Rory Groves and Pastor Joel explore economic independence through "durable trades," contrasting industrial specialization with biblical generalism to resist systemic fragility. They critique capitalism's individual focus versus Marxism's atheism, proposing distributism as a family-centered third way. By mapping diverse gifts like blacksmithing, farming, and teaching into mixed vocations, families can diversify income, avoid burnout, and build resilient communities grounded in covenantal vision rather than corporate dependency. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Welcome to Theology Applied00:03:12
Hi, this is Pastor Joel Webben with Right Response Ministries, and you are listening to Theology Applied.
And this episode of Theology Applied, I was honored to have as a special guest Rory Groves.
Rory Groves, he wrote a book called Durable Trades.
And what he and his family have been working on for a while now is how to be self sufficient.
It makes me think of 1 Thessalonians 4, where the Bible says that we should seek to work quietly with our own hands and that we should do so.
To a capacity where we are dependent on no one.
I don't know about you, but for myself, in the last 18 months of 2020 and 2021, I have become painfully aware of how dependent we all are on so many functions of society.
And I don't like it.
So, if you're looking to be cancel proof, if you're looking to be self sufficient, self reliable, independent from the system, this is the episode for you.
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Without further ado, thanks for tuning in.
Let's get started.
Applying God's Word to every aspect of life.
This is Theology Applied.
Hi, this is Pastor Joel with Right Response Ministries.
You're listening to Theology Applied.
And as I've already said, my guest for today is Rory Groves.
Rory, would you just take a moment and introduce yourself to our listeners?
Yeah.
Hi.
It's great to be here, Joel.
I appreciate the opportunity.
And yeah, I mean, I wrote the book Durable Trades Family Centered Economies, which have stood the test of time.
And so a lot of my research and work, and then my own family, we've been on this journey of learning what it means to work together as a family in a very individualistic modern age.
That's really interesting.
Reigniting Family Mentorship00:11:11
Well, In light of our current culture that tends to cancel people, I can't help but continue to think of, you know, well, thinking of 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, verse 11 through 12.
And it talks about, you know, that we should aspire to work quietly and diligently with our own hands.
But then it goes further and says, so that you would be dependent on no one.
Right.
And man, I don't know about you, but the last 18 months, I've just been painfully aware of how dependent I am on so many different, you know, Commodities economically dependent on this for conveniences dependent on that, and I've just thought, like, yeah, like I am not the cancel proof, resilient, conservative Christian that I thought I was.
I mean, by God's grace, you know, I pastor a local church.
It's conservative.
And, you know, I do this ministry with Right Response Ministry.
So I'm not, I don't feel like I'm compromising or cowering out of fear of.
But I know a lot of men right now are really struggling with that.
Do I, you know, do I compromise my values, my virtues in order to save my livelihood?
And so I feel like what you're doing is incredibly relevant.
So would you just, I don't know, speak to that, you know, for the guys who are trying to reject the woke culture, the cancel culture, even with the cancel, you know, Well, let me ask it like this.
I'm not a libertarian.
So I believe in cancel culture.
I just think that conservatives should cancel wickedness.
So, what are some of your thoughts on cancel culture?
Let me start there.
Oh, man.
Let's see.
There's a bunch of jumping off points that I could go down.
I know.
I'm sorry.
I think, you know, cancel culture is kind of like the latest iteration, the latest handwriting on the wall to say, I probably need to become a little bit more self reliant in.
Get myself untethered from this system, this matrix that I'm completely, you know, a part of and unable to live without.
You talked about kind of recognizing some of these things over the last 18 months.
My background is as a computer programmer.
I, you know, I've spent the last 20 years in high technology.
I've started my own software company.
I've been, you know, very much immersed in that whole world for most of my life, computer science degree in college and all of that.
And so there was a point at time about 10 or 11 years ago where I was actually watching some documentary about kind of like apocalyptic prepper kind of information and like that.
And it just struck me one time do I have anything useful I could contribute to society if the lights went out?
Right.
And the answer was definitive no.
I don't know how to build things, I don't know how to grow things, I don't know how to.
Without this incredibly high level of infrastructure beneath me.
And so this kind of started just a curiosity that ended up resulting in me moving my family out to a rural property.
I continued on.
I didn't plan to leave the technology side of things.
But as I got more involved in like farming and shepherding and working with the land and working with my family while we were working the land, it really started to open my eyes to like.
Okay, there are some very practical ways that we can reclaim some of these home based functions and these home economics functions that we've really parceled out to corporations and governments and different things over the years.
But there are many things that are available to us, available to men if they want to lead their families in this way.
And eventually that kind of culminated into me looking into actual vocations or trades, which is what I document in my book.
And so, the premise for the book is that is this exact thing.
What can families do together in this day and age and build something that will last, not something that's going to be cancelable, like you described, which is like the modern iteration of where we're at, but also that would have some measure of insulation against just supply chain issues and technology innovation and disruption?
You know, the whole field of technology is one of constant change.
Everything is going obsolete all the time.
So you've got to reinvent yourself continuously.
You know, nobody used to live that way.
We would have family businesses that would pass on from the father to the son to the grandson, and they would go for generation after generation.
They'd get better and better.
And so, this is a modern reality that we live in, and it's really a false reality.
We were not designed to change careers every couple of years for their entire lives.
We were designed to get really skilled into a few select areas and then to be broad generalists in a lot of areas.
So, that you could build your own shelter, you could grow your own food.
You know, you would live in communities of people who did that same thing.
So, anyway, this kind of coming back to cancel culture is whatever the threat is.
If you don't have families that are self reliant and if you don't have them living together in communities that are self sufficient or self reliant, you're not going to be able to resist whatever tyrannies want to come down the pike.
And they will come.
You know, so at our founding in our country, we had, uh, 80, 90% of the population were farmers, which means they were all self employed.
They didn't have employers.
Who was going to cancel them?
They couldn't be canceled.
And by the same measure, you had a natural restraint on tyranny.
So, whatever the government had in mind to do, they were naturally restrained because the people didn't depend on government and they didn't depend on corporations who can, as we're seeing with the vaccine mandates, they can parcel out whatever the government wants.
Um, so there, anyway, there's a whole lot of layers there, but the bottom line is to become more self reliant really insulates yourself from all of the above.
Man, that is uh helpful and convicting.
That's uh, because I, you know, I'm like your past self, it sounds like you're not there anymore, so you know, praise God for that.
But yeah, I just feel like, man, if we were in a post apocalyptic world, I feel like I'd be dead.
I just, I just, I'm not, I've never really been that handy, you know, and and um.
That's just not really where my interests were.
You know, I like the outdoors and those kinds of things.
But as I got older, I was like, when I was younger, I loved those kinds of things.
And, you know, I enjoyed hunting and guns and those things.
And as I got older, I just lost interest, you know.
And so, anyways, all that being said, I feel like a lot of men today just have not exercised or sharpened those kinds of skills.
Like when it comes to gardening or, you know, growing crops, I wouldn't know the first thing.
So, well, let me follow up on that because a lot of men today were not raised by men.
Or at least men who had this kind of broad knowledge.
They were raised by specialists.
I mean, in the sense that their parents were specialists in one vocation or another, and they didn't really have a broad skill set to pass on to their children.
That's a new phenomenon.
My wife and I, you know, we call ourselves first generation farmers, and there really hasn't ever been a first generation farmer up until recently, until you go all the way back to Adam, right?
Right.
In the sense that we're having to learn everything from scratch all over again because.
Our parents weren't farmers.
You know, they didn't teach us how to grow.
And so we've had to kind of claw back this knowledge.
But what we're doing is we're teaching our kids.
So we have five kids and they're 11 and under, and they're out there with us and they're planting the gardens and they're digging up potatoes.
And my oldest son is out there on the tractor with the bucket loads of manure while I'm out there with the pitchfork spreading it on the field.
I mean, this is just this stuff that we do.
But for me, The key thing is not how productive the farm is or whether or not we're making money or if it's profitable.
It's that I'm passing a skill that's an essential human skill onto my children.
They're just growing up with it.
So, for them, when it's their turn to start a family, they're going to have this broad base of skills.
To me, that's a huge value about working close to the land or working in trades or these kind of general broad categories of skills, is that you can kind of reignite that mentorship again so that your children don't have to start over from scratch.
Right.
No, that's really helpful.
No, you're right.
I mean, we live in the age of experts and the age of specialists, and that's part of the problem when people look to somebody like Dr. Fauci for policy.
That's not his job.
And because policy, that's what politicians are supposed to be you're making policy, and so you're looking at society as a whole.
So you bring in an epidemiologist, but you also bring in an economist, and you bring in a psychologist, which for me would mean nothing because I think it's a biblical bunch of bogus.
But yeah, you bring in a biblical counselor, you know, like.
Hey, if children don't see their parents' face for a year and a half, will that have an effect?
No, there's no studies that show that have an effect.
Well, are there no studies because it's never happened before in society because we've never been this stupid?
Oh, well, that might be, you know, but anyways, you bring in, you know, multiple experts, and the politician is supposed to be, in some sense, a generalist who is looking out for society as a whole, who's, you know, taking counsel.
It makes me think of like in Israel, you have a king and you have multiple counselors, you know, you have, you know, the magicians, you know, which again, that was not so great, but.
Yeah, multiple counselors, and you're bringing them in, you're hearing multiple sides of the story.
But today, it's like we live in a society of experts, a society of specialists, and we ourselves are so narrow and specialized in one field.
And it's like it's so exceedingly rare to find someone who has, you can't be an expert in everything.
But the generalist is so valuable today just to have somebody who has just a proficient working knowledge in multiple fields to be able, because I think that's a lot of like where wisdom comes from.
Is being able to take multiple fields, see how they work together, and then come up with good policy.
Or if you're a father, come up with a good plan and good direction and guidance for your family.
And a lot of people, we're just, in the realm of knowledge, epistemology, we've outsourced that.
So we're dependent on experts and with trades.
And so it just feels like it's just this big machine with all these tiny little cogs.
And it's incredibly difficult for anybody to be independent.
Value of the Generalist00:06:04
And so I read 1 Thessalonians 4 11 through 12, you know, work quietly.
And don't be dependent on anyone.
And it feels like a pipe dream.
It's like, well, yeah, that sounds great.
But how do you do that?
So, getting real practical for a moment.
So, I've heard some guys, you know, I've talked to a few guys who are trying to go into the, you know, the independent farming kind of thing.
And they say, well, you start with, you know, on the animal side of things, you start with chickens.
Everybody starts with chickens.
They're cheap.
And then maybe you move up to some goats.
And then, can you tell us just real practical for a moment with crops, with animals?
Like, where do you start?
How does a guy who lives right now, let's say he lives in, You know, like a new build development, that's where I live.
A new build development on a third acre.
Like, if I wanted to do this, where do I go?
How do I start?
So, I mean, people are going to be coming at this from a lot of different walks of life.
And we get a lot of people because of both the book and the fact that we've been doing this for a number of years, and other people have kind of watched what we've been doing.
So, we get a lot of people that are interested in moving out to the country or they're interested in trying their hand at some of this stuff.
And we have these conversations a lot.
And one of the things is that people are At all very different starting points.
And there may be a season of your life where this isn't really working out.
You know, we have some friends that are in an apartment right now and they would love to be out on some farmland, but they just, just not in the cards for them right now.
So, so they're doing like a community garden plot in the summer months.
But in terms of the thing that I would, I really encourage people is not to get too caught up in how do I replace my income with a farm job, because that's actually really hard to do.
I mean, farming is incredibly intensive and it takes an incredible amount of scale to be competitive.
At this day and age.
So, just thinking that you're going to put some greens in the ground and sell it at the farmer's market and then be able to quit your job, it's going to be a while and it's going to be a lot of intensive operations if you even want to get there.
I encourage people not to look at things in terms, especially starting out in terms of just pure profitability, but look at things in terms of self sufficiency.
The biggest bang for your buck is going to be what you provide for yourself.
As soon as you exchange a commodity into money, it's going to lose about 90% of your value.
And that's again because of, What we're talking about.
It's the economies of scale.
You're going up against much bigger operations as soon as you take your products to market.
But if you can get like chickens or a small garden and you can start to raise something that you yourself would eat and you yourself would enjoy, and then in the process, you're gaining skill.
I want to go back to something you said about skill and a broad base of skill producing wisdom.
That's very biblical.
I'll send you some notes after the show.
I can't think of it off the top of my head, but I have the basic.
Premise is that in the Bible, God seems to prefer generalists.
When you take a look at how he filled people with wisdom in the Bible, it was with wisdom to do a broad base of a lot of things, especially in the temple construction, Bezalel and Aholiab.
If you read through those accounts, he's empowering people to operate in a very broad base of skills.
They were not specialists in the sense that we think of specialists, like a guy that's just going to do spot welding on this one spot all day long, every day on a factory floor.
They were in charge of very broad based types of construction and skills and all these different things.
And that was one of the things that I get out of scripture when I'm reading it.
And of course, reading through the Proverbs and the Psalms and all the wisdom literature is that God really seems to, the term wisdom is synonymous with skill.
And so there seems to be kind of a deeper understanding when you have a more broad base of it rather than honing in on just a very specific area.
And also that.
Specialization that we are part of, that we find ourselves as cogs in the machine.
I mean, that machine is called industrialism.
That's been the whole point for the last 200 years.
Since the Industrial Revolution, everything in our society has been orienting us towards efficiency.
And the way you become efficient is by turning people into cogs.
You know, it's not as efficient to have everybody making their own shoes.
But that's what every farm family used to do prior to 1850.
They make their own boots in their own kitchens and they had the ability to do that.
Well, it's not as efficient.
Sure.
Okay.
So we'll move the boot making to a factory.
We'll free up that family to spend more time in the coal mine, let's say, and every society benefits.
We'll just follow that out for 200 years.
And then you have people that don't know how to make anything.
I mean, they don't know how to show up for work on time.
There's just so much of a deficit of skill and knowledge anymore because we took away the broad base of things in order to gain efficiency.
So now we're in a day and age, and people are finally waking up to this is that maybe we've gone too far.
And there's a lot in our generation that are taking stock of things and saying, you know, I don't think it's all just wrapped up in the paycheck.
There's maybe something more to life than just what I, you know, what I take home from the cubicle job or the office job.
Maybe there's more that I was meant to do with my body and being physical with, like you were saying, First Thessalonians, working with my hands.
And I'm, Wanting to say, yes, there is.
You are designed to do a lot of things and to do a lot of things very well.
And that wisdom comes to you through that broad base.
So that makes a lot of sense.
But there's one thing that I couldn't help but think as you were speaking.
Capitalism vs Marxist Equality00:15:19
So, my brother, a lot of my listeners probably don't know this, but I have two brothers and one sister.
My sister, her husband is my fellow elder in my church here, Covenant Bible Church in Texas, where we're located in Georgetown.
My two brothers, though, have a very different worldview.
And one of my brothers is a registered Marxist.
And we have a good relationship.
And we have conversations from time to time.
He actually was visiting recently, and we had a really great conversation.
And we ultimately profoundly disagree.
And what it always comes down to at the end of the day is theological and philosophical, fundamental ideas.
You know, we always, it's like we have the same conversation and it's new, and we're like, man, we're really getting somewhere.
And then it always lands at, oh, Joel, you think that people are totally depraved.
And I think people are good.
And if they had universal housing and this and that, you know, they'd all be painters and artists.
And, you know, so, anyways, so, but my Marxist brother, if he was sitting here listening to the things that you're saying, I think he would say, well, this is some of what Karl Marx is upset about, you know, like, cause, and he's upset about that.
He would say, yeah, I hate.
The Industrial Revolution and a lot of its aspects and these kinds of things.
So, my brother, he's actually a cobbler, and it's a business that was owned by the grandfather.
So, he's working with the grandson now, and his father owned it.
And so, it started in the 20s, and then they moved into the city of Seattle in the 40s, but they still have the equipment from the 20s, 100 year old equipment.
And my brother has his doctorate, but he works as a cobbler and does nothing really with his degree.
Is working with his hands and is happy and likes it.
And they own goats and chickens and things like that and building their little farm.
And so my point is, he has a very different worldview than you and I do.
And yet he would agree with a lot of the things that you are saying.
And so, what I want you to help me with and our listeners with, how do you parse out industrialism from capitalism?
Because, see, my brother, he's a Marxist, he's a socialist, you know.
And so, how can you point out the flaws of the industrial?
Craze that completely severs labor from households and where everybody's working at the widget factory, and you know, you do one little thing over it.
Because that's my brother would, just like you, he would disdain that.
He was like, You don't get the satisfaction of bringing one product from beginning to completion.
Like, that's part of his frustration.
He would say, There's a significance and a satisfaction and a joy in labor when the cobbler gets to build the whole shoe and not just, you know, one part of it.
And so, as you're talking, I'm just thinking about my brother who I love.
I love my brother.
I want to be clear about that if he listens to this.
Love my brother.
I respect him in many ways.
And then, of course, I think he's dead wrong and he thinks I'm an idiot, you know, and whatever.
And I just praise, you know.
So, but he would be agreeing with a lot of stuff you're saying.
So, where's the difference?
How do you parse that out?
Like, because I'm assuming you're a God fearing capitalist.
Yeah, I am God fearing.
My views on capitalism have shifted as I started getting into this question more and more.
Okay.
And I hope I do it justice.
I actually just finished a chapter on biblical economics.
For a textbook, a homeschooling textbook that's going to be coming out from generations.
I'm not, maybe next year, I'm not sure.
But we were exploring all of these topics, which you were asking socialism, capitalism.
I also look into distributism, which is something that would be of interest for you and your listeners to examine.
G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc did a lot of research and writing on a third way.
It's not capitalism, it's not.
Socialism is called distributism, and it's more of a family centered approach to economics.
But then I spent a good deal of time speaking about or writing about the family economy.
And in exploring the differences of capitalism and socialism from a biblical point of view, what I would say is first of all, your brother is right in the sense that the Industrial Revolution was the seed, it was the cause for a lot of the Marxist.
Theory against capitalism.
Marx said, My objective in life is to dethrone God and destroy capitalism.
So you can kind of get a functionality of where his position was.
He was pointing out in the Industrial Revolution certainly gave plenty of opportunity for abuse on an industrial scale.
And Marx was picking up on that and writing against that.
And his critiques of it.
were not invalid.
What was invalid was a solution because he was basing an atheistic, immoral, and a completely unbiblical philosophy.
He was applying an unbiblical philosophy for the basis of his solution.
And so that's where I would differ from him.
But where capitalism runs off the rails is the fact that capitalism views the individual as the fundamental unit of society.
In other words, the fundamental economic unit.
Whereas the Bible teaches that the family is the basis of all society.
So you have, and where do you get that?
You can get that all over, but basically you can go right back to Genesis.
God created them male and female, and he put them in the garden.
And before there was any government, before there were corporations or any kind of institutions, any man made institutions, there was the family.
So the family is always preeminent above any other man made institution.
And it operates as the most basic level.
Of the economy.
And actually, it was always recognized that way.
It wasn't until capitalism came along that they started to view the individual as the basic unit of society, not the family.
And that would be my key distinction.
If you have capitalism, you have the good things of free enterprise, you have private property, you have liberty to the greatest extent possible, you have private ownership of corporations, of all of the means of production, and so on and so forth.
These are all good things, these are all things that biblically are supported.
Where capitalism runs afoul is that there is no moral basis for capitalism besides freedom.
Freedom is kind of the ultimate morality in capitalism.
Well, if you have autonomous man, right, the heart is wicked, the heart is deceitful beyond all things and desperately wicked.
Who can know it?
So, if you have the heart of man is desperately wicked or depraved, as you would say, and you give that man ultimate freedom, what is he going to do with it, right?
And this is where capitalism has nothing to say about it because if it's efficient, if it produces wealth, it's a good thing.
I mean, in terms of achieving the ends of which it's set up for.
There are some other nuanced things.
Real quick, I would add to that, though.
I think that capitalism, certainly there's crony capitalism, and certainly there are faults.
But I think what capitalism would say to that is capitalism is not a religion.
But I think that it would say that capitalism has competition.
So there are checks and balances that are built into.
Because for my brother, so here's some of the things he would throw at you if he was on the show.
And he would say, or he'd throw at me, probably.
He'd probably agree with you a little bit more.
But he would say, all right, well, if.
If there's a river and some guy, you know, he owns land on the head of the river, up the river, and he chooses to build a dam, but all these other people are dependent on the river downstream.
But it's his property and he has river rights and all that kind of stuff.
He builds this dam and he becomes obscenely wealthy, obscenely rich, and everybody else is actually suffering because of, or same, you know, the shortest distance between point A and point B is a straight line.
And if somebody happens to own this land, it's been in their family for generations and it's It's not because they did anything extra or they worked harder or this or that.
They just happened to be in this place.
But then, you know, 100 years down the line, great great grandchildren, you know, they're two cities that pop up here and pop up here and their populations, you know, explode.
And you own the land right in between or you just own land, not all the land, but just land in that straight line between point A and point B, these two cities.
That land is going to be incredibly more valuable than other land.
And it's not because it has some special flower that grows in that portion, you know, the land with.
You know, medicinal property.
It's just, you just got lucky, right?
You're at the head of the river, you're up here at the head of the river, you're down here, you know, blah, blah, blah.
And, you know, so he would kind of throw these kinds of things out.
And so then he would say, so you need a check and balance, right?
You need somebody to come in and be able to check the, you know, the oligarchy within capitalism, the tech giants and the, you know, the Jeff Bezos.
And where I would disagree with him is, you know, because his solution is the state.
And I would say, but, So, your view is that the capitalist CEOs are corrupt and will exploit people, but the state won't?
For me, it's just like they're all corrupt, like putting on a police hat or putting on a Domino's delivery hat or whatever hat you're wearing, whatever role you're in, whether it's a civil role or whether it's in the private sector, the heart of man is still the same.
So, to me, I feel like there are more checks and balances with.
In the capitalistic economic system, then I think there might be in our government.
What do you think?
You don't even have to speculate on that because we have 200 years of history to see what the result of Marxist theories were.
I mean, within 140 years of the publishing of the Communist Manifesto, a third of the world was under communist rule.
And so we've seen the millions and millions of people.
I mean, the 100 million people that have died mostly of mass starvation out of.
Coming out of Marxist theory.
So, it doesn't matter that Marx identified some faults with capitalism.
What he projected into the world was far more catastrophic and evil than anything that came out of, you know, Wealth of Nations.
Anne Rand or whatever.
Adam Smith and the Wealth of Nations.
And so, and I agree.
And the assessment is that capitalism can certainly coexist with biblical law.
It just has to be subordinate to biblical law.
I think that's where what we see right now is where a lot of the rails are coming off, or where the train is coming off the rails in American society is we have abandoned God's law as a source of moral authority.
And when you do that, going back, this, of course, this stuff has been happening for a long time, but you can see how each successive generation, capitalism exploits.
The morality of that generation to achieve its ends.
And so now we have America, which used to stand for something more noble and good around the world.
We're the ones exporting pornography and Hollywood and all of this divisive agenda that's coming out of very progressive leadership.
This stuff is being exported by America to the rest of the world.
We're the ones doing that.
That's capitalism working itself out.
And so the key difference there is that you can certainly coexist.
But capitalism, in and of itself, is not a moral authority.
It has to operate inside the boundaries of another authority.
So, back to your point, as I agree exactly, is that the Bible teaches that man is inherently evil.
This is our fallen nature.
And Marx and communism teach that man is inherently good.
And they just thought if you could arrange society in a way that was more fair, then everyone would flourish.
So, I mean, it would be one thing if you're projecting these ideas out there in the world and no one had ever tried it.
Right, that's not the case.
No, I mean, show us an example in the world, right?
I mean, look at Cuba today, they're the most egalitarian society in the world.
I think the average wage is something like uh, 17 a month.
I mean, it's like it's impossible, impossibly low this late, you know, at this stage in the world history for as long as they had been trying that experiment.
But you have corrupt people in charge, and they will always act corruptly, they will always prevent.
Actual prosperity from coming and that destroys wealth.
No, you're absolutely right.
So I hear you better now.
I understand what you're saying.
That was really helpful and makes a lot of sense because ultimately, what you're saying is the same thing that I would say is that, you know, for the Marxists, they're saying, well, the corrupt capitalists, the greedy capitalists, you know, like they would make an argument.
I mean, some of the arguments we would agree with, like, so, you know, like they would look at a CEO and then look at, you know, a laborer and say, you know, like capital, the idea of capital liquidated, like there are profits.
But the idea of liquid capital that belongs to the owner rather than the laborers who actually are doing the work and producing, you know, that blah, blah, blah.
And they would look at that and they'd say, This CEO makes 200 times what the employee, like, okay, this person may have started the company, you know, or this person might be, might have, I don't know, like, you know, 20, 30, 40 points higher IQ.
This person might work, might work double the hours, like, but by all those metrics, all right, they work twice as much, but 200 times the salary.
They have twice the intellect, 200 times the salary.
And I think that's what Marxism and every, they're all just different forms of egalitarianism.
That's the big thing.
And egalitarianism, ultimately, in order to be consistent, it becomes androgyny, right?
That's why the whole transgender craze and all, you know, you have to steamroll from gender, from this, from that.
Everything just has to be the same.
In order for it to be equal, we all have to be the same.
And we know that our God works within and within hierarchies, that biblical hierarchy is a thing, but hierarchy can be perverted to where it's 200 times a person at the top.
Because the biblical model of hierarchy is that the husband lays down his life.
Trusting Market Forces00:02:40
For and I think that's what you're saying.
I think that, like, why we have to get back to the family because you don't have the picture of Christ in the church with CEO and laborer, you just that dynamic, but you do with husband and wife and with children.
And so, at the end of the day, it's I think capitalism as an economic system fits within the biblical mold better, although you're right, there are flaws and has certain, by default, built in checks and balances through competition.
But only to a point, right?
Because, like, for all the capitalists out there, myself being one, how in the world do you compete with Facebook and Twitter?
And, you know, like, we try, right?
So, Parlor, we got them, you know?
And then, oh, but we don't own the servers.
We're gone.
You know what I mean?
And it's like, I'm all for, like, I like Marcus Pittman.
I like those guys and Lore.
And I'm going to support those things, right?
Because we got conservatives got to try.
We can't just sit around and complain.
We got to try.
But honestly, I'll just be honest and confess, I'm not super hopeful.
That we're going to be able to compete with Instagram and Facebook and Twitter and these kinds of things because there's a certain point where you just, I mean, I think Google, like, I read once, I think they buy a company like every day or every week.
They buy any company that even looks like it might have the potential a decade from now to be a competitor and they just buy them and they buy them and they buy them.
And you know, and so it's just like, it's like almost at some level, it's like, it's one thing when someone's better, they actually work harder or they actually have a unique idea.
But it's another thing when it's like, King of the mountain, king of the hill, and you just, you're not stronger and you're not working harder.
You just got there first.
And there's something about the strategic positioning of the high ground that, in having the high ground, nobody else can ever compete.
And so that's the problem that we're finding with capitalism there are certain industries and certain fields where it's like this person, yes, they had a unique idea, and God bless them for that and all the ways that it has lent towards flourishing with humanity.
But this is not just hard work and intellect and.
Creativity.
There's something about just the nature of this industry where nobody can actually compete.
And so, the governing force, I don't trust the state to govern the market.
And that said, I trust the market to govern the market.
I'm a big fan of Thomas Sowell and basic economics.
So, I trust the market to govern the market much more than I trust the state to govern the market.
But that's why I'm a capitalist.
But I agree with you that the market still can't perfectly govern the market.
Becoming Cancel Proof Families00:06:56
You're still going to have some of the Problems and they're not small, they're big problems that we have today.
So, at the end of the day, what we're talking about is what is has God provided to govern the hearts of men?
And it's his law, and you know, and the basis, the fundamental human societal building block where the law of God is instructed and taught and birthed into the hearts of men is the family.
Would you agree?
Am I?
Yeah, and I think, I mean, believe me, I've been in this industry my entire career and I know exactly what you're talking about, but I also see the hollowness of it.
Some of these giant corporations, these things are not going to last.
I mean, put your hand to the plow and don't look back.
I mean, honestly, these things, we don't need to create Christian alternatives to these things.
We need to just start living authentic Christian lives and authentic Christian community.
Those are the things that will last, right?
Matthew 5 through 7, where Jesus talks about building your house on the rock, it has nothing to do with political power or might.
It's following the words of Christ, building our homes, our families, and our communities and our churches on that truth.
That truth will never fail.
We've seen this come and go through the ages in Christianity.
Where there are powerful, I mean, think about the Roman Catholic Church and the power that it had up until Martin Luther and the Reformation.
I mean, we have seen dominant, powerful world forces before, and we don't need to create a conservative version of everything that's out there.
I mean, there are always ways in which we can be strategic, but honestly, these things are all going to pass.
They're all just a shadow.
And the Lord, what he will, What he will preserve will be those God fearing souls and those God fearing communities who, like you said, they stand by his word.
Every word of God proves true.
That is what's going to last through all of this.
So, in my mind, things are going to crumble.
And I actually think there's a cause for great hope in that, in the sense that God is going to restore righteousness in his own timing and in his own way.
And he's calling people to be part of that right now and to not try to be so immersed.
In the popular culture, that we're always trying to be distracted by who's ahead, who's winning, who's losing, and all these things.
I think a lot of the presidential and the whole political cycle is hugely distracting to the everyday, kind of brick by brick kinds of things that we need to be doing as Christian families and building community in our churches and building more self sufficiency.
So that when those things aren't there for us, when the systems crumble inevitably, as they will.
We actually have answers for the world.
We have answers for people who are looking and saying, hey, you know, why, what is it that you have?
Why are you still able to survive and to thrive in the middle of like a crisis pandemic and we can't even figure out what to do, you know, from one day to the next?
And the rules keep changing on us.
Why are you happy right now?
Why are you doing so well?
Well, the world's going to need some answers.
And so I think we, it's easy to get caught up in what these massive corporations are doing and the fact that.
The wicked are prospering in many ways.
But to me, it's not a problem.
Just stay true to what the Lord is calling you to do.
Keep your nose to the grindstone, and He'll take care of the rest.
Well, that's super encouraging.
And, you know, I've thought about that a little bit, but the way you said it was just so painfully clear that, you know, if I could sum it up in a sentence, it's just reminding the Christian that our only strategy is not merely to compete, but we also have the strategy of outlasting.
That the flower fades, the grass withers, but the word of the Lord and whatever the word of the Lord has built, namely, first and foremost, his church, his people, communities, families, those things endure forever.
And I personally would go beyond that in a lighter sense, not in the same degree, but in a lighter sense, that all truth is God's truth.
That in heaven, that, you know, in mathematics, that two plus two will still be four.
You know, that all that, you know, so every good endeavor, you know, every true endeavor, That is in accordance with God's word has an eternal merit, an eternal value.
And so, I don't know.
I've thought about it some, but the way you said it was just so encouraging to me, just realizing like, because sometimes it just feels like insurmountable, absolutely impossible, like David versus Goliath, but where, I don't know, where David's like a handicap, you know, somebody who you know, it still wouldn't matter, would it?
And yeah, and what I forget is that, no, but Goliath, it's not just David versus Goliath.
Goliath is self sabotaging.
Goliath will slay himself.
And the word of God promises that, that, That at the end of the day, if a person is in rebellion against God, they're not, and the most elaborate kingdoms of the world, like the Roman church, but I think like Assyria and Babylon, you know, like, I mean, you look at one of the great wonders of the world, and it's like, this can't fall.
We can't lose.
And then it's just like.
Yeah.
In one day.
And yeah.
So yeah.
So when I think of it, I'm like, but it's Twitter, Rory, it's Twitter.
Yeah, yeah, Joel, but what about Assyria?
What about Babylon?
Exactly.
So that's good to hear.
That's encouraging.
It reminds me of a quote I use in the book from Francis Schaefer.
He said, Men always build their towers so high they fall down.
And don't you see that happening all the time?
There's just so much ego and pride in what man can do.
Come look at what, look at this tower that we have built that reaches to the heavens.
And God laughs and holds them in derision.
And so I just have so much confidence that the Lord is going to take care of his people.
If we can stay focused on the task, and it's a big task, you know, and coming back to the family.
This is a big task to disciple our children the way they should go and to do it and to build something that will last with our families is a worthy pursuit.
And it's something that's going to take all of what you have, but it's something that I can attest to, and many other families who are walking this way can attest to.
It is worth all of your effort, it is worth everything that you are doing to pour into building stronger families.
Amen.
Well, let me ask you this.
This is maybe one of the last questions that I had for you.
Building Stronger Homes00:09:11
How, everything that we're talking about, how significant, and if we want to be independent, be dependent on no one, work quietly with our own hands, you know, become cancel proof and become a generalist and not just a specialist and more independent and be able to pass these things down to our children, how important is it in terms of location where a person chooses to raise their family?
Yeah, that's a good question.
I guess I hadn't thought too much about that.
In my book, it's not location dependent.
I mean, we talk about farming, but that's just one of the 61 trades that I cover in the book.
And so it really depends on what you're being called into, what you sense that the Lord has for your family.
Let me answer it this way One of the exercises that we take families through is to kind of do a survey of The unique gifts of each member of your family.
What are the passions?
What are the gifts?
What are the callings?
What is your experience, background?
Kind of just to map out each person in your family, starting with mom and dad and then doing it with the kids, and then try to do the math.
So basically, what is this all adding up to?
You know, what is our family good at doing together?
Not just what is dad doing, you know, and then going off to dad's job.
And mom watches the kids in the household.
But as a family, what can we do together?
That's what I wanted to figure out.
What could we do together in this day and age that would be sustainable?
And what we found out is it was a mix of things.
So we're involved a little bit in farming, we're involved in teaching, we're involved in writing.
And for some people, they're doing things like Airbnb, they're doing things like open up some custom blacksmithing, kind of metal working shop.
Some people are doing silversmithing and goldsmithing.
And there's a whole number of different ways in which families can work together towards.
A vocation or multiple vocations.
And so it really depends on what you feel called to.
Getting back to your question in terms of location, there is obviously a huge benefit in rural versus city.
You're going to have a lot more freedom just right on down to the zoning laws.
I mean, when we moved out of Minneapolis, we moved to southern Minnesota, but I couldn't get chickens where I was in Minneapolis.
And we had about a 10th acre little lot right on the Kind of right in the southern part of Minneapolis, but a great little neighborhood.
But it couldn't do that much.
So for me, it was a big deal to get out somewhere where we had a little bit of space.
We had some more liberties in terms of what we could do.
A lot of times you get further away from the city, you have lower property taxes, there's lower crime, there's benefits.
And today, a lot of people can telecommute.
And so you're not as restricted in terms of having to be in the office.
Now, whether that's a long term situation or not depends on your job.
But I would say that rural is certainly preferable.
If you want to go into farming, and I would encourage everybody to try to grow at least a kitchen garden to try to get some basic hands on experience with growing, even if all you're doing is making salsa at the end of the year, or growing some pumpkins or some squash to keep over winter.
Just do it because God created us to 10 gardens.
In the beginning, that's what he did with Adam.
It was the first occupation.
So it's in our DNA, and there's a lot of theology in the garden.
But besides that, if you are interested in going into farming, you want to look at other things like what's the annual rainfall?
I mean, can that place be sustained without irrigation?
There's a lot of props out there for a lot of farms that will not be around if there's some kind of crisis.
So you want to try to get into a climate which would be a lot more hospitable to the kind of activities you want to carry out with your family.
That's really helpful.
I guess that's kind of a broad answer.
No, that was a great answer, though.
Okay.
So, in general, rural tends to be better than cities.
But then also, I thought what you said that was so helpful was just taking a tally of the family and not just dad and not even just dad and mom, but looking at the children, talking to them, seeing their desires, their giftings, seeing what we can do together.
And the hodgepodge thing was helpful, you know, that it could be a mix of things because at first I was just thinking, man, farming.
I just, You're not putting so much pressure to try to make up the income from any one thing.
So you're not trying to make $60,000, $80,000 a year from farming, which is incredibly difficult to do.
But maybe you could make, you know, $10,000 a year from breeding animals and selling sheep.
One of the things we do is sell purebred sheep.
And so maybe you can raise some of your income that way.
And that's a big deal.
But then maybe you're gardening to the extent where you're not buying a lot of food in the grocery store anymore.
Kind of a nice thing to have if, like, the grocery store shelves are going empty.
Right.
Besides the fact, you know, whether or not you're getting paid for it, these are some nice things to build into the system, you know, bring the supply chain back home.
So there's, There's these advantages to just having a more broad skill set.
And you also don't burn yourself out trying to ramp up so heavily in just one area.
So that's kind of the more having a mix of trades approach.
Yeah, that's really helpful.
All right.
Well, let's go ahead and land the plane.
Do you have any final words?
I'll give you the final word.
Oh, man.
I mean, I think, you know, God created us in the garden as families, right?
He took Adam and Eve, put them in the garden, and he put them to accomplish something together.
And I think the degree to which, wherever you're at today, and I know there might be a lot of guys that are in a situation where they can't just go out and buy a farm or they can't, they just have no ability to start doing this stuff.
But I think the key thing is to start thinking covenantally as a family, as the head of the household.
If you're a dad, if you're the mom, starting to think of what you can do with your husband to team up with your husband to do something together as a family.
I think that's how God views us.
And I think that that's where the blessing is.
So, to the degree you can do things with your children, involving them in important tasks, not just meaningless chores to keep them busy, but actually important tasks for the family, that's where the blessing flows.
That's where the intergenerational discipleship happens.
That's where the passing on the skills and the culture and the values to the next generation takes place.
So, start somewhere and then try, as God wills it, to bring your family together around a common vision.
Hey, man.
That's really helpful, Rory.
All right.
How can our listeners follow you?
And one more time, plug your book.
Sure.
The book is called Durable Trades Family Centered Economies That Have Stood the Test of Time.
And it's available wherever books are sold.
You can come to our website at thegrovestead.com.
So, thegrovestead, like my last name and homestead, thegrovestead.com.
And if you click on the book's detail page, you can get a sample chapter of the book.
And see a little bit more about it.
And if we ever have any coupons for the book, we publish them right there on that site.
So come to that site.
That's the best way to get.
We also publish a quarterly newsletter.
We have a new one that we just finished up and it's just going out this week where we talk about a lot of what we're doing out here and how to build kind of like on the ground, how we're building a family economy if you want the nuts and bolts.
That's really cool.
All right, Roy, thanks so much for coming on the show.
Appreciate it.
Absolutely.
It's been a pleasure.
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