wealth and poverty and economics and taxation and all of these issues. But a lot of the times, New Testament scholars don't have the philosophical background knowledge to have a coherent understanding of these economic categories. And again, I totally understand why. Like Barclay, Barclay knows, I'm sure, five languages. Uh, he's familiar with all of the secondary source material, or um, he's familiar with all of the primary source material in the New Testament. He is well read in the secondary sources. I mean, Barclay, if you're a biblical scholar, you got a lot going on. You don't have time to wade into a lot of these really complex economic debates. And but a part of the problem with that is that most biblical scholars have a very superficial understanding of economic concepts. And I think that that oftentimes hinders the conclusions that they draw from their correct interpretations of the New Testament. So oftentimes, and Barclay's an awesome example of this, where Barclay has rightly identified a very important and significant issue in the New Testament that directly relates to our conception of economics, wealth, and possessions. But I think that some of not all, most of the conclusions he draws are great, but some of the conclusions that he draws from his analysis are a little off base because I don't think that he's he's operating within a consistent conceptual framework for economics. So I want I want to talk about his contention that we looked at a couple of slides ago, that wealth is more or less always a bad thing, that it's always a danger, and that under no circumstances should Christians hoard up wealth. They shouldn't accumulate wealth, they shouldn't seek to pass it on to their children, they shouldn't seek to advance their standards of living. I think that this is where he's overstating his case. Now, we know as libertarians that the best way to alleviate poverty, and this is true not only theoretically, but also empirically, if you look at the last 300 years of Western history, that the the most effective way to alleviate poverty and to ensure that people can have the resources they need to survive is through capital accumulation. And what I mean by capital accumulation, for those of you that are not familiar with these economic concepts, is essentially saving up wealth and investing it in the resources that are needed to make goods and services, to produce goods and services. So these are like this is this is capital, you know, land, labor, um, resources, the things that we use to make stuff. And when you have capital accumulation, when you have wealth that accumulates over time, and when that wealth is invested in capital, you're able to produce more goods and services at a lower cost that meet real people's needs. And on top of that, when you have higher levels of capital accumulation, you can also have higher levels of employment. So not only are you satisfying consumer demand, but you're also creating more job opportunities so that people can support themselves. So the accumulation of wealth is an absolutely necessary function in any sort of healthy economy if we want to, if we want to alleviate. Poverty. And again, it is the accumulation of capital, the accumulation of wealth, which has led to the absolute explosion in living standards all throughout the Western world. And so I think that capital accumulation is incredibly important. And that any analysis of what the New Testament says about the dangers of wealth also has to take this into consideration. Again, the ancients weren't thinking about wealth in this way. They weren't thinking about it in terms of capital accumulation. It's a lot different for us. Now, with that being said, if you're a wealthy investor or you have a lot of money, that's that's great. But again, you also have to make sure that that wealth that you accumulate is used to produce, it's used for productive ends, for positive ends, for creative and generative ends, instead of just using that wealth to satisfy yourself. And I have this very unpopular opinion that for Christian entrepreneurs that are successful in the marketplace, I'm I love that the marketplace rewards them by giving them more profits. And I love that they're able to take those profits and invest them in making their company more efficient and hiring new employees and lowering the cost of their outputs and all of these things are incredible. But if you happen to be a Christian entrepreneur and you're a multimillionaire or even a billionaire, you still have an obligation to live a humble and charitable life. Like I just think, and again, you can email me and correct me if I'm wrong, but I just think that it is wrong for Christians to live in mansions. And I think that it's always going to be wrong for Christians to live in mansions. I think it's wrong for Christians to buy super expensive sports cars or to buy, you know, like I just don't think we should be, no matter how much money we make, because we're providing value on the market, I think we have to heed Barclay's warning and understand that the more that we have, the greater temptation there is to put our hope and trust in these material blessings. And there are limits to what Christians can and can't have if they want to be authentic disciples of Jesus. I think that's the case. And heck, maybe some of those limits would force me to get rid of the things that I have. Maybe I have too much. I can guarantee you that I do have too much, right? So no matter how successful you are as a Christian, you have to always be aware of that. But we also don't want to do what Barclay is implying here and cut off capital accumulation, which alleviates poverty. And again, the goal of charity for the earliest Christians was to alleviate poverty. And we have a way of doing that on a mass scale that they never could have imagined in the first century. And so we don't want to draw the conclusion from the evidence in the New Testament that modern capital accumulation is necessarily a bad thing. Is it a danger? Allah, 1 Timothy 6. Absolutely, for sure. But it also alleviates poverty, and we have to keep that into, we have to take that into consideration. Um also, one of the things that I think that this, and this is something that it's it's funny. I I made, I made a joke about the communities in Jerusalem. So, you know, in Acts chapter 2 and Acts chapter 4, Christian socialists love to read those passages where the believers in Jerusalem sold all they had and they possessed everything in common as a legitimation of modern authoritarian socialism. Of course, what they get wrong in that analysis is that socialism relies on the use of coercive force. No one forced any of the believers in Jerusalem to sell their possessions and give to the community. It was all entirely voluntary. Therefore, if there is a modern economic system that Acts chapter two and four corresponds to better, it is capitalism, which allows individual owners to make decisions about the goods and the goods and the resources that they own, and not socialism where people are forced to give up what they have for the sake of some grand bureaucratic plan. So even from that standpoint, uh the socialists are wrong in their interpretation of Acts two and four. But I used to always joke that the reason why the community in Jerusalem needed this contribution, this collection from Paul is because they sold everything they had. Therefore, they had no capital accumulation, no reserves, and no savings. Therefore, when a crisis hit, they were not prepared for it and they were all thrust into poverty. And I I always kind of held held that in tongue-in-cheek until I read what James Dunn had to say about this, which again is Barclay successor. And James Dunn, I quote this in my book, it's really funny. James Dunn actually raises that as a possibility. He's like, you know, the level of giving that the church in Jerusalem was doing is unsustainable in the long run. And ultimately they wound up having to rely on outside help. Um, and so maybe that's an example for Christians to not sell everything they have and actually have a rainy day fund. Like we have to have a backup plan so that we don't wind up becoming vulnerable ourselves. So my second point is that the community in Jerusalem, they were quick to sell all of their possessions, but they were also extremely vulnerable during the famine. And the Macedonians, who are living just above the subsistence line, had to give above and beyond their means to meet the needs of the people in Jerusalem, which is an act of God's grace, but some uh it's a position that the Macedonians didn't have to be put into. And had the community in Jerusalem maybe engaged in a little bit of financial planning, maybe engaged in a little bit of saving, maybe engaged in a little bit of capital accumulation, they would not have been thrust into the same level of poverty that they were because of the famine. Now, again, early Christianity is a movement among the poor. So chances are they would have needed help regardless of what happened, but certainly undercutting savings and investment, undercutting having any sort of wealth to rely on in hard times made this situation worse and wound up actually uh taking their financial burden and placing it upon other people. And this is a point that Paul makes in First Timothy five, where he says that like gifts, charity should only be given to those that truly need it. That those who like, and he's talking about this in in 1 Timothy 5 in the context of widows and widows who should receive charity from the church. And he says there has to be some qualifications, right? There's some widows that don't really need the charity and we shouldn't get it for them. And then again, going back to 1 Thessalonians 4 and 2 Thessalonians 3, which I'll get to in a moment, Paul says you got to work and you can't live off of the products of other people, which necessarily involves um, you know, having some sort of wealth and savings. So this leads me to point three, and this is that Barclay Barclay implies that financial planning, savings, and passing wealth on to children contradicts the New Testament witness, but they are essential for avoiding poverty and thus relying on the production of others. And I would completely agree with that. I don't think that as long as wealth does not become the temptation and the trap and the snare that draws you away from discipleship, as long as wealth is not an idol, and as long as we manage our wealth in a responsible way, there is nothing wrong with Christians engaging in financial planning. There's nothing wrong with Christians engaging in saving, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with Christians passing wealth on to their children to make sure that their children are not impoverished, right? And in fact, all of these things are essential for avoiding poverty and thus relying on the production of other people because this is what's the this is the problem with charity, and this is what a lot of people just fail to understand in the modern world. That for every charitable, like for every charity case, for every person that is in need of charity, somebody has to work to provide for their needs. And there are many people in America because of the welfare state, whose long-term financial plan is essentially to live off of the productivity of other people taken by force through the power of the government. And I think that that is just as immoral and just as idolatrous as putting all of your hope in earning wealth and keeping wealth in the first place. Demanding other people's wealth, expecting that other people are going to work to provide for your needs is also a massive problem in Christian discipleship. And I think this is a big blind spot in Barclay's argument. And the New Testament does not overtly, and Barclay acknowledges this, right? But the New Testament does not overtly come out and say that financial planning is bad, that savings is bad, and that passing wealth onto children is bad. Um, what the New Testament witness does uniformly say is that wealth can be a danger. And for Christians, wealth must always be utilized with others in mind, that our wealth should always be used to build the kingdom. And it's great if we save, great if we financially plan, but we have to understand that that is for a purpose. And that purpose should be the alleviation of poverty and making sure that we ourselves stay out of poverty so that we don't have to rely on the work of other people, right? So I think this is, I think Barclay overstates his case. And I don't think the New Testament witness, um, although he's right about a lot of what it says, I don't think that it implies that we should be irresponsible with our wealth. And then, number four, radical eschatologically oriented charity does not undermine the obligation to work. This is Paul's clear injunction in 1 Thessalonians 4 and 2 Thessalonians 3. Uh, you should work with your hands. Those who don't work don't eat. Paul very much believes that a part of our obligation as Christians, and in fact, a part of our Christian witness is that we work hard and provide for our own needs. And this is Paul sets himself up as an example of this in 1 and 2 Thessalonians and also in 1 Corinthians 9. Paul says that he doesn't want to be a burden to the Corinthians, therefore he works all day long so that he does not he's not a financial drain on the Corinthian church. So there is this idea that Christians should work and that they do have a responsibility to manage their wealth in a responsible way, right? We have a responsibility to be responsible with what we have. And going back to point two, the Jerusalem church was kind of irresponsible and things didn't go well for them, right? So that's a good example of what economic financial mismanagement can do. But you can mismanage your money in one of two ways. You can squander all of it by giving it all away and having nothing in reserves and by not planning to use it wisely, or you can squander it by making it your idol and spending your entire life trying to chase more and more of it. And we have to walk a fine line between both of those. Again, in this response here, I don't want to undercut anything that Barclay said about the dangers of wealth and our Christian commitment and our absolutely, the absolutely essential nature that are the absolutely essential reality that our attitude towards wealth and our possessions is a fundamental component of our Christian discipleship. He's right about all of that, but I think he overstates his case. And I think we need to keep these things in mind. And those of us that understand Austrian X that understand Austrian economics and that understand financial management can kind of see how the New Testament actually provides us with a framework for thinking about these things in a much more nuanced cruciform and sacrificial manner. Now, one of the things, and I'm not gonna give any details because I don't think that this has been released, but I've been working on a project that I'm contributing to. I'm not writing this, it's not, I'm not writing another book, at least not yet, but I'm contributing to another book. And I'm my my contribution again, not to give away any details because I don't think that we've released any information about this. I'm not even gonna tell you who we are. I don't think there's any details released about this in public yet. But I'm writing a contribution about John Wesley uh and the Wesleyan tradition's understanding of politics and economics or political and economic concepts. I am a Wesleyan. I go to a Nazarene church, I worked in the Methodist church, um, and so I self-identify if I'm if I want to pin my pin my theology to a particular branch of Protestantism, it is Wesleyanism. And I actually think that if we take my response to Barclay, and we also take all of the really great research and insight that he had in his article, and we tried to find a middle ground, I think John Wesley's actually already done that for us. And I think that John Wesley has done an uh did an excellent job of finding a way to strike a balance between understanding the dangers of money and wealth, but then also using that money and wealth to serve other people and managing the wealth that we do have in an effective and responsible way. And so I want to talk about that a little bit. So I have a couple of excerpts here, the last uh couple of slides here uh that I am going to show you before we wrap up for the day. These are excerpts from that article that I wrote about Wesley. And I want to talk first of all, and again, this is not gonna take long. So you're hearing from first of all, we're already almost an hour in. I'm gonna go through this real quick. But essentially what happened is that John Wesley spent his entire life traveling around England, especially to members of the lower classes and helping to he preached this message of spiritual revival. He felt that in England at in the 18th century, that spirituality was at a low, and he believed that God wanted to regenerate English society. And so Wesley travels all over England preaching to mostly lower class people. And he talks to them about being frugal, he talks to them about avoiding drunkenness and spending all your money at the bars, he talks to them about all kinds of things. And he finds out that the people that actually listen to him wind up being extremely financially successful because they become more responsible with their money, more responsible with what they have. Uh, and so this creates a problem for Wesley, where now there are second-generation Methodists, second generation followers of Wesley that have way too much. They're starting to become decadent. And so there are people that go from being poor because of poor wealth management to becoming like middle class and depending on their wealth too much. So doing that they go from being the kind of people that Barclay expects us to help to being the kind of people that Barclay warns us about based on his interpretation of the New Testament. So John Wesley has to find a way to help these people think about how they ought to best use money. And within this context, Wesley composes this essay, which he delivered on several occasions called The Use of Money, where he lays out a vision for Christian financial stewardship. And I think that this helps us better understand or conceptualize how we should respond to wealth and possessions in the modern world. And I'm gonna read from my section on this here. Uh so in Wesley's essay, The Use of Money, he balances the value and utility of wealth with its potential for evil. The fault, he notes, does not lie in the money, but in the but in them that use it. I totally agree. And this is where I think Wesley and I would also disagree with John Barclay. I think Barclay is kind of suggesting that the fault is in the money. Wesley says correctly, the fault's not in the money, it's in the guy that uses the money. And then he goes on to talk about actually the benefits of money. Uh he goes on to describe, this is from my my piece, he goes on to describe money as the most compendious instrument of transacting all manner of business, and if we use it according to Christian wisdom, of doing all manner of good. Money is an excellent gift of God, answering the noblest ends in the hands of his children. It is food for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, raiment for the naked. Because of this, Wesley argues, it is of the highest concern that all who fear God know how to employ this valuable talent, that they be instructed how it may answer these glorious ends and in the highest degree. To this end, Wesley provides his audience with three principles for wisely stewarding money: gain all you can, save all you can, and give all you can. And every word of this is brilliant. Like I completely agree with what Wesley says here. Again, he's not undermining the dangers of wealth. He sees it in the lives of some of the people that he's preached to who have gone from poverty to wealth and are now being tempted to go astray from their wealth. They're they're emulating uh or enacting exactly what Paul warned about in 1 Timothy 6, right? There, and Wesley's worried that money might draw them astray. And so he has to write them and say, Hey, look, money's actually a really great thing. And if God's children use money wisely, we can make a huge difference in this world. And so his three principles for wisely using money are earn all you can, save all you can, and give all you can. Now, I would highly recommend you can find this online for free, um, that his article here. Uh, and it's only like, I don't know, maybe eight or nine pages long. It's not very long at all. And it's a really good article, and I think it's full of a lot of wise practical advice. And I think that it helps nuance the claims that Barclay made in his contribution to the New Testament ethics book. Now, within this, Wesley, his advice for properly managing wealth, earn all you can, save all you can, and give all you can. All of these are predicated, all of these are predicated on Christian values. So he goes on to say at length that you earn all that you can through legitimate immoral means, right? So you're not going to earn a lot of money working in the porn industry, you're not gonna earn a lot of money exploiting your workers, you're not going to earn a lot of money doing work that is immoral or that contradicts Christian values, but you should find a job that pays you well and you should earn as much as you can from that job. Wesley also qualifies that to go back to Barclay's concerns that he rightly identifies in the New Testament by saying that earning all you can does not mean that you work your entire life away. Like you have to be there for your family, you have to be there for the people in your life, you have a responsibility to your church. You cannot work your entire life away, but you should try to earn all that you can in a moral, upstanding, Christian way, insofar as it does not detract from your relationship with God and your ability to serve others. And then Wesley's gonna go on to say, save all you can. So from what you earn, don't spend your money on frivolous things. Like, don't spend it on decadence and things that you don't need. And I think that that's a real gut check for all of us modern, Western, post-industrialized Christians. It's easy for us to spend money on crap that we don't need. And John Wesley would say, no, uh, forego the very nice things and just get what you need. And he even talks about how, you know, like why would you go out and buy a very expensive garment of clothing when you can get a much cheaper one that does the same thing? So it's just wise practical advice like that. Go out and earn as much money as you can, save as much money as you can, and do that by not making decadent purchasing decisions. Buy what you need, uh, buy what is going to get you by in life, and don't be excessive. Don't go beyond that. Save everything that you can. Totally agree with that. And again, what this does is this allows for, you know, this allows for savings. This allows for, if you're an entrepreneur, capital accumulation, the more you save, the more that you can invest. And you also have a backup plan when times are tough. So you don't wind up being in poverty and having to rely on the generosity of others. And then number three, Wesley says give all you can. And again, in Wesley's wisdom, he understands you don't just give to anyone who's in need because there are a lot of people that aren't really in need. They're just trying to live off of the system. But we should be wise and responsible and judicious in the way that we give, and we should always give with the intent to build up the kingdom. So again, John Wesley, 18th century, going all the way back 300 years, uh, just brilliant advice that I think is so practical for today, and I think is so richly steeped in the ethos of the New Testament. And I think that John Wesley's advice here can nuance Barclay's incredible scholarship in this article and the very prescient warning that he has for all of us modern Christians who want to put our hope in wealth. So I can't recommend this book enough, New Testament Ethics. I've only read a couple of articles uh out of it right now, but all of them have been really good. Um, you know, there's probably some articles in there just going through, and I haven't read them yet, but there's some articles in there on subjects that as libertarians, we'd probably, as right-wing libertarians, we would probably disagree with. Um, but there's another great article on the use of possessions. Like I said, I'm going to be interviewing the the two scholars that that contributed that piece to this book in June. So be looking forward to that here in a month or so. It should be a really, really fun interview and really great. And again, I love John Barclay. Uh, I doubt that John Barclay will ever listen to the Protestant Libertarian podcast or this episode. But if you are listening, I love your work, love what you're doing. I can't wait to read your book on grace. Uh, I'll probably do an episode on that when that's done too. So I hope that I was not too um, I hope that my pushback was not, was not seen as being disrespectful because I, like I said, I have a ton of respect for you, love what you do. I just wanted to give my thoughts to make sure that we nuance some of the claims that you make so that we can, we can approach this very important and significant issue in the most responsible and helpful manner possible, which is what I want. So uh my challenge to you guys today, and this is a challenge for me, something that has become even more apparent as I've been writing the book and as I've been thinking about these issues, is that we do have an obligation to manage our wealth in a responsible way and to use what we have to build the kingdom of God. And we cannot put our hope in possessions or wealth. And I don't know what that looks like for you. I don't even know what it looks like for me. Now I don't even have all this stuff worked out in my head, but I know that we need to be more charitable and less frivolous, and we need to take John Wesley's advice and be responsible with the money and the possessions that we have because in the hands of God-honoring people, wealth and possessions can actually accomplish great things for the kingdom of God. We just can't be drug away into the temptation of idolatry. So that's all I got to say about that today. Again, as always, I really appreciate you guys listening to this show. Um, I love that we have this new studio. I love that we're filming in 1080 and that we can have slideshows and all kinds of great things. So thank you guys as always so much for listening to this episode today. You guys are what makes this possible. I I again I appreciate absolutely everything that you guys do. Again, I say all the time, libertarian Christians.com slash shop. Uh, I'm trying hard. I don't, you know, because of my exercise routine and health goals, I'm trying not to drink on the week. So I don't have my Protestant Libertarian highball glass in front of me. However, you can go to libertarianchristians.com slash shop or store, and you can get yourself one, some other Protestant Libertarian podcast merch. Uh, please consider donating to the Libertarian Christian Institute. They do a lot of good work, including publishing my forthcoming book, Politics, Economics, New Testament Interpretation. 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