transcript
Speaker 1:
[00:07] Hello, everyone, welcome to The Esau McCaulley Podcast. We're joined today by our regular Justin Giboney. How are things going with you, Justin?
Speaker 2:
[00:13] They're going well, man, glad to be here.
Speaker 1:
[00:15] For those of you who like, I may be trying to inspire people to like click in to our YouTube things, we can get our YouTube views up. But like, I've always loved Justin's art in the back. Like, where did you get those images? He has GK Chesterton, that's Fannie Lou Hamer. I can't see who the other two people, who are the, who are the people behind you, the other two?
Speaker 2:
[00:33] Gardner C. Taylor and Mahalia Jackson.
Speaker 1:
[00:35] Okay, then did you get those paintings somewhere?
Speaker 2:
[00:38] I did actually show Baraka's wife.
Speaker 1:
[00:40] Okay then.
Speaker 2:
[00:40] Paintings for me.
Speaker 1:
[00:42] Oh, does she have like a business?
Speaker 2:
[00:44] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[00:45] Okay, shout out. Google show Baraka. Where do we go if I need to get some of this painting? What do I need to do?
Speaker 2:
[00:50] I can get that to you so you can put it in the show notes.
Speaker 1:
[00:52] Okay, we put it in the show notes.
Speaker 3:
[00:53] Yes, he's mostly just interested because he wants one of himself to put up, send to you Justin, I'm sure it will be sent to me.
Speaker 1:
[01:00] If people want to put a picture of me on their wall, who am I to tell them no, right? These people, let the people like who they want to like, you know what I'm saying? We should get one of these, yeah, for the show.
Speaker 3:
[01:09] For the show, right behind you.
Speaker 1:
[01:11] I would say I would look back at my own self. So we also joined today by Mike, how are things going, Mike?
Speaker 3:
[01:15] Things are great, Esau.
Speaker 1:
[01:17] Did you do anything fun over the weekend?
Speaker 3:
[01:18] I recovered, I was in Nashville last week with some other Christian podcasters.
Speaker 1:
[01:22] Oh, wait, it was a Christian podcast?
Speaker 3:
[01:24] Yeah, so it was a group of us kind of getting together, just sharing all the trade secrets.
Speaker 1:
[01:28] What did you tell them? What is the key to our success or lack thereof?
Speaker 3:
[01:32] The key to our success is having a pretty talented host, but an even more talented producer to keep the host on track.
Speaker 1:
[01:39] Oh, okay, I thought you could have said actually having a great team of guests.
Speaker 3:
[01:42] Oh yeah, great guests as well. Yeah, you're right, that would have been better.
Speaker 1:
[01:45] So our first story is this article that we saw a couple of weeks ago. We've been trying to get it on the podcast for a minute. It's about, what's the name of it?
Speaker 3:
[01:54] The people who shun super popular pop culture.
Speaker 1:
[01:57] Yeah, it's like popularity resistance. And they said, there's these people who, when something becomes super, super popular, they're the kind of people who says, I haven't seen it. And then they spoke about, there's like two different types of personalities that relates to popular culture. One is fear missing out. If you hear something that's really popular, you immediately say, I gotta watch it. FOMO. FOMO, but then the other one is called love of missing out. I don't know if you wanna say LOMO, that doesn't really give it the same kind of energy. Then when something gets super popular, you say, I'm not gonna do it. So I'm not gonna lie to you. I am kind of a mix, but I miss out on all kinds of stuff. So I haven't seen The Pit. Everyone says it's like so good, really good. I watched like maybe the first season of The Bear. It's so many things.
Speaker 3:
[02:44] Oh, The Bear is so good. What is your problem?
Speaker 1:
[02:46] The same thing. This happens a lot on our podcast, Justin. Something will become popular. And I'll say, we should do a podcast about it. And then by the time we get around to it, I'm out. Also, SEPRENCE. I haven't seen SEPRENCE.
Speaker 3:
[02:58] Esau. Justin, have you watched any of these?
Speaker 2:
[03:02] My wife watches The Pit. So I've seen that a couple of times.
Speaker 1:
[03:06] What's the other one? The one with the black guy with Sterling. Sterling K. Brown. You know what I'm talking about? Paradise. Have you seen that, Justin?
Speaker 3:
[03:15] No, I haven't seen that.
Speaker 1:
[03:16] So, Justin.
Speaker 2:
[03:17] I watch a season of it. Not this last one.
Speaker 1:
[03:20] So, Justin, are you a fear of missing out person or are you a love of missing out person? I'm going to tell you something that's popping. Do you lock in or do you just kind of like, I don't care?
Speaker 2:
[03:31] As you guys know, I'm not big on pop culture in general. And I think I'm just not interested in it. So, but I don't know. I think I do feel like sometimes there's a lot of hive mind going on when it comes to what's really popular. But if something looks like I want, if it looks like something I want to see, I'll watch it. I don't think I'm not going to watch it because it's popular. So maybe I lean to the latter.
Speaker 1:
[03:55] What about music? What about music? Will you listen to... Maybe it's movies it doesn't get to you. Are there like artists? If you hear something, this is a good album, do you listen to it then?
Speaker 2:
[04:07] It has to interest me, I think, independently. I don't think that the numbers and a whole bunch of people saying they like it moves me all that much.
Speaker 1:
[04:14] What is something that was really popular that you didn't watch because everybody said it was popular?
Speaker 3:
[04:20] There was this book a few years ago called Reading While Black.
Speaker 1:
[04:26] It was really popular.
Speaker 3:
[04:28] I was just like, not for me.
Speaker 1:
[04:30] Can I ask you a question?
Speaker 3:
[04:31] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[04:31] Have you read that book?
Speaker 3:
[04:32] Have I read? Have you read? You were my honest answer.
Speaker 1:
[04:34] Yes. Have you read Reading While Black?
Speaker 3:
[04:36] I read the intro and maybe chapter one or two and then I stopped.
Speaker 1:
[04:40] Wow. It wasn't because it was bad.
Speaker 3:
[04:42] I got distracted.
Speaker 2:
[04:43] You got distracted, really?
Speaker 3:
[04:45] It's that book that I-
Speaker 1:
[04:46] It came out in 2020. You had six years to finish. You could have done a chapter a year and been done by now.
Speaker 3:
[04:51] I know. But instead I read-
Speaker 1:
[04:52] A chapter a year.
Speaker 3:
[04:53] I'm a big, how far to the promised land stand. I said like, that's the Esau. I can't be a fan of both of them.
Speaker 1:
[04:59] Okay. I only have two. We'll leave that alone. So I would say, and people get mad at me, people came too hard for Sinners to me. And I was just like, you can't tell me I got to watch this show, this movie. So I didn't watch it.
Speaker 3:
[05:15] I watched Sinners?
Speaker 1:
[05:16] Yeah.
Speaker 3:
[05:16] I didn't get it.
Speaker 1:
[05:17] I mean, maybe we're gonna get killed for this. Maybe you can't, cause you know, different reasons. But for black America, black people get mad at me. They say, you haven't seen Sinners. It becomes like these movies that everyone tells me I have to watch. I'm a big fan of supporting like black film, but it was like horror. And it was like, supposedly really graphic, like a lot of sex scenes and stuff. I was like, I don't know if I really care enough to hear to watch it. Justin, is there a particular thing that you remember hearing a lot of hype about that you just said I'll pass? I know you said a lot of it doesn't interest you. What is one that you felt like there was omni pressing that you say, I don't care what you say, I'm not gonna listen to it or watch it? Did you watch Sinners?
Speaker 2:
[05:53] I don't think so. Yeah, I did see Sinners. I thought it was pretty good. I think it was a little bit overrated. But now I don't recall saying, oh, it's popular, so I'm not gonna do it. If I'm just not interested, I'm not interested. I will say, I do think, and this is a very unpopular opinion, I think Kendrick's last album was one. I was like, it's okay.
Speaker 1:
[06:15] Oh, your G&X?
Speaker 2:
[06:15] I was like, this is the greatest thing ever. And I'm like, I just don't.
Speaker 1:
[06:17] G&X is okay. It was okay.
Speaker 2:
[06:19] But the vibe was to pretend that it was the greatest album that anyone ever heard.
Speaker 1:
[06:23] G&X was okay.
Speaker 3:
[06:25] Project Hail Mary, did that level up to the hype?
Speaker 2:
[06:26] I love Kendrick.
Speaker 1:
[06:27] Yeah, Project Hail Mary, it was good. I think it was just different more than it was hype. The other thing that they mentioned though was there's a sheer number of cultural products. That's another reason. It's not just fear missing out and loving missing out, but there are so many things now that you have to see that people are overwhelmed by. And that's the reason why I think I struggle with so many TV shows, because there's a lot of drama. I mean, there's a lot of plot and it's super intense. And I don't know if I got like eight to 12 hours to like dedicate the binge through a show. And so the bar for me of like, it needs to be a kind of show that I can check in or check out on. And a lot of these new shows feel like there's a high level of emotional commitment. And I get enthusiastic. And then I think about, do I have another energy to go into this bunker again in paradise? And right now, I currently don't.
Speaker 3:
[07:22] Okay, that's fair. I would say to both of you, you have to watch Severance. It's so good. Now, but it's a show. Here's the thing. You've got to commit. You really have to pay attention.
Speaker 1:
[07:33] I committed to my wife. I committed to Severance.
Speaker 3:
[07:35] Here's the thing with Severance, the frustrating thing. It takes in like four years to put out another season. So, you just watch a season and then sometime, your kids will be off in college before the next one comes out.
Speaker 1:
[07:45] The other story we're going to talk about, the next one actually relates to this. If there is a sheer number of massive cultural products that we feel a little bit overwhelmed by, there was an article also in The Atlantic called The Last Time We Watched The Same Thing. And it's one of these stories, these things we dealt with before. Kind of the death of monoculture. And it starts with this famous photo from the 2014 Oscars, where it's Bradley Cooper and a bunch of celebrities. Interestingly enough-
Speaker 3:
[08:15] Taking a selfie.
Speaker 1:
[08:15] Taking a selfie. And interestingly enough, this is when selfies had just now kind of reached the mainstream. And at the time, it was the most tweeted photo of all time. And so, and he was talking about that. This is even back in the time when posts and tweets not be. This is before video on social media became dominant. There was actually content photo driven. And he talked about how at that point, there are 44 million people who watch the Oscars. This is like monoculture. Today, only 18 million people watch the Oscars. At the time, there were 24 shows on network television. They had 12 million viewers or more in a given week. And now there's only three. And so, they are talking about this idea that at one point, there was these cultural meeting points where we all watched the same thing. We all talked about it. We all went to the same places. They have conversations about them. We'd have like, we'd all go on Twitter and talk about what's happening on Super Bowl and basketball and all these other things. So, the death of monoculture. So, here's the thing. They said the thing that killed monoculture was the rise of video on social media and personalized algorithms. So, instead of everyone watching the same television shows, we came together and we now we come together, we have our own algorithmic driven video feeds. So, Justin, here's the question. Is the death of something like the monoculture a good thing, a bad thing? Does it matter for us Christians at all?
Speaker 2:
[09:44] On the whole, I do think it's a bad thing in that we don't have a whole lot of common ground already. And so, to lose what common ground that we had, even if it's cultural references or we all watch the Cosby's or we all watch TGIF Fridays, it means that there's something that we have in common and that we can relate to, whether it's the language or how they go about it, that I think helps even from a political standpoint. Now, what I see even more so is we go out of our way, and maybe this relates to what we were just talking about, we go out of our way to not have anything in common.
Speaker 1:
[10:18] Yeah.
Speaker 2:
[10:19] Like, if I feel like I'm progressive, I want to make sure that everything that conservatives like, I don't like, I don't watch, I don't deal with at all. And so, I do think it can be hurtful at the end of the day.
Speaker 1:
[10:30] I think that this, I was talking to Mark, Mark, who was Mark? Mike.
Speaker 3:
[10:37] Yeah, Mike. How many podcasts have we done together?
Speaker 1:
[10:40] I was talking to Mike earlier. And the thing about the death of the monoculture, it was also, and once again, Twitter has always been complicated. I know everybody's down on social media. But it was even this time when we were all kind of come on social media to the same places around the same times. And the conversation seemed at least somewhat organic. And you could actually meet people and have a conversation that felt like it was a communal meeting place. And there was even a time when we talked about this, when you could actually build your platform across a wide variety of people on social media. So you would put something out and people from everywhere kind of saw it. And you had to kind of engage in ways that made a little bit of sense. Now you have like Blue Sky, which is its own ideological platform. You have Twitter, which is the opposite algorithm. And then you have True Social, which is the third thing. And you no longer have not only common shows that we watch, but common places that we even meet and engage with one another. I'm not saying that stuff was healthy, but there was this idea that I thought when I said something, even before I had a huge platform, I was saying it was like, these are... I thought I'm engaging in a conversation where a lot of people are around topics that we all genuinely care about together. And it does feel like there's something lost there.
Speaker 3:
[11:59] So, I mean, what's the solution, though, to either one of you? Because it does feel like, I agree with everything that you just said. We're all kind of in our semblance of an echo chamber. We have our algorithms are fed to us. Justin still doesn't know who Jennifer Lawrence is. He probably never will.
Speaker 1:
[12:15] She was in that selfie. She was in that selfie. I don't know what she...
Speaker 3:
[12:17] She actually was. And so, if we admit, I agree, it's a problem, what's the solution here? Why does this matter?
Speaker 1:
[12:26] Well, I think part of it, and I think a good example of this is recently David French, who's also on The Holy Post Relativity regularly, every Friday, as it is, every other Friday.
Speaker 3:
[12:37] The last Friday of every month.
Speaker 1:
[12:38] Last Friday of every month. He went on Ali Beth Stuckey's podcast. They actually had a conversation about the things that they disagree with. What you saw was that even though they had some fundamental disagreements, in a lot of places, they actually were relatively close together. I think it's really easy to sometimes demonize someone if you can completely depict them as the other. I think part of it is finding ways in person to have conversations. I think the other thing that I might want to suggest, and I would love to hear this with Justin, is that we have to learn how to watch things as entertainment. There aren't 100% ideologically fitting with who we are. Because I feel like even now the content, because there's not a monoculture, people are making content for their core audience. Anytime something gets out of that core audience, people freak out. I think a lot about, we talked about this when they had Black Snape on Harry Potter, or we had like, anytime Disney tries to get diverse for some of their casting, people see each one of those things as these ideological markers. We turned media or entertainment into another place where we fight our culture war, instead of being able to say, this is a good story that asks interesting questions. Is Justin, am I fair about that? Is there something else that we're missing?
Speaker 2:
[14:01] No, I think you're getting it right. One of the tough positions I've taken probably within this last year or so is just, I'm completely against the huddling up in your identity group and shunning everybody else. I think we really need to be deliberate about getting outside of our identity groups, meeting people and having relationship. Once that happens, I think you start to watch some of the same things. Some of the best things that I've been put on come from people who I normally might not have interacted with but for trying to create relationship. That's a big issue. I think more than almost any time I can remember, people think it's okay to just kind of like... People who otherwise could... So some people are isolated from other groups. There are people who have opportunities to reach out and get to know people in other spaces, Christian leaders especially, who are choosing not to do that. I get the protection side of it. I think at the end of the day, that's not a good idea. But when we do reach out, we do go to those other spaces. I think we build common ground. There's things that we give each other to give and take.
Speaker 1:
[15:05] This is something else that we actually... I'm glad that you mentioned this thing about the church I wanted to get to. Because not only we lost the death of the popular monoculture, we've kind of lost this idea of Christian figures who speak beyond their tribe. And I used to think, if you say, let's say you wanted to have an audience, maybe you'd get a third of your audience agrees with you, a third of your audience are people who may not care one way or the other about religion, you're going to draw them in, and another third of your audience will be people who disagree with you. That might not have been accurate. But the idea that I want my, if I write something, I want people across the spectrum to see and engage and be a conversation piece. I feel like now it's like if I can get 90% of my core and rabid audience to agree with support and purchase what I have, there's no need for me to go beyond my tribe to make money and to have a living. That just means that what gets out into the discourse is more and more pure in the sense of there is no deviation because my economic model depends upon me staying and feeding that exact same crowd. It doesn't have to be very big. If it's big enough for you to make money in that, then it becomes like self protection. One of the things you have, right, Justin, is the possibility, what we now call counseling, and I'm not saying that counselor culture is ever good. What it was was the universal agreement that this thing that you did was kind of beyond the pale. You had to apologize and say, hey, I didn't do this well. Now, if your core audience is not offended by it, and you don't care what everybody else says, you can kind of ignore why the discourse. I feel like we've lost this ability to communicate across ideological difference, because the financial motivation is to never compromise. It is to only continually feed your own group.
Speaker 2:
[16:59] I think it may be even more cynical than that for some people. I think in these identity groups, some of the gatekeepers, and in order for you to stay there and be seen as authentic, you have to pay this toll, which causes you to say things that pushes up other groups away. If you don't criticize white evangelical certain amount of time, if you don't criticize progressive leaders a certain amount of times, you lose accreditation within these particular groups. And so you almost have to push them away to fit within this other identity group. And it causes people to just completely, I think there's an economic benefit to it too, but it's also a matter of, I think, belonging within certain groups, unfortunately.
Speaker 1:
[17:41] I feel like, I was talking to my wife about this the other day, I think that sometimes, and I love Holy Post, we've chosen the least economically viable group, because we'll sometimes, I want to make it seem like we're uniquely virtuous, but we're not necessarily ideologically uniform, in the sense that you can come on this podcast and assume you're going to get a whole 45 minutes of yelling at white evangelicalism, or 45 minutes of trying to argue progressivism, and the audience for people who actually want to hear this kind of middle row, and middle is the wrong word, but I guess individual discernment, it feels like that kind of complexity, and I don't want people to feel sorry for us, that kind of complexity feels like it's a harder, slower road to travel, to help people to understand those things. Do you even feel like that? We went one idealized, I know we talked about this before, but do you even feel that tension of saying we need to kind of clarify or take one particular lane?
Speaker 3:
[18:43] I've joked before when I have friends ask, like how Holy Post is doing, what I think the upward potential is for us as a company. It's like, I don't know. I don't know how much of a market there is for people who want like nuanced Christian takes that don't automatically take a belong into a camp and bundle everything together. We get people all the time who come across a clip of something we do online that they really like, but they'll make an assumption about all of our stances on all of the major issues based on that one clip. Because traditionally, well, if you believe this about gun rights, then you're going to believe this also about this, that and the other.
Speaker 1:
[19:19] Yeah. So I'll put like, yes, we will say we'll be pro gun control and pro life at the exact same time. And people go like, I know I came here to yell at all things Republican. I go like, no, I think this baby is of infinite value by God. And when people hear that, they go, oh, you must mean these other 15 things. I don't. Let me ask you this question. They will move on. I want to belabor this more. You could have someone, and I don't want to, you know, may he rest in peace. Someone like Tim Keller, who was kind of a public intellectual, who did deviate between these two things and kind of had a wider platform. But that was the pre like social media. He kind of, he existed pre social media. Even someone like Beth Moore, who kind of crosses ideological, you know, spaces. Is it possible for someone who did not exist in the pre internet, pre social media era, to build a platform like what Tim or what Beth currently has, where they don't all fit into one ideological box? Or has our tribalism taken over, where it's hard to kind of get to that statements, statesmanship status judge? You think we could do that again?
Speaker 2:
[20:26] It's certainly not impossible. It's tough, but I believe it can happen. You just got to outwork them. And I think you have to provide a vision that people aren't used to. What's going to happen is, as people become individualistic, we get all this identity idolatry. All that stuff doesn't really hold water. After a while, and I know this from my personal experience, you realize that a lot of the stereotypes and narratives you have just really aren't true. A lot of the stuff that you hate about the other group, in one way or another, you'll find in your own group eventually. And so as that stuff breaks down, there has to be people that provide an alternative way to view things. And so we have to believe, I think that's more of the imagination. We have to believe there's a way to do it. It's not going to be easy. I think you need to be innovative, but I think that's the cross is part of trying to do it.
Speaker 3:
[21:14] Okay, I'm ready. I'll do it.
Speaker 1:
[21:15] Go ahead.
Speaker 3:
[21:16] No, I'll be the person that can bridge all the gaps and be the next Tim Keller.
Speaker 1:
[21:20] Actually, I think, and this is the last thing I want to say about this. I think that we're also witnessing something of a political exhaustion amongst young Christians. I think the Christians who are having the most kind of influential younger generations of Christians that I'm seeing are particular people who focus on theological content. I think that people kind of know that the world is messed up politically. And right now, someone like John Mark Comer are these people who are talking about, and even 28, 19, which is like, whatever else you think about, people think about this guy talks about Jesus a lot. And he says, take your faith seriously. And so I think that people are seeing certain kinds of Christians who are presenting themselves as focused primarily on Christian practices. And I think there'd be one response to this kind of excessive polarization is there's a, in a younger generation, almost shutting out of Christian politics and talking just about like faith. Have you noticed that in Atlanta, Justin?
Speaker 2:
[22:22] Oh yeah, I mean, we've even done some, when we're at HBCUs and even other places, we've even done some kind of surveys where sometimes they just don't want to talk about politics. That just doesn't rise up to be one of their top three issues. Now, I think they should care, but I do understand why there's some burnout in the way that we've been handling.
Speaker 1:
[22:40] Yeah. Do you ever question the Bible? That's not a sign of weak faith, but an invitation to dig deeper. What we really want to do is to make sure we're asking the right questions about God's word. The Bible is full of treasures, yet many of us have not been given the proper tools to uncover them. You may even be carrying wounds or guilt from how the Bible has been taught to us. Join Marty Solomon as he helps you ask those better questions. In his books, Asking Better Questions of the Bible and The Gospel of Being Human, Marty gives you the literary tools to understand tough topics from the Bible. In this process, you will obtain a deeper appreciation of God's Word and what it means to be created in its image. Marty is a theologian and host of The BEMA Podcast. To start asking better questions of the Bible and to take a closer look at his books, go to navpress.com or the link in the show notes. To start listening, just type B E M A into the search bar wherever you listen to podcasts. If you want to watch Marty challenge Lecrae on his Bible understanding, head over to YouTube and search for Lecrae and Marty Solomon. The Bible is full of treachery. It's time to start asking the right questions. I don't mess around when it comes to things that I use every single day, like my mattress. That's why I sleep on a mattress from Brooklyn Bedding. It's not just a mattress. It's the Lebron James mattresses, built to last in their own US factory in Arizona. These mattresses are second to none. Sleeping on my new Sedona Elite, I can really feel the quality from stitching to support. Every night has been a comfortable sleep. Go to brooklynbedding.com and use the promo code Esau. That's E-S-A-U at checkout to get 30 percent off site-wide. This offer is not available anywhere else. That's promo code Esau, E-S-A-U for 30 percent off site-wide. Support our show. Let them know we sent you after the checkout. Zones Field got him doing football numbers. Speaking of someone who existed in monoculture, this might be the pop culture episode. Dave Chappelle.
Speaker 3:
[24:52] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[24:53] Dave Chappelle. Once again though, Dave Chappelle and the Chappelle show happened before all of this. He's been doing his comedy shows afterwards. But he did an interview with NPR, I think it was. I forget who he did the interview with. But he's launching a public radio thing in Ohio and he was trying to get some publicity. So we did an interview. So I want to talk about all of them. There's one part of this interview that was really interesting because Dave Chappelle and a few other comedians, I don't know if you have the list of the comedians, you can say it in a second, who went over to Saudi Arabia and who performed in front of the Saudi government. There's criticism of him because the Saudi government had been complicit in the murder of a journalist. And initially, when he had been invited to do it, he had said no the first time he was invited. And then he goes back and they say, well, how can you go to this place where these people are complicit in murdering this journalist? And he said, well, at first I said, no, I won't go. Then he said, well, you know what though? I noticed that the American government does business with Saudi Arabia. He says in Netflix, he has to deal with us, business with Saudi Arabia. There are a ton of people who do business with Saudi Arabia. And he says, when the black man goes over there, that's when he kind of gets in the trouble. And he actually said, yes, he said, the idea of clean money is a myth. He said that-
Speaker 3:
[26:14] Can I read this quote? It's so good. He says, none of these things were an issue until I went there. Now, why is that? Soon as a black man can make money off the plantation, they try to tell you the money is dirty. Well, okay, I'll go home and spend the money with actual slave owners on it. Where is this clean money you're talking about?
Speaker 1:
[26:31] So, I thought he raised an interesting question that I thought we might think about maybe from the Christian perspective. Because the idea of clean money actually is complicated. And he's right that everything is in some sense morally compromised. So, how do we decide, as Christians, the kinds of things that we say is worth our time and energy to boycott or to withdraw from? How do we make those kinds of decisions? Do you ever struggle with this idea that he's talking about? There is no such thing as clean and non-compromised money. And how do you think through how you make these kinds of financial decisions and say, okay, in this context, I'm not going to engage and support it. And in this context, I'm just going to say it's part of a broken economic system. Have you thought through that at all?
Speaker 2:
[27:15] Yeah. And I think there's a tension here. And on one end, I think we know not all money is good money. And so there are places that I wouldn't go and wouldn't receive their money based on my principles. At the same time, I really am against the means of control people try to put on people in that cancel culture. Like, oh, if you go somewhere I don't like, even though I may not even be consistent in my philosophy about this, then I'm going to cancel you. He may go there and maybe you want to have some interaction because guess what? He can plant seeds. He's speaking to thousands of people. Maybe there are things that he could say that they could actually think about. I think we have to be very slow to say, don't go talk to a certain group ever. To me, again, it's a means of control for a lot of people. They need to get over it. You don't control what people say. I think we need to go more from, you can't say that to here's why you're wrong. Instead of kind of just stopping people from doing things that we don't want them to do, make your case and then move on. But the cancellation is getting kind of old. I don't think there's much of a future in that.
Speaker 1:
[28:17] Dave Chappelle actually said when he went to Saudi Arabia for one of his shows, they gave him a list of things that he couldn't say. And then he said, it was nine things. And he said, there's nine things you can't say. And he said, he took that list and he went on the stage and that was his set. He went one by one through the list. And he said that being able to make funny, I don't know what he made fun of. I don't know, he didn't say what the story was. But the idea that people in that audience had never actually seen someone defy some of these taboos. And he said, like you said, it was an opportunity to push back on it. But how do you know the line between pushing back on something by attending Justin and feeling co-opted? Have you ever found yourself in a place, you're in this place like, man, I'm not sure that what I came to do, they wanted to have accomplished. Have you ever been that as a speaker?
Speaker 2:
[29:07] Yeah, I felt that way before, but anytime I feel that way at all, and I'm coming up on an event where I might feel some way about that, I'm gonna just say what I, I'm not gonna pull any punches, I'm gonna say what I mean to say if they don't bring me back, that's cool. But I'm never going to go into that space where I feel like, should I be here, should I? I'm gonna say, I think Chappelle hit it on the head. He went in there, he said, well, they didn't want him to say, I'm not saying be a contrarian, but I'm certainly not going to hold back what I need to say because I'm in a certain space. And I think if you can maintain that integrity, it opens up the amount of places that you can go because it says, I'm going to maintain who I am and it's up to them whether they want to hear it or not.
Speaker 1:
[29:49] Yeah, I found, and I wasn't thinking about going here, we'll come back to the money thing in a sec with Chappelle and what it's like. I found when I travel places, because of the things that I do, different audiences want different, it's not very just parts of my CV. Some people want the black intellectual, not black intellectual, black justice stuff, not too much Jesus. And so they want me to come and talk about all the problems in America and talk about racism. And then they can buy the fact, because I'm talking about racism, they're the people who could just listening to this speech are exempted from the conversation. And there's some people who know me as someone who loves Jesus, who's a faith leader. And they want to be able to have me come in and give the Jesus bits, but don't get too much into the racial politics stuff. And so I found like I try to say no to any places where I'm going to edit out one of those versions of myself, where I can bring the whole of who I am. And even if they don't edit it, I don't like the conversations before and I don't like the dinners where they're like, oh, we get it. And so like I want to be in a place where they're inviting a holistic account of what I understand Christianity and the gospel to be without me having to edit one part of the other. And I tend to, if I do come to go against type, right? So if you want a lot of Jesus, you're going to get a lot of Jesus for how the gospel impinges on how we treat our neighbor. And if you want only neighbor stuff, I can say, I can only come to you, not with these kinds of secular critiques only, but this idea that there is something that the gospel has uniquely to answer it. And whenever I feel, there have been times I was like, man, this didn't feel good. Not because I felt like I didn't say what I was called to say. I felt like by virtue of being in this location, I was cosigning something that I didn't realize I was fully participating in. That's one of those things you learn from speaking.
Speaker 3:
[31:44] Okay, can we look at this from a slightly different angle? Because I think many of our audience are probably not getting speaking invitations.
Speaker 1:
[31:51] The money part.
Speaker 3:
[31:52] But many are torn on if they should be boycotting companies or not. So like, let's just use Amazon as an example. Like, oh, there's a lot of things that Jeff Bezos does that I'm not a huge fan of. I've seen some Christians call that you should boycott Amazon. That two day shipping is also super convenient. And I have struggled with this kind of boycott culture. You were saying this too, Justin. Like, if I'm consistent in all of my views and I boycott companies that I think violate my strong held beliefs, I feel like I would end up boycotting every single company. So how do you draw the line between what is worthy of a boycott and what isn't? Or is it just like, well, I'm gonna make those decisions personally, but I'm not gonna expect other people to hold to those same decisions.
Speaker 1:
[32:35] Justin?
Speaker 2:
[32:37] Yeah, it's a good question. I think it is something that you decide. I don't know that there's this bright line. I would say when something egregious happens and it seemed like it came from leadership, then that's a time where using your discernment, you might say, you know what, I'm gonna step back here. If it's consistent and like one of those major issues that you feel like it's impacting a whole community or something like that, then maybe you do start reaching out to people to say, hey, I don't think that we should move forward with this. But also realize the boycott is not the only means that you can use. You just kind of have to use your voice and use discernment. But I would say it would have to be fairly egregious relative to what's going on already for me to say, okay, I'm going to boycott right now or take the next step, which is sometimes necessary to get others to do the same.
Speaker 1:
[33:23] Well, I would say the thing that you're probably getting at is something along the lines of economic discipleship. And this might seem like a small thing, but I think that I'm not saying you shouldn't boycott, but I want to talk about other things that Christians can do because you can not go to one store and then go to another store and spend the same amount of money. And the poor or the people who you're concerned with that is leading to this boycott don't benefit from it. And so one of the things I can talk about is like, how can we actually redistribute the gifts that we have to help those who are in need and to make that a regular part of our family's decision making? And so there is something that you care about. How are you financially helping in that situation? Obviously, I think it's like giving to your church. Part of giving to your church though is when you give to the church, obviously, you're investing in it. It's a spiritual component. But it also then ought to have you asking questions about how does the church spend that money and then give that money to those who are in need. It's a part of your economic... And this is true. And I was in this thing. Churches pay attention to the people who give. And so if you give it to your church and saying like, listen, I'm tithing. I want to make sure that some of this money is going towards helping the people who are needing. But beyond tithing, there's this idea that you can give to organizations who are doing things to empower people. Or you can give it to organizations like the Anne Campaign, who are doing good. I'm not even kidding when I say that. When I say that economic discipleship is what we, we know what we value, not with the place where we withhold money, but where we spend money. And so I do think that Christians really need, we all see these things, right? These churches go viral for a moment. Actually a friend of mine, and I think it's, it's Derwin Gray. He's at Transformers Church in DC. And I think they paid off some, sorry, the Carolinas. They paid off like some, some medical debt. And so you do see churches that do these, you know, these big positive actions. And I think that supporting organizations and Christian organizations with resources is better than saying, instead of going to Target, I'm going to go to Walmart. I'm not saying you should, no, I'm not talking about Target, I'm just using it as an example. The second thing I would say is that everybody has their own particular thing that they're passionate about. And I think that you probably shouldn't use the easy out of, it is impossible to do anything to then do nothing. So there's certain things that you will see, you will feel convicted about. I remember there's certain clothing companies that don't like the way they do their advertising. And I'm not running a boycott campaign, I'm just like, I'm not shopping there. And so I think that being able to be sensitive to the spirit's conviction and being willing to make your own personal economic decisions and talking about that with your family so they can understand it. But I think that he is right, that it's impossible to completely detach ourselves from all of the economic things that are broken. But I don't think that we should just do nothing. So support actual organizations that are economically empowering people and then withdraw from the things that we need to withdraw from. Did I leave anything out, Justin?
Speaker 2:
[36:29] No, I think this is pretty good.
Speaker 1:
[36:30] Yeah.
Speaker 3:
[36:31] We solved that one.
Speaker 1:
[36:31] We solved that one.
Speaker 3:
[36:32] Yeah. We're set. And if you're looking for media companies that are trying to navigate this crazy world we live in in a theologically orthodox, pro-neighbor, entertaining type of way, maybe buy a Holy Post Plus subscription.
Speaker 2:
[36:49] Oh.
Speaker 3:
[36:50] Just throwing it out there. Just, was that, don't boycott Holy Post is what I'm trying to say.
Speaker 1:
[36:56] Don't boycott Holy Post.
Speaker 3:
[36:57] Boycott all of your other subscriptions, but then use that money for Holy Post.
Speaker 2:
[37:02] Okay.
Speaker 1:
[37:03] That's fine. That's fine. Speaking of redistricting-
Speaker 3:
[37:06] And the end campaign.
Speaker 2:
[37:07] And the end campaign.
Speaker 1:
[37:08] Okay. Speaking of spreading the money around, Justin, our last story is with our guy in New York about Mom Donnie. I want to make sure I say his name right. Can you tell us what he's doing there as it relates to taxes and moving million around as it relates to the wealthy there in New York? What is he? What is he got going on?
Speaker 2:
[37:25] Yeah. So as I understand it, New York City Mayor Mom Donnie has proposed a tax basically on secondary homes or residences. So this tax basically puts an annual surcharge on one to two homes, condos or co-ops, valued above five million dollars when the owner has a separate primary residence outside of New York City. Right. So if I have a residence outside of New York City where I live, but I have one to three homes in New York City, they're going to tax those when it's above five million dollars. Now, what this is meant to do is it's meant to target the ultra wealthy, and it's projected to generate about $500 million in annual revenue.
Speaker 1:
[38:13] So let me ask you a question before we get into this. Will any of us qualify for this tax? Do any one of us have a secondary home in New York of over five million dollars? Are you going to be taxing this?
Speaker 3:
[38:25] I think I'll be okay.
Speaker 1:
[38:26] Okay. Justin, do you got a second crib in NYC?
Speaker 2:
[38:29] I got to look at my current books if I don't just roll above that.
Speaker 1:
[38:33] I don't want to get people's pockets.
Speaker 3:
[38:34] I try to keep all of my real estate right under five million.
Speaker 1:
[38:37] Does anybody?
Speaker 3:
[38:39] 4.9 is the sweet spot.
Speaker 1:
[38:40] I only got a second driveway. I got like one driveway. So none of us are going to be impacted by this directly. But Justin, so as a Christian, should I care if somebody with a five million dollar house gets taxed? Should we just tax the rich? How should I think about this?
Speaker 2:
[38:57] This is a deep one and it's a good question to ask because I literally have seen people on X and other places say the tax the rich is basically a sin. It's stealing from people and all this other stuff. I think it's different. I don't know that we can say one way or another that a Christian has to feel a certain way about a tax policy. But certainly, when we look around at what's going on in our community, if there are people who we can say are just not paying what they would say they're fair share or evading some taxes, it may make sense when you have other needs in the city to make sure that people are being taxed in a way that's fair. So I don't really have a huge problem with the raising of taxes in certain situations. I'm not one of those people that off top, that sounds like a bad thing to me. That said, when it comes to New York and other places, I do think they feel like they're going to tax their way out of bad policy and just a bad situation. I'm not sure that's going to happen. If we're going to be honest, New York has pretty high taxes already and they haven't fixed everything. In a lot of the cities that take a lot of taxes, let's say for education and other things, they're paying the most per pupil. We're not necessarily seeing it in the outcomes. The democratic socialists like Mamdami idea that we're going to tax our way out of this, we can raise some taxes. But given the government more money doesn't assure they're going to use it wisely, doesn't assure that you're going to get the outcomes that you want to have. I think it's deeper than that and I think partially it's going to be about what mediating institutions do in those places, not just taxing people. Of course, for this, when it's a money thing, it has to do with the deficit and all that stuff. That's another conversation. But those taxes in themselves don't fix.
Speaker 1:
[40:43] Justin, that's way too nuanced. Hold on a second. If I can follow what Justin just said. It's fine to tax people because one of the things he was talking about is one of the things he was saying, Mondami, and we'll come back to what Justin said. I want to lose track of this so people don't follow the conversation. These people who own this real estate is also driving the cost of housing up and it's decreasing the availability of housing. That's a little bit tricky because the amount of people who are able to afford those houses is already relatively small. But I'm thinking of these assuming that if you get the economy moving by the buying and the selling of the houses, and the prices on those places goes down, and that's a trickle down effect in changing the economic structure of housing in general. So I think that you're right that in this situation, where there are people who are not paying their fair share or they're driving up the housing market to tax them, and maybe even make it not financially in their benefit to have these places that are largely empty for most of the year, that's a good thing. But the idea that taxing things can't solve people's problems is also another thing that's interesting. We were talking about this earlier, is that you have even in places like New York City, or actually New York City and even California, this idea that a lot of the wealthy people from those cities and those states are actually leaving to come to the South, in particular because of the high taxes in those places. And the fact that the cost of living in those situations are so high, that even the poor can't afford to live in those communities. And when you get to those kinds of places, and I'm sorry Justin, I'm taking too much of your spotlight here, that even when you are in those wealthy areas, like in California and these other places, and it comes time to build affordable housing, the wealthy who votes in favor of those high taxes, they don't allow affordable housing near them because that's going to drive down the property value. And so I do think there's a lot more that goes into good governing of democratic spaces beyond simply taxing them. But as a Christian, is there any idea that I need to think, maybe I ask you this, Mike or Justin, what if I work for it, well, why don't I get to keep all of it? Isn't there like this idea that the Bible says that hard work ought to be rewarded? Shouldn't I as a Christian be just free market?
Speaker 3:
[42:57] No, Justin, you'll probably have something more profound to say than me about it.
Speaker 2:
[43:03] I don't know. I think proportionality works both ways, right? So nobody's taking all of your money with, we're talking about your second residences in New York City and all that other stuff. But that proportionality, again, cuts both ways. One, if you make more and you have more, proportion says you're going to pay more in taxes and we know sometimes people are able to get away with that. But at the end of the day, you're still enjoying what you have. And taxes can get too high and you get to this point where it's diminishing returns. And I'm afraid that in a lot of these larger cities, that's the point you get to, especially when you haven't proven that you're necessarily going to use those funds and get the outcomes that you want. That's the thing that I worry about. Because I don't think government is... I believe in a government that should be fairly well funded so they can do some things that only government can do. The idea that the government changes a struggling city and fixes everything once it makes everything free. The socialist dream just doesn't... I don't believe in that.
Speaker 1:
[44:06] So how do I not sound just in like the wrong kind of person when I say this kind of... You talk about like this group think kind of conversation where obviously we believe in certain kinds of like social programs to uplift the poor. Like I was someone who benefited from social safety nets and I would never want to cut the social safety nets now that I benefited from them. But also there are these other social factors like the strengthening families that also have clearly defined long-term economic outcomes that allows the people that aren't... You can't just policy your way to that. So how would I balance this idea of saying, yes, I believe in the social safety net and yes, I believe the people who have the resources are able to cheat the system and find these loopholes. But these are the very people who say, let me keep all of my money unless it's fixed the family. And when they say let's fix the family, there's no economic link to that. It's a self-serving kind of idea to say that we really need to do is fix these families and fix these schools because that's the problem and that doesn't cost me any money. So how do I acknowledge the truth in this idea that the family structures and these other things are signs of positive economic indicators without that being just an excuse that people use not to redistribute any of their wealth as relates to giving their fair share.
Speaker 2:
[45:31] Yeah, and this is the problem with being overly ideological, because you already have the conclusion in mind before you really deal with the facts. So if I'm super ideological and hardcore and conservative when it comes to some of these issues, I've already come to the conclusion that almost any tax, raising any taxes at any time is going to be bad. Does that really fit the situation that I'm looking at? Or go the other way. I've seen people that act like every tax is good. Well, let me tell you something. In cities, sometimes even like Atlanta, you keep raising the taxes, let's say, for your house. And now you're putting people out of the community who lived there for years. Older people can't pay their taxes, who've been in these neighborhoods forever. And now they can't pay them because you thought it's a progressive thing to raise taxes and that always ends up, well, it doesn't. We have to be nuanced enough to look at the reality and judge it from there. Ideologies, a lot of times, aren't flexible enough or thoughtful enough to deal with every instance of what's going on. And so we have to deal with nuance where it comes.
Speaker 1:
[46:35] So should we just have a flat tax, Mike?
Speaker 3:
[46:37] No, we shouldn't have a flat tax.
Speaker 1:
[46:38] What should we do? How are we going to fix it?
Speaker 3:
[46:39] Well, I mean, I'm not an economist. I don't know. I think everything is just saying, I agree. It's wrong. It's not black and white. I think there are many who are wealthy that sometimes they look and they think they hit a double when they were born on second. And they forget this idea that we all start the race of life at different starting lines. And it's just, and even if you earn every single penny and you truly relied on no one, which I highly doubt, it's just good to help your fellow people regardless. And just taxing, it's not like anyone would look at California, Illinois and New York and say, oh, what great economies, what great social programs. I know, by any means. And so taxing more does not always result in a better lifestyle for everyone within the state. I think this is just like a classic time where, like Justin was saying, we need to stop falling into the camps of whatever political party we belong to and look at the reality of the situation.
Speaker 1:
[47:39] And here's the last thing I'll say about this. One of the things I do think is really interesting about this, especially this gets into a Christian conversation, is it like the free market, you know, Christian people tend to be most hostile to the kind of government help programs, where some of those programs actually have pretty positive outcomes as it relates to issues of life. That, you know, one of the issues that women struggle with is like childcare and Head Start and all of these things that give them the idea or the ability to feel like they can raise their children in a way that is economically feasible. So obviously, we want people to value like life intrinsically. That would be great. But if I know that this economic out this political policy has a positive correlation with something like life, the idea that my tax philosophy is going to get, I would bend my tax philosophy to get people a more positive outcome. And so it feels to me this really interesting that that's the one thing that frustrates me sometimes the most, that you've actually seen some of these progressive ideas have positive life outcomes for people. But because it violates certain political philosophies, people would rather cut the programs that actually lead to the positive outcomes for women feeling like they can raise their children.
Speaker 2:
[48:53] Amen.
Speaker 1:
[48:53] Mike, normally I close the podcast by explaining how all the different stories fit together. But I'm going to pass it over to you to give you an opportunity to shine.
Speaker 3:
[49:05] It feels like you're passing it over to me because maybe you don't know how the stories may be I don't, but I think that you do.
Speaker 1:
[49:11] We didn't get Mike's corner, it's just Mike's corner.
Speaker 3:
[49:12] No, right. I think it all comes down to money.
Speaker 1:
[49:15] Okay, money.
Speaker 3:
[49:16] And all the stories we talked about today, it comes down to this ancient, biblical belief that the love of money is the root of all evil. And that we are often motivated to do things we know are wrong to get more money. And that money often will make us do things we shouldn't do, and it will make us greedy, and it will make us look after ourselves instead of the people around us. And in reality, what everyone should do with their money is buy a Holy Post Plus subscription.
Speaker 1:
[49:45] There we go. So we can stay in business.
Speaker 3:
[49:47] So we can stay in business.
Speaker 1:
[49:48] We'll see you all next week. Thank you for listening to the Esau McCaulley Podcast. The Esau McCaulley Podcast is a production of Holy Post Media produced by Mike Stralow. If you know now, you know that it's by Seth Gourvet, Like a Corvette, music by Rob Noor. Make sure to follow the show wherever you get your podcast and leave a review so more people can find it. See you next time. I'm out.