I would say if the authorities didn't want us involved in the public square, they ought not to have crucified Jesus in the public square. You're a humanistic principle. Why would they dance to you? I would say they dance. I would say what's the problem with startups bumping into startups? In the conflict picture? No. There's no problem. In the conflict picture, it won't matter. No, Mr. President. You are not protecting reproductive freedom. You are authorizing the destruction of freedom for 1 million little human beings every year. I'm sorry, my friends, that I am tired seeing Jesus presented as a weak beggar. He is a powerful Savior, and the gospel is not a suggestion, it is a command. Where we're holy, don't you sympathize with that? I sympathize with every single human heart wishing to know the one true and living God. But I believe there's only one way that that can happen through Jesus Christ, and the gospel is about repenting of sin, not celebrating it. Now, during the threshold of an amazing adventure, we will explore this spiritual abyss. You have not experienced this before. You are going to love it. First Corinthians 15, 58, therefore my beloved brethren be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord. What's everybody? Welcome back to the gospel heard around the world. This is once again, Apology of Radio. You can get more at Apology of Studios.com. That's A-P-O-L-O-G-I-A Studios.com. Go to Apology of Studios.com, get all the past episodes, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them just from Apology of Radio, even from when we were on terrestrial radio stations. You can get provoked, the podcast show provoked, you can get theologians, cultish. They're all there for your listening enjoyment. Don't forget also when you sign up for all access at Apology of Studios.com. You get more content. 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Abortion is abolished nowhere in this nation. It is active everywhere in this nation. And so our work is in many ways just beginning with an even better foundation right now with the church involved the way that it is. So we are going to jump into today's episode jump right into one of my favorite people. It is the son of Dr. Greg Bonsen and his name is David Bonsen. You've probably seen him a time or two on Apologia radio, but you've also probably seen him on the major TV network news networks talking about financial stuff. He is world renowned in this area respected. And I think I appreciate that so much about him is that the world wants to listen to his advice as well because it's very, very good. And David's done some great work. I don't even know how he finds the time. I don't know how David you find the time to do what you do and write these books. I think it's probably the influence of your dad getting up before in the morning and typing away. But David Bonsen, thank you for joining us on Apologia radio. Thanks so much for having me. I absolutely love being with you guys. Oh, where it's always a pleasure brother. David, you wrote a new book again. Don't know how you have the time to do this, but you did and it's, it's fantastic as always. The book is full time and the book was actually in was a barn barn. I don't know what camera we got on us right there. The full time work in the meaning of life by David Bonsen. And I saw a picture. Did you have was this in the in the front of Barnes and Nobles in New York City? It was. They did a whole window display for the book. Well, even an odd on Fifth Avenue. That is a big deal. How did you trick them? Yeah. I will promise you from the bottom of my heart, I, there was no trickery and no payment. They just loved the theological chapters so much. I don't know. I feel like David and, and I don't know, maybe I'm wrong with us, but to my mind, like that means that you've really made it as an author when like in New York City, Barnes and Nobles has your book in on display in the window. That's like, that's, that's next level. That's very, it's very cool. And so, all right, David. So I want to give you enough time to talk about the book and have everyone get the book. And so full time work in the meaning of life. David, just what's, what's the main point you wanted to get across in this book? It was essentially that there is a deficient view of work in our society. And then it parlays into that there is a deficient view of work in the church. And if I were only writing about one and not the other, I may not have been animated enough to write the book, but because I view this as a situation in which the culture at large is getting it wrong and the church is not there as a prophetic antidote or a prophetic backstop. It's an issue that fires me up because I don't think we're going to get this corrected when, in my mind, the church is more or less making it worse, Sunday by Sunday. So it has this unique blend of being a cultural problem that I care about as a Hyperion that is not being remedied by the institution of church that I care about as a Christian. And that was really the animating driver behind me writing the book. So for our listeners that maybe I'm familiar with that, I want to dive into both of those things and talk through them and get your chance to sort of explain so we can wet everyone's appetite to get the book themselves. But you mentioned the word Hyperion and a lot of our listeners probably have no clue what you're talking about. So I think it's important because it does create the passion that you have and it creates, it's a catalyst for what you do. So what does it mean to be a Hyperion? At the most simple level, which is really the way this should be explained, it means that I believe Christ is Lord of all. I mean, that's the one sentence definition. Now why the word Hyperion for that, he Abraham Kuiper, the deceased former prime minister in Holland and theologian and pastor and journalist and commentariat extraordinaire famously said there was one square inch that Christ did not said belong to him, that he didn't famously say mine. And so I could delve deeper into why I'm such a fan of Kuiper, but ultimately as a Calvinist and as a child of the Reformation, I believe in the priesthood of all believers, I believe in repudiating the secular sacred distinction. These are all distinctly Protestant notions that I think guys like John Calvin lived out and then I view Kuiper as the heir of Calvin. And so identify as a Kuiperian because I think there's such an extraordinary need today for us to proclaim the crown rights of Jesus and all domains of life. And there's very few who have done that better in the last 150 years than Abraham Kuiper. That's right. I'd like to get everyone excited about going to read Kuiper for sure. I'm glad it's a perfect description. So this I think will help people to contextualize what your life is about, David. And you know, one of the things I said to con over as we started the show is like you were at the book. So how would you describe it? And he said work is worship. Work is, work is worship. And I love, I love that sentence. And it goes into what you just described for the listeners about this problem with the secular sacred divide. Because let me, let me have you explain that. Why is that a problem to have a secular sacred divide? Right. Well, because it doesn't exist in the world, if you, if God is Lord over all, He did not make some things like church and pulpits and missions to be sacred and then other things like plumbing and technology and Wall Street to be secular. If He's Lord over all, then that distinction is fictitious. Yeah. So this is a comment on the sovereignty of God. Yeah. Amen. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think that that I would challenge our listeners because it's, it is something that is so much a part of even your father's theology and his work and his teaching that, that got you there, obviously, and got us there. I think it's important for our listeners to really stop and meditate on, on just that point as they think about what your point is in this book. The sovereignty of God, the rule of God over all things. There is no area of this world and in this life that isn't under the rule and the authority of the triune God of Holy Scripture. And so all of life is Christ. Everything belongs to Him and that makes work, even if it's not work in, quote, the church, all valuable, all, all able to glorify God, all something that is, is something you can pursue as worship. And so David, you made the point that you're, you're approaching this from the two, the two lanes. One is the problem that we have in the culture at large. And then the problem that the church doesn't have a prophetic voice in this area, we've lost our way in some way. So I guess maybe, maybe just speak to maybe what might even be obvious to a lot of people. And that's the problem in the world right now with how they view work. What is your point there? I think that this is a more recent phenomena that in modern culture, recently pop psychology is winning out and, and the kind of traditional forces in the American ethos of the, the work ethic, right, of a free enterprise. These were things that were very integral to the founding of our country. There was this sort of Puritan heritage of hard work of industriousness. The US embraced free markets even quicker than the European scholars who wrote about free markets in the 18th century. Adam Smith and the great classical economists were riding across the pond and we were putting it into practice quicker than they were. And when the industrial revolution happened, economic growth went up all over the world, but it went up exponentially more in the United States. We had a harder work ethic. Tocqueville talked about the kind of strong communities we had. There was a risk taking culture and entrepreneurial culture. It was wedded to some degree of a religious fervor and moral ethos. There were a lot of mistakes and sins, but the juxtaposition of religious liberty and economic liberty was a real one. And so it gave us a big advantage. And then you fast forward to today, there's still an incredible productivity in America. Silicon Valley may not be a place in which they're proclaiming the crown rights of Jesus, but they sure invent a lot of things, create a lot of things, innovate. There's productivity, but now what you have is this insidious Phariseeism that is in reverse, where people refuse to preach what they practice. So someone who has a flourishing career who makes good money, who works really hard, who does really well writing at the Atlantic, can write an article about how horrible work is with this great career and fulfilling life they have, and they can talk about all this stress and anxiety that is weighing people down. And so we've sort of turned the pop psychology forces against work. And I think that's the error I see in the world. I think that the church's problem is categorically different. And so in a lot of ways, I feel like I'm fighting on two fronts. Excellent. Well, I actually just started Kuiper's, forgive me, I don't know how to say it. Maybe pro-reg, rage, Raji, Riji. But when it's that and you can pronounce it however you want, because it is in the spoken language. You just make something like a fact check. Yeah. That's really good. Anyways, then just me, it's Latin for the king. So it's excellent. I just a little plug for that book, Volume One. But it's funny, I was going to tell you, David, I, Jeff knows this, I probably last year sometime, we're talking with Joe Boo, and I was like, can you please do a book on the Puritan work ethic, like, because that's a major issue, just work ethic in general, what you touch in this book. And he was like, yeah, maybe if I can get to it, which I know he's super busy, but so I was thrilled when I saw this come out, because I was like, this is great, I've been wanting something like this. So thank you. But I was just going to say, I think I anticipated this being a purely theological book, and I was very much blown away and impressed, but it seemed like almost the first half of it was just pure science. It was just numbers, data, and I was like, wow, this is really, really good. It really blew me away. So I wanted to thank you for that, and I don't know if you want to touch on any of that, but that was really cool to see that, to see kind of lay out the argument just again from pure science, from pure numbers, and then be like, oh, and this is why, because scripture. Well I appreciate you saying that. It's funny because I've had others say we were really hoping it was going to be all economics and all data, and we were really disappointed by how much Hebrew and Greek exegesis there was from scripture. So it did give me a chance to harmonize a lot of my passions. I'm not a theologian, I'm just the son of one, but I love the word of God and I've probably studied system theology a little bit more than I pretend I have, but I don't do a lot of writing where I'm actually exegeting scripture this way, and this book gave me a chance to put on a theological hat, but it did allow me to also play to my strengths professionally around the economics of work, the basic tea loss of work, being productivity. And then what you're talking about the data is the sociological dynamic. I'm really grateful to a gentleman by the name of Nick Eberstadt, who has a lot of material out there on this that is unique to men. I think we have a crisis of work in our culture, but prime working age men is where the tragedy is. So there's a war on teenage unemployment that's a real problem, and I think the baby boomer concept of retirement is a perversion, but there's nothing more distressing than a 30 year old, able bodied man who's living at his mom's couch who won't get a job. That's to me, that's the epicenter of this situation. Yeah, I appreciate that and I mean, as pastors, like that's something that we encounter quite often. Unfortunately, it's, you know, the culture's leaked into the church from that aspect, especially since COVID, no one wants to work now because of the government funding, they're getting to sit on their couch. You know, people that literally could have gone back to work, but they're like, why make more from the government sitting on my rear end? What is going on here? You know, and like so many guys, young men, just they're not working, they're lazy, they're complaining. It's like you can go just about anywhere and get a job right now, at least here in Phoenix and make like money you shouldn't be making because people are desperate to hire, just have people show up to work. And so yeah, I appreciate that. That's a major, major issue in our culture for sure and the church. So thank you. And you know, can I say something about when people come to you guys as pastors and they say, I can make more money from the government than I can working, I think that it is more than just semantics to point out that they're not making a dollar from the government. The government doesn't have any money. They're making money that someone else worked to make. So it's a transfer payment. So what they are is they're sponsored by somebody. Well, there's other words for it too that become more inflammatory, but you get the idea. And so at this point, it enables us to talk about it, pastorally, spiritually, ethically, biblically. It's not merely the economics of the unsustainability of it, the lack of productivity, but it also speaks to the ontological reality that our being and our essence come from us being image bears of God, who was a worker, if anyone had the ability to just wave a wand and have things sort of happen in the world, it would have been him. He worked to create the world and then made us to be his agents in the world working with the creation that only it's funny. One of the last times I was on your show, I used the expression co-creators and I never, ever, ever read any comments about anything on social media, YouTube, anything, because I believe in preserving my sanity. Amen. But I just happened to notice one comment where someone thought that that was inappropriate to refer to us as co-creators with God. And I can't fathom what's theologically controversial about that, that God made out of nothing, ex-Nahilo, and that we make out of something, ex-Naturum, out of the nature and creation of what God made. And I think it's a really important point that we were called by God before sin entered the world to create and that he did not make the world finished. On day one, we didn't have the Brooklyn Bridge, we didn't have a wheel. To my knowledge, they didn't even have fire, mankind had to figure out how to start a fire. I mean, there's all of these artifacts of culture that come about from mankind acting as a co-creator with God. And I think that when people say I can get paid by the government, they simply mean someone else will act as a co-creator of God and all get some of the money from it. And there ought to be some really, really harsh words for that. Amen. That's very good, David. I know that Mr. Bonson, the problem that you posed is just what you're talking about in the book. This is the issue is voluntary worklessness. I think you even call it an epidemic. Like that's the problem that we're facing. It's voluntary. And we know that human beings are inescapably religious creatures geared towards worship. That's what your chapter on Genesis is all about and the theological basis for work. And that's why when Jeff says, you know, he's relaying to you how I would summarize your book, work is worship just a few minutes ago. My question is, how much of our problem with a lack of desire to work is owing to our problem or misunderstanding of what it means to be a worshipper of God? Because you mentioned that the problem is also that the institutional church doesn't have a recovery of the Protestant work ethic and a view of life that says everything is holy unto the Lord. We're missing that foundational grounding reality of Genesis and creational normativity and the reason for our existence, right, full-time work and the meaning of life. How much of this is owing to our deficient view of worship, not only in the culture, but in the Christian church? Well I think that they're one and the same and they feed off each other negatively. That a deficient view of worship leads to a deficient view of work. And a deficient view of work leads to a deficient view of worship. And your summary of my book's message that work is worship is more than just an encapsulation of the message. It's grammatical in the Hebrew scripture that avo da is literally translated as work and as worship. When God said in the fourth commandment, six days shout that work and do all that labor, that context is obviously vocational work. And that's the word avo da. And when the word is interpreted in the Hebrew scripture and the Hebrew prefix avo repeatedly in a context of worship, including the temple worship, we are not just given a framework of interpretation about work and worship. We're given the actual grammar and translation of work and worship. The book of Joshua says, "Choose this day whom you will serve." That's avo da. The same word for working in the garden. The same word for six days shout that work. I love it. Well, David, maybe as we get into the problem with the church, can you help people understand that who are just starting to think ciparian thoughts? They're just starting to think in a way that's more consistent and comprehensive. When you say work is worship, somebody goes playing basketball for a living, painting a house. You mentioned plumbing, like seriously plumbing. Worship? A labor of some kind. I mean, it didn't feel like a worship service when I'm digging into that hole down there. Somebody says, you know, really, so building a house is worship to God or being a stockbroker is worship to God and they might ask the question, "David, how could you possibly explain these seemingly at times mundane things and not church kind of things? How could you make that into worship? How does someone make that a worship experience? Well, I start with an economic question, but see, my view of economics is distinctly Christian, Jeff. Give me an example of a job or an endeavor, including all of the examples you just gave, where the activity is not reducing goods and services that meet the needs of humanity. There is no example. Nobody is going to pay you to go dig a hole in the ground right in front of you for no reason. There is some need that is being met in the work or there isn't a job and it can feel mundane and tedious. It could also be laborious and physical. On this side of the curse, there is the sweat of the brow. But when we talk about worship, I start with what the work is, that it is us meeting, having our needs met by meeting the needs of others. Now what is financial markets? What is Wall Street? What is it that I do for a living? I am putting capital into things to have the needs of those who have capital met by them meeting the needs of risk takers and entrepreneurs and producers who they themselves cannot have their needs met without meeting the needs of some end user, some consumer, someone they're delivering value to. There's a pro-cyclical nature to all of this. This is how I believe markets work. It's how social cooperation works. This is the very fundamental belief that a Christian has about engaging in a marketplace. So how is it worshipful? It is because we are the subject of the work. We're the workers. We're doing the work and we're doing it transitively. What I mean by that is our work doesn't exist in isolation. It doesn't exist in a closet. It isn't private. The work is extended towards an object who is the object, the person who's benefiting from the work. So I believe that God loves the worker and I believe God loves the person being worked for. Therefore, I believe God loves the line between those two dots. If I believe God loves the worker and the person being worked for, then I must believe God loves the work and that is worship. Very good. It's beautiful. In a way, I don't know if it would be too as much of a stretch to say, but we are the agents of God's providential care in the world. He's the ultimate provider as father of his creation and then his subjects, his creatures, are the ones that are the means by which that providence comes to bear. So there's this beautiful interconnectedness that we all have together, like we all depend upon one another for these goods and services, but ultimately, we are ultimately dependent upon the provider of all of it. And that has to be rooted in worship. Oh, yeah. Amen. All right. Good. Go ahead. I was going to change the subject if you want to. Well, I was just going to get to, okay. So first of all, I would just go a quick little spot here to point people to more really valuable work, but then go into the issue of the church and the lack of prophetic vision and speaking into the culture on these issues because we just don't know. We don't even have a biblical view of life and work, generally speaking within the church. And so we don't have a voice that can speak into these issues with any kind of meaning. But you guys, if you've been watching the show for the last six to eight months, you know, we've been talking about something that I have been planning to do for years for my own health and well-being for my life. And I was looking into doing NAD, NAD treatments for a long time. You guys have heard me talk about the fact that there's just a ton of really amazing science on this. It's been utilized for a long time by very famous and wealthy athletes and all the rest to basically reboot your system, just do what you do to take care of your body. NAD is called the, it's nicknamed the Fountain of Youth. You have an abundance of it when you are young. And as you get older, you start to lose it and aging and all that stuff takes place. And NAD is just so important for so many biological systems, it really would take a lot of time to explain. If you went without it for 30 seconds in your body, you would be dead. And so, NAD treatments are amazing, they're usually done through an IV. And it's very painful to do it that way, because for some reason, the NAD going into your system directly to your bloodstream is actually very difficult. Once you pull that out, you feel like Iron Man, you can like run through walls kind of thing, but it's very painful, very expensive. So, ionlayer.com is a Christian run company, dudes are amazing. They created a way through a medical patch to get high quality, potent NAD into your system without the pain over 14 hours, and you just do it via a patch. If you go to ionlayer.com, type in Apologia and all caps in the coupon code, they give you a huge discount. If you want to invest in your own health and well-being, try it. We're doing it all the time. It's blessed my life and my wife's life in tremendous ways, and I'm going to be doing it forever. And I was doing it before, they wanted to connect with us. So, ionlayer.com, Apologia and the coupon code, they're going to give you a discount and they help to support the show. And so, go to ionlayer.com to get started with that and invest in your health and your well-being. Is that part of their promise that you'll live forever? There's only one person that promises that, and he will deliver for sure. But yeah, just go research, just type in NAD health benefits, and you'll just see so much of the science behind this. It is really, really amazing. And it's a great way to do what people talk about today when they talk about biohacking. It is a great way to get into your system. And basically, use the systems, the way that God designed them to work. And I think it's very post-mill, in my mind, the preservation and protection of human life. And that's, by the way, why I really love ionlayer, because I see it like that. This is one of those things that's just like part of the Christian worldview is to find a way to protect and preserve human life and to bless it, and that's what it does. So, I love it. I do it all the time. Oh, I've done it all the time, and I think you should give it a shot. Go ahead. Next one. Well, real quickly, because I know David has a limited time, I just wanted to point everyone, again, to shop.apologiastudies.com, where you can get these sweet, awesome tracks that we have, and some coffee, and some cool shirts, and we'll do the others later. Go ahead. Yeah, as you can say, do you want to jump into the church issue, or I can ask a question on that. Well, let me ask this real quick. This is actually a great question for David. Someone in the chat said, "Honest question, is it godly to mix commercials with the work of the kingdom of God?" Is it godly to mix commercials with the work of the kingdom of God? Yeah. The implication in the question, respectfully, and charitably, there's an implication in the question that is dualist, because why are the commercials not part of the kingdom of God? Yeah. Why are the things that are being advertised not part of the kingdom of God? The endeavors in the marketplace, whether it be part of the marketing that helps to support the show that leads to the overall ecosystem of all these activities, they're part of the kingdom of God. And so I think that that's what I meant earlier by "kiperian," and I don't mean to throw proper nouns at it instead of just describing it, but that's all I'm referring to guys, is a theology of kingdom, and the theology of kingdom includes church, but it is not limited to church. And David, that nails it right there, that gets us right into the problem of the lack of prophetic vision and ministry in this area, is that people will see the spiritual things are the churchy things, the things that relate to the house of God, they relate to the worship service, they relate to a Christian ministry. That's where real value is found. You want real spiritual meaning and real spiritual value. It's going to be within the walls of the church, or it'll be with those Christian ministries. They're doing the work of the kingdom. All this other stuff out here is just worldly and not truly spiritual in nature. And so when you talk about dualism, I think that's what you're getting at, is that Christians need to understand that dualism is not compatible with Christianity. And though we've adopted it, though it's popular and it's all the rage within evangelicalism, it is certainly not biblical. And that gets us into the problem. So David, you do describe in your book that second issue that you're very passionate about is this lack of prophetic vision coming from the church in this area. So there's no salt and no light coming from the church, generally speaking, in this area of work because we don't even have a good theological understanding of it in the first place. So what do you attack first when you go against the problem of the church? So I believe first I want to look to kind of the origins of it, where did it come from? And when I had Doug Wilson on my podcast that I did for this book, we were talking about even the dualism had a source. And I think that much of this is born out of an ancient Gnostic heresy that the Gnosticism in early centuries that essentially said that there was a superior value in spirituality than the material universe that in my mind, it is an implicit denial of the incarnation of Christ. I believe in a son of God who was fully God and fully man. And I believe that God made embodied people and that we have souls that can never die. We have an eternal destiny, but we also are made with bodies that will be raised up again and that God sent his son not merely as a deity and spirit, but as man, it became fully man. This is to me an incarnational truth that speaks to the fact that God cares about the spiritual or immaterial universe and the physical or material universe. And when we believe that there is a superiority in that which is spiritual or metaphysical and an inferiority in that which is physical, that to me is the Gnostic heresy and dualism falls out of Gnosticism very easily. That was to me an ancient error. Now here's the problem with the last hundred years. So we're all byproducts of somewhere in the last 50-ish years, okay? I'm going to turn 50 next month, so I'll speak for myself. I believe that there's two things that have happened since let's call it the turn of the 20th century that were both catastrophic errors from the church when it comes to work. About a hundred years ago, give or take, there was a mass retreatism from the church, a palatism, a fundamentalism that was getting its tail whipped by modernism, that was anti-intellectual, that was anti-cultural engagement, and it led to a very significant palatism in the church, reasonably focused on some form of soul saving, but quite explicit and self-conscious about being against Christian engagement in politics, media, the arts, technology, education, and yes, the marketplace, commerce, commercial society. So guys, what I think happened a little over 40 years ago now is a really good thing in that we began to reverse part of that. I think that the church in let's call it the late 70s, early 80s, largely for survival, said, okay, this whole thing about being out of politics is not going very well. And whether it was issues of life or issues of marriage, I don't think that we've handled all political engagement very intelligently all the time, and I certainly don't think we handle it faithfully all the time, and I don't think we're handling it faithfully right now all the time, but the Christian church did more or less abandon retreatism, that there's still a general consensus across a lot of evangelicalism that, okay, Christians need to be back in the game a little bit in politics. And the other great examples, education, in 1978, there were zero homeschoolers, more or less. It wasn't measurable. We and now you're talking about millions of people in the last 40 years that have gone into classical school, Christian school, homeschool, millions of people that have reembraced Christian engagement and education. So what I think was first a broad era of retreatism is now isolated to where, okay, in my lifetime, from the time I was about in kindergarten till now, we've started the course correct a little bit. We have a long way to go in politics and education. But in the marketplace, the church has had a pretty robust faith and work movement for about 30 years that is still constricted by this pietism, constricted by this idea of, oh, yeah, you should go to work so you can tithe to your church, so you can give to missionaries, so you can witness to people at the water cooler. They have not gotten into this full-orbed idea of, no, Christians should engage in the marketplace and excel in the marketplace because God cares about the marketplace. We're still missing that. Yeah. That's powerful stuff. Guys, you got to get the book. You have to get the book. It is. It is not overwhelming. Take a look at that. It's not overwhelming at all. You're going to learn a whole lot full-time work in the meaning of life. David Bonson, you got to have this in your library. You really do. This is one of those necessary correctives today if we're going to bless the world with a full-orbed portrait of the gospel in the Christian worldview. You need to have things like this that address the problem. David, I really love how you said that. I don't think you and I have talked about this particular issue together, at least not in this way. That's one of the main things that I've constantly said, even over the last couple of years, I've tried to emphasize that early on in the history of the church, literally in the pages of Scripture, the deadliest enemies of the Christian faith were these Gnostics, the Gnostic heresy. You've got the apostle Paul addressing the issue. You've got the apostle John addressing the issue. There's even external stuff related to the apostle John, not recorded in Scripture. There's a famous story in history of the apostle John was going into a local bathing house, which is what they did at the time, community bathing things, and a very well-known Gnostic heretic was in there. The church history goes that the apostle John comes running out of the bathhouse, essentially naked, pleading with everyone to leave the place, because God was going to cause the roof to cave in upon this deadly heretic. They saw them as the great arch enemies of the Christian faith, and you see, even into the second century of the church, the church is having to make war against Gnosticism. If you want to give me an expression of that, what would it look like today? Gnosticism is alive and well today within the church and in the world, and it is demonstrated clearly in everything that David just said in terms of how you view the world, how you view work. Many Christians, I think, just to understand today that they hold to a perspective, a worldview perspective about work and the world, and you've got this area over here that is a matter to God very much. It's not very important. It's tainted by sin. This over here, the spiritual, the metaphysical, this gassy existence, this spiritual existence, that's what matters before God. It's like you don't even realize that you're spewing Gnosticism. I think that is a major issue within the church. I've said it for a long time. Gnosticism is alive and well within the church, and it's time that we overcame it. This book is one of the ways that you can overcome it. It's the theological way of addressing overcoming that error. Here's the deal. Why does it matter? Because you were created to worship God. If work is worship, then give busy worshiping and see your work as pleasurable work of worship. See it as a joy. See it as a spiritual experience. Every aspect of it, because it is that gift from God. I'll just leave it there. We need to have that corrective. We need to have that happen, and it will lead to blessing the world with the Christian worldview. I've said so many times, I think one of the major problems that we have is we've got many, and I've got many, and this is not pointing a finger just out there at the world. It's just saying this is a major problem, is that we don't understand what the good news of the kingdom is. That's what Jesus was preaching when he left the wilderness. He comes out proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, the good news of the kingdom. We don't really know what that means. Like we know what gospel means in terms of like we go, "Oh, that means like I'm justified by faith in Jesus Christ. I have a relationship with God. I have peace with God." The answer is yes, yes, and amen to all that. It's true, but that's the truncated view of the gospel, because the gospel is also the gospel of the kingdom, is the good news of the rule of the Messiah in the world. The Jews understood, because they knew their Old Testament, same Old Testament we have, what this kingdom was going to bring in the world, and there's no way out of it. The texts from the Old Testament clearly, clearly, clearly display that the Messiah's kingdom is not just this gassy experience out there somewhere, but the Messiah's kingdom had something to do with this life, this world, promoting human flourishing, bringing justice, establishing righteousness, and it was going to be comprehensive. It was going to be as the waters cover the sea. It was going to be, he shall have dominion from sea to sea from the river to the ends of the earth. He shall establish justice in the earth, he won't grow faint or weary until he's done so. The gospel of the kingdoms is a comprehensive view of all of life under the rule of the Messiah. The Jews understood that, that's when Messiah was bringing the Christians today, many times we've lost that. Not all Christians, not all Christians, not the real Christian history, but right now, we're in a space where it's like, we think Jesus is Lord over there, but not so much over here, and we need to get back to it, and this book's going to help. Yeah, so to change the subject, kind of, I'm just curious, David, obviously you've made a living deal with economics and people have you on Foxy's and stuff like that, talk about economics. You've been on a lot of shows, secular shows, you mentioned you, you did an interview or had a conversation with some heretics before, like what has been the response, because obviously it's the best seller right now. What has been the response from the secular world to the theological aspect of this book? Well, it's funny, I just think that sometimes subversion is an effective tactic in the foolishness to the Greeks, because I don't think these people know about the exegesis. They know that I'm a free marketeer, and they know that I can capably discuss markets and economics, I have built some relationships with people, and they respect me, I guess, for the time being, and then I get to put a book out there that spends several chapters exegeting Genesis 1 and talking about Abraham Kuiper and the quotes Dorothy Sayers 10 times and a whole bunch of other Christian people, and so I think it's a blessing that audience is there, but like a lot of subjects, Luke, people sometimes hear what they want to hear, and I think a lot of Christians right now are excited to hear that there's a theology of work, and someone's saying we need to work harder and that all things belong to the Lord, and then they may not want to hear the part where I'm saying, "Hey, retirement isn't a biblical idea," and then there's maybe people who aren't Christians who enjoy me saying we're not going to get the productivity we need for economic growth if we don't get more people in the labor participation force, so they like these sort of wonky economic ideas, but they don't like me saying that work is worship. I get to synthesize the message because I'm sort of untouchable economically, they can't hurt me in that way, I don't need to sell books, but I don't really, but then I was just wired to tell the truth. That's all I want to do is wake up every day and be faithful, and if some people like it, I'm happy, and if they don't like it, I'm still happy. Well, I think it's a good point to be made that when you're good at your work, when you're good at what you do, and people respect you for it, you have a better opportunity to have their ear so that they'll listen, because they respect the work and they respect what you can produce. If we keep putting out shoddy work, if we do everything poorly as Christians, if we don't invest in it as worship and do it to the glory of God and do it, if you said something, David, that stuck with me, and I thought it was just a great way to encapsulate it. When you talk about Genesis, God as creator, he was innovative, he was creative, and he was good. That's a beautiful, beautiful way of putting the beginning of the story, right? We should be like God in that way, so we need to be innovative in our work and creative and our work and good. Like God, where image bearers of God expects us to be like him. If we're doing that in our work, in the world and blessing the world, we'll do things like build cathedrals and amazing architecture and beautiful music like we used to do as Christians. And now, because, and I think this is a consequence that you're pointing to, David, because we don't view work as worship and we see this divide of secular and sacred, Christians put out really garbage movies, Christians put out really garbage art, you know, Christians aren't invested in beautifying the world to the glory of God, like we have been in the past. So, recapturing that, you're not saying, and here's the thing crazy, David, you're not saying anything new, that's what's beautiful about it, is that you're not, you're not saying anything new, you're taking something that is a biblical theme that's seen throughout Christian history and you're saying, hey guys, let's get back to this. This is what blesses the world, this is what, this is what's pleasing to God, let's get back to this, we're wrong right now. And so, yeah, there's consequences to, to our theology and to our worldviews and our praxis and this, this is very important. So, what you were just saying reminds me of the, I could be wrong, I think it's Martin Luther who said, the Christian shoemaker isn't a Christian shoemaker because he puts crosses on his shoes, but because he makes the best shoes that money can buy. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. That's what it reminds me of. I'm just going to mention, I was, this conversation always makes me think of Proverbs 22, 29, do you see a man skillful in his work, he will stand before kings, he will not stand before obscure men. You know, so in regards to your book that, I feel like that perfectly defines you, you've, you've proven yourself skillful in your industry, you know, so you will stand before kings, you'll stand before the biggest people in that industry. And here you have an opportunity to exit each Genesis one because of the hard work you've put in. Anyways, I love that verse. I think it applies. And I think what's, I should be motivating, I'll just say this quickly here, David. I think we should be motivating to anybody when they hear what Luke just said is what's underneath all that success and respect and honor in your industry is that you believe that work is worship. And that's, that's what, that's what it motivates you and drives you is it's work is a foundation. If someone says, well, how do I do that? Like give me the, give me the book on how do I get that in my life? Well, it's right here. It's right here. And it's explained here that work is worship and that's what you need to get, we get about doing. So. Well, yeah, and even going back and I'll shut up, but even going back to Genesis one, you know, after the fall, it's not like God was like, now you're going to have to work Adam. It was like, he was already doing the work and just going to suck. No. It's going to hurt. It's going to be painful. Like, you know, so I think we miss that a lot of Christians miss that as like, oh, because of said, now we got to work is like, no, you already should have been working. Well, and there's a really easy way to properly exegete that passage, which is to look at all of it instead of half of it. Yeah. Does anyone think, does anyone think babies are a curse? Well, I guess I shouldn't say that because some maybe do, but Christians, there's no Christian who would say babies are a curse. Children are a curse. Well, the, just as chapter three, verse 16, he starts with the curse being given to Eve after the fall and said that they will now suffer the pains of childbirth and your husband will rule over you. Husbands are not curses. Children are not curse. Then in verse 17, it switches to work. And what my dad said, and I didn't find the sermon from my dad until after I'd written the book and I have a podcast coming out tomorrow called on the hook that I go through 34 different sermons from my dad where I went and extracted real audio clips. Oh, okay. And, and, and we, and so I'm going through and talking and then we're playing quips from my dad. And it's basically this sort of conversation put together between my, myself and, and my right dad with some materials from the 70s and 80s and everything. Well, first of all, Luke, he quotes Proverbs 22, 29, he talks about that very verse and the idea, which today I think we would say is a leadist or establishment or something. But it's right in the Bible, the people will end up with respect of folks that have influence and status. And that can be a good thing when used to the kingdom of God. But that, that issue about the curse. My dad said work was not a curse. The sweat was the children are not a curse. The pains of childbirth were. This is the only possible hermeneutical interpretation that makes sense. The notion that work was created before the sin, that it was blessed before. It was presented before. And then it was presented after but attached to a curse. And the worst most to conclude that work itself is a curse is totally incoherent scripturally. Mm hmm. Yeah. One thing I've noticed is when people ask, have asked me as a pastor and I don't have any grand insight here because scripture doesn't give a lot of details about what the eternal state will be like in terms of like mechanical things, the day to day kind of stuff. But I think people have been shocked at times when I'll say, well, you need to stop thinking about heaven and our eternal state is like this gassy existence out there where we're just sitting around doing nothing. You need to think about it in terms of what the garden was like, where the physical and the spiritual are again reunited and the way that God intended it. And people will say, well, what are we doing heaven? And I'm like, well, what were they doing in the garden? They were building. They were creating. They were learning. They were growing. And so I imagine the eternal state in heaven, when heaven and earth are fully reunited again to be restoration of all that. So I anticipate in heaven working, building, creating, learning, growing for all eternity. Yeah. If you think heaven is going to be us sitting around and occasionally getting up to go to a worship service or something like, you know, you're thinking about the way that God made us wrongly. God created us to be like him. God is innovative, creative. He's good at what he does. He creates. He is he made us to do the same things and he made us to work. So I'm excited about heaven in terms of like learning, growing, building, creating art, finally learning how to sing, you know, like whatever, like that might take an eternity. It might be able to take an eternity. Maybe it'll never be accomplished. That's a perfect. So where did people get you're 100% right in that what people do? And I don't and maybe some of it is harmless, you know, you form sort of mental imagery as a kid usually, right? Where did people get a visual image of heaven? That is gassy, that is sitting around, that is maybe singing in a service and then going back to when the imagery in the Bible is a celestial city. Now, this is another piece I found in a sermon for my dad and it is so incredibly connected to his views of antithesis. The city of God did not begin at sin. It began at creation. Wow. This is a pure Augustinian idea. The city of God began at creation. And I believe that heaven is the restored, redeemed city of God. If people, there's two things I think many Christians are going to have to get real use to before heaven. They're going to have to learn how to get along with other Christians and they're not very good at doing that and they're going to have to learn to work. Amen. Yeah. Look, that will ruffle feathers, that will really be like a thorn in someone's side when they've thought about heaven a certain way and you start saying no, heaven's going to be a restoration of what was and so there'll be work and creation is going to be beautiful and it's without the curse, but you're not going to be sitting around for all eternity doing nothing. God actually has a lot to say about lazy bones and we're not having being lazy bones. You know what I'm saying? Think about the verse that you read at the beginning, 1 Corinthians 15, your work in the Lord is not in vain, or that comes in a chapter about the resurrection. Right. Yeah. Really interesting. Yeah. That in some sense our work follows us like out of the grave and into eternity, otherwise Paul wouldn't be talking about a foundation being laid and then that foundation at the last day being revealed by fire. There's a lot you can say to this, like I mean, I wanted to read at the beginning of the show the parable of the talents and it's just, it's just a long section about taking so much up of the time of the show parable of talents when the master comes back to the servants, you know, he's given, he's given talents, bags of gold to certain people based upon what they're able to produce with it. And so some receive more, some receive less, but he gives the bag of talents and expects him to actually produce something with it, right? And what is the challenging part of that section of the parable of the talents? It's when he talks to this wicked and unprofitable servant, he calls him wicked because the unprofitable servant takes the gift of God, this bag of gold and buries it, does nothing with it. He produces nothing. And so I just, I know you're this, you know, harsh master and you know, look, I didn't do anything with it. It's still there. You still got what you gave me and he calls him wicked and unprofitable. And but what does he say to the people who took the bags of gold and actually produced more with it, created more with it, developed more with it. He gives them charge over more. Now if that's a portrait of what God's going to do towards us in the future, hey, I gave you a bag of gold, look what you produced with it. I'm going to give you charge over more. I take that to mean that in heaven, there's some degree, there's going to be something about the rewards and gifts of God based upon the labor and worship that you did here. Now I'm going to give you charge over all of this. I'll give you charge over all of this. Now if that's a portrait of what God's going to do for us on the last day and in heaven one day, that means that there are things that we're going to be doing in heaven, working with in heaven, producing more for God in heaven. Do I have a full picture of what that looks like? I certainly don't, but I know the principle behind it and it's biblically secure. That principle is. All right, David, thank you for joining us today. Love you brother. Thank you so much. Great for you. Yeah. So full time, everyone, work in the meaning of life. What do I say, David? Does everyone go to Amazon and buy it? Where should I? Yeah. Amazon is probably where most people are going, fulltimebook.com has reviews and clips and excerpts, and then there's links to buy it there through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, whatever. Perfect. Everyone get the book. David, I'm sure we're going to have you on again. So looking forward to your brother. Thank you so much for everything you do. All right, everybody. So this look, the show is, I think, going to bless a lot of people. I think it's very, very important. This is necessary corrective for the church and the world today. So get the book. It is fantastic. We love David. And one of the things that I always inspires me when I get the chance to sit down or talk with David is, it encourages me to see the value of being a good father and be a good, a good godly model for your sons and daughters because, yeah, what's Jesus say? Wisdom is justified by her children, right? And what's that mean? If you want to see, if you want to see a wisdom is, then it'll be vindicated by what it produces, right? So if you want to see if someone is truly wise, well, let's see what they produce. And I think I think Greg produced a great one. And so David Bonson, full-time work in the meaning of life, just real quickly, we have one more thing to point people to and that was actually, I mean, so talking about hard workers, right? People work in the glory of God. I got to just, you know, I keep mentioning am tech blades, Bill rapier is one of the hardest working men. I know when he does it, the glory of God and he makes these blades to the glory of God. Let me tell you. So if you want a really sweet, awesome blade and go to amtechblades.com, put apology in the coupon code, you get a little bit of a discount there. So, and then of course, heritage defense.org, please, I keep saying this, I mean it, please, please, please, if you're a homeschooling family, sign up now. You need it, especially the way the culture's going. You need, you need, you need legal defense in case any, any three letter agency comes your door and wants to talk to you and take your kids. So, and it is ridiculously, stupidly, yeah, cheap and again, a part of the coupon code first month for you. That's right. That's right. And we've been very encouraged to get reports back from them about how many people are signing up and it's been quite a bit some that encourages us because you need to be a part of that as a Christian, particularly Christian homeschooling families, you need to have them for sure. And so, do we have any super chance? There is one. Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. Wally West. Wally, thanks for your support. I showed my dad the Calvinist movie. He is this understanding that we reform Christians believe that someone can come to God for salvation and God will turn them away. How do I biblically explain the doctrines of grace? Oh, well, actually we just did a great series on the doctrines of grace. Yeah, I'd refer you to those first. Definitely look through the episodes we did. We also have a sermon series teaching through the doctrines of grace, apology of studios right here on YouTube, go through that sermon series or the recent series video. We're still going to do one more on it and that's responding to objections for defending Calvinism. So we've got to do that at some point in the future. And hopefully, hopefully next week we wanted to actually review the late flowers. Well, this is where we can also view that debate. Yeah. So I would say, first of all, nobody is, nobody is coming to God for salvation who isn't being drawn by God. Right. It doesn't happen. There are ways you can prove that in Romans chapter three, the apostle Paul gives the indictment upon Jew and Gentile and he said, there is no God seeker. There is none who does good. There is none righteous. No, not one. So scripture is really clear that there is no God seeker. Nobody is seeking for God. So God doesn't turn people away. Everybody already is turned away. That's the nature of humanity in the fall as everybody has already turned away. God doesn't turn people away. They are turned away because they are haters of God. For enemies of God, they are dead in their sins and trespasses. So if somebody is turning to Christ to trust in him, that is, well, as an example, John six, no man can come to me unless the father who sent me draws him and I will raise him up. Jesus says he raises up the one the father draws. So no one is able. No one can. The father draws and Jesus raises them up. That's a more biblical way to express that God doesn't turn people away for salvation because nobody wants salvation apart from the grace of God, the mercy of God, doesn't happen. According to scripture, that's a biblical worldview. So thank you guys for everything. Thank you guys for supporting apology or radio grateful for all that you guys do to participate with us in ministry. Go get your all access account with us at apology of studios.com party with us in this ministry. That's Luke the bear. He's out of here. I'm Jeff the common and ninja and that's a great con over director of communications with end abortion now. We'll see you guys next week. Bye. in. the. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
