Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Is the US Dying?: Population, Immigration, Economy, Culture, and Childbearing

Episode Date: May 13, 2021

Did you know that the US population is in decline? Most of us don't think about population that much, but it has some pretty significant impacts on daily life: who your neighbors are, what jobs are available, and what your family looks like. Listen to https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/staff/keith-simon/ (Pastors Keith Simon) and https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/staff/patrick-miller/ (Patrick Miller) as they discuss and debate these topics, based on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Yglesias (Matthew Yglesias's) book https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/50165554-one-billion-americans (1 Billion Americans). Interested in more content like this? Scroll down for more resources and related episodes, including https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcasts/are-kids-a-blessing-or-a-burden-psalm-127-3/ (Are Kids a Blessing or a Burden?) and https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcasts/how-to-love-your-neighbor-an-interview-with-chris-and-elizabeth-mckinney/ (How to Love Your Neighbor). Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/ (website) and follow us on https://www.facebook.com/TenMinuteBibleTalks (Facebook), https://www.instagram.com/thecrossingcomo/ (Instagram), and https://twitter.com/tmbtpodcast (Twitter) @TheCrossingCOMO and @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life in the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. And I'm Patrick Miller. Also, if you want to connect with us, follow us on Twitter at TMBT Podcast. You can also check out our hashtag, hashtag, Ask TMBT, where you can ask us anything, and we'd love to connect with you. Keith, what was your grossest dad moment? Like poop? Yeah, you know, potty stuff.

Potty stuff. Well, I... Bodily fluid. I don't know if this really counts as grossest dad moment, but I'll never forget it. We're sitting out to you. We've got two little bitty kids, and we're with some people who don't have kids. And all of a sudden, my old's, I guess, is probably a year and a half, maybe two years old, starts vomiting like a lot at dinner. And Christine's sitting right next to him.

Like, just to be clear, one long extended vomit or kind of a multiplicity of vomits? Well, at the time, what I recall is just like gushing out like a fire hydrant. And it came out of the blue. It wasn't sick or anything. I don't know if it. I don't know what had happened. But he just like profusely vomiting. And Christine immediately starts catching his vomit.

Yeah. And I immediately go pick him up. And so we walk back to the restaurant. He's vomiting everywhere. People are looking at us. But we tried to get him in the bathroom as quickly as possible. And then we came back to people who didn't have kids, I bet to this day they still haven't had kids because they were in shock. I think they were more shocked that Christine just immediately

started catching vomit. And they just had a category. And Oliver went through some funny vomit phases where he would just vomit randomly. And it was always difficult to explain to people when it would happen. They'd be like, you should probably leave now. Well, no, I'm not going to leave because he just vomits randomly. There's nothing wrong. They think he's like he's contagious. Yeah, they think he's thinking I go, no, he just looked at you and vomited. My grossest dad moment, I pride myself, I was a diaper virgin before I had kids. Really? Never changed the diver? I refused. I said I wanted to save myself for my first kid. Wow, purity culture. Yeah. So this is probably one and a halfish weeks into my first experience is changing diapers. And I'm holding Iris by her two legs to wipe her

because she's being held upside down. Well, no, no, she's on her back on the changing table and you grab them by their legs so you can wipe their butts, you know, if you had visuals to make a lot more sense. but when I lift her up, she just lets one go. She poops? She projectile poops off of the changing table onto a set of curtains that was probably about six feet away. White curtains. It's just this big poop stain. Sure, Emily was thrilled with that.

We actually had a pretty good laugh. Okay, so one more thing, because you talk about being a diaper virgin. So my good friend, same thing. He had never changed the diaper. But it got to the point where his kids, like, two years old and he's never changed. changed the diaper and his wife says, gosh, could I just go do something tonight with my friends? And so he's like, okay, because he was scared to be left with the kid alone. Maybe it's 18 months, something like that.

And so then... I always kind of judge guys like that. Yeah. And so he lets her go, she does her thing. And his kid poops. And he's got like this really big kid. And it's got one of those onesies on that you kind of tear away the snaps. But he doesn't know what he's doing.

And so he takes out scissors. And he starts cutting at the feet. and he cuts the thing off of them, the onesie off of them. And then I guess changes his diaper. I don't know, but the wife comes home. And again, this is a good friend of mine. The wife comes home, and she's like, what the heck? Why is this outfit all cut up?

Well, I had to change the diaper. And I guess this is the way you do it. So you diaper versions, there you go. No, no, no, no, no. I've always been able to watch my children on my own. It also, that's an intelligence level thing. I mean, there's snaps. It's not hard to figure out.

Has he never seen snaps before in his life? Oh, no, first time. You had to peel it. Oh, shoot, where's the scissors? We're going to get this kid unpeeled. I can't wait to tell you later who it was. I have some guesses. We'll talk about it later.

So why are we talking about our gross dad moments? I have no idea. Well, on today's episode, we are going to be discussing a book by Matthew Iglesias called One Billion Americans. It's kind of one of my favorite books I've read in the last few months. Really? I don't get it. Yeah, it's okay, but you read it because of me. And I wouldn't say this.

I don't agree with everything in the book. but the basic premise is that America has a population problem. And we'll talk more about this, but there's two solutions on the table, and those are childbearing, thus our gross dad stories. Ah, that's the connection. Segway. And immigration. But before we hop in, Keith, can you give us a quick introduction to who Matthew Iglesias is? Yeah, Matthew Iglesias' biography, I think, is part of what makes this topic interesting, because as we get into it,

you're going to see that it has appealed to both people on the left and the right. And Matthew Iglesis has kind of had to navigate those waters recently. He wrote for Slate when it was more of a moderate magazine, not the liberal magazine it is now. He wrote for the Atlantic. He founded Vox in 2014 with his buddy Ezra Klein, who'd left the Washington Post, a very, very successful magazine. And Matthew Iglesis has always been on the left, but more of a data and policy guy. Well, in 2020, July 2020, he is one of the 150 people, all liberal, who signed the Harper's letter. Maybe you've heard about it, but it was a letter that Harper's magazine published.

And these were people on the left who were all decrying the shutting down of free speech. In other words, all these people like J.K. Rowling, Noam Chomsky, Barry Weiss, all these people signed this letter saying, hey, look, we on the left have to be careful because we are starting to promote ideas that shut down people's ability to, speak the truth or to say things that are unpopular. And Matthew Iglesis signed that letter. Again, 150 people did. And he just got all kinds of grief from it. Almost everybody on that list got roasted for it. Yeah, maybe. I don't know. I just know he did. Asra Klein, again, his co-founder and good friend started sub-tweeting him. At least that's what it looked like to our Matthew Iglesis is like, can we talk about this in the office? And all this is happening on Twitter,

he's kind of targeting his friend. And then there's a woman who worked at Vox. Her name is Emily Vanderverf. I think that's how you say her name. I hope I'm getting it right. She's a trans woman. And she was very unhappy that he had signed this letter. And so she sent letters to the editors at Vox.

Remember, the company the Matthew Iglesis founded. And then she posted it online, her letter that she sent to the leadership at Vox. And what she said in that is, look, Matthew has been nothing but extremely kind and to me personally, he's done nothing but encourage my work, but he should not have signed that letter. The fact that he signed that letter calling for more free speech makes Vox a less safe place for me to work. So there's this weird thing where the guy who founded the magazine is now being attacked by people who work at the magazine, but not because he's mistreated them in any way, no, they say he's been great to him, but because he is signing a document that

150 liberal sign calling for more free speech. So it's just kind of a weird world we live in. So Iglesias eventually he leaves Vox and he goes and starts writing for a substack because he says, look, I just want to be able to have an independent voice. So I had to leave the place I founded in order to find the ability to say what I want to say. Yeah, I mean, we're living in an interesting moment where what I would call traditional liberals are more and more on the outside of kind of the far wing of their own party. And when they don't hold the party line, that far left party line, they're often cast aside, cast out, and then strangely defended by conservatives. So we're in a bizarre place culturally, and Matthew Iglesias fits into this. He's still, I think, a very liberal

thinker. I mean, if you read this book, his solutions to these problems are classically liberal solutions. Which is why I know why you like it so much. But, you know, we talk a lot about the people being in their own echo chamber and listening to Fox or MSNBC or whatever. But that happens inside of media organizations as well. There's a guy named Cass Sunstein who I really like to read. He's interesting dude. He took people from Boulder, Colorado, who are obviously very liberal, and then he took people from the conservative Colorado Springs. And he... It's like the Christian Mecca out there. It's the New Jerusalem. Anyway, he used to be Wheaton, right? Now it's the New Jerusalem of Colorado Springs. Anyway, he's...

he had them just talk to each other about issues. So the liberals were talking to the liberals, the conservatives were talking to the conservatives. And what he found is that the more they talk to people like themselves, the more liberal or the more conservative, in other words, the more extreme they got. So that doesn't just happen in our own little media echo chambers where we're watching programs, but it also happens within the media organization that they become more and more liberal or more conservative, more and more extreme. So think about that. If Vox is going to be the kind of place or any media organization is going to become the kind of place that you have to agree with everybody in order to work there, then all these media organizations become more extreme.

They become orthodox organizations. They end up having statements of belief almost where you cannot transgress these statements and remain a part of the organization. And the problem is that you just brought up, if you are only in a group of people who share beliefs, you will continue to migrate further in a polarized direction. All it takes is relationships with someone on the opposite side who's going to press back, ask you questions, and make you realize, oh, as it turns out, I don't know everything. As it turns out, those people are good people who have some interesting ideas. If you do that, it's going to moderate you, and it's going to make you more open to free thinking. Which is what is interesting about Matthew Galaisus, a guy who's on the left, and yet now he's

heterodox because he's willing to consider things from all angles. And that's a lot of what makes this book kind of interesting. That's what drew me into the book in some ways, is, again, we'll talk about what he sees as the problem, and I tend to agree with him, but he's seeing a problem that he thinks the left and the right can work on together. And I'm fascinated by this as well, because I think the way that he says we should address these problems actually have some really strong biblical, ethical underpinnings. That the Bible actually has some interesting things to say about these topics. So let's hop right in, and we need to start off by talking about what's the problem. Why should we care about population? And Matthew Glacius' basic idea, or what he's arguing,

is that there are other nations which are much more populous than us, which are catching up with us in terms of their national wealth. And so the example he gives is China, of course. And he says, look, Chinese people are much less wealthy than Americans. They're quarter less wealthy than Americans. By individual. By individual. And he goes on to make the point, however, that they don't have to become as wealthy as us individually to become more wealthy than us as a nation. Because they have so many more people, if they simply became half as wealthy as the average American, because they have so many more people than we have in America, China would become a wealthier nation. And he doesn't see this as a net positive for the world, which makes sense because

China is an oppressive regime. It is government controlled. You think what they're doing to minorities, like the Uyghurs? It's not a country that we would probably say, gosh, this is great for the world if they're the Bain power broker. Now, as it turns out, Matthew Iglesias was not the first person to come upon this problem. Did you know that in China, there are 56 cities with over a million people? You know how many we have here? Nine. Actually, that's not true. I know the figure you're referring to, and it's a projection of 15 years from now. Thank God. No, no, that is right now. Michael, China is agrarian. Urbanizing fast, you betcha. But still agrarian. Most in terms of land, not population. Come on, Michael. No, no, you're wrong. You're wrong.

about this. Where are you getting this information? I got it from New York Times.com. Uh-oh. Getting nervous, Oscar? Okay, someone look it up. I'm on it, Jim. I'm on it.

Guys, it's not worth it, really. Guys, this is not worth our time. Are you watching this? Seriously? Well, are you? I'm sitting right here. Got it. China has 56 cities

with a population of over 1 million. The U.S. has nine. Suck it, Oscar. Well, on the plus side, all this worrying about China has made you smarter than Oscar, Michael. Great. I was wrong. I'm wrong. Is everyone happy? Well, who are you? So I happened to know more than the smartest guy in the office. So what?

I don't care. Okay. Now, where were we before I bested Oscar? There's an office clip for every occasion, isn't there? Oh, it's such a good. Part of the fun of the clip is, you know, in this show, Oscar's known as the smartest guy, and Michael's always wrong. and as Michael's being proven right throughout the entire scene, he just has this smile on his face. I'm the dumb guy, but I'm finally right for once. That's how I feel around her office most days.

If I'm ever right, I'm sure. I'm the public school kid, and boy, if I could just be right once. I'd never forget about it. But as it turns out, Michael Scott is right in this particular instance. Currently, there's about one billion Chinese to 330 Americans. And again, like I said, they don't have to become as wealthy as Americans. And we should keep in mind, it is much easier to grow from a poor country to a richer country than it is to grow from a wealthy country, which we are the wealthiest

country in the world, to an even more wealthy country. Yeah, it's just like maybe losing weight. It's a lot easier to lose the first 10 pounds than the second 10 pounds. So China has been developing their economy at a very rapid rate, and that's great. We should be happy about that. And Matthew Glacist does a good job in the book of saying we want to root on all countries and for their development, because when China grows economically, it brings a lot of people up out of poverty. And, of course, we should cheer that. We should want that. Yeah, Matthew Iglesias' goal is not to try to keep China poor. I don't know who could ethically think that's a positive, good thing to do. His goal is to help America stay wealthy and populous, which really, really matters.

An interesting comparison here is to World War II. Most people might not realize this. 80 million Germans at the time of World War II as compared to 130 million Americans. And America's GDP was actually bigger than Germany and Japan's combined at the time. Yeah, we won the war because we just outproduced them, right? Yeah, you're exactly right. As it turns out, it was not a good time to be a Nazi. Nothing makes sense anymore. Yeah, I know.

It's definitely not a good time to be a Nazi. Who is that? What is that? No, I have no idea. It's from Jojo Rabbit. I don't know who that is either. It's a movie. You gotta start watching something.

Usually sometimes I've heard of the movies, but Jojo Rabbit? It's a story of a little boy. It's a story of a little German boy who has an imaginary friend who's like a child version of Adolf Hitler. It's actually, I haven't seen it either. Oh, okay. Mr. Culture. I haven't seen it either. Well, I have young kids.

I don't have time for that. You say either. Uh-huh, that's right. But the point was, Germany in Japan, they never stood a chance of winning simply because we were a wealthier, more populous nation. There wasn't a chance. So we didn't just think of how dumb it was to take on Russia as well as the United States. Yeah, so let's get back to the big point here, is that the United States birth rate has been declining for quite a while now. So replacement rate for a population is about 2.1.

And the United States... Can you explain what that means? Replacement? Yeah. So the replacement rate is the amount of children per woman that a population would have to average in order for the population to raise in order for the population to remain steady. And that is 2.1 children per woman. So obviously, if that number goes up, then the population increases, and if it goes down, then the population declines over time. Yeah, so right now, there's 330 million Americans. And to keep 330 million Americans, we would need to have a

average birth rate of 2.1, 2.1 children per woman. So that's where we would need to be. Unfortunately, that number has been decreasing over time. And this was actually partially engineered by policy. There were policies that were designed starting in, I think, the 60s and 70s, trying to persuade people against having children. There was a theory called the population. I mean, actually sent me this article this morning. Yeah. So if we're going to get into this, this is super interesting, I think. Paul Ehrlich, a guy writes in the 1968, 68, I believe. He's a Stanford University professor. But he is not a demographer. But what he essentially says is, look, the population of the world is growing way too fast and we're going to destroy ourselves. And that was the big fear. People were having too many kids. And that's why we had poverty. And that's why we were going to have these natural disasters or epidemics, all this stuff, food shortages. And he was proven absolutely wrong.

Totally incorrect. Well, and it happened immediately because that's when there was what they call the Green Revolution and Agriculture, where people were able to produce more food with less resources. And so we had plenty of food to feed the world, but that still hangs in the American psyche, that this idea that we are overpopulated, we are not overpopulated as Earth or as a country. Are there pockets that are overpopulated? Well, sure, of course. But we need more people, not less. Well, and it's worth pointing out. He was doing his academia at a time where using hard statistics wasn't common. People were working mostly in the world of theory and ideas. And again, as people who have followed up his work, they pointed out that he's not just incorrect. He's actually

the opposite of correct. As populations grow, there's actually growth in wealth, growth in opportunity, growth in food. Everything gets better, as it turns out, with a higher population level in the United States. And it's not just the United States that's seeing a decline in the average birth per woman. You're seeing this in a lot of places around the world. Ninety-seven percent of the world lives in countries in which the population rate is below 2.1. The lowest, I think, is Japan. In Japan, a few years ago, they began to sell more adult diapers than baby diapers. In Japan, you will have a person who turns 100 for every child that is born. That is insane.

But in America right now, we have more people over the age of 80 than we do under the age of 2. And the simple reality there is someone's going to have to pay for those benefits for social security. Someone's going to have to be the health care workers who are going to be working in nursing homes and taking care of people. And we are not replacing ourselves. In Japan, I think the best case scenario at this point is that the people in the old folks' home will be cared for by robots. Yeah. That's what they're shooting for. No, that's what they're going to have to do, literally.

There's nobody around. People probably are laughing right now. You ever see read the book, Children of Men by PD James. Yeah. Super interesting book where people couldn't have kids. anymore and just how the aging population. My mom moved into this place outside of Austin. It's called Sun City. I think they're all over the south. But what do I know? Anyway, it's 55 and older. So it's not like assisted living. Everybody, you know, everybody lives in their own homes and that

whole thing, but they have a community, whatever. Went down a visitor and you go out and all you see are like old people. It's kind of freaky. I have zero interest in ever living in a place like that. Yeah, it was personally. Maybe I would understand it. It was super weird. I'm probably going to be cremogene by the time I get older. Now, so let's go back to the United States. was an all-time low in the United States, our birth rate dropped to 1.72. So we are well below the replacement rate. And in fact, that birth rate has been dropping dramatically since 2008. If the birth rate had stayed where it was before 2008, so let's say there's no drop after 2008, there would actually be 5 million more Americans alive today. Well, I can't wait to talk about

this in a second because we're going to get back to this. But if we hadn't had 62 million abortions since 1973, we'd have a lot more people, too. Well, and that's one of the things that we're going to have to talk about in this picture, which Matthew Glacius leaves completely out of his book. Which is, yeah, I don't know how you do that. He's like, well, he's classically liberal. I mean, he doesn't see that. I mean, I'm with you.

He's a smart dude. He knew what he was doing. Yeah, I agree on that. He was just placating a certain audience. But what we have to understand is that these lower birth rates, there have been studies that show that they lead to fewer kinds of services, fewer kinds of customers, less wealth, less innovation. They lead to the failures of cities and towns.

We live in Missouri, and it's not hard to find rural towns that are struggling right now because their population is declining. And it's not merely because people are going off and moving to the cities, although that's a piece of the puzzle. It's also simply because population is decreasing. While this is somewhat difficult to measure, I think we simply also have to add the fact that children bring happiness. There's something about being in a community where you have young kids that are running around. They bring life. They bring energy. And when you lose that, I think our societies are less.

I want kids around. Well, we're going to get to this again later. I want to get to it now, but I know that you've got other things on your mind. I can tell. We'll get back to it. But I want to get back to why people are having less kids. And I don't think it's because they just love kids so much. Quit trying to fight me.

Okay, we'll get back to that. Okay, so according to Matthew Glacius, there's going to be three ways to grow the United States. And that is immigration, childbearing, and revitalizing the heart lane. Now, we're not going to talk about that third one. But I want to talk about immigration and childbearing again, because these are actually topics. The Bible has a tremendous amount of things to say, too. So let's hop into immigration. Now, immigration can be kind of one of those hot-button issue.

And so the first thing I want to say is this, we've got to get past chance as our approach to immigration. Build that wall. Build that wall. Build that wall. Golly, jeepers. That scared me. Keith, are you going to chant it? No, I'm not chaining it. Who was that? It was Donald Trump. You really didn't know who that was?

Well, I couldn't tell it. It didn't sound like him. Yeah, he was at a rally. He was getting people to chant build that wall. Now, our point here, by the way, is not to talk about walls at all, actually. We do want to talk about immigration. And I think immigration is one of those topics that people get really tribalized on. It's either I'm anti it, I'm for it.

We should have totally closed borders or we should have totally open borders. Keith and I think, and I would say Matthew Glacius as well, take a pretty nuanced view on immigration and say that we should allow immigrants, that there's net positives that come from it, but there should be clear rules. There should be good vetting processes. There needs to be a legal process by which it happens. So let's hop in. Keith, are you going to give me a history lesson on immigration? The United States has had a complex relationship with immigration. In some sense, we're a nation of immigrants. And that's always pointed out as if we should always have as many immigrants that want to come to the United States. because that's how all of our ancestors, unless you were forced through slave trade or a Native American, got here. Yeah, I mean, Americans are, on the whole, one of the most immigrant positive nations in the world. But just statistically speaking, we are much more positive than most European countries about immigrants. And America actually has the largest immigrant population. We've got 47 million immigrants in the United States.

That's 19.1 percent of the 244 million immigrants worldwide. But when you go back in history and look at our immigration policy, what you notice are a few things. One is that it was always more open to people who looked like us than those who didn't. Another is that there's always been restrictionists and liberalizers. And those changed parties. Like right now, I think you'd say that the Republicans are more restrictionist on immigration and Democrats more liberal. But that's not how it was for large parts of our nation's history. It was Democrats who are the more restrictionist.

And it just kind of just shows how parties change their ideology and how you never really want to attach yourself to a party because they change. You want to attach yourself to truth and principles. Well, along those same lines, the biggest dip in immigration was in the 1930s. And the two biggest peak spikes in immigration in the last century were actually under both of the bushes. So here's the example of when it didn't go so well, is that in 1882, there was the China. Chinese Exclusion Act, and it did exactly what you think it did. It prevented people from coming based on, not their skills, but based on their country of origin. And you started getting this idea that there were some people who are welcome and some who weren't. A lot of restrictionists

had a better safe than sorry idea, and so they limited Japanese people, and we interned them because we were afraid to let Japanese people come in during World War II because, again, And probably they're okay, but it's better to be safe than sorry. There's always been quotas on the number of immigrants who could come to the United States and what countries they can come from. And then in the 1960s under LBJ, that quota system was abolished. But what you found were that politics took over. So, for example, in the late 60s and early 70s, there are Cubans who are fleeing Cuba and Haitians who are fleeing, well, Haiti. And what you found was that Americans were far more open to Cuban refugees than Haitian refugees

because Cuba was communist. And so it was a way for America to welcome in those who were fleeing communism. And it made America's democracy look better. But the Haitians, well, we didn't really care about them because there was no point of national pride to be made there. Yeah. And so moving to more recent history, like I just said, one of the last major peaks and immigrants allowed into the country was under George.

W. Bush. Now, right after that, George W. Bush put a serious decrease on immigrants, and Obama slowly brings those numbers back up almost to the same level that happened at that peak. After Obama, what Trump does is he brings the numbers back down, not super low, but he does bring them back down closer to the average during George W. Bush's presidency. I'm only saying all to say that immigration has been an ebbing and flowing thing. It might not fit the picture that you think politically right now. The other thing I want to say is I think there's just a lot of misinformation about immigration, There's fears about losing jobs, about immigrants soaking up welfare, taking Medicaid, social security from people, causing crime.

And yet, what we've seen is that when there have been waves of immigration, that's not what happens. Perhaps the best case is the Marial Boat Lift in 1980. So this is back to what you were just saying, Keith, 125,000 humid immigrants come to Florida. So Castro allows all of these immigrants to leave. I think the goal was to mess with America. Yeah, that was a separate one than the one. I was referring to, but yes, you're right. This merry old boat lift was after the first one in the 60s and 70s. And what Castro was trying to do was expose America as saying, look, you can't

really handle all these people. So the rumor was that he was emptying his prisons and his mental health institutions and sending all these people. And there are a lot of Cubans we know in South Florida. And they took up the challenge by taking little boats down to Cuba. And they were transporting the Cubans back to the United States. So the idea is, here come 125,000 Cubans into South Florida. And a period of like a week. It's a very short period of time. Yeah, and they weren't vetted. They weren't brought there because of their skills. So how would this influx of Cuban refugees and immigrants, how would it affect the job market? Yeah, so what happens? First of all, let's talk about crime. That becomes one of the concerns. Well, there was a short peek in crime,

although it wasn't the immigrants who were doing it. It was protest. from poorer communities that thought the immigrants are going to come and take their job. That's where most of the crimes came from. So it didn't look as though immigrants increased crime. What about employment and wealth? Well, thankfully, we've had a lot of time since then to do some studies. And what we've discovered is that, I mean, think about this, a hundred and twenty-five thousand immigrants coming into, largely Miami, into a single community. Unskilled workers. Unskilled workers. It had almost no net effect on people born in the United States. No, almost none. There was a slight effect on Americans without high school education, but the sample size was so small. It was 19 people. That it was like, this is silly that we're arguing over this. So even those who are anti-immigration had to admit that there was hardly any effect on our ability as Americans to get jobs. Well, and that actually highlights the effect of immigration. Immigration does not typically have negative effects for people born in the nation. It has tremendously positive effects for people born in the nation. It has tremendously positive effects for

immigrants. Immigrants will often increase their own wealth by four times, but this is the benefit to America as well, because if an immigrant comes over and their wealth increases by four times, that means that our total national wealth has also increased by that amount. Now, this can be confusing for people because a lot of people think that economies work like pie. Like a zero-sum game. Yeah, zero-sum game. You get a big piece, I get a smaller piece. Yeah, so like you love pie, Keith. And so if you get a big piece of pie, that means I... Yeah, bigger than yours, I hope. Well, exactly. I have to get a smaller piece of pie. So that's how people think about economies. That's a really

unintelligent way. I'm sorry. It's just stupid. That's the word you're looking for. It's just, that's actually not how economies work. People generate wealth. Wealth is created. There's a reason why, I don't know, did you have friends who had big screen TVs growing up? No, that wasn't even a thing when I was growing up. Because when I was growing up, I had a few friends that had these big screen TVs, and they were the coolest thing because no one had TVs this big.

Almost everybody I know now has bigger TVs than that in their basement, which they purchased for a lesser cost. So we are wealthier. We have more stuff. We have nicer stuff. Wealth is generated. This actually goes back to our theology of the image of God. God created us to be creators, to be generators. And so there's this real sense if you see human beings as being saps, they just suck, suck, suck, suck, they drain things. That's not the image of God. The image of God is that we have this generative potential. We can make things. We can cause economies to grow. And so by bringing immigrants in, our economy actually expands. We become wealthier as a nation. And imagine if we just did a little bit of work

to bring in people with skills, people who had education, and we brought them into our country, not only would they contribute to wealth, but they would also be job creators for Americans or future immigrants. But right now, we have a policy that makes it really difficult for people with great education and great skills to come. Like, for example, we have a shortage of health care workers, doctors and nurses. If we allowed people, and of course we'd have to put them through some sort of testing process to make sure they were qualified. Simply we do with foreign cars, right? Yeah. If you buy a Toyota, you trust that our transportation administration has set up good rules to make sure that Toyota isn't going to cause an accident. But if we were able to bring in foreign

born doctors and nurses, we would find that we have more health care for the people who need it, particularly in rural areas that are without a lot of the health care they need. So the point you're making is that immigration is a huge benefit for the local population as long as it's done with any kind of wisdom. Almost when it's not done with wisdom, it's still a net positive. Yeah, and that's not what we're remotely advocating for here. No, I'm just saying even it. I think some of the other concerns with immigration has to do with cultural fit and cultural values,

are these people who are coming over, will they be American, will they fit? in with America. And again, as you look at studies, the answer to that question is widely, yes. In fact, what I find really interesting is that if you are conservative, for example, and you say, I value marriage, I value family, those are my values. We'll bring in more immigrants, we'll bring in more people who share your values. I just want to read a little quote from a Institute of Family Studies that says this. It says, specifically, 72% of immigrants with children are still in their first marriage, whereas the share among native-born Americans is just 60%. So if you're pro-marriage, pro-keeping families together, you should be pro-immigrant,

because they're actually keeping their families together at a higher rate than people living in the United States. Let's read one more quote. Behind these numbers are relatively higher marriage rates and lower divorce rates of immigrants in general. For every 1,000 unmarried immigrants ages 18 to 64 in 2019, 59 got married. The corresponding number for Americans was 39. So immigrants are also getting married more frequently. The study goes on to show that immigrants tend to have a strong family-first mindset. They are more committed than the average American to keeping their family and their marriages together.

So again, if you're a conservative, you say, I have family values. I think you should try to be consistent and say, well, I would love to bring people into our country who share some of these same values. So I guess that's why I thought the history of immigration in the United States is important to look at, because when we look backwards, we can see things maybe a little bit more objectively than we can in our current moment. It's true across a lot of issues. Well, when you look back into the history of immigration in the United States, it was based on racial prejudices. We were accepting people who looked like us and rejecting people who didn't. But here's what's even more interesting now is that a lot of conservatives who are hesitant about immigration. They are, like you said, pro-family, pro-marriage, pro-child, pro-religion. And the people that conservatives tend to be open for on immigration are Europeans. But they're- They are the exact opposite. They are less religious and less family oriented. If you want to secularize America, let's bring in more European immigrants.

If we bring in people who are from the global south, what we find is that it strengthens conservative values. So it's this weird dynamic that people aren't really looking at the policies and thinking it through. They're just picking their tribe over truth. And it just gets you in a lot of problems here. That's exactly right. Just to highlight the point, Poland is one of the most religious countries in Europe. It would rank as the 48th least religious state in the United States. In other words, states that you might think, oh, that's a state that doesn't value religion,

it values religion far more than Europe's most religious country. So, again, if you want to secularize America, if you want to bring people over who have those kinds of values, that's fine. Bring in Europeans, which seem to be Donald Trump's approach. We want to bring over those kinds of people. If you want to bring over people who have conservative values, who have a great work ethic, who want to keep their families together, guess what? Go to the global south. So let's talk briefly about what the Bible says about immigration. What I find so interesting is that immigration, how you treat foreigners, how you treat people who are not native born. It's actually part of God's vision of how a functioning, flourishing community should work. His vision of Shalom was actually a community in Israel that was welcoming to the foreign. In fact, not just welcoming to the foreigner, but made sense. space for them, served them, took care of their needs. Let me read you some verses. This is from Leviticus 1933. When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. I think anybody

would agree with that. The foreigner residing amongst you must be treated as your native born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God. Yeah, I love how it roots it in Israel's history. In other words, the way God motivates his people to care about the immigrant and the foreigner, is to say that was you. You too were an immigrant and a foreigner. And of course, he's talking about their time in Egypt where they were enslaved there and they were in foreign territory. And Israel found themselves, God's people found themselves in a lot of places that they weren't natural fits. And so he's saying, be in Babylon as exiles. Be kind to others who you should be able to identify with them. And that's part of our spiritual story as well. Peter tells us to see ourselves

as exiles in this world. And to be an exile is to, in some sense, be a foreigner. And so, again, I think the challenge for Christians is to not just treat foreigners fairly, but to love them and serve them. Another command from Leviticus 1910 says this, do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. So let me pause. This is an ancient practice called gleaning. So you can imagine you were harvesting your field. You would go through one time, pick as much as you can. And then if you were smart, you would go through a second time and grab anything that you missed. This was incredibly important because that was a world of food scarcity. People went hungry 60 days a year. So if you left food behind, kind of a big deal. And yet, God's law

told them to only go through once. So they only go through once and leave behind that second time for who? Let's read. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am the Lord your God. Yeah, that's what is laying behind the story of Ruth, where she comes into Israel as a foreigner. She's a Moabite, and she's allowed to get grain from the field because Boaz has told his workers to not bother them, to not go back through and get every last bit of grain they could get out of the field. So what you're seeing is, in practice, a care and a heart for the new person, the person who is dispossessed, the marginalized. And part of that righteousness is this. He was willing to allow his own family, even his own workers, to suffer some more hunger for the sake of a foreigner.

That's God's picture of righteousness. And so, again, I think if we want to be people, like you just said a second ago, who take truth over a tribe. We need to pick the Bible's truth. And part of the Bible's truth is that we should have a heart for foreigners, a heart for immigrants, an open attitude and mind towards them. And as it turns out, when we look at the research, there's actually great benefits that come with immigration. So this makes sense. Why would God say this is my vision for Shalom? Well, God didn't need a statistician to tell him that by bringing immigrants into your community, your community actually flourishes. Your community does better. Before we move to childbearing,

real quick, Patrick, is that I think a lot of times people think, where are the immigrants or where are all the new children we're going to be having? Where are they going to live? In Keith's basement. Aren't we running out of space in our country? And I think it's just the opposite. A lot of our cities are declining. People are leaving them. And we're having less and less people who are living in places, like, for example, St. Louis. Now, there's a lot of stories out there, but St. Louis is a place I was born and spent the first few years of my life. And so I found this statistic really interesting. In 1950, St. Louis was the eighth largest city in the United States.

Since then, it's lost 65% of its population. And if you drive through St. Louis, you understand that it has seen better days in the past. So you have a lot of Midwestern cities, Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, you know, like I said, St. Louis, lots of places where the population is declining, but we know they can. support more people because they have supported more people in the past. One more little thing that maybe only I find interesting is that in the lower 48 states, so not counting Alaska, which has a lot of ice and not counting Hawaii, there are about 105 people per square mile in the United States. And relative to other countries, great countries, successful, prosperous countries, that is

extremely low. Even if we doubled or tripled that, we wouldn't begin to touch what you see in Europe, which is obviously... Like England or somewhere like that. So there's plenty of room. So the point is there's plenty of room in the United States to add a lot more people. And you could set up immigration policies such that people, for example, make an agreement to go live in a particular community for a certain amount of time and hopefully they would stay there. But this could be a huge boon to rural communities, to dying cities like what you mentioned that already have infrastructure and space for people. There's a lot of net benefits that could come from adding those people in. They'll bring wealth. They'll bring opportunity, they'll bring new businesses. There's a lot to say there. Okay, let's go to our second

topic here, which is childbearing. So if we want to see America's population grow, you know what we got to do? Let's get it on. How long do I let it play? A little Marvin Gay. All right. We're going to have more kids. Yeah, we got to have more kids. It's time for some childbearing. There you go, get that breadth of you voice. You had on the last purity culture episode. Yeah, well, you know, I save it just for you. So let's talk about child. And this is where we're going to argue, because I don't buy any of the stuff you're getting ready to say. I mean, I buy it, but I don't buy your interpretation.

So let's go. Let's roll. Okay. So let's start with the basic question. Do people want less or more kids than what they're having? Well, you're going to say they want more kids than they're actually having. And I'm going to say, no, no, no, no, no, no. What you tell a surveyor is different than how you live your real life.

Because you know what people end up doing? They end up doing what they want. want to do. Okay, so we'll talk about this second, but let's just, can we start just with the numbers? The average woman wants 2.7 kids. They told the surveyor that. Yeah, that's what they told the surveyer, which apparently all the other statistics we've used in this episode are also trashed, because as it turns out, they just talk to a survey, but let's keep going. Okay. Men, they want 2.66. But obviously, the birth rate is closer to 1.7. So that's a significant, there's a significant difference at the very least between what people think, I'll go with you, what people think they want,

in terms of having kids and what they are actually having in terms of kids. So people are having, just to be really clear, people are having about one less kid than they say they'd like to have. Yeah, I want one less kid than I have right now. I'm just kidding. The one that didn't sleep less night. Yeah, that's exactly right. You could have moved out last night. That would have been nice.

Oh. Okay, but let's get into what you're talking about. We need to ask the question, because I think we agree at least on this. People think they want more kids than they're having. Can we agree on that? It's either they're lying to these demographers. I just think there's a sense of which people say things to surveyors that aren't really true, but I'm not really interested in whether they're lying to it.

I want to talk about why they're having less kids and they say they want. That's exactly what I'm interested. We're in agreement. There's an aspiration. People aren't living up to their aspiration. So the question becomes why. So again, let's go back to the demographers. When asked, why haven't you had as many kids as you want to have?

Four out of the five top reasons are all. financial. Now, you don't buy this. Well, let's just go down the list here for a second. People are saying, look, we're not having as many kids because it's too expensive to have them. And one of the big expenses is childcare. And another really big, relatively new expense is college. And the college thing bites you in a couple ways. One, it causes people to delay having kids because they are going through more education and they have to pay off the debt that comes with that education. And then secondly, when you think about having a child, if you think about it from an economic perspective, paying for that child's education is a butload of money. And so what the idea here is, is that

people want to have more kids, but it turns out that the kids are just so expensive and they have to pay off all their school debt so they don't ever really get around to doing it. Now, as you can tell, Keith lived in this amazing ivory tower with his wife where they never thought about finances as they were going through their child-bearing years because somehow God provides. This back in your days when you thought your savings plan was just giving away your money to ice cream. Okay, so let's think about this for a second. I'm going to use myself as an example, which is always dangerous because it could come across as judgmental or self-righteous. Don't worry yet. Well, let's just go.

But I'm just trying to tell you what Christine and I did. Yeah. I'm not saying you should do this. It's just a story. How many years ago was this? Nothing more than once upon a time and land far away. No. So, Christine and I live below the poverty level until we were 32. We had at that time our third kid and we now have four. And so we had kids because you ever heard of birth control? We chose to do without material comforts because we wanted to have kids. So it's not as if we didn't have to make choices. We did. You don't get everything in this world. I get it. But. But.

It's not as if we thought of kids as an economic proposition. I don't expect everybody else to think of kids like we did, but we thought of kids as something that brought a lot of joy in our life. We thought of kids as part of God's call in our life to have kids. We thought of our kids as a way to raise up followers of Jesus. We thought of having kids as blessing other people in our community, like we've been talking about. A higher population means more blessing in the community to share around.

So if you're going to think about kids as an economic choice, then no, you're not going to have that many kids. But is that what you do, Patrick? Do you and Emily, I mean, if you're going to ask me, I'm going to ask you. Did you and Emily get out the little financial planner and add up how much your kids cost and then put on Marvin Gay? So here's what I want to say. First of all, everything you just said at the end there, I think that's great. Anything that's something all Christian should agree with. Now, they might not choose to have four kids like you have.

Correct. Everybody can do their own thing. And that's not what we're advocating. This is not a podcast telling people you need to personally go out and have more kids, although I can imagine someone might listen to this and say, you know what, actually maybe God is calling me to do that. However, to the question you just asked, how do we think about it? I want to ask you one more question.

Did your parents pay for your college? They paid for part of it. Did Christine's parents pay for her college? Absolutely none of it. Christine comes from a poor family, and she was independent, financially independent, from when she was about 15. I paid for part of Christine's college. It was her parent

Her dad's strategy Was to let her get student debt And then let her future husband Turned out to be me to pay it off Yeah So and I A little backfired didn't it You thought you're gonna catch me

Like I was some sort of privileged person Oh no no no Everything paid for Oh no I actually But it turns out that I didn't Because I'm a public school kid You actually said exactly what I thought You were going to say

And I was gonna make a point with it Okay tell me So Christine grew up in a family Where there were less expectations of what a parent was going to provide for their child financially. Correct? And you grew up in a family where you were provided for, but everything wasn't going to be handed to you on your private school plan. There's a partnership. Right? There's a partnership, right? And so you've, I think, taken that approach with your kids a lot to you as well.

Absolutely. So it sounds like maybe Christine had some economic ideas that came from her family and how parents and children and what they should expect financially, you did as well. Now, my wife and I came from a different background. Not better, not worse. My parents did pay for my entire college. Now, that's incredibly lucky, incredibly blessed. Emily's parents paid for her entire college. Again, incredibly lucky, incredibly less. We are like this bizarre world of couples where we didn't have to graduate with undergrad debt. And that was a huge gift. Now, when we had kids and as we've been having kids, have we, because of our backgrounds,

thought to ourselves, gosh, we really want to pay for our kids' education? That seems to us like the right thing to do. Well, how are we going to be able to afford college for X amount of kids, especially at the income levels that we have? And as we thought through that, it has been a major factor in us thinking through, well, what's the level of help that we want to be able to provide our children financially, and what's the number of children we want to have? Now, I would argue with you that's probably more reflective, both of my background,

and your story's probably more reflective of your background. And I would also argue that there are a lot of people who are making choices about children in the fashion that we are as, hey, there is a financial thing I need to think through here, and there's probably plenty of people who are doing it your way. Okay, look, I need to preface what I'm getting ready to say, that we're talking in generalities. We're not talking about specific people. everybody's individual story. I have had many people tell me I don't want to have another child,

and that's very sincere because of the finances. Oh, I believe that. I just don't want, I completely believe that. I just don't want people to think that what I'm getting ready to say is about them as an individual. I'm talking about cultural trends and why our birth rate is declining. And one of the reasons that I find inescapable is that we live in a culture in which self, has been exalted. And we want what we want, when we want it, how we want it. We want control of our lives. We don't want things to interrupt us. We want to have our plan figured out. People say things like, well, I need to save a certain amount before I can get married. I need to have a certain level of my career before I can get married. I need to have a certain amount of

money before I can have another kid. But all those things that revolve around us, one of the best things about parenting is it causes you to take your eyes off of yourself and put it on other people. So I don't think that you can look at the declining birth rate and not see a rise in the culture of self at the same time the birth rate is declining and not think that those are somehow linked in some little bitty way. Well, Keith, you see, I'm a both-and man. I have no problem with what you just said. I do think that that affects it. I think that finances matter. And here's, and I'll stop with the finances, but I just want to try to make the point a little more clearly. Most things get cheaper over time. So I just gave the TV example earlier. TVs are actually much cheaper today than

they were 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago. Computer, same thing. Yeah, everything gets cheaper over time. And also, most labor gets cheaper over time. And that's because labor becomes more efficient. There's better ways to do things. And so it becomes cheaper. There are some forms of labor, however, that don't become cheaper that require the exact amount of work. So if you want to get a quartet of people together to play the Brandenburg Concerto by Bach. Great Concerto, in case you were wondering. Private school. He had all his school paid for. His wife went to a private school. She had all our school paid for. Well, when we had the concerto play at our house. The concerto. Here's the deal. It always takes at least a certain amount of people for six people

to get together to play that particular piece. The number of people required to play that piece is the same today as it was in the 1700s whenever Bach was writing his concerto. So in some senses, the labor costs haven't gone down. It's exactly the same. Now, the beauty is, because of technology, we can get that music in our iPhones. It's easy to access that you don't have to have to have wealth to be able to listen to music. But if you want to have a live performance, that hasn't changed. The exact same thing is true of parenting. It takes two? It takes, well, it takes someone has to watch that child. And that labor has not decreased in costs. It has not become significantly more efficient, with the exception of maybe laundry machines and

dishwashing. Are you wanting to watch the kids? I don't want robots to watch the kids. You don't want to take care of the kids? No, that's not the point. Isn't that up to the family to take care of the kids? Well, I do think it's up to the family to take care of the kids. My point is that as other things are economically scaling down, there are some things that have actually scaled up. Daycare prices have gone up because it takes more money because those labor hours haven't decreased. Educational prices have gone up. Healthcare costs have risen. And so it costs more to raise child today, both in terms of your own labor hours and in terms of the other people's labor hours, than it did even 10, 15 years ago. So what's your solution to all this? Let me guess. You want

the government to open up a lot of free daycare centers. No, that's actually not my solution. Really? Are you sure? No. Look, this is actually what I find so interesting about this topic is both the left and right are trying to come with a solution. So on the left, you just named part of the solution, which is universal pre-K, which will cost billions of dollars, which we actually probably don't have. Well, I don't know. We have all kinds of money. We just print money these days. We just make it up. I think the president spoke and he proposed another six trillion dollars on top of the budget. So maybe numbers are just flexible and we can print as much money as we want. So you can put this on your dream list that we're going to have universal daycare. So you take your

kid in the morning, I don't know, one year old, whatever it is, and you just drop it off and they're taken care of for the rest of the day. I love how you're putting this idea I already said I didn't like in my own mouth. Well, I think it's where you're headed. It's not. So let's, here's what I would like to say. That's one possible solution on the table. And again, this is lifestyle choices. There are more women who want to be working full time in the workplace. Obviously, Christine kind of did a mix of both, stayed at home, worked part time. She's done it all. When our kids were younger, she stayed at home with them. And then as they got a little bit older, it started hitting school, she went back to work. So again, ironically, the most expensive time to have a child is from

birth to kindergarten. That's when you will spend the most money in your children. It's also the time... Oh, you haven't paid for college yet, bro. I have. I've been in there. You don't have to pay for college. Someone has to pay for those things for that child. And it's also happening normally at a time in your life when your own income earning power is at its lowest. You will only be getting more money over time, but when you have young kids, you have less. And add to that, if you are college educated, you probably have some level of debt. And so I'm only saying... So who do you want to solve this problem? Yes, all those things are true. But what? But what? What's your solution?

Well, unlike you who's living in the ivory tower, I guess telling all the wives to stay at home. No, I never said that. Don't you dare? I'll get so many emails. I never said that. Anybody can make whatever choices they want. I just want to know what's your solution. Yes, it's expensive to raise kids. So I think that what you were saying about cultural reasons that have stopped people from having kids, I'm 100% on board with it. So I think we do have to deal with a cultural problem. So we'll get back to that. I'm a big fan of Romney's Family Security Act. What it does, is it takes existing money that's already in welfare programs and other places. You don't need to raise taxes for this. It reallocates that money to give people a monthly check from the government. I know that might make you wiggle a little bit in the amount of $350 or $250 to help them with their

children. My point is not that I disagree with the Romney proposal, which you might have to tell us a little bit more about, I don't know maybe people are familiar with it or not. My point is not that I'm against incentivizing people for behavior that helps corporate goods. because our tax code already does that. We already incentivize certain behavior, like home buying or whatever. And right now we currently penalize marriage. We actually penalize aspects of childbearing. And this deals with that.

It gets rid of those penalties. It gets rid of the childbearing penalties. It actually helps families. And, by the way, these policies, which have been implemented in other countries like Spain and Italy, have reduced abortions. Amen to all that. Love it. I got no problem with it. If you think that's going to solve this issue, it is a different.

It is a drop in the bucket. I drop in the bucket. So I am for it. Let's do that. Let's help people who have kids. But I also want to just say this, when the government starts giving you money and when they start open the universal daycares and when they start doing all that, they go back to the university day cares.

They are in control. Keith, why I like the money going to the parent option on a monthly basis is actually for the point that you just made, which is this. That parent gets to decide. If I want to have mom or dad stay at home with a kid and we want to use that. money in a different way that's going to help us? Great. You can use it that way. If we need to have that money go towards health care costs, great. If we need to have it go towards daycare costs, great. I mean, to be frank, $350 is just a drop in the bucket of daycare. So it's going to help

when you and Emily get out your sheets and your Excel spreadsheets and put it all in to see if you want more kids. It'll maybe tip the scales. Well, I will say this. I don't know that for us it's going to tip the scales, but I think there are people who are trying to figure out how can we pay for things. And I'm not saying it's the thing that's going to change it. These approaches have been proven to, not dramatically, but have been proven to raise birth rates, which I think is a net sum positive. I think that the government has a vested interest in helping people do things that help our society. Here's the deal. Yes, I agree. I'm not trying to be mean. There's lots of people who want to have kids who can't have kids. So I'm sure. I probably should have stated that up front

earlier. I'm not talking about this conversation where it feels like we're stepping on land's mind and we could be hurting feelings and we don't mean to. It's just hard to have this conversation. is such a sensitive topic and not unintentionally hurt someone. So again, we're just talking about generalities. We're talking about ideas. We're not talking about your specific situation. Absolutely. And we're also just having fun, having a little debate.

We don't usually do debates on the podcast as we're going. But here's the deal. I usually say smarter things. I am providing, this is going to sound weird. Any parent who's raising a child is providing their society with something highly valuable. Amen. And so if you are a single person who doesn't have a child, and I'm not saying that was your choice. Maybe you're single and you wish you could have kids, but you can't.

Or maybe you are a married couple and you can't have kids, or you've chosen not to have kids. Or maybe you're a gay couple and you can't biologically have children. You can't reproduce. When a family like mine reproduces, we are providing something for our society, which is incredibly costly for us, but is going to benefit others. Those children are going to pay into Social Security. they're going to be, like I said earlier, the health care workers, they're going to be the people who are there to create businesses that allow our economy to continue to grow and provide for those people who did not make massive financial investments by having children. They will benefit from our financial investment. And so I do think the government has a vested interest in helping people who are helping the common good in a particular way.

Yes, I agree. Like I've tried to say, I'm all for the government programs that incentivize families to do what is for the common good. What I push back on a little bit is it seems like your view of people is what some people call homo-economicus, that you think of human beings as these rational economic creatures who sit down and chart it all out. And I just don't think that is true. I think a lot of what you're talking about is downstream from culture. And the culture has exalted ourself and our desires to the point where it is hard for us to set aside our agenda to care for children. Children are demanding.

Children take a lot of effort, a lot of time, a lot of sleepless nights. They are a buttload of work. I get it. I got four of them. And our culture today, that is not honored. What's honored is you doing you. And so while I'm all for the cultural, societal support through the government to helping families, I just don't think that's going to make that big of a difference as long as we are living in a culture of self-expression and individualism.

Yeah, and I agree with that. One of the other things I like about policy changes is that policy often does drive to a limited degree cultural values. If you put things into policy, it often shapes people's perception of what's a good life, what's not a good life, what should I be doing, what shouldn't I be doing. And so one of my hopes would be that if these kinds of acts were passed, it would communicate to the American public that having children isn't a current. Can we just go back for just one second because Matthew Glaze is the guy who wrote this book. Well, he wants way more than I want. Yes, but just to his personal story. And I said this isn't about personal stories. It's about generalities.

But because he's the author of the book, I think we get to talk about his personal story. And he has plenty of money. He's been very successful. And he's calling for people to have more children and for the government to play a role in people having more children. But wait. And he says he's got one child and they're done. they're out. So he proves my point. You can have all the money and all the resources to have more kids. But if you've bought into, and I'm not talking about Matthew Glaces specifically, I'm just talking about generalities. If you've bought into the culture of self, you're not going to have kids because kids are the antithesis of the culture of self. No, you're absolutely right. And I think this is one of the areas. This is why I was so fascinating with this book, that it is really in great alignment with what the Bible says. All the way back in Genesis 128, when God makes humanity in his own image, it says that God bless them, and he said to them, be fruitful and multiply. The very first command, God gives humanity in the Bible. Where's that Marvin Gaye song? I should listen to that again. No, I won't play it again. Now, the very first command is that we would multiply. Now, like we already said, there's reasons why maybe various individuals might not multiply, and we're

not trying to make a point there. But in general, the calling, how does God want his creation to flourish? How does his creation grow? How does it develop? It's through multiplication. It's through people having kids. A different verse. Psalm 127 forces this, like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one's youth. That is one of the most countercultural verses I have ever read. Yeah, Psalm 127 calls children a blessing from God. How many other blessings that God wants to give you do you say no to? Probably none, right? I mean, if God said, hey, I want to come and I want to bless you, you'd be like, well, I don't think so. No, you'd be like, yeah, I want a blessing. I want a blessing. It goes, great, here's your blessing, a child. You're like, ooh, that's not exactly the blessing I was

hoping for, right? But it is a blessing of God. And Christine and I did live below the poverty line until I was 32. And thankfully, we're well past that now. But I never looked back and go, well, if we didn't have quite as many kids, we'd be able to go on more vacations or better vacations. We'd have more in our retirement. Or we'd be able to drive nicer cars or live in a nicer house. I never think that way. And I don't think that the vast majority of people will either. I get that some people are in really difficult circumstances. Let's help those people. I get that raising kids is expensive and is good for the common culture. So let's make a tax code that incentivizes that. but let's understand that having kids, more kids, less kids,

starts with our own heart and our own belief system. So let me talk to myself. We have two kids and we're debating whether or not we want to have a third or if we want to stick with two. And I don't know what we'll end up deciding. But I do know this, at least how I talk to myself. If I'm in a 50-50 balance, chances are the Bible pushes me to lean in the end of having more children.

It's hard to read the Bible and its vision of Shalom of what God wants his creation to be and not come to the conclusion that having children is a major part of what he wants people to do. Now, again, I'm named. Lots of people can't do that. They would love to be able to do it. Other people don't want to do it. I'm not trying to create guilt and shame. I am trying to say, however, that what Matthew Iglesias in his book has stumbled upon, if we would just allow more people to immigrate, if we would just increase the amount of children being had, is actually part of the vision of welfare and goodness and that the Bible offers us to begin with. I love it when people who aren't Christians and people who are in the social sciences and

whatever, they come back and affirm and confirm what the Bible has been saying for centuries. And it turns out that welcoming the immigrant and being fruitful and multiplying are good for human beings, good for culture, good for society. Let me just throw a last line in here is hopefully you'll give us a lot of grace. there's a lot of caveats that Patrick tried to make probably more than me, and I should make all those caveats as well. We're just talking about this idea. Hopefully you weren't offended by it. Sincere apologies if something that either of us said were hurtful or insensitive. Yeah, and I think along those same lines with both of these topics, Keith and I obviously

just had a little debate back and forth, but what we want people to walk away with is a commitment to truth, and it's a commitment to principles. And whether we disagree, on the policies, how we're going to get ourselves there, I think that there are some wonderful principles about how we love the foreigner, about how we value children and procreation, that come from the Bible, that all Christians, whether you're liberal or your conservative, should be able to affirm. And we have to pick that truth over our tribe's particular perspectives on these issues. So if your tribe is pro-abortion, well, that's fine, but just no, that's not part of God's vision of Shalom. If your tribe is very anti-immigration, that's fine. Just know, that's not part

of God's vision for Shalom, and we need to pick the truth, that central aspect over our tribes. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps other people find this podcast more easily. Also, ask yourself, who could you share this podcast with? Texting an episode to a friend or a family member is a great way to help them grow spiritually. If you want to go deeper, check out our show notes for book recommendations. and