David Bahnsen [00:00:00]:

This is part of the common grace reality of a fallen world. If I have a fiduciary responsibility to my clients to try to obtain the best return on their capital and there is a company that, has some sinful platform connected to them as every single one of them do in a fallen world. And if every single company I found was owned by a Christian, they would still have sin up and down the organization, and they would still be buying their iPhones from a company that does and so forth and so on. So there is absolutely no ability to be out of the world while I'm in the world.

Jim Spiegel [00:00:42]:

Welcome to the Kalos Center podcast. Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Kalos Center podcast. Our guest today is David Bahnsen. David is founder and chief investment officer with the Bahnsen Group, a highly successful wealth management firm that oversees more than $6 billion in client assets. He's been described as one of the nation's top financial advisors by financial publications from Barron's to Forbes to the Financial Times. You may have seen David on TV as he's a frequent guest on CNBC and Fox News. He hosts the podcast National Reviews Capital Record, which is all about free market enterprise.

Jim Spiegel [00:01:33]:

David has authored a number of books, including Crisis of Responsibility, published in 2018, The Case for Dividend Growth in 2019, There's No Free Lunch in 2021, and his most recent book is entitled Full Time, Work and the Meaning of Life. David's non professional passions include Chinese food and USC football. That's a topic that we will avoid discussing here as I am just as ardently a fan of Michigan football. David's greatest passion, however, is his family, his wife Jolene, and their 3 children. So David Bahnsen, welcome to the Calos Center podcast.

David Bahnsen [00:02:11]:

Well, thank you so much for having me.

Jim Spiegel [00:02:14]:

So I have a lot of things I wanna discuss with you. But first, as I do with all of our guests, I wanna start at the beginning, at least as far as your Christian faith is concerned. So when and how did you convert Christianity?

David Bahnsen [00:02:28]:

Well, the the answer for those of us raised in a Christian home is always a little boring relative to those who have a big, exciting adult testimony, but my answer very sincerely and authentically is I was raised in what we call a covenant home and so and, raised by a devoutly Christian father who who taught me in the ways of of the Lord from a very young age, made my own profession of faith at a very young age. And though I've certainly had ups and downs in my journey, I haven't ever had one of those big exciting periods so many have of deconstructing my faith and deciding to come back to it later. I've stayed in the faith the whole time. So I am happy to say now as a 50 year old man that I've been walking with the Lord for 50 years.

Jim Spiegel [00:03:23]:

That's fantastic. I would say regarding testimonies like yours that they're powerful in their own way. And that, if you never went off the deep end morally, the fact that you still sense your sinful nature and your need for a savior, I think that powerfully demonstrates the holiness of God. So something to keep in mind regarding your quote unquote boring testimony. Yeah. I've, appreciated your your father's work over the years and, would bump into him at, different theological conferences like the Evangelical Theological Society. Maybe this would be a good, next question for you. How has your father's work impacted you personally and professionally?

David Bahnsen [00:04:09]:

Well, it it's a question that when my, aforementioned book, that came out early at the beginning of 2024, full time work and the meaning of life, which is dedicated to my late father. But when that book came out, more and more people have asked me what the connections are to my sort of theological upbringing and the fact that I am in a professional line of work that involves, finance and and entrepreneurialism and economics, where my father's line of work was theology and philosophy and, you know, pastoral ministry. And and it gave me a chance to say something a lot over the last year that I'll repeat now, which is that in a lot of ways, I believe that there is a direct, not indirect connection between what I do for a living and what my father did. Now epistemology, philosophy, theology, and his particular distinctive orientation around a Christian worldview, he was engaged in defending the idea, and I'm engaged in applying the idea, but I believe that they're 1 and the same. And so while there is a very different, association with these respective fields, I do believe that my dad's work in the lordship of Christ and in the philosophical implications of the belief we have about the kingdom of God, I believe it's very connected to what I think about finance, about stewardship, and and the vocational callings that that people have. So the professional reality is, my dad did not want me to be a pastor, he did not want me to be a theologian, but I do want to be a worldview minded financier, and and I've worked very hard for 30 years to to do so. The personal side of it is the is the easier part because I already wrote a chapter in my book about it, so I'm an open book on this. I work very, very hard and I wish more Christians did, but my dad was the hardest working person I ever saw in my life, and so it was not merely that he taught me, although he did that too, but he didn't merely teach me the importance of hard work for a kingdom minded Christian, but he modeled it.

David Bahnsen [00:06:45]:

He lived it out, and he had great joy in doing so, And it was a profound inheritance that he left me.

Jim Spiegel [00:06:53]:

I would certainly regard you as a worldview minded financier. That's clear from, your published works as well as the stuff you've done on your podcast and various interviews. I don't know. I'm sure I have never never encountered a wealth management person or anyone in the business world that is conversant in the realm of ideas, you know, political philosophy and economic theory, how would you summarize the guiding principles of your investment firm? And and in what ways, does your Christian theological framework influence those basic values?

David Bahnsen [00:07:36]:

Well, the second part we'll we'll start with because I don't believe that it influences them. I think it it is the foundation of them. And so, you know it's probably a little bit of semantics, but but the reason why I make that distinction is that there are a lot of Christians that might say that they they almost give you the impression they want to sprinkle some of their Christian thinking in the way that they go about managing money, and then it always ends up being something somewhat pietistic, which is not bad, but it may not necessarily scratch all the itches. Saying I I really work hard to be the money manager, and because I'm a Christian, I want to do it with integrity, so I'm going to sprinkle in some honesty or sprinkle in some, you know, civility or charity in my you know, I I believe that at a foundational level, the way in which we think about capital, the way in which we think about capital as a tool, a tool for enterprise, a tool for the every good endeavor of what people are doing in producing goods and services, the way in which an investor is seeking to get a return on capital to have some of their own needs met, and the way in which that is a byproduct of how their capital can help meet the needs of others through debt or equity, capital markets. These things all require an understanding of how the world works, and to have an understanding of how markets work and have an understanding of how markets in the world work, you have to have a feel a theological point of view about what the world is, where the world came from. I believe markets are nothing more and nothing less than humans acting, And I can't understand markets if I can't understand humans, and I can't understand humans without a belief about the human person or a belief about human nature. And so these things are deeply theological. And so the way in which I approach my understanding of investing and financial markets and a basic economic world view requires all of this other understanding.

David Bahnsen [00:09:49]:

Now that's probably not what people mean when they ask that question, but it's what it means to me. But then when it comes to the day to day management of the business, the way in which you hire people, fire people, pay people, the types of clients you want to work with, You know, there there's also a lot of day to day prudential concerns that are informed by, what what I believe is, Christian ethics. But that foundational issue of how we think about markets and how we think about our wealth and and how we think about God's kingdom, all of those things are to me, rooted to a belief system.

Jim Spiegel [00:10:31]:

Okay. Very good. Our next guest actually will be Eric Johnson, who's the founder of the Christian Psychology Institute. And and he, is a champion for what he calls Christian psychology. Rather than, doing kind of mainstream theorizing about, issues in psychology and counseling and that, as you say, sprinkling some biblical ideas or virtue concepts on top of that, He advocates doing all aspects of psychology Christian Lee. Right? So it's a fully integrated from the start, Christian approach to psychology. Sounds like that's pretty much what you're doing, as a a person in in wealth management. It's it's you you aim to be Christian through and through, in a fully integrated way.

David Bahnsen [00:11:25]:

Yeah. I think I think that that's right. And I think when you mentioned the reformed tradition that there, is often an association in the theological background I have and the, doctrines of grace that are embedded in the, reformed, tradition. I really do think it is rooted in a belief about the sovereignty of God and what the relevance of the sovereignty of God is in the world, and and, there is a world and life view of Christianity that I hold dear, that my father taught me, and I think that is the core distinctive of the Kuyperian tradition that I hold dear to, the Calvin Calvinian tradition, and that is, a wonderful way to say it that, psychology, finance, I would add, you know, technology, agriculture, politics are part of the kingdom of God and ought to be connected to a belief system that that is coherent, and that is too often lacking. We we we do a a sacred secular distinction on these disciplines, and it is compartmentalized and truncated our faith, to our own demise.

Jim Spiegel [00:12:40]:

Your first book, deals with what you call a crisis of responsibility, and the subtitle of that book is our cultural addiction to blame and how you can cure it. Can you summarize your thesis in that work? And and also, I'm interested to know how has your thinking changed about that subject, if at all, in the 7 years since publishing that book?

David Bahnsen [00:13:04]:

Well, the thinking has definitely not changed. I think I probably have just gotten a lot more passionate and intense about it, and the society around me has given me much more, opportunity, to to feel committed to the theme of the the book. The sort of follow-up to that book and an extension, with with greater application is the subject of my next book, which which won't come out until I say that just to tell you that the thinking and the and the the priority of the subject has not only not gone away, it's front and center again in my writing priorities. The thesis of the book in 2017, that came out in early 2018 was, exactly what the title would suggest, that we're living in a crisis of responsibility, that there is embedded in our culture, a desire to blame others for that which plagues us, and that it needs to stop. And the inspiration for the book was initially my study of the great financial crisis of 2,008, and my belief that that moment was essentially one in which our response to it as a society told us almost everything about what was happening in our society, that a significant part of the population immediately migrated to blame Wall Street or blame capitalism or blame the private sector, or some element of of nefarious actors that were greedy that caused the world to fall to its knees. And, the right immediately migrated to a narrative that the government had caused it, and it was bad government policy or too much government policy or bad Federal Reserve monetary policy. And, I believed very strongly that there were colonels of truth in all of this, that there was significant, poor decision making on the governmental side and poor decision making on the Wall Street side, and yet that what what was sorely lacking in either of those narratives was the heart of the matter, which was the person in the mirror. The the Main Street was held out by both right and left wing narratives as a victim of the crisis and was never held out as the perpetrator of the crisis.

David Bahnsen [00:15:33]:

And I'm perfectly comfortable including his co accomplices, Wall Street and K Street, but it was utterly incoherent to me to vindicate Main Street. And out of that work and being prepared to make that case, in a more holistic narrative of the financial crisis, I brought in the book to to go into other subjects that I thought were also adjacent, around this subject. The it's the fundamental belief I have today that, I'm less concerned about it these days on the left. I think identity politics, I think blame casting, critical theory, the underlying Marxian philosophy of dividing up the world between an oppressed and an oppressor is embedded in leftism. That is not new. It is not any less dangerous, but it does not represent a new danger that so many on the right have joined the fray and become convinced that some big bad institution is responsible for all that, plagues them in life, is to me very dangerous and reflects a crisis of responsibility that I want to antidote.

Jim Spiegel [00:17:00]:

Yeah. There's certainly one major important fundamental distinction, I think, that you see between, conservatives and say those on the right when it comes to these issues and those on the left is, it's a different view of human nature. And it was certainly, a difference between, conservative, approach to these issues and and, that of Marx, where you have on the one hand, a view that that the problems that we see in society are result of human sin, human fallenness, as opposed to a kind of, view that the problem with human beings is a result of institutions or, social dynamics, and that there isn't really a problem with the human heart. I think that's a fundamental distinction we see, manifested between those on the left and and the right. It it

David Bahnsen [00:17:59]:

I I would I really do truly wish that I believed that were true, that everyone on the right is coming at this from the vantage point of a constrained vision of human nature. I I don't believe that is the case anymore. I think that many on the right believe that they are, that essentially they have become the oppressed and that the oppressor is the government or or higher education or Hollywood or some form of elites, and whatnot, and that that I think you're right that it absolutely has to be connected to an anthropology and and a belief system about human nature, but I think that increasingly, in the in the sort of modern moment in which we find ourselves, many on the right are more comfortable adopting what is actually the world view of the left about victimhood.

Jim Spiegel [00:18:59]:

Interesting. In your 2021 book, there's no free lunch, you cite, a legion of ideas and arguments in favor of free market economics. What are some of the most important among those to your mind?

David Bahnsen [00:19:15]:

In terms of the tenants of free market economics? Yeah. Well, I I believe that, much like I answered earlier about my own world view towards, financial profession, economics has to start with a view of the human person. My view of the human person has to start with a view of creation, and that out of this concept of God making human beings with dignity, making human beings, as image bearers of him, making human beings superior to the animal kingdom and with, human faculties that are different than animal instincts with reason, with rationality, with interiority, which is a very important concept. The unique interiority of mankind enables us to create and innovate, to appreciate, to participate in living in a way that's very different than animals and plants. And while this may seem very obvious to a lot of people, it breaks down certain, presuppositions that exist in secular economics. If we have souls that can never die and if the aim of economics is not merely our survival but our thriving, then it colors in an understanding of what it is for a human being to flourish. So I view human flourishing as the aim of economics, and then you have to ask yourself what that means. Is it atomistic? Is it merely survival, having our our primal needs met, you know, achieving, water, shelter, and food, or is there an addition to certain material conveniences, also a spiritual component? And this is I think fundamental to economics, that we need to study the social interactions of mankind, the free exchange that takes place to to drive certain desired results and our production of goods and services, outside of merely the realm of, the the physical, but also the way in which it drives human flourishing.

David Bahnsen [00:21:45]:

So the hopes and dreams and aspirations of mankind should not be taken lightly. They are a big deal. They were a big deal at the Garden of Eden. Very big aim was put on mankind before the fall. A very big aim was put on mankind after the fall, and in this process of redemption, so much of our activity here on earth is economic and yet we ignore the study of economics in the church like it's a plague.

Jim Spiegel [00:22:15]:

Okay. So some people would say, even some non socialist, that the very pursuit of wealth is of the is a moral failure, specifically the sin of covetousness. How would you respond to that? Or or we could actually frame the question this way. Why isn't, say, entrepreneurship necessarily a manifestation of the sin of covetousness?

David Bahnsen [00:22:39]:

Well, pursuit of wealth and covetousness covetousness are not merely different morally. They're different grammatically. They're just entirely different concepts. So I am opposed to the sin of covetousness. But of course, covetousness is, something that presupposes something. How can I covet something if the neighbor I'm coveting it from doesn't already have it, and how did he get it? So economics is dealing with how we get things, how things are produced, how things are acquired, how things are traded, how resources are allocated. Economics is dealing with the reality of scarcity. Covetousness is the sinful wanting of something because someone else has it.

David Bahnsen [00:23:27]:

So socialists are welcome to invite a conversation about how goods and services should be produced and how they should be distributed. But I do not recommend they, invite a conversation about covetousness. It is inerrant to socialism. It so the, discussion about the sinful desire to obtain wealth or the non sinful desire to obtain wealth, what whatever one's point of view on that subject may be, that's an entirely different subject than covetousness, which is not desiring to produce wealth, but to take the wealth of others that they produce.

Jim Spiegel [00:24:14]:

I think you're right on about that. That's those are some helpful distinctions. Princeton ethicist Peter Singer, you're probably familiar with him. He's written about what he calls absolute poverty, which is poverty by any standard. Obviously, one need not be a socialist to maintain that government programs should prevent such extreme poverty. So the question is, when, if at all, should government place limits on wealth and equality through redistribution of wealth to guarantee, say, certain basic provisions for everyone?

David Bahnsen [00:24:49]:

Government should never redistribute wealth for the purpose of addressing wealth inequality. If government is redistributing wealth in the tax code, it would be, for the purpose of funding legitimate need of government, and and there are more taxes to be, obtained from wealthier people than there are from poor people. And so in that if that is called redistribution, then redistribution in that sense is happenstance to the wealth inequality, is not being done for the purpose of addressing wealth inequality. The government addressing wealth inequality through confiscation is called theft. It's a violation of the 8th commandment. So I, acknowledge the legitimacy of the need to fund government, and I acknowledge that, wealthier people are gonna fund more government than poor people. So that is a form of redistribution. And our society, will have some form of a social safety net.

David Bahnsen [00:25:59]:

And some of it I may agree with, some may not. But there is transfer payments involved in a social safety net, and that's a form of redistribution. But that's still very different than saying we're going to do redistribution for the purpose of addressing wealth inequality. How the government can set the standards of what wealth inequality is, and then the standards by which they will, adjudicate this confiscation, is totally beyond me, and and, of course, completely unbecoming a society of equal protection under the law that holds to our, commitments to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. So I I I think my answer is nuanced enough to acknowledge that there are forms of redistribution that are going to happen, but that they are not to be driven by, the desire to address wealth inequality. I think that, the entire conversation about wealth inequality is predicated on a very, very, very dangerous premise.

Jim Spiegel [00:27:11]:

Yep. Very good. Now here would be some, more theological pushback. The new testament contains a number of challenging assertions about money, such as the difficulty of rich people entering the kingdom of God that, that Jesus mentions in Luke 18, and the apostle Paul's remark that the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil in first Timothy 6. How can one protect one's primary allegiance to Christ while pursuing wealth?

David Bahnsen [00:27:42]:

The same way that they can protect their allegiance to Christ, and avoiding idolatry of any other thing that is not wealth, which is to seek first the kingdom of God. The Bible holds intention the very clear biblical reality that love of money and idolatry idolatry of money is a fatal sin. The bible also, tells us that idolizing our spouse is a sin, and the bible does not tell us to get rid of our spouse. The bible celebrates wealth accumulation. The bible celebrates, entrepreneurial spirit, hard work. It promises material prosperity as a reward for industry, and its cautions against the love of money are 100% of the time in every single verse, prohibition against an idolatrous and unhealthy love of the money, never the hard work itself, never the industry itself. So my view on this is extremely consistent that a believer who's accumulating a lot of money has ethical responsibilities that go with their relationship with money, how they accumulate it, there's their generosity of spirit, their character that is associated with ethical decisions they make in their life as a steward of the wealth they obtain. I also believe the same thing about parents, about spouses, about friends.

David Bahnsen [00:29:35]:

In any, capacity of living, there are ethical responsibilities that come therewith, and in all such cases, we have responsibility to live like believers, and I believe we need to live like believers as it pertains to our money as well. But as a matter of repudiating Phariseeism, it will never be true that the Bible draws a line as to what the appropriate level of wealth is, and it will always be true that those who are trying to do so are Pharisees.

Jim Spiegel [00:30:12]:

Okay. Good. So when it comes to ethical responsibilities, in stewardship, one of the challenges for all of us, not just someone who's heading a a major investment firm, but we all need to be morally circumspect and careful critical thinkers with regard to what we invest in, what we purchase, what we support. You would be more aware than most, in terms of the different businesses, the different services companies out there that actually advocate for, different kinds of policies that are at odds with a Christian worldview, say, a company that's deeply committed to, the LGBTQ agenda or to, pro choice advocacy. So as you make investment decisions on behalf of your clients or with your clients, how do you work through that tangle of difficulties? Is you have so many businesses out there, Fortune 500 companies, whose values may be odds to some degree or another with Christian values.

David Bahnsen [00:31:29]:

Well, there's a biblical concept that is fundamental to our understanding of the world as Christians that my late father referred to as the antithesis, and Genesis 3:15 said that there is an enmity between man and and and the those who are committed to the ways of God and those who are not, And and so I believe that we are on this side of glory living in a a world that there are, antithetical forces at play. And as a Kiperian, I have a very deep appreciation of another concept called common grace, whereby, even people on the wrong side of the antithesis who lack a saving knowledge of the Lord can be very, very good heart surgeons or very, very good makers of coffee. And so how we reconcile, the world of common grace, which was given to us, I believe, as a very, special dispensation of grace to those of us who have a saving knowledge of the Lord. I thank God for the common grace of, that has been extended to unbelievers, because the, we richly benefit from the productivity innovation, medical contributions, what have you, even of unbelieving people. And I also thank God for an understanding of antithesis and his grace in saving me and in allowing me to see light in the context of his light. So I have a worldview that helps me understand the world that I think a lot of unbelievers don't have, and that's what I mean by antithesis. So when I think about believers and unbelievers in the marketplace, and when I think about investments that I want to have on behalf of my clients in public companies, the idea that I will buy a sin free company is utterly preposterous. All we are dealing with is the degrees of transparency.

David Bahnsen [00:33:33]:

When a company makes it easy and says, we have LGBT month at our company and blah blah blah, it might be, first of all, a marketing ploy and and other sinister, you know, cynical nonsense, but it is, transparency that is no different than if there was less transparency when you say, oh, this company doesn't do that, but they buy their furniture from a company who does, or they buy their furniture from a company who banks at a company, who buys their tablecloths from a company who does. In other words, we are not dealing with any scenario by which people can avoid these things. This is part of the common grace reality of a fallen world, that these, sinful activities exist. They are unavoidable, and I have a choice as to whether or not I want to try to make a difference. If I have a fiduciary responsibility to my clients to try to obtain the best return on their capital, and there is a company that, has some sinful platform connected to them as every single one of them do in a fallen world. And if every single company I found was owned by a Christian, they would still have sin up and down the organization, and they would still be buying their iPhones from a company that does, and so forth and so on. So there is absolutely no ability to be out of the world while I'm in the world. But what there is an ability to do is take advantage of my legal rights as a shareholder of these well run profitable organizations to engage to try to make a difference.

David Bahnsen [00:35:27]:

And I believe that those who advocate boycott as a strategy of ownership do not fail to appreciate the utter irrelevance of their boycott in equity ownership relative to the asymmetrical opportunity of engagement by being an owner of the business, by being able to make shareholder resolutions, by being able to speak at shareholder meetings, generate proposals for the board, or as we have done at my company time and time again, be able to engage directly with investor relations, directly with the c suite of the company in matters of cultural, political, moral significance. I still do so with an appreciation for the antithesis. I still do so with appreciation for common grace, but we can move the needle far better as equity owners of these businesses than we can of boycotters, and so the philosophy I take is to always and forever pursue the best investment opportunities for my clients. But once we have that equity position where it is authentic, we genuinely own the company. We genuinely believe they are a profitable venture that represents an attractive investment opportunity. We are not owning it as a political ploy or activist ploy. We own it because we believe in what the company is doing, and yet when they're doing knucklehead things in their HR department or DEI or ESG or other such contemporary, kind of, distractions, that we can engage about those issues. That's my long answer to your question about our philosophy.

Jim Spiegel [00:37:16]:

That's good. So you've referred to yourself a couple of times now as Kuyperian. That's a reference to, the reformed thinker Abraham Kuyper, who wrote lectures on Calvinism, and I believe he was prime minister of the Netherlands. Yes.

David Bahnsen [00:37:33]:

He was.

Jim Spiegel [00:37:33]:

So, why would you call yourself Kuyperian? You you did refer to common grace a minute ago. I would assume that would be one tenet there that you would affirm that he was strong on. For what other reasons would you call yourself Kyperian?

David Bahnsen [00:37:48]:

Well, I think when people think of Kyper as the heir of Calvin, you you think of a late 19th century theologian, activist, journalist, ran the the free, press in Amsterdam, the prime minister. He was one who, like the Genevan scholar John Calvin himself, was deeply involved in many of these public square elements of Christianity. So Calvin was a 16th century version and Kuyper a 19th century version, but they were singing from the same hymnal, And it just comes down to my belief in the lordship of Christ, that the that Christ as, king Jesus claimed sovereign control and interest over more than just our hearts and souls, but also over the affairs of his world. And that is the great legacy of Abraham Kuyper is his application of the theology of Christ's lordship and what that means to our understanding of the kingdom of God.

Jim Spiegel [00:38:55]:

Good. Your latest You

David Bahnsen [00:38:56]:

know, a lot of people do associate common grace to Abraham Kuyper, but I'd my belief is that Kuyper and Bavinck really did great work in summarizing certain elements and, succinctly, compartmentalizing certain elements of Common Grace, but I think Common Grace has been understood as a basic reality since the fall.

Jim Spiegel [00:39:20]:

So your latest book, Full Time, which is on the meaning of work or work in the meaning of life, what, would you say is a biblical view of work? And in in what ways does that challenge popular American attitudes towards work?

David Bahnsen [00:39:39]:

And when you say popular American attitudes, do you mean in the church, or out of the church?

Jim Spiegel [00:39:45]:

No. More generally. In the, general population.

David Bahnsen [00:39:49]:

You know, for for a long time, I might have suggested that the American mentality about work outside the church was more biblical than the American mentality inside the church. I think, over the last several years, it's become clear to me, and the COVID moment was really a point at which a lot of this, animated me and and ended up inspiring me to write this book. There's an ethos in the founding of America that's very pro work and is very pro enterprise and recognized, and I think a lot of this, comes out of a sort of protestant work ethic that I admire a great deal, and and even when America was somewhat separated from the kind of Christian roots of this, it it you know, we the DNA runs pretty thick that we celebrate risk taking. We celebrate entrepreneurialism, and and I hope that will hold. I think the American experiment requires it to hold. Whereas I would say in the 20th century, much of the American spirit about work in the church did move to an escapism that in the in the first 70 years of 20th century was largely permeated across all elements of the public square, not just work or the marketplace or vocation, but education, media, and politics. But you really saw the church re engage in the last 20 years of the 20th century in politics and education, but you did not really see it in work. And so I think the last 20, 25 years as we have come into this new century has seen an advent of a faith in work movement that, is progress, but but really still somewhat, I think, afraid or gun shy from going to where I go in in the book, which is proclaiming that the work is inherently important to God, that God does not merely care about the paycheck we get from the job and does not merely care about the tithes we get from our paycheck, does not merely care about the obedience embedded in in responsibly providing for our families, though I believe he cares about all those things, but that the actual work of salesmanship, of craftsmanship, of agriculture and technology, of waiting on tables, of the theater, of the arts, of, entrepreneurial endeavors, all of these things fundamentally matter to God, and they matter to God because it's what he made us for.

David Bahnsen [00:42:43]:

These things are our manifestation of being image bearers of God, that we honor our duty to, our duty as being made in the name in the image and likeness of God in our, endeavors, in our cultivation of the earth, in our co creating with him out of the raw materials of the world, and that this was universal. This was not a commandment given to half of his creation so that half of us could produce and the other half consume and everyone would either get happiness from 1 or the other, but rather that all of us were meant to, as image bearers of God, produce. And because we're all made individually, we will produce different things. We will be animated by different things. We have different skills. And yet, nevertheless, work represents this, expression of this earthly activity that we were made for.

Jim Spiegel [00:43:44]:

Now it happens that you are in a a very demanding line of work. The demands on your time are significant, managing a major investment firm. How do you how do you maintain an effective balance between your professional work and your roles as a husband and father?

David Bahnsen [00:44:05]:

I try really hard not to maintain a balance because that, presupposes that there is such thing as balance of hats that I'm supposed to be wearing at all times. So I talk about in the book that we treat it like it's a closet. Now first, let me very, fairly and charitable say, I always know what people mean by the question. I do, and it's a very important question and a very fair one, yet I believe that the vocabulary matters. I'm not looking to get the right amount of shirts in my closet and sweaters in my closet and pants in my closet and then say, okay, I have the closet well balanced. There are 100% of the seconds of my day in which I am a husband, and 100% of the seconds of my day in which I'm a father, and 100% of the seconds of my day in which I am called to my vocation. And I do not believe that these things are intention with one another, but there is a need for wisdom in given moments where, time and space limitations keep us from doing 2 things at once or being 2 places at once. But I think that this notion of balance has sort of, been sold to people, that there's a certain amount of hours in your day you do this, certain amount of hours in your day you do that, and and I don't know that I really believe that.

David Bahnsen [00:45:39]:

There are seasons of life that are different than other seasons. There are days in which I must leave the office early to be at one of my kids' events, and there are days where I must miss a dinner with my family to be working late at the office. And in any moment that I am missing family dinner, I am still a husband and father. At any moment at which I am leaving the desk to go to a kid's school play, I am still a financier. And and and I want Christians to become very comfortable with that reality because balance involves things that are at odds with one another. And this work life balance language implies that our work and our life are at odds with one another, but they're not at odds. Work is a vital part of our life. Indeed, I believe it was the thing God made us for, and so I'm uncomfortable, pitting them against each other, if that makes sense.

Jim Spiegel [00:46:37]:

Yeah. That's good. Well, what you just said is good segue into this next and final question, which is, what is your view of the meaning of life, and how has your professional work aimed to work out that conviction and practice?

David Bahnsen [00:46:52]:

Well, I believe with the, shorter catechism of the Westminster Confession of Faith, that man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. And I believe that we glorify God and enjoy him in our work, and in our service to his kingdom, and in our relationships, and that a, holistic understanding of human flourishing recognizes the both physical and immaterial components of the human person, that God himself made Jesus incarnate, fully God, fully man, cares for the physical world that he himself created and cares for the spiritual world that knows not time and space limitations. The purpose of my life is to glorify God by trusting him and obeying him and to cocreate with him. And that's what I wanna wake up every day and do is obey God and cocreate with him.

Jim Spiegel [00:48:00]:

Very good. And, amen. So thank you, for joining us. I'm sure our listeners have found this to be both informative and inspiring. So I appreciate you being on with us.

David Bahnsen [00:48:13]:

Well, it's been a pleasure. Thank you for your very thoughtful questions. I really appreciate it.

Jim Spiegel [00:48:19]:

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