Live Free with Josh Howerton - When Should Christian Parents DISINHERIT a Child?! | Live Free with Josh Howerton

Episode Date: September 7, 2026

Should Christian parents ever remove a child from their will? And is an inheritance something children are entitled to—or something parents are responsible to steward before God? In this episode of LIVE FREE, Pastor Josh reacts to a viral Dave Ramsey conversation with a Christian mother wrestling with whether to leave an inheritance to her adult children. From there, he tackles the deeper biblical questions behind the controversy: stewardship, generational resentment, school choices, socialism, and what parents should do when their children walk away from the values and faith they were raised to embrace. This isn't about creating a one-size-fits-all rule. It's about learning to think biblically about money, family, responsibility, grace, and the legacy we leave behind. In this episode, you'll learn: Whether children are biblically entitled to an inheritance How stewardship should shape the way Christians think about wealth Why Christian parents should think carefully about education and discipleship How Pastor Josh evaluates socialism from a biblical worldview Why inheritance decisions shouldn't be driven by anger or revenge How grace and generosity factor into decisions about a rebellious child How Josh and Jana are approaching inheritance in their own family Stand firm. Think biblically. Live free. 🧢 Want a Live Free hat of your own? Visit LiveFree.shop 📲 Looking to grow deeper in your faith? Check out the Lakepointe App to access our Discipleship Guide, daily Bible reading plan, and more. Text APP to 20411 to download

There's a lot of things here that go into wisdom and stewardship questions. Number one, I have decided I am not going to fund rebellion against my Lord. That's a principle for me. Well, hey, Lifree Nation. Before we jump into the episode, this podcast is recorded right here at Lake Point Church in Dallas, Texas. But the Livfrey Nation is spread all over the country and all around the world. So if you've been watching and thinking, man, I wish I could be part of something like this. We want to invite you to take a simple next step,

and that is join us for church online. Every weekend we stream our services live on YouTube, Facebook, and our church online platform, and it's more than just watching a service. There are a live host in the chat, prayer teams ready to stand with you, and people all around the world worshiping together in real time. And so whether you're exploring the faith,

coming back to church, or just looking for a place to start, church online is a great way to jump in and experience what God is doing here at Lake Point. We would love to see you in the chat this weekend and now enjoy the podcast. All right, welcome to a bonus episode of live free. Let me shoot you straight. We are always trying to figure out, these are a lot of extra work, always trying to figure out if the juice is worth to squeeze on these things. So if these are

helpful to you and you would like us to keep doing them, if you could like, comment, share, especially on Facebook, that lets us know that they're actually helpful to you, that you want us to keep doing them and that the juice actually is worth the squeeze, which incentivizes us to want to do them more. And we will be talking a lot about incentives today. It's going to be a lot of fun. Now, let me set this up real quick, because this is a really emotionally thick. It's a little thorny. And what you're getting ready to see, the reason I want to do this is this is becoming a question that families all over America, Christian families all over America, are having to anticipate. So let me tell you what you're getting ready to see.

This is a Christian boomer mom. This thing went stupid viral and with a lot of rage attached to it. It's a Christian boomer mom, and I'm pointing out boomer for a reason. I'm going to talk about that here in a second. Calling into Dave Ramsey and asking the question if her two children that have become socialist, this is her language, if she as a Christian mom should consider removing them from her will. Now, I may take this episode in a direction that you do not expect, so just roll with me, but that's the context of this.

So we're going to talk three things. We're going to talk about the concept of Christians and disinheriting children. Should that ever happen? Under what circumstances? If so, what does the Bible say about it? We're going to talk about socialism a little bit because that is becoming one of the most, actually, I'll say, theological pressing questions. This is like a massive question that's rising in our culture.

What does Christianity say about that? And then we're also going to talk a little bit about school choices and things like that that a lot of times we're not thinking about. Maybe like we should. Okay. That said, let's react to Dave Ramsey reacting to a Christian boomer mom. Here we go. So I am looking for some guidance from Dave and Dr. Delaney about my will. I have two daughters, one of whom is doing very well financially.

She and her husband are in the 1%. And the other daughter earns about 50,000. And for several years, I felt uncomfortable about how do, like, divide up the assets. Okay, let me stop here, and I'm going to go ahead and point something out. Now, you can tell from the ages of her kids, and then you can see it, we're going to edit it so you can see it, How this went viral is somebody saying, this is the most boomer phone call I've ever heard. So really quick, I just want to riff on this.

If you're not aware in our culture, especially in like younger, like kind of honestly, my generation and down, there's this like this mega rage viral undercurrent of resentment towards boomers. Like this is a big thing. That basically the narrative becomes the boomers lived in utopia and had everything amazing,

kind of like the little meme you'll, see is like a 1960s boomer dad, and it'll be like, this guy was a, you know, a gas station attendant and owned a, you know, a 2,000 square foot house and went on two vacations per year on his gas station attendant salary. So there's kind of like this boomer resentment. Now, there's actually something theological that's underneath this. And let me just point something out. And first of all, if what I say in the next 30 seconds enrages you, I'm asking you to stick with me for the next two minutes and not tune out in the next 30 seconds. So here's my, here's the thesis. Whenever somebody is doing, there's this, this emotional undercurrent like this.

If poor living standards are the problem, then better living standards are the solution. But check this out. If envy is the problem, there is no solution. You cannot solve an envy problem with a money solution. Now, some of you're like, what? What are you talking about? Is envy the problem? I was going to just track with me. want to point something out. There is something that you may not be aware every generation since Adam has done this thing where they look at the previous generation and there is a tendency towards envy. I'm going to read you the Bible verse. A lot of people have never seen this in the Bible. This is Ecclesiastes 710. Say not. Why were the former days better than these?

For it is not from wisdom that you ask of this. So here's what's happening. I just want to say this real quick and then get back to this. What a lot of times happens is people will look at their parents' generation and they compare their parents' end-of-life situation to their beginning of life situation. And guess what that causes? It causes envy. And what envy will cause you to do is exaggerate your parents' generations' advantages and forget all of their disadvantages. So let me just riff this real quick and get back to this. Okay, so let's just acknowledge something. if I'm understanding it correctly, boomer gen, that's my parents' gen. They had two legitimate advantages.

Lifetime, over the zoomed out span of their life, great stock market. Number two, later in their lives. So not always. Later in their lives, great housing market. But what everybody like in my generation and down is doing when it comes to like the boomer anger is they're doing the ecclesiasee 7 thing. and they're exaggerating all the advantages and completely memory-holling all the disadvantages. Let me list for you some of the other things

the boomer generation had to go through. So the boomers were raised by the greatest generation, that's the generation one in World War II, but can I be honest, it wasn't always that great for the boomers to be raised by that generation. You had 50% of the men in that generation coming home from World War II.

So that means a bunch of them, A, actually didn't come home. You got rampant alcoholism and abuse, Let me just riff these. In 1950, American families had to spend 20% of their disposable income on groceries. It's 10% or less today. The boomer generation experienced 20 years of combat in the Vietnam War, eight years of the military draft. One in 10 men in that generation were drafted to Vietnam. I want you to pause while I'm doing these and ask yourself the question how this generation would be responding if these things happened in our generation.

Probably not awesome. You had 1968, you had Martin Luther King Jr. and JFK were both killed. You had mass civil rights protests. Then you get second wave feminism. You've got abortion, birth control, and no-fault divorce all hits this generation for the first time. 1969, that was the Stonewall riots. So this is the rise of the like radical LGBT ideology thing. All that happens during Boomer Gen.

You got 1973 oil crisis. People sitting in gas lines for hours. hoping they'll be able to fill up their gas tank. Unemployment rates in the 70s peaked around 9%. It's 4% today. Inflation was 12%. It's 3.4% today. You got Watergate scandal.

You have mass heroin addiction. All the dudes coming home from Vietnam. Then you get the 60s and 70s, the hippie movement. All the sex drugs rock and roll. So if you're like kind of the, it's kind of on the line. online there's like this massive very online dudes so kind of do this like tradwife that's kind of what they're looking for well what the boomer gen ad is if you're like a just kind of like a based sort of conservative guy trying to find a girl you got the 60s and 70s hippie movement it's like

lots of sex and drugs um i'll just point this out anecdotally my grandfather lived in somebody else's garage growing up for part of his childhood and my i check with my parents my parents first mortgage rate It was 13.8%. So I just wanted gently, like, we need to pastor ourselves and go, hey, man, we got Bible verses for this, Ecclesiastasy 710. Hey, we need to be really careful when we're doing generational resentment. Say not, while we're the former days better than these, for it is not from wisdom that you always ask this. Okay.

Now, let's keep going. I'm an everyday millionaire. But more recently, I've gotten to the point where I don't want to give either of them any money. Why? Okay. Let me do something real quick. Before I say anything else, there's going to be some parents who you watch this, and when you hear that phrase, I don't want to give many my money. There's like a wound that opens up in your heart because you're a Christian parent and you're looking at your adult children or your adolescent children and they're not becoming the children that you always dreamed and hoped

and prayed. And I just want to let you off the map for some of you. I just want to point this out, in the parable of the prodigal son, what did the father do wrong? Nothing. Because the father represents God. And yet, the son still rebelled. So let me just say something. If you start to notice as a parent that there's a pattern in your children, man, of course, repent, receive grace, go get some wisdom, put some grace dirt on it, get me. back up and get in there with your whole heart and soul. But some of you need to hear this. It's not your fault. It's not your fault. If in the parable of the prodigal son, a perfect father can still have a son rebel. That's going to happen in a fallen world. And some of you also need to

hear that the father specializes in bringing prodigal sons home. So much grace to this hurting mom here. I feel like I've worked so hard my whole life. I paid for college for them. I've paid over half million dollars for college. Now what she's getting ready to do is she's explaining why she's really hesitant to give any of your children anything in her will. So pay close attention to what she says. And they've turned into socialists. And they just, but they have.

Well, you're still in the wrong college. Okay, I want you to notice that phrase, you send him to the wrong college. This is a big deal because sometimes parents are accidentally making decisions that have very predictable outcomes, and then they're surprised when the very predictable outcomes happen. Notice what Dave says here, and we're going to ask a question about some things, was Dave right? Notice what Dave says here, he says, you send him to the wrong college. This is something that Christian parents need to think, listen, a lot more carefully about as we'd to disciple our kids. So let me just do a little quick theology really quick. Okay, what the Bible says,

this is Abraham, this is called Kipurian sphere sovereignty. We talk a lot about it on live free. The Bible says that God has established three institutions and when those institutions are working in the right way in their lanes, they function together for the building of society in a God honoring way and generally the discipleship of children and families. The three spheres, check this out, you need to get this in your head. The three institutions that equal the three spheres are are the family, the church, and the state. Now, what theologians, especially in the reformed tradition, have done, is they've assigned a biblical icon to each of the spheres. We're going to a layer deeper on this than we probably have before. So what they do, what a lot of theologians

do is they go, the family's represented by the rod. Parents, it says, you know, spare not the rod, so discipline and instruction. The family's represented by the rod, the church is represented by the keys, and the state is represented by the sword. So for the church, Jesus gives the keys to Peter, that's the keys, what you bind and lose. That's what he's doing there. And then the state in Romans 13, it says that God instituted the government to, quote, bear the sword. And that's not for no reason. That's what Romans 13 says. So what the Bible says, all this is going to get down to, how should parents think about what schools they send their kids to and just track with me? You know, just if you're kind of starting to clinch, just track with me. All this, we need a theology

that helps us answer the question. How should we, how should Christian parents think about what schools they send their kids to. So the roles in general that are assigned to these three spheres, the family is given the role of discipleship, health, and education, the church is word sacrament, the functions of the church, and then the state is represented by the store. That's Romans 13, the administration of justice. Now, let's go a layer deeper. Bad things happen when institutions get out of their biblically assigned lanes. We're going to apply this both to school choices that parents, Christian parents make. And here in a second, when we talk about socialism

and is socialism compatible with Christianity, why or why not? All this gets down to what are the biblically assigned roles of these institutions, okay? So what some people do is they'll point at guys like me. I'm going to give an example here. They'll point at guys like me or podcasts like Live Free. And dude, it's the reason that I get disbanded from conferences. Is people say things like, hey, man, that pastor or that church

is getting too political. And what I always say the same thing. I always say, hey man, the church is not getting more political, politics, or getting more spiritual. When the government stepped out of its lane of doing things like teaching math and building roads to doing things like redefining marriage, erasing gender, reframing infant murder as quote unquote reproductive rights, and then using the government school system to indoctrinate everybody's kids into believing those things, hey guys, church didn't move.

Politics did. when the government got out of its biblically assigned lane of, hey, your only job is to administer justice, Romans 13, and got into the role of the church to start deciding what's right and what's wrong. How should we define marriage and not define? Well, here's the deal. Whoever designed those things gets to define those things. And when you remove God, the government is the highest authority left in society. So when you remove God, the government sees a job opening, and the government wants to put itself in the place of God and do those things. So then, watch, when that happens, it becomes the role of the church,

like be the little, you know, the little sedan on the highway. They kind of like dust somebody's bumper and says, hey, man, get back in your lane. That's what's happening right now. Now, let's start applying this to Dave. I'm just going to go ahead and give away my cards. Dave, and listen, I say this with gravity, because I know that parents are going to feel emotion

around this. When Dave says you send them to the wrong school, Dave's not wrong. Here's what I mean. In the Bible, the responsibility for the education of children belongs to families. Watch, not governments. The primary responsibility, okay? You can do this. All the, Deuteronomy talks about this, but I'll just go to New Testament. Ephesian 6.4 says this. It says, fathers, do not, provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. In other words, God looks at the leader of the family, the dad, and goes, hey, dad, it's your responsibility to make sure that your children are raised in the discipline and instruction of Lord.

Now, here's what's happening to a lot of, like, Boomer Jen parents, Christian parents, is that when they went through schools and the collegiate system, those were one thing, and now they're not that thing anymore. So we don't have time to kind of do this whole deal, but especially in the 60s, kind of especially around kind of the civil rights era movement era, that was kind of the era when Marxists committed to what they call it, quote, the long march through the institutions. In other words, this is a side note, it's not on my notes, but it is in my heart. What you have happening right now a little bit in American society is Marxists have a plan to make America a Marxist nation. Secular progressives have a plan to make America a secular progressive nation. Muslims very much have a plan to make America

a Muslim nation, but Christians always seem to have a bunch of reasons why Christians should not seek more influence in the nation. Now, we don't get political, or the only application of the gospel to society is, ah, the gospel is neither right nor left, Jesus wasn't a Republican or a Democrat. And so what's happening is godless ideologies are discipling their adherence into governmental and social activity. And man, accidentally a lot of Christians and Christian leaders are discipling Christians into political, into inactivity. That has had, very frankly, very predictable results over the last few decades. So if you ask a question, now why did Marxists, we're getting to get back to this, why does Dave say you send him to the wrong schools? Why did Marxists decide in the

60s, hey man, we need to commit to a, quote, long march through the institutions, which one of the primary aims of that long march was especially the American school systems. Okay, why? Well, in general, progressive people, this is like just data. This is not like emotional bias. This is just data. In general, progressives don't have kids. So their only goal or hope is to capture and reprogram yours. okay so what's happening to a lot of like boomers like this mom is hey man the school system was one thing when I was in it but then it changed and I wasn't aware it's generally you know a lot of times been captured by activists and then colleges changed from teaching kids how to think to telling them what to think so they moved from just doing education watch they move from just doing education

to actually now what they're doing is reverse discipling your kids if you're not very careful and very selective in who you entrust to give your children discipline and instruction, okay? This is a fun little history note, and then I want to move on. So obviously, for most of American history, there was not a centralized Board of Education in the federal government that decided what the children throughout the nation would be taught. So two guys, especially in the late 1800s and 1920s, when the U.S. government started considering this at scale,

there were two Christian pastors, a guy named Jay Greshamachan, old Presbyterian guy who was the head of Princeton Theological Seminary back when they actually taught the Bible. And then a guy named R.L. Dabney in 1879. Jay Gresham Machen actually testified before the United States Congress in the 1920s, essentially warning them. that, hey man, you guys might be good with the concept of like a federalized government school system now, but he warned them in the 1920s. Someday, you're going to be good with it now because all the teachers are generally Christians. There's like someday the government may be secular and the teachers may be secular. And then that government school system might end up being used to reverse disciple children into godlessness.

bro, R.L. Dabney, I'm going to give you some quotes. R.L. Dabney in 1879. These are his predictions in 1879 about what would happen if the government centralized and federalized control over the school system that educated the populace of American children. These are 1879 predictions, okay? Quote, we have again and again warned the advocates of the Yankee state theory. That's who was talking about like government, let's federalized and centralized government school systems, that the practical result will surely be to expel the Bible and Christianity from all the schools and to rear us so far as state schools go, a generation of atheists. my brother was predicting this in 1879.

I'm going to give you one more quote. Their complete secularization, talking about the government school system, is logically inevitable. Christians must prepare themselves then for the following results. Now, what are the results he's going to predict back in 1879?

Remember, this is a nation that had like Protestant catechisms, the Isaac Watts hymnal, and the Bible in the core aspects of American school curriculum for hundreds of years. What's he predicting is going to happen back in 1879. Prepare for the following results. All prayers, catechisms, and Bibles will ultimately be driven out of the schools. My brother was predicting this in 1879.

Why? because when the three institutions that God has established get out of their lane and into another lane, the wrong person trying to do the right thing ends up with the wrong thing happening. Now, quick caveat, as anyone who knows me will know, this is not me saying any public school is bad and you should not just veer into especially viewing school teachers as quote unquote the bad guys. you'd be crazy. My mom was a teacher for 40 years, largely in the public school system. There are a stupid number of amazing Christians in education. We need more of that, not less. And if you're one of them, we need you to be as overt as you can be about your faith in that setting.

But I will just generally give a warning to Christian families. This is an old Voddy Bakum quote. If you send your kids to Caesar, don't be surprised when they come back as Romans. That's what happened to this mom. Okay. Now, let's keep going on. So we should be very, very careful about what schools, yes, even colleges we send our kids to, don't end up spending half a million dollars funding the deconstruction of your children's faith. Let's keep going.

Yeah. It's funny. You're my favorite call maybe in two months. I know we're all laughing. No, we're with you. We're with you. I'm depressed. I'm very depressed about where I see my children heading.

And I think I don't want my money to go to them. Okay, that's the question. That's the question. I want to ask this in a second because every parent is going to have to ask this question at some point. and every child should be asking this question as well. So let's keep you on. I feel terrible about that. You shouldn't.

They're not entitled. They didn't hit the DNA lottery. They're not entitled. I'm going to come back to this. My children have been instructed since they were small that in order to get the opportunity to manage the money that God gave me to manage, meaning that I panned off the responsibility to manage some of the Ramsey fortune to them, they will have to be people of character.

Now I'm going to come back to that. Bookmark that in your head. What he says is as a dad who earned all that money in order for my children to have the right, that's not a privilege, that's a right, in order to have the privilege, sorry, not a right, to manage the money that I earned and that God entrusted to me to manage for his purposes,

they have to be aligned to his purposes. Is that the right way to think? or do parents have a de facto responsibility to inherit their kids? How should we think about that? Now, watch what he says next. Socialists are not people of character. Okay. There are parasites.

Now, I want to stop and talk about this real quick. If you're wondering why I'm talking about this, so as a pastor, let me just give you a little history, like, and pull back the curtain on what it's like to be a pastor. So I started being a pastor in, it was 2005 when I became a pastor for the first time. And I'm just telling you, what I watched in 2005 is that was really the steep curve of the rise of things like queer theory, aggressive LGBT ideology, and especially like, you know, you can call it different things, kind of the capital W woke kind of race movement. And what I watched happen to a generation of pastors is generally around that time, pastors were not prepared for, I call it air war, the societal questions that Christians were going to be faced with.

And so, like, bro, I know this is hard to imagine now. In 2005, I don't think I'd ever in my whole life heard a sermon about same-sex attraction, how to think about that, how to disciple people. Like, I'd never heard that sermon before. And what happened is pastors might have been a little behind the curve. And so what you had was pastors, they were answering questions nobody was asking anymore. And they weren't answering the questions that everybody was asking now. I'm going to warn you right now, this issue of how Christians should or should not think about socialism,

I'm afraid if we're not careful, it's going to be like that for this generation of pastors. Let me show you this. Go ahead and toss that graph up. This is CBS News. say this. Bro, this is insane. So CBS News, our CBS News poll out of this morning finds 58% of this, particularly in one political party, have a positive view of socialism, and just 32% have a positive view

of capitalism. So right now, primarily in progressive circles, you have 58% of the rising generation is gone, hey, socialism good, capitalism bad, okay? So what I'm saying is, hey man, you may not like having to answer this question. For me as a pastor, I do not have the privilege of not being able to answer this question anymore. This is going to be one of the societal questions the next few years. And, oh, by the way, it has on the ground discipleship applications for people and families like this woman. So let me just briefly do a little thing about answer the question,

is socialism compatible with Christianity, or what are the points of incompatibility? So zoom out and Christians have to learn to think air war, okay? Here's what I mean. In general, what you're going to notice is that it works like this. More God requires less government and less God is always going to require more government. So among a populace, when you got more God, you're going to need less government. And when you have more, when you have less God, you're going to need more government. Here's what I mean.

When you have a nation of godly and honest people who are full, of the Holy Spirit and internally motivated to obey the commands of the scriptures. Do you know what you don't need a whole lot? A bunch of police. You don't need that. Do you know what you don't need when you have people who wake up and they have like historically, it was called a Protestant work ethic? They embodied sort of the Thessalonians mentality that, hey man, if a person will not work, they shall not eat. Do you know what you don't need when you just have a whole bunch of people who that's their vibe. You don't need like billions or trillions of dollars of government welfare systems. So, and you could do this ad nauseum. The point is, notice this, more God, less government, less God,

more government. That's why at the American founding, you had 98% of the American populace was Protestant Christian and you had virtually like a minuscule governance. That's why. Now, there's three, I'm just going to tell you, there's three reasons in general why Christian theologians have historically said that socialism is incompatible with Christianity. And again, whether you like it or not, you're going to be able to, you're going to have to be able to answer this question. So number one, I'm going to do this rapid fire. Just because you call theft something else doesn't mean it stops being a sin. Okay. So just because you slap a different name on it, doesn't mean it stops being a sin. There's three ways to view a person's relationship with money. You can say what was mine,

is mine, and that's called selfishness. You can say what's mine is gods, and that's called stewardship, or you can say what's yours is mine, and that's called stealing, except if the government does it, and then historically we call it socialism. But just because you give it a new name, doesn't mean it stops being theft. Now, if you're like, wait a second, are you saying that all taxation is theft? No, let me come back to that.

But here's the question that, like, an astute Christian thinker has to ask. at what point does a government confiscating the wealth that somebody earns become theft or does it ever now i'll just point this out as others have pointed out before me um the uh the 10 commandments presuppose some things for instance the seventh commandment you shall not commit adultery it presupposes the institution of marriage okay the commandment doesn't make sense without that presupposition. The Eighth Commandment, You Shall Not Steal, it presupposes private ownership. Okay. Now, classical socialism cuts against private ownership, but the Ten Commandments are based upon the presupposition of private ownership. So here's the question some people have

tried to ask, and I don't have a specific answer. Honestly, it's more art than science, I think. some people have tried to go, hey man, when does government confiscation of wealth that someone else earns become stealing? Here's what some people have said, and I think there's a logic to this. It's going to blow your mind. What some theologians have said historically is anything over 10%, anything over 10%. And the point they've made is that God is first. And what God does in particularly the Old Testament, but the principles pulled over into the new, is that as God is first, 10% of everything that we earn,

we return to God and acknowledge that it's His. And what some people have done, if they go, hey, man, whenever a human entity or a government exceeds 10%, what they're de facto doing is implying a preeminence over God. I will just say this is interesting to me. You need to put on your theological thinking cap, pray, open your Bible, and figure out what you think. in 1 Samuel 8, the prophet Samuel warns the people of Israel, hey, if you take a king like all the other nations,

he's going to do this insane thing, this insane thing. He's going to take up to 10% of everything that you get, and he's going to keep it for himself as the leader of the government. This insane thing. Now, that's interesting to me. So number one, socialism, as some point, governments can steal, and that's a sin. Okay? Number two, I'll just point this out, historically zoomed out, and again, there's different definitions, but historically zoomed out, socialism creates poverty, it does not solve it. So here's a principle that Christians need to get in their heads. With governments, you tend to get more of what you incentivize and less of what you penal.

I'm going to say it one more time. With governments, you tend to get more of what you incentivize and less of what you penalize. So socialism is like, hey, man, everybody just, it's Mom Donnie's, the warmth of collectivism. Let's just pool all of our resources collectively and give it to the government. And then the government will distribute it each according to his needs. That's the phrase, okay? Here's a problem. Big problem, Skippy, is you're not asking the question, what human needs?

behaviors are we incentivizing and what human behaviors are we disincentivizing? That is the opposite of the spirit of Thessalonians when the Apostle Paul says, if a man will not work, he shall not eat. Why does the Apostle Paul say that? Because God understands human nature is default mode sinful, and so we need real world incentive structures to incentivize fallen people towards righteous, fair behavior. Okay? So you got to ask this question. This is why, okay, let's go a little spicy, this right here, with governments you get more of what you incentivize and less of what you penalize. This is why states and cities that throw billions of dollars at homelessness tend to end up with more homelessness. They do not solve homelessness. Why? Because with human

governments, you tend to get more of what you incentivize and less of what you penalize. When you tell people the government will provide for you, you're not solving poverty. You're incentivizing activity very frequently. Now, if you don't believe me, I'm going to show you two pictures, okay? This right here, that. That's Hiroshima, after 80 years after an atomic bomb. That's Hiroshima, 80 years after an atomic bomb. Okay, next picture. That's Cuba, 60 years after socialism. Okay. One city can survive an atomic bomb. The other society could not survive 60 years of socialism. So check this out. Christians have to learn to stop being children in our thinking, like the Bible says. Listen, Christians do not measure policies by their intentions, but by their outcomes.

It does not matter if the intention of a policy is to, quote, solve poverty and care for the poor. If its outcome is to create poverty and multiply the poor, it's evil. Okay. Now, last thing, and then let's get to this question that he's asking about disinheritance. How should Christian parents think about this? he calls socialist parasites and even though that's i'll just say it that's not their intention he is not wrong frequently is not wrong okay here's why i say that um how does the bible say giving should be done

it says willingly and not under compulsion i should want to point this out what people who generally lean towards socialism say is they say that man their motive is to be generous and to care for the poor that's what they say and honestly for for some of them i i've i've believe them. I genuinely believe a lot of them have a genuinely altruistic spirit. Okay. But I do want to point this out. When you get to the actual data, in general, Christians and conservatives are three times more generous with their own time and money than progressives, three times. So like back in 2016, when Bernie Sanders had a little run for president and his income tax returns came out, the guy who was supposed to be the generosity candidate, the care for

the poor candidate. His tax returns came out and he was giving around 1% of his income to charity. Same thing with Pete Buttigieg a few years ago, 1%. Biden in 2008, less than $4,000 given a charity over an entire decade. Okay. So here's what I'm saying. Again, I'm trying to help you think as a Christian. What happens a lot of times is progressives and Christians are often using the same glossary, but using a different dictionary. So they're using the same words, but they have different definitions for those words. When Christians use the word generous, we mean generosity with our own money. When progressives use the word generosity, they tend to mean voting for the government to forcibly redistribute other people's money. Okay. So that's it. There's these these are the reasons.

Now all this, I just want to kind of land the point on this. What you're going to notice is it's kind of like progressive people who lean socialists, what they tend to do, they tend to be an inverse correlation between faith and socialism for a reason, more God, less government, less God, more government. And generally what they'll do is these people, the same people, they'll laugh at you as a Christian for believing in an all-powerful, all-good God. Those same people think if we just made the government all-powerful, it'd be all good. Good luck with that. Okay. Now, let's keep going on. We're going to get to our land-the-plane with the question.

And so if my children are going to be parasites, I'm not going to finance their lives so that they have a reality show. Is there a way to put money in, let's say, a trust where they couldn't get access to it to they were, let's say, 70 years old? Well, I mean, then they'd just be a 70-year-old socialist, right? Watch what he says here. hoping by then they will have kind of woken up. You can. I put mine is my all of our estate is trust based and our trust is um we've done it from a faith perspective not an economics perspective but if they're not walking with God they don't get to manage God's money. There it is. Okay, here's what he says. If they're not walking with God, they don't get to manage God's money.

And he said it earlier, his children have been raised in an environment where they know, So, hey, man, for you to receive the ability to manage the things that me and your mom earned, you've got to have generally the same values that me and your mom are living for. Now, here's a question. The question is, is it wrong for parents? How should parents think about this? Should Christian parents think about removing children from their wills who are living in rebellion against God? Okay, now again, let's go back to the, let's do a little theology really quick.

We already mentioned in the Bible, you've got three. institutions, family church, and state. What some theologians have historically done is that they've noticed that in the Bible, this is very interesting, there's an ultimate penalty in each of those fears for somebody who lives in high rebellion. So notice this. The ultimate penalty for the church is outlined in 1st Corinthians 5, and it's excommunication. If you are a member of a church that's living an open rebellion against God in unrepent and sin, you know it, you don't care. It's a, you know, little leaven, leaven's the whole lump. The Bible commands the leaders of a church to remove that person from the church. That's 1 Corinthians 5. Now, in 2006, that's going to go

internet viral and, you know, all the things will happen, but pastors are still commanded to do it. In the state, the ultimate penalty for rebellion is the death penalty. The death penalty is biblical. even in the New Covenant, Romans 13 talks about the government, quote, bearing the sword not in vain. Now, let's get down to it. What is, here's what some theologians have done, what is the ultimate penalty for high rebellion and open unrepentant sin in the family? What some Christians, theologians have done is they've gone, man, it's disinheritance. That this is a biblically permissible response from parents. tragic, very emotional to open rebellion against them and their lord. A couple examples that a lot of

people probably miss. In the Bible, Jacob disinherits his son Ruben. Remember Ruben slept with one of his dad's concubine, so honestly, dad should have a little bit on you there. Dad shouldn't have a concubine. Rubin sleeps with his dad's concubine, and Jacob disinherits him from his birthright and it goes to Joseph. The other thing some theologians have done is they've looked at Old Covenant New Covenant continuity, and they've pointed out that in Deuteronomy 21, the penalty for, go read Deuteronomy 21,

the penalty for a child living in open rebellion, open defiance against their parents after discipline and instruction and love and pleading and all these things. in Deuteronomy 21 was the death penalty for an openly defiant, rebellious child. God frequently talks, I'm reading Leviticus right now, my personal Bible reading, and he'll talk about them being cut off from among their people. So what some theologians have done is they've gone, hey man,

obviously, if you were to receive the death penalty, you do not receive your inheritance. Now, quick caveat, obviously there's old covenant, new covenant discontinuity in the civil penalties for these things. So Christian parents today are not advocating for death penalties for rebellious children under the new covenant. I just got to get that in there. But we're asking this question about disinherence. Now, let me just get down to like brass tax and talk about how what I think about this, what we should think about it. I'm just going to tell you how me and Jana have decided to think about it. There's a lot of things here that go into wisdom and stewardship questions.

Number one, I have decided I am not going to fund rebellion against my Lord. That's a principle for me. Number two, what, like if you watched this post, like people just unloaded on Dave for this. I mean, capital, you unloaded. And we'll be honest. some of it I watched and I was like man what an unfair entitled attitude towards your parents what a lot of the reactions to this boiled down to was kids saying I'm furious my parents aren't going to give me the money they earned to fund a lifestyle that tears down everything

they believed in I'm sorry man like there's a little bit of me in this like who do you think you are now we got some things to balance Notice in the parable of the prodigal son in the New Testament, the son has a rebellious spirit towards the father, and the father still chooses to give the son part of his inheritance. That's interesting. You might be seeing there kind of a shape of the gospel. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. And the book of Roman says, it's God's kindness that leads.

us to repentance. Huh, how do I factor that in? I'll also point this out while we're talking about Deuteronomy 21. I'm giving you principles and then I'm going to talk about how we might synthesize them. Deuteronomy 21, here's a warning. It gives a specific command against what I might call like revenge disinheritance. Like I'm kind of ticked at one of my kids. I don't like one of my kids. And it's really just an emotional reaction rather than a godly principle that we instilled. in the air that our family breathed from a young age. So what we are not allowed to do is sort of just revenge, disinherit kids that are kind of ticking us off a little bit.

Now, let me talk real quick about how Jan and I right now have decided to synthesize these principles as Christian parents. And I'm not saying you've got to do these things. What I'm encouraging you to do is open your Bible, pray, ask the Holy Spirit for guidance, and do what he tells you to do, okay? what me and Janner are doing, and some people probably unload on this, but I'm just telling you what we've decided to do. What we've decided to do is we've literally, God comes first, he is first, and we want to treat him first in our children and our children's children. And what we're praying is that, like the Lord says, that we want to see people with the last name of Howard and throwing haymakers for the kingdom of God, quote,

the 10th generation. And so we want to model for our children what it looks like to put him first because he is first. So what we've decided to do was we wrote into our will to leave the first 10% of our inheritance to the kingdom of God. And we designated it that way. And then this may be wrong, and I may come back and change it. But essentially, we just have a little note in there that says, hey, we already tithed on the inheritance, so you don't have to. That's why it's our money. And we we typed on it for you so you don't got to so that's what we did we went hey first 10% goes to him that's what we did okay now what we want to do is if our children are generally walking with the lord we want to leave that to them so that they can grow up raise Christian families and we can

keep passing the howerton baton of faith to the children and their children to the 10th generation because as parents we just have this deep thing inside of us that we that we believe that the most important thing we do with our lives is probably not something we accomplish. It's probably going to be somebody we raise. Okay. So what we've decided to do is generally in our home is just already to start just generally talking about, hey, kind of what Dave's doing here. It's the air that we're raising our family in is, hey, everything that we have and everything we are, it belongs to the Lord. And so in order to have the right to manage God, God's things, you've got to generally be walking with the Lord, okay? Because our allegiance is to the Lord

and to His kingdom. Now, as a parent, and somebody may just tee off on me on this, but I just want to point this out. One thing that happens when you begin to do things like that is we want to create as many, watch my language, primary and secondary motivations for Jesus to win all the 50-50 balls in our kids' lives at critical junctures in their life. So everybody's going to have moments when they're like right there on that spot and you're the sophomore in college and you're like, hey man, am I going to go this way or am I going to go this way? Am I going to do that thing or am I going to do that thing? We want to create as many incentives as Christian parents so that in that moment in the back of our kids' heads, even if the primary motivation that we want, which is just I love Jesus and I can't believe he died for me. And because he gave me everything, I want to give him everything with my life.

That's the primary motivation we want. But we want some fail safes too. We want as many secondary motivations. So in that moment when the primary motivation might fail, there's like that Jesus wins a 50-50 ball. And I actually am totally okay with a little thing in the back of my kids' minds where they start going, man, there's some serious real-world consequences for me taking off the team Jesus jersey.

and go on to Team World or Team Satan Jersey. I want that. Now, let me go to a third thing. This for us, we're not looking for perfection. That's not what we're looking for. I'm just talking about children who have a general orientation toward the things of God. So, you know, I'm not, hey, this is not a,

hey, Hudson, you've got to be a fourth generation pastor. You got to have my exact theology, you know, I'm just talking about we want somebody who's generally moving in the direction of the Lord and his kingdom. I'll tell you another thing that we've decided, and let me just give you, this is what we've decided, that may give you a caution. What we didn't want to do is have that principle be something that we just sprung on our children at the end of our lives, or that they find out for the first time, in our will. We didn't want that. Why? Because then I feel like you do run the risk of it feeling

capricious and vengeful rather than a principle rooted in Team Howerton is on Team Jesus. And everything we have and everything we own belongs to him. So we want it to be the air they're raised in so that if they make that decision later in their lives, and by the way, we do not expect that. We like the like the word says, we walk in faith, we are sure of better things. Okay, we walk by that faith. But we didn't want that to be something that might feel capricious.

So that's how we've chosen to do it. And I will say, I did some reading about this, what someone might, somebody might just pray, open their Bible, walk by the leadership of the spirit, and make a completely different decision than me. What I would say is that's fine, okay? but what someone might choose to do is if their children were in that situation,

they might choose to like, hey, we want to, out of love for our children and generosity and grace, at least take care of their needs and make sure their needs are met. Give them a leg up in the world as an expression of gospel grace and mercy. And then maybe not go above and just state it because we don't want to end up funding in the next generation. don't want to fund someone living a life in open rebellion against everything that we believed and stood for. So that's what Jan and I have decided to do in our lives. What I would encourage you to do is open your Bible, pray, ask the Holy Spirit for wisdom, and do whatever he tells you to do. Bonus episode over.