SPEAKER_00 0:01

They built the infrastructure of America that I have lived on my whole life and completely taken for granted.

SPEAKER_01 0:10

What I hope for the American family is that we're able to pass on to our kids a lived experience of secure love.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

You and your life are actually the inheritance that is going to get passed down. And now they're all gone. And whatever it was they built, they handed to me. And now I'm standing here looking at their gravestone.

SPEAKER_01 0:56

I have a friend who likes to walk in cemeteries, and I will I asked him why. I mean, part of what he's thinking about when he's in there is like what decade's gonna be on my gravestone.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

Yeah, I was thinking about that. So if I'm in my 40s right now and it's the 2020s, then you know, 30s, 40s, 50s. I guess I kind of hope I get to the 2060s. It's ambitious. 70s? I mean, it'd be impressive if I could get to the 2070s, maybe. Uh I think about my kids, and I'm thinking a few of them might last to 2100 statistically. I mean, unless there's some amazing medical breakthrough, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:30

It's kind of sobering. I'm sitting here doing the math in my head, and I mean, I I'm running out of real estate.

SPEAKER_00 1:36

Well, welcome to Abundant conversations about the life everyone's looking for and what's getting in the way. I'm Dan Jarvis, joined by my good friend Del Fasenfeld, and today marks our final episode of season one, America's Future. I got the idea for this episode. I remember I texted you shortly thereafter, Del. I was in Philadelphia, kind of feeling some American feelings over there. And we had talked about doing a podcast for a long time and was thinking, what should our first season focus on? And there was a big banner in Philadelphia that said America's 250th birthday. And I thought, you know that this summer, this would be a great opportunity to address the issues that we see personally and pastorally that are affecting America. So here we are. We've done a whole season of reflecting on what's wrong, what's right, or what we wish was right, what we should do about it.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

Yeah, and I hope that it's been practical. You know, we're trying to diagnose some problems, but you know, the goal is to find a solution path that we can all apply.

SPEAKER_00 2:36

Yeah. Here's what I think we miss sometimes when we watch the news and we get riled up or we get caught in a political cycle is we're thinking fairly short term. What's going to happen next? What's the next program? What's the next decision? In this episode, I'd like us to zoom out and think about the longer range future of what do we hope America becomes? What are we wishing for in the 2050s, the 2060s, the 2100s when our kids are dead and gone and their kids are now leading the future? What and they walk by our gravestone and go, Well, that person, you know, lived a hundred years ago, and they're reflecting on our lives. All the things that we're currently worried about will mostly have passed into the past and people won't remember. But they'll there'll be a few headlines that they might read in their history books. But certainly the things we built with our lives and our character, our businesses, our churches, our civics, those things will either still exist or or they will have evolved into the next level and be the foundation of what those people are experiencing then. So I'd like to talk about that long-range future for America. What are we hoping we can pass forward to the future?

SPEAKER_01 3:47

It's important and not something that we normally think about. I think most of us do tend to defer the things that are way out in the future and we never get back to them, even though we probably all agree that those things ultimately are probably the most important.

SPEAKER_00 4:02

Yeah, they're kind of in the important but not urgent quadrant of our lives, and so they don't get the attention that the urgent things do that are due tomorrow. So to set the frame for it, I was thinking about those old gravestones and just the people that founded America and gave us what we have. Think about my own great-grandparents. I didn't know them. I know a few things about them. I know one of my great-grandfathers was a postman in Pennsylvania, so he delivered mail, but he delivered it by horse-drawn carriage. And in the winter, because of where he was, sometimes they would rig it as a sleigh and he would be, you know, delivering the mail on a sleigh. I think that is a whole different world.

SPEAKER_01 4:47

They don't make them like that anymore. They don't.

SPEAKER_00 4:49

But I but and the in the scope of world history, though, that wasn't really that long ago that that happened. And I just think, well, my grandma, my my maternal grandmother, worked at NASA and she was there for the space race. She was a nurse in NASA. And actually, before that, she was a nurse in World War II and cared for my grandfather as he had, I think it was tuberculosis, and they met in the hospital. I mean, it's just like some of the movies you see about history, they were living that life, and they passed all that on to my parents, who then passed it on to me, and here we are.

SPEAKER_01 5:21

Yeah. And a lot of these folks did this building without the social safety nets that we have today. Yeah, rugged. Yeah, that was rugged. Yeah, I one story from my family tree is my grandfather, his father was out of the picture early, and he ended up dropping out, lying about his age, going to work for the telephone company. I think he was 13. Told him he was 18 or whatever, and started working, you know, when what we would consider just to be like junior high school. Wow. Uh, worked his whole life, you know, to try to help support his family.

SPEAKER_00 5:59

Isn't that wild? I I've heard of people that wanted so badly to go fight for America in like World War II that they faked being 18, they were really 16 or something. I mean, you could get away with that today, but it's just amazing that that was the state of things.

SPEAKER_01 6:13

Yeah. And almost and almost sort of like an accepted part of the American lore. I hear that all the time. You know, I lied about my age. My grandmother was a pioneer kind of in her own way. She went to seminary in an era where women just didn't do that. Wow. So she has a seminary degree. I guess that would have been in the 30s or 40s.

SPEAKER_00 6:34

Wow. So I saw a really interesting historical TV series. I think it's still around. It's the The Men Who Built America. It's I thought it was worth watching. It was somewhat dramatized, but it showed you the lives of Rockefeller and Carnegie and Morgan and Edison, some of the people who figured out how to consolidate and scale, like oil industry, steel production, railroads, banking, electricity. They struggled to make all that happen. Now, those were the headlines. There are a lot of people that didn't make the headlines because they failed. They tried to do it, but those were the guys who succeeded and they were very rich in their times. But they built the infrastructure of America that I have lived on my whole life and completely taken for granted. It's just always been there. I and I think before that, there those things didn't exist. And now, you know, there's current entrepreneurs who are building the infrastructure of the future, the the internet and AI and cell phones and satellite networks and all those things are 50 years from now, people take all that for granted. And, you know, us old fogies will be, oh, yeah, I remember when we didn't have that kind of thing. Right.

SPEAKER_01 7:40

I mean, here in Michigan, we're constantly complaining about the potholes in the roads. But I mean, it is sobering to think that there was a time when you just didn't even have a road.

SPEAKER_00 7:48

Yeah, right. And what the guy in Back to the Future say, like where we're going, we don't need roads, you know. So maybe that'll be the case in the future. In my hometown, they renovated one of the grocery stores that I grew up going to. And, you know, now it's super classy and amazing. And I it just struck me that my kids will never, other than like some grainy picture, they'll never see the store I went to. Now they'll only see the up the upgraded one, and they'll think that's normal. And I'm thinking, oh, I appreciate how far we've come. So if you think about American history as this continuum of one generation handing off its life and character and virtue and whatever it's built to the next generation, you go all the way back to the founders. And John Adams wrote to his wife in 1777 this statement. He's kind of waxing eloquent, and he says, posterity, which is an old-fashioned word for like future generations out there, future children. You will never know how much it costs the present generation to preserve your freedom. And I hope you will make good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in heaven that I ever took pains to preserve it.

SPEAKER_01 8:56

He was uh good old job, waxing eloquent, but also feeling a little bit grumpy. I think I've had days like that. He's probably welcoming.

SPEAKER_00 9:05

Guys, I I made this for you. Don't blow it. So he might be repenting in heaven these days. I don't know when he looks down at America right now. Thomas Paine, in his little pamphlet Common Sense, which was very pivotal to getting the average person in the colonies excited about the American Revolution, he wrote, As parents, we can have no joy knowing that this government is not sufficiently lasting to ensure anything which we may bequeath to prosterity. And he says, in order to discover the line of duty rightly, we should take our children in our hand and fix our focus a few years further into life. Wow. He's saying we've got to look ahead, everybody. We can't just look right now at the here and now. So with that backdrop, I I wanted to just chat with you about what do we wish America could be. Other founding fathers mentioned it, so I know it was on their minds because they were realizing we're paying a price today for something that we probably won't even live to see the fruition of. It's going to get better as freedom takes root and all the prosperity that will follow it takes root. So George Washington talked about preserving the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of our republic. Ben Franklin was looking at a sunshine that had been carved into the chair that George Washington was sitting in as he was presiding over the convention. And he said, you know, kind of as all these guys had sort of a poetic dynamic about them, he said, but now at length I have happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting sun.

SPEAKER_01 10:36

Yeah, I just saw a movie about this. Um, you know, he was they were they were fighting so terribly in the convention that it just looked like the whole thing was gonna come off the off the wheels, and he was looking at the sun and he was preoccupied with is this thing going down or up?

SPEAKER_00 10:52

So today, do you think it's going down or up? Wow.

SPEAKER_01 10:58

I'm kind of an eternal optimist. I just believe in the ability of human beings to come together to solve problems. I want to say that I couldn't get up in the morning reliably, you know, with any kind of optimism if I didn't believe that there was a way to see it continue to rise.

SPEAKER_00 11:18

I agree. I I kind of would almost say I have to say it's coming up, right? Because there are things about American culture today that I think are in bad shape that I would say feel like sunset. You know, the state of the family, the state of the fiscal condition of the government, maybe our standing in the world seems like it's declining. But then there is a vision that I want to believe. And here's what's interesting about thinking long-term future vision. I think God has built the world in such a way as that you and I get to be a part of constructing the future.

SPEAKER_01 11:51

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 11:51

And so it's not predetermined that America has to fall apart or that our glory days are behind us. We can forge a new future. We just have to wake up tomorrow and decide to be different than we are right now.

SPEAKER_01 12:02

I think kind of at the center of the Christian hope is this idea that you know evil isn't going to be the thing that prevails. Right. That there will somehow be a way for resurrection and rebirth. And I think people who have put their faith in something more than right now find inspiration every day to like work for that better future.

SPEAKER_00 12:26

Yeah. I also don't think we can build a future simply by avoiding catastrophe. If that's our vision, is just can we stave off judgment day a little bit longer, you know, whether that's financially or demographically or something. That's not a vision to live for. I mean, you may have to do those things, you may have to address the current crises that are in front of you, but the vision has to transcend that. Yeah. Not just what are we against? What are we for?

SPEAKER_01 12:50

There's a famous proverb just about without the vision, people perish. And I think that's what you're referring to. Like we're not made to just avoid catastrophe or to not do bad things. We're actually made to live for something that's beautiful and true.

SPEAKER_00 13:07

Yeah. All right. So how old will you be in 2050?

SPEAKER_01 13:11

Oh man, this is getting better.

SPEAKER_00 13:12

You don't have to do the math right now. I know that's complicated, but not that hard.

SPEAKER_01 13:16

I mean, I'm 55 right now. Okay. So that's 30 years or 20 years?

SPEAKER_00 13:20

80 something.

SPEAKER_01 13:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:22

So let's say you're still here in 2050.

SPEAKER_01 13:25

Thanks for granting that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:26

What do you uh well there is that guy that he's trying to help us all live to 150 by like biohacking and eating super greens and stuff. So if he figures it out, I'll I'll do it. You know, I want to live as long as I can, I guess, on Earth. But let's just say 2050, what do we hope America will be in that time?

SPEAKER_01 13:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:47

There's a variety of categories we could talk about, right? So I'll name a few and I'll just ask you, what do you wish for? So when it comes to our family trees as a culture, our nuclear families and then our extended families, what do you hope is true statistically or culturally about families in 2015?

SPEAKER_01 14:07

Man, you hit a passion project for me right there, because that's what I've given my life a lot to. What I hope for the American family is that we're able to pass on to our kids a lived experience of secure love. And I don't know how that happens without parents figuring out how to model that, love each other, stay committed, have a stable environment for kids. So part of why I care so much about the breakdown of marriages in our culture right now is because the ramifications go way beyond the the couple's personal happiness. That's the laboratory for where we pass on how we experience love and the relational capacities that go with it to our kids. Yeah. So I think we gotta I think there's a reckoning right now in America uh that goes way beyond like our morality. It goes to our vision of of how humans are formed. And so, man, strong families, covenant keeping, relational capacities, stable, secure love.

SPEAKER_00 15:11

Well, and the dysfunctions of family are the root cause of a I would say a majority of the cultural problems that we have. And so a healthier family unit is going to bring us to a healthier place in many other categories. So you think about things like addiction or crime or everything correlates in indebtedness or like all the things that are holding us back as a culture would be potentially overcome or at least measurably improved if families were happy.

SPEAKER_01 15:38

Everything, everything about a human being goes back to their experience of secure attachment. I mean, so that's a neuroscience thing that's a whole new field. But man, we've got to work on that together because you know the future literally depends on it. So yeah, I'm huge for like seeing that a revolution of relationships.

SPEAKER_00 15:56

Okay. Well, so kind of right alongside that would be friendships and neighborhoods. What do we hope will be true in the future when it comes to our connections to one another as citizens?

SPEAKER_01 16:08

I have a lot of thoughts on that one, too.

SPEAKER_00 16:09

Well, we did a whole episode on how important this is. I want to believe that by 2050 we will have rebuilt some bridges of trust, even across the aisle of disagreement politically. Right now, for a variety of factors, I think we're seeing fellow citizens through a lens of like their enemies, you know, their ideological enemies. Yeah, right. We kind of live in a feedback loop, right? You're taught to fear your neighbor or you're taught to distrust, and then if you find out they vote differently than you do, you're you're taught to resent them deeply or think that they're a terrible person. I feel like we have to overcome that if we're going to survive as a culture. I want to believe that that's possible and that maybe even the current moment of feeling this fever pitch of dissension would kind of jolt us back to something where we we rebuild some bridges of trust.

SPEAKER_01 17:04

Yeah, you said something to me, you know, when we were kind of talking about this podcast. You just said like it doesn't really profit us anything if we uh achieve all of our highest aims if we're not happy. And happiness like is correlated completely to the quality of our relationships. So if we're alone, we're not happy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:25

I mean, imagine if America's wildest best dreams came true and we had a colony on Mars and we paid off the national debt and everybody had great health care and affordable housing. But if all of us are still lonely and sad and addicted and detached, then none of the rest of that stuff's gonna matter, right?

SPEAKER_01 17:45

It really comes down to you know these circles of relationships. You know, obviously we talked about family a second ago, but now we're talking about friendships, and really the friendships exist in an ecosystem that that is our neighborhoods and our local associations. I mean, I'd love to see a future where even though we're becoming more technologically advanced, that we know more about what it means to actually be a human, how to live, how that actually works. So we actually specialize in that because it's core to everything.

unknown 18:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:16

So alongside that, I think part of what I hope will be true in 2050 is that we will have this is more concrete, you know, more, but that we would have a new vision for what useful work looks like as technology improves and accelerates and changes the definition of work, that we would find fresh purpose instead of it being AI doomsday and it's gonna take all the jobs away, that instead we've found a more efficient and important way to use our lives because a lot of the manual tasks, both physical and academic manual tasks, are all going to be handled by computers that could free us to be even more human than we've ever been. And I I want to believe that's possible. I know there's a lot of risk it could go the other way, but it would be really exciting to imagine a future where so many things that have limited us in our capacities, that those caps are lifted.

SPEAKER_01 19:08

I think one encouraging sign to me is it feels like the younger generation is more in tune with that part. So they're the ones asking not just what are we producing, but what you know, how are we producing it? Like how's it how, you know, where does this come from? They want transparency in the supply chains. They want to see that the things that we're making and consuming actually have a connection to the human impact. They are much more in tune with this idea that the common good should be driving our work. And, you know, that used to be a foundation, I think, in our country's past, where the highest ideal was actually what we're building together and what we're building it for, not just whether we're making a profit off of it. It'd be awesome to see us, you know, kind of get through this phase of maybe rampant consumerism and individualism and come back and own some of these deeper values of what this all means for us together.

SPEAKER_00 20:00

In the midst of all these things, I think it kind of comes back to this idea of the inheritance one one generation to the next. I really do want to give my kids and their kids a joyful future, a thriving future. And I think I've really been blessed. My life and the time and place I was born has afforded me a really amazing run so far. And I don't want to think that was the peak of American history and it's downhill from here. I really do want to believe that the next generations coming forward can experience some great things. Some of that's going to be their choice, right? All we can do is pave the road, but I do want to pave the road. I want to not leave them a mess, but to feel like we did our part in our generation, so that from a moral perspective, a financial perspective, an infrastructure perspective, a cultural values perspective, like that's all ready for them to now build their future upon.

SPEAKER_01 20:53

Yeah. And and hopefully bless the world, not just people who are here in the US, but the whole world benefits from the I've I've got a question for you in this because I'm just thinking about how we're gonna pass that forward. And one part of me goes, you know, like we need to do our job to leave them the best possible things. The other part of me just goes, like, I wonder if they're gonna learn some of what they need to learn from an honest ownership of our mistakes, because we have bone it in some ways. So I'm not I'm not sure what you think is the is it a both and or is it an either or? I'm thinking of some of the backlash where kids are saying, I don't want to be like my parents. And then in some ways we want them to say and then and they're justified, right? Like we don't want them to emulate the places where we've we've had mistakes, but we also want to pass them forward the things that are worth preserving.

SPEAKER_00 21:46

Yeah, well, it is a it is part of the inheritance that a parent can give to a child to share their learned experience, the school of hard knocks, the things that you should never do. I tried that, it's not gonna work. Not every kid listens to that kind of wisdom. The wise ones listen, right? They don't have to repeat the mistakes of their parents because they can see it. I think about my parents and how they've lived quintessentially American lives, and there've been a lot of ups and downs for them. I was there for some of those ups and some of the downs. And so I can look at their story and build upon it. It's not like I have to start with zero and try to figure all this out on my own. I can lean on the wisdom that they, and not just them, but their whole generation. One thing that I feel sad about sometimes is it's kind of a meme now to make fun of older generations or, you know, hey boomer, you know, whatever. And that was my parents that generation. It's very offensive when people think I'm a boomer. Like, hold on, that was my dad. I'm not a boomer. But I look at that and say every generation had its good qualities to emulate, and then things that we'd say, I don't want to do that again, or like they left this mess, we don't want to leave that same mess.

SPEAKER_01 22:56

I think more of that nuanced view might be it might help us stay out of some of the pitfalls. Might what might be some other like threats.

SPEAKER_00 23:05

Your your pessimism or optimism is part of what you hand down, and the next generation is going to pick up their cues from you, even if they really don't want to be like you or they're trying to rebel against you. The reality is kids do follow in the footsteps of their parents in many categories of their lives, even when you don't want to admit that. You look in the mirror and you're like, yeah, I'm kind of like my parents in certain ways. So we have the opportunity to shape their worldview. We have the opportunity to offer them the difference between a good attitude or a bad attitude about the future. Also, foundations of faith and morality come from parents. I saw a statistic. I don't want to fully believe it, but I mean it's just a statistic. It's not like it I can't choose not to believe it. This statistician was saying that whatever somebody believes at about age 13 is likely what they'll always believe.

SPEAKER_01 23:56

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 23:57

And that just makes me think I've got a very limited window of opportunity with my own family to help forge and form those foundational beliefs. And so when we look at gen alpha, gen beta, whatever the trendiest words are to call the young kids these days, this is our opportunity to help them believe something about America and about their future. And I don't want it to be dishonest. I want it to be the truth. But I think I want that to be based on virtues and vision, not just pessimism and despair.

SPEAKER_01 24:33

I think that's been one of the gifts of your friendship to me is I tend to be cynical and I tend to be better at tearing things down than at building them up. But you've said to me so many times that a huge percentage, I mean, you of the reality that we actually live into is started in our in our minds. It's like actually the attitude that we choose or the reality that we decide. It's been challenging to me because I'm like, wow, what story am I actually telling myself? And how is that actually shaping or maybe even limiting my future?

SPEAKER_00 25:09

A quote that Daniel Webster offered when he was addressing the New York Historical Society in 1852. So you gotta put your 1800s suit back on. And of course, they were more culturally Christian back then, so they're framing their understanding of the national future as part of their relationship with God, not just practical things. I think that's an interesting quote to chew on. I'll read it in two parts because it's a long one, but it's valuable. He says, if we and our posterity, so again, if we and the future generations of Americans shall be true to the Christian religion, if we and they shall live always in the fear of God and shall respect his commandments, if we and they shall maintain just moral sentiments and such conscientious convictions of duty as shall control the heart and life, we may have the highest hopes for future fortunes of our country. So if we can have the good character in our hearts, things can go well. That would be a summary of modern speak there, but that's important to consider. You know, sometimes we look at the actual problems we have pragmatically and we think, I don't know how to get out of that mess. But part of it really just does start in your own heart with your own character. And if we can be the right people, eventually things can work out.

SPEAKER_01 26:34

Yeah. There's a there's a huge internal component to every external problem that we have.

SPEAKER_00 26:39

Yeah. So you ready for the second half of this one?

SPEAKER_01 26:41

Give it to me.

SPEAKER_00 26:42

All right. If we and our posterity reject religious instruction and authority, violate the eternal rules of justice, trifle with the injunctions of morality, and recklessly destroy the political constitution which holds us together, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us and bury all our glory in profound obscurity.

SPEAKER_01 27:07

And they knew how to do a warning in the They knew how to do it.

SPEAKER_00 27:10

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 27:10

In the nineteenth century.

SPEAKER_00 27:11

Yeah, so there it is. Who we are probably matters more than what our government is doing at any given time. And what America looks like a hundred years from now might have more to do with our character personally than it does with what's in the federal budget this year, or what debate are they having on social media right now. You and your life are actually the the inheritance that is going to get passed down, your values, your vision.

SPEAKER_01 27:43

Kind of shatters the entitlement mentality. If I'm basically just thinking, wow, you know, what does life owe me? That's a that's a really different perspective that he's outlining. That it actually I need to start with, what can I bring? What do I owe? How can how can I with the people with me create the kind of future that we want?

SPEAKER_00 28:04

Yeah, well, and like Thomas Paine, we quoted earlier, is he he was Webster was kind of taking the children by the hand and saying, all right, let's look past us, let's think about the next generation, not just the next election cycle or the next day or my next decade. What will things be years and years from now? There's an interesting Bible story of a time when the nation of Israel was in captivity in Babylon, and, or I guess that Judah was in captivity in Babylon, and they were in a hopeless scenario, and God had said to them through the prophet Jeremiah that they should still seek the peace and prosperity of the city they're living, and they should be building homes and planting gardens and having children and living for the long term, even in an extremely difficult scenario. That's all that story's in Jeremiah 29. And I was thinking about how some people approach America's future with a hopelessness and a despair, and they have a lot of reasons. There's a lot of dark things you could cite and go, oh, wow, the the the money's bad, the environment's bad, the demographics are bad, the politics is bad. There's no hope. And what should I do? And the simple truth is, even in a really dark and hopeless scenario, you should still play the long game. You should never give up. There's always a reason to plant the next tree, have the next child, plan for the future, and you just keep being faithful with what you have and your character. And if we as Americans were all doing that together, we would start seeing improvement in the big picture. But if if we all give up individually, then there's not going to be hope.

SPEAKER_01 29:38

It's kind of genius in a way. I mean, I know that's a really old text, but it's kind of contemporary, and there's a genius to it because I'm sitting here thinking, like, it's probably your best hope for a better future, right? Like if you just if everybody gives up, you're definitely not going to have the future. Even if you find that you can't change it, doing the things that you can do to make the place where you live the best possible place means that you end up with the best possible life that you could have had in the past.

SPEAKER_00 30:04

Of the cards that you'll be dealt, like wouldn't you rather have if if things really went bad for America, wouldn't you rather have a house and a garden and some kids than having nothing? It's like I'd rather face the future doing the best I can.

SPEAKER_01 30:16

It's sort of like the ultimate, like, hey man, give up on despair idea. Like it's just never the it's never the winning side. How do we apply this, you know, to where we are? Again, I'm always thinking big ideas, you know, small person here in a small world, like what do I do?

SPEAKER_00 30:30

I think there's a few reflection questions we could ask that would help us orient to the future, start thinking this way. This one really punches me in the gut, honestly. If America became more like me, would it be healthier? Interesting to think about. If America became more like me, would it become the country that we're saying we want? Wow. Because America is me, and it is you. So if we want a different future, then we just begin by becoming different men, different women.

SPEAKER_01 31:09

I mean, if you're gonna if you're kind of ripping the lid off here, I guess we could apply that really personally along a whole host of variables of the things we've just talked about. Like we've talked about trust. If we want a trustworthy government.

SPEAKER_00 31:23

Yeah, are you trustworthy? Starts there. Or if you want a stronger family, how is your family? How are you doing?

SPEAKER_01 31:32

Am I strengthening my family?

SPEAKER_00 31:33

Yeah. Even if you think about some of the things like finances, maybe you're really upset that the government's deeply in debt. Okay, well, how are you doing in that category? Or maybe you're wishing the government would be more environmentally responsible. Okay, how are you doing with it? If we personalize all this, it not only helps us, I think, see the future, we do have some agency, we get to choose the future. But if you personally change your habits, America's still gonna do what America's gonna do. But if you do it and I do it and the next person does it, pretty soon that does start to add up to cultural change.

SPEAKER_01 32:12

It's the way off the beginning with one person that last actually happened because we spread it on a on a one-to-one basis. And I guess in this episode, we've been asking the question, what do we want not just next year, but for our kids and grandkids, like way down the road. So I guess the question is if we want that kind of a culture that thinks beyond itself, how am I thinking beyond myself? Am I living for something more than next year or my retirement?

SPEAKER_00 32:41

In Galatians, the Apostle Paul wrote, Don't be misled. You cannot mock the justice of God. You will always harvest what you plant. In the old way, you always reap what you sow. And so I think it is a good question to ask. What am I planting right now? I'll eventually get a harvest of whatever that is. You could ask, what am I building right now? Like if we say, I will I really want to build America for the future, what are you building? How are you contributing to that? And what are you passing forward? What am I passing forward? What are the values? What are the virtues? It's not not about physical things. I guess we could pass forward a few of those, or maybe a few dollars in a bank account somewhere, but I'd much rather be passing forward a vision for life that's worth pursuing and some values that are worth living for.

SPEAKER_01 33:32

Yeah. My wife's favorite story in the New Testament, or at least one of them, is about the little kid that brought his lunch to the disciples when they needed to feed all these thousands of people. And at one level, you're just like, it's the stupidest thing. I mean, this little boy's lunch, it's not even worth offering. You might as well just there, you know, he might as well at least had a snack. But he's like, Hey, I'll help. And Jesus took the little the five loaves and two fish, and somehow through miracles, ended up multiplying it to the blessing of everybody. And uh, that's kind of her living metaphor. Like she gets up every morning thinking, like, I've only got five loaves and two fish, but I get to offer it today. The trust is that somehow together and with God's help, it's gonna be multiplied.

SPEAKER_00 34:19

Maybe it'd be worth a walk in the cemetery for all of us just to reflect on where we came from, where we're going. I'm really grateful for our listeners sticking with us for this first season of Abundant and thinking a lot about what we want to do from here, where we want to go. I know we've talked a lot about our next season. We want to zoom in on manhood and womanhood in particular and talk about what makes a human being human. How do we live our best life in the light of who God made us to be? So we'll take a little break and then we'll come back with that season. I want to make sure that everyone who's listening to this is subscribed to the show so that you get notified when that season drops and we start those conversations. I think that'll be really important.

SPEAKER_01 35:06

Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. I think what what does it really mean to be a human being right now is the biggest question of our time. So it'll be an interesting season to explore.

SPEAKER_00 35:14

And regarding season one and American future, I did want to offer our listeners an opportunity. We are probably going to be dropping a bonus episode just to talk about some of the feedback we've gotten. And before we do that, I wanted to give everybody a chance to give us a little bit more of that feedback. If there's a tough question you think we haven't addressed, critique, I mean, I guess you're allowed to say something nice too, but whatever you'd like to say in kind of response to season one, let us know. And maybe that will find its way into that bonus episode of uh the mailbag, as it were, the whatever, whatever people want to talk about that we haven't addressed. I'd love to do that. Dell, any other encouragements you want to offer our listeners before we wrap up this first season?

SPEAKER_01 36:01

No, I think the I think the whole spirit of it has been to be a catalyst for thinking more broadly, more widely, hopefully more integratively with your values and your faith. So, you know, that's been my hope that it's been a stimulus for that and grateful for the listens.

SPEAKER_00 36:16

Yeah, well, this has been abundant, sponsored by Barion.life and originating from Barion Center Bible Church in Southwest Michigan. Special thanks to our production team, Ben Sanders, Trevor Jones, and the rest of the BCBC family for those who donate to make these shows possible. Thank you. And of course, for you who listen, thank you for being a part of what we're doing here. We'd always love to hear from you, and until we get to chat again, live abundantly.