Theology in the Raw - Living Well in a Chaotic World: Dr. Alan Noble

Episode Date: July 30, 2026

Dr. O. Alan Noble is Professor of English at Oklahoma Baptist University, a fellow at the Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics, and author of four books, including his most recent book: To Live Well: Practical Wisdom for Moving Through Chaotic Times. Check out the Christ at the Checkpoint conference at: www.christatthecheckpoint.bethbc.eduTime Stamps:00:00 Introduction 03:46 Advice for Aspiring Writers07:03 Moral Confusion and Living Well in Chaotic Times10:47 Can Going Offline Fix Modern Life?13:04 The Seven Classical Virtues Explained14:28 On Prudence and Difficulty Making Decisions22:49 Why Courage Is Hard for Young Adults Today27:19 Justice, Social Media, and Virtue Signaling36:07 Suffering, Courage, and Healing from Trauma42:23 Which Virtues Are Hardest to Practice?44:50 Politics, Institutions, and the Common Good52:47 Are Big Corporations Inherently Evil? (Closing Thoughts)See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

I'm primarily talking about the sort of moral chaotic times that we live in, the kind where people are telling you how to live. And they're giving you messages about what it means to live a good life, what it means to live a virtuous life. We all want these things. But we've got gurus from all over the internet and all over the world telling us what it is. And it feels overwhelming and we feel anxious about it because we're just trying to do the right thing, but we don't know what that right thing is.

Hi, friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology to Rob. Before we jump into our episode, I wanted to tell you about a awesome conference that I want you to check out. It's called Christ at the checkpoint, which is happening from December 27th through December 31st, 2006, in Bethlehem. Like that Bethlehem, the real Bethlehem,

the place where Jesus was born. So at the conference, Christians from around the world will gather to study scripture, worship together, and learn from Palestinian Christian leaders, some of whom who have been on this podcast, like Muther Isaac, Daniel Benora, Lama Mansour and many others. So it's not just another conference. I mean, you'll hear biblical teaching and worship with the local church. And you'll spend time in the places you read about in the headlines, like crossing

checkpoints, visiting Palestinian communities, breaking bread with peace-loving Christians from around the world and seeing the occupation that we hear about. You'll see it with your own eyes. It's an opportunity to encounter the living church in the Holy Land and explore what the gospel has to say about peace, justice, and faithful discipleship in one of the most contested places. And the timing is perfect. So you can still celebrate Christmas at home with your family and then experience the Christmas season in Bethlehem right where Jesus was born. I highly encourage you to check it out. I know it's long ways away for most people listening to this podcast.

But if you have the time and money, I would highly encourage you to consider. going to this conference. You can find out more at Christ at the checkpoint. Dot, BethBC.edu. I know it's a lot. Check out the link in the show notes. Again, it's Christ at the checkpoint, one word, dot, Beth, B-E-H-B-H-B-B-C. Dot E.U. Check it out. Okay. My guest today is the one and only Dr. O. Allen Noble, who is professor of English at Oklahoma Baptist University, a fellow at the Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics and he's author of four books, including his most recent book, to live well, practical wisdom for moving through chaotic times, which serves as

the base of our interesting conversations. So please welcome back to the show, the one and only, Dr. O. Allen Noble. Good to have you on. I think this is either second or third time. Either way, really enjoy your books and talking to you. You crank out a lot of books. Is that because you're like an actual writer, like you're an English person, not like a person that also write, but you like a writer, you know? So do you just go from like book to book because you have so many ideas and you just can't not write? Or I think it's, I don't know that I have so many ideas, but I do enjoy writing. I do enjoy writing. So I guess that makes me a writer. I do enjoy writing. I enjoy it quite a lot. So, you know, and then I do have mouths to feed. And so there's,

aspects of it as well. And so there's like this, you know, connection to, you know, it's like it helps me support my family and I love doing it. And so that's a good combination, I feel. What would be your big picture pieces of advice for writing well? Top five things that you tell people. I always say set a schedule, set a schedule. So for me, right, I have a work. I have a work. count schedule. So I use the program Scrivener to write in. So I use that to write in every day. And it has a word count generator. So I just set my deadline. And it tells me how many words a day I need to write. And so right now I have to write 700 words a day. And so I just write 700 words a day except for Saturday and Sunday.

And then I hit that every day. And that to me, because writing a book, it just feels like overwhelming. There's just so many words you have to write. And you're just like, I can't ever do this. So ever since my dissertation, I've just had a word count. And sometimes it's been like 150 words. And if I could just hit 150 words, I can be like, well, I chipped away at the book. You know?

And that's the number one thing. because at the end of the day, if I have to delete 10,000, 20,000 words that were really bad, at least I processed some content and some ideas. But the worst thing is not getting words down on a page. So these are not final form. This is just the act of writing. I mean, some or maybe very little or maybe not at all might make it into the final form of whatever you're working on. But this is just, you're talking about just the exercise of putting your brain to your fingertips

and getting words out as an exercise almost. Yeah, yeah. And hopefully, you know, ideally a lot of it works. But so I'm working on a new book and I just, I wrote a chapter on, I wrote this chapter and it ballooned to 9,000 words and I rewrote the chapter to 6,000 words. And so I cut 3,000 of them. and that's that's normal and and I feel good about it but I had to write those extra 3,000 to get to the good 6,000 and I feel good about that because I had to process that information but

sitting down and doing that processing is is helpful is helpful work that's I need to remind myself of that because I follow the rut of you know I'll do a lot of research research research then I'll it'll start to kind of there's like a tipping point where I'm I'm like, okay, I think I know what I want to say. And then usually I begin writing at that time. Yeah. And sometimes I get frustrated if I'm like writing, writing, writing. And I'm like, ah, this is just still underdeveloped and under research and they go back and do more.

But I'm like, no, that's okay. That's not the fine. That's just. Right. Just think about that first, second, third, fourth, as a way of processing information, not, this isn't your, this isn't your final product. You know, this is still almost part of the research. If I can remind myself, this is still part of the research stage. I might write 10,000 words on something.

And at the end, I'm like, oh, this is garbage, you know. I'm like, yes, that's fine. It's not, you're not going to turn that in, you know. Yes, exactly, exactly. Your most recent book, To Live Well, I love the subtitle, Proctal Wisdom, for Moving Through Chaotic Times. Why don't we start there? Yeah.

chaotic times what are the chaotic times that you're thinking of and then I guess maybe work backwards we can figure out how best we can live within those chaotic times and I just I your first few pages of the book

or so like I almost wanted to be probably might be kind of boring for people I almost wanted to read the first like three or four pages of the introduction because you just talk about like, I don't know, just this scattered life we live. We chase this, this, this, this.

We go from thing to thing to thing and thing. And then what's that quote from, is it Elliot? Yeah. You know, you know only a heap of broken images. And he said like life is like a heap of broken images. It's kind of like almost nihilistic. But as you were writing this, I'm like, oh, yeah, I totally. you're naming what a lot of people are feeling.

Maybe, okay, let's just start. Okay, so sorry, scattered around. Let's start there. Summary is kind of what you're getting at the first few pages. What kind of life are you, what kind of paint? Yeah.

Picture are you trying to paint there. So, yeah, there are a lot of chaotic times. I was just on, on X, which I still call Twitter. And just looking politically, there's a lot of chaotic times. But I'm not talking about those chaotic times, primarily. I'm primarily talking about the sort of moral chaotic times

that we live in, the sort of like how to, you know, the first part of the title, to live well, the kind where people are telling you how to live, right? And they're giving you messages about what it means to live a good life, what it means to live a virtuous life, what it means to live, a righteous life, what it means to live a healthy, a balanced, right? A lot of people talk about, you know, how does it like to live a balanced life, right? And we all want a peaceful life. We all want these things, but we've got gurus from all over the internet and all over the world telling us what it is. And sometimes it's science, you know, science experts telling us this is the latest research. We'll glance at headlines telling us this is what the data says today.

And then tomorrow the data will change. And it's like, we're just trying to keep up and live a healthy life. And it feels overwhelming. And we feel anxious about it because we're just trying to do the right thing, but we don't know what that right thing is. And they conflict. These messages conflict. And so we feel overwhelmed. We feel anxious. We feel insecure. We feel inadequate. And this is not a, it's not a healthy way to live. It's not a, it's not a, you know, a flourishing way to live. And so the image I use from from the wasteland is this idea that we were born into a heap of broken images. There's not a coherent way of living that we've been given. We've just been given this, this like shattered stained glass window where it's just a bunch of broken pieces. And we're

supposed to put the pieces together and make something coherent. And we really can't. It's, there's nothing coherent left. And so we just walk around feeling anxious. And, and maybe we pick something up and we run with it for a little while, some diet or some fad or something. And then, And then we run out of it, right, after a while and we move on to something else. But it's not satisfying. It doesn't work. How much of this would I avoid if I just stayed off the internet or stayed off like social medians? Like, because everything you're describing like, you need this and this fat, this.

I'm just curious. Like, would I even be aware of all that stuff if I just wasn't online? Like my neighbor's not talking about, you know, like you're. if I even talk to my neighbor, you'd like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a great question. Yeah, I mean, it's pretty hard to stay offline. So that's the first thing I'd say. And then you'd have to stay out of the gym and, you know, you stay away from the water cooler, right? Because, you know, at work, somebody's talking about it, right? They're talking about what, what their exercise plan is to give their life more balance and, you know, whatever it is. Right. So it's like, it's kind of in the air

we breathe. People are talking about, you know, this is what I'm doing. You know, you seem stressed. Here's what I've, you should try CrossFit. This is what gives my life balance, right? You know, so it's, I think you could, it would certainly relieve a lot of this. But you'd also have to stop watching cable news, right? Because they're, you know, it's, it's everywhere. It's in the air we breathe. Yeah, that's true. That's true. Sports games, commercial. Yeah. Yeah. staying offline as much as you can or you're minimizing your social media intake would probably lower the pace slow down the pace or just turn the volume down on all this stuff but it certainly wouldn't go away. I found that like just the busyness of just marketing to advertise.

I guess it's kind of what you're talking about, right? It's not just what somebody else is interested in is it's people trying to sell you this, sell you that, sell you this, sell you that, sell you that, you know. Even listen to the podcast. Like, people are like, oh, do I need to buy this book now? I just listen to another podcast and I need to buy that. But, you know, like, there's just stuff all around us that we're told we need, some of which are really good things. I'm going to say, I think your book is a good thing. Yeah. Yeah. It's hard to sort out. So how, yeah, how, so, okay, how do we sort all, that out? What's the remedy? I know this is, you know, took you over 200 pages to address, but you can jump in wherever you want.

So what I pull back on and turn to is are the seven virtues, the seven classical virtues, the four cardinal virtues and the three theological virtues, prudence, justice, fortitude or courage, temperance, faith, hope, and love that Paul talks about in the New Testament. You know, these virtues have been talked about from classical church tradition through the reformers. They've been held as they're in the Bible. They're good sources of how to live well to ground ourselves that help us move forward in life and give us some roots to understand what we were. created to be in Christ. And so that's what I turned to as opposed to just sort of free-floating. I could have written a book that was like Allen's 10 tips to living well, but it would have been

like, why, why me, right? You know, why my 10 tips? Why not somebody else's? And so instead, I thought, let's turn to something a little more grounded in history. And that's what, that's what I turn to. What prudence? Yeah. What is prud? That's not a word we use very often. No. No. Yeah. So prudence is practical wisdom, right? It's in proverbs. Proverbs talks about prudence. Right. So it's practical wisdom. So you use prudence all the time when you make a choice to, you know, whether it's to, to, you know, how to talk to a friend, right? You know, the words you're choosing, you know, that you're making a prudent choice. whether to call a friend, let's say, in a difficult time, how to buy a car, whether or not to choose a career, whether to marry someone, to date someone, to pursue certain projects.

Those are all acts of prudence. It's practical wisdom. And so we use prudence all the time. The question is, are you using prudence well? Right. And so the way I talk about prudence is you survey reality, you acknowledge what the good is, which is glorifying God and enjoying him forever. And then you get wise counsel and then you make a judgment and then you follow through resolutely. And that last step is really hard for us today because we

often hesitate and then we regret. Right. We make a decision and then we spin in circles and we we don't act resolutely. We think, oh gosh, I should have done this. I should have done that. But the prudent person acts with resoluteness. So that, yeah, so you titled the check. chapter on prudence choosing decisively. Yeah. What's behind that title instead of just calling it how to be prudent. It's that idea of resoluteness is that choosing decisively because I do think that, well, we live at a time when there are so many choices given to us. Yeah. And we have this problem with choice paralysis where, you know, I had somebody tell me that they had a problem going into the toothbrush aisle at Walmart because there are so many different toothbrushes and,

you know, they just want to buy the right one, but, you know, which is the right one to choose. And so they just freeze up. And I think that's a great example, right? We do this with, you know, if we're car shopping, if we're, you know, and it becomes an existential decision of choice paralysis when it comes to like careers or spouses or vocation. And, you know, or things like that, it becomes like, well, if I choose the wrong one, then my whole life is over. Right. And so understanding prudence, learning to act prudently allows us to choose decisively. Now, that doesn't mean that we're always going to perfectly make the right choice, right? You could start down a career path and maybe you discover I need to, you know, I need to pivot, right?

But it does mean that you act decisively. You walk into that career with confidence and you follow through with it and you work with excellence and you try it out. You give it a good shot and you act decisively. And so, you know, I work with a lot of college students and one of the things they struggle with is acting decisively. You know, there's a lot of fear, a fear that they might fail, a fear that if they try something and get it wrong, then that means something about them. And so I wanted to emphasize that

acting prudently means you seek God's counsel, you seek wise counsel, you make the best decision you can based on reality. And then you do something. You do something and you do it decisively. You give it your best shot. And, you know, I talk about the sunk cost fallacy in there. if in a career or some other decision, if it doesn't work out, then you pivot. But you need to act decisively. I wonder how much of personality differences go into this. So recently, my team and I, for the nonprofit that I run,

we all did the Strength Finder's evaluations, which was fascinating. It was so interesting. I've done it before a long time ago. And actually when I was teaching at Cedarville, we did a disc profile evaluate. Anyway, like doing a personality test like that with a group that you work with, I think it's a game changer. Anyway, it was shown that I, I forget, I'm high on like intellection and whatever those like, all my strengths were like in one box. Yeah. I've got one very narrow lane. But one of the things that it showed is that I, before I make a decision, I like to examine

all the possibilities, you know, like I love to do lots of research, this, that, this, that, where I might struggle is making it. It is like, okay, I spent thousands of hours. This is where we're going. And actually, people who are saying, we actually don't see you struggle with that, but you just, it's going to, you are going to take more time to make a decision. Interestingly, my wife was kind of the opposite. She's like, interesting. All right. So what do we do it? Okay, boom, let's do it. I'm like, well, hold,

hold on. Like, we need to let me, let me think through this. Is this? And I think it's actually in our, in our good moments, it's great because she'll lean on me to, to slow us down and, and like, think through it well. I'll lean on her to, to make sure we actually do make a decision. in our bad moments. It's just, you know, we'll buy heads. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, she's like, you're being indecisive. And I'm like, you're being unthoughtful. And that usually goes well. So, yeah, it's, so going back to your point, like, do you find that different people, this might come more naturally? And other people, it might just be a more, more of a struggle given the way they're kind of wired?

Sure. Sure. I'm, I'm sure that's the case. And that's going to be the case with each of the virtues, right? There's going to be some people that are just more disposed to each of the virtues than others. But I think the challenge is, you know, what are you going to do to, you know, how do you cultivate those things right from there? And examining yourself and asking the question, to what extent is my indecision of vice and to what extent or a, you know, Yeah, or, yeah, a vice. And to what extent is it, is it prudent, right? Right. And I can't answer that for you, right? Like, you're the only one who can answer that. Or I wouldn't say maybe a vice, but or to what extent is it immoderate, right? You know, is it, am I, am I doubting myself in a way that's immoderate? That's, that's, that's unhealthy. That's, that's, that's causing me to wallow or to, to doubt. myself and to what extent would it be more virtuous to just say, I've done all this research. I can be confident in what I've done and walk this out. And I can't answer that for you.

But I think everybody's got to, you know, examine that. And everybody's going to be predisposed to different of the virtues. And, you know, there are going to be people who are more courageous and naturally disposed to courage. And people who are more naturally disposed to courage. And people who are more naturally disposed to justice who have a more finely tuned sense of justice and are just just more sensitive towards that you know people who are more naturally loving people who are naturally have a sense of hope right um i think that's just the way god has made us right and so the question is what do we do that after we sort of and and hopefully this book will will provoke people to do that right to examine themselves and to think well what does this mean

mean for me. How do I think through this in my own life? And yeah, how do I process that? You mentioned before earlier college students. Yeah. That have a harder time, maybe out of fear making decisions. Have you seen that as a growing trend? I mean, you've been teaching for what? Yeah. A couple decades almost. Yeah. Yeah. I've seen that as a growing trend. So I haven't, so you asked about personality. So I haven't let, I've seen less. I've seen less personality challenges. And I've seen more cohort challenges, right? So where it's like, this is a group, you know, Jonathan Haidt has talked about this where there's just this, this general sense that younger people have not been, what I would say is, you know, trained

in encourage, right? And so because they have not been given opportunities to have that cultivated, that virtue cultivated in them because we've had, as he says, younger people who are overprotected in the real world and underprotected online, right? And so often they'll be put in situations where they have to make a choice and they feel like it's an existential choice. If I choose wrongly, then it reflects badly on me and I feel very insecure and inadequate. And part of the problem is that society, and so this includes, you know, us adults, has placed this existential burden on these young people, like don't mess up, don't make these mistakes or else. And so they feel inadequate. They feel scared to choose wrongly.

And that feeds out, you're saying it's cohort. So it's kind of a social influence there. Yeah. Yeah. And I think social media contributes to this too, right? So they don't, you know, they see peers who are achieving things online. And so they don't, you know, they want to keep up. And so there are all kinds of things feeding into this. I wonder if that, like, if the bar has artificially been set so high, you know, you go on Instagram and everybody looks a lot better than they actually do. Or your feed will have certain types of people being thrown in your face and others not, you know,

or everybody puts a best foot forward or you see success. you see people in shit. Like you see the best almost artificial presentation of humanity. Yeah. And so because it's almost impossible to match up to what's in front of you online, I could see where that could feed into that fear of like, gosh, if I step out and try that, I'm not going to know, I'm probably going to fail because I can't match up to that.

Yeah. Hmm. Have you heard that the, that, that, uh, Like younger people are getting their driver's license a lot later and they're drinking a lot less. Yes. I keep hearing these two stats. In fact, I heard recently like an alcohol distributor had to lay off like 30% of their employees because they're like, we've got to figure out how to get younger people to drink again. Yes.

Yes. No, I think inhibition is one of the markers of particularly young people, inhibition. And I think it's because they've been placed, this goes back to one of my earlier books, you or not your own, they have this burden of having to be somebody, of having to achieve something, right? And so because they have this tremendous burden placed on them and social media makes it 10 times worse or 100 times or 1,000 times worse, they feel like I can't achieve greatness. So I'm going to fold in on myself.

and freeze up. Now, not all of them do this, right? There are some, there are some who are who lean into it and they go forward and they, you know, they're successful. But they're the outliers. A lot of them just folding on themselves and they don't want to strive. And so one of the, my hopes for this book was to say, here's what, you know, here's what living well looks like. Like you can do this. You can strive to live well. And it doesn't look like what the world is telling you that it looks like. This is what it actually looks like to live well, to live virtuously.

Interesting. Your second chapter is on justice. And I was excited about that chapter. Because, yeah, I did when I read the subtitle before I opened the book, Chaotic Times. My mind just goes to. world affairs and politics and stuff. You know, if you're on Twitter or X for five seconds, it's that.

Like that feels like the window into the chaotic world we're living in. Is that part of what you're talking about here? Or do you, how is justice a virtue? Or maybe what are some misunderstandings or wrong ways of understanding justice? Yeah, I mean, it applies to all those things, right? I mean, it applies to all those things. So we just, as we're recording this, there have just been a number of ice shootings. The details haven't all come out, right?

So I don't know how justice affects those ice shootings. And so I'm hesitant to speak on what the, all the details are, right? I haven't even heard about this yet. Okay. Where was it? One was in Houston and one was in Maine, right? And so I'm, you know, part of justice is is, is waiting for the details and, and being cautious and, and, and, but, but also part of the deep, part of justice is being willing to, to speak out when, uh, injustice has been done, right? And, um, and so this is the reality that we live in is that, um, we live in a country where not only is, and this is every country, right?

injustice is done. And then we also know about a lot more injustice because we have this, you know, global media. And then you have to wonder, how much is it my responsibility because of social media to speak out about every injustice? Yeah. And these are things, you know, you have to weigh. And I don't think we all have the obligation to speak out about every injustice that's done every time. I think that's a heavy obligation to put on every person. But this chapter deals with what justice is, which is giving each person his or her due.

And it does include political justice. I don't go into it heavily political justice. I try to just give the foundation of justice. But the implications are into politics as well. Yeah, right, right. Yeah. Like Twitter justice warriors. I've always, I don't know, I've, I've, in general, leaned away from using social media as a platform to address issues of justice.

And I don't know if I'm right here. I would love to hear your thoughts. Yeah. But it kind of plays into the point, you're, you kind of hinted at that, that if you, if you highlight this injustice, then it could seem like, oh, so you don't care about that other thing because you don't. Oh, yeah. Mention it. Right. So how do you, like, it just seems like it ends up being kind of selective.

And quite honestly, I think so many people do it at, do it to virtue signal. Yes. And I, I try if, like, hopefully I'm not doing it for that reason, but because I feel like that about almost everybody who fights justice online, you know, like, I'm like, I just get a cynical. So I'm like, I don't know. if I feel that way about most people online doing justice stuff. Like, am I playing into that?

So I just kind of 98% of time just kind of don't say, I don't use social media as a platform to address justice. But sometimes I'm like, yes, but it still can be effective. It spreads awareness. It does this, that, you know. And also because it's so soundbitey, I'm like, I would rather have an hour long conversation of the podcast. Yes. Reach a lot less people. force people to listen to an hour long conversation.

But part of me is like, well, I don't think sound bites are the best way to accomplish justice. You do a lot of virtue signaling. So I'd rather reach a lot fewer people with long-form conversations. I don't know. Are there holes in my thinking?

Is there wisdom in... No, I think there is wisdom in that. I think there is wisdom in that. I think that there are no hard and fast rules for how we are to do this. But we are to think, so this is where prudence comes in. This is where prudence and justice actually overlap, and we need to think prudentially about how we use this social media platform.

Right. So you're thinking prudentially about virtue signaling and the reality that when we use social media, there's a part of us that is hyper aware of how other people view us, And sometimes when we're doing that, we're actually just thinking about how will other people think about me when I do this instead of thinking about what is this actually doing? What is this actually, what is the meaning of this and how is this actually affecting the world? And so if you're more concerned about how will other people view me, then you're probably not actually doing anything meaningful. You're probably just building a brand. And so that's a problem, right? sometimes I will speak out, we'll say something. I have written a few substacks on political things, on justice issues. I'm more inclined to do that and I do that sparingly because it's got to like cross a line and then I think, okay, now it's time. But I have, you know, tweeted things and part of my reasoning is I know that

there are certain people following me who it will be helpful for them to stretch to stretch them. and I want to stretch them and I want to sort of challenge them and hopefully in some meaningful ways like I've built some capital with them and I'm hoping that that will be helpful to them but I think what you're doing makes a lot of sense too and I don't think that there's like a

right way of doing this I think there can be helpful ways of doing both what I won't do is get into an argument with you on Twitter about it Because that's a waste. Yeah, I usually I get myself like one or two cheat days a year where, where, yeah, but in general, I have a rule. I just don't engage people, especially if it's like a, if they're like, hey, really enjoyed your book, appreciate, you know, thanks for writing that. I might say, hey, thanks for that, you know, but I don't engage like in a debate or whatever.

But again, I get like one or two cheat days a year. And they usually, I regret it later, just like when I eat way too much pizza and eat too many wings and stuff. So, yeah. Yeah, it's funny because we all recognize, everybody recognizes that now. Like, Twitter is a cesspool. Always has been. It's not just Elon that made it that way. It's just like it's, yeah, it's not a place for like good.

So like, but why just like we all know it. It makes us more angry, fearful, less happy. Our cortisone levels go up. It doesn't do anything constructive, typically. We all know it. Is it like, yeah, candy's not good for me either, but I eat it every day. You know, like, is it just one of those things? Like, we know it's not healthy for us, but we just can't stop doing it.

I love it for sports. I love it. I love my Thunder, my Oklahoma City Thunder. And when the finals are on, you know, it's the best place to be. It's a great place to trash talk and to keep up with NBA news. Like, it's still a great place for sports-related stuff and to keep it light and those kinds of things. I agree with that. Yeah, Twitter.

I've been using Twitter more for baseball for me. Yeah. It's like, man, there's some really good clips of videos and stuff that you. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So.

Okay. It's a great sports bar. It's a bad public square. It's a bad. I feel like it has gotten, do you think it's gotten worse? Maybe. It's hard to tell.

It's been pretty bad for a long time. You discuss, okay, so you discuss several virtues, the seven that you mentioned earlier. Living moderately, suffering, suffering,

like, I don't want to, I don't know, I always go back and forth on this, the whole like, oh, first world problems, you know,

like, do we really suffer here? Those of us living in the West, but part of me is like, well, having relative affluence, which is off the chart if you're in the West, even, you know, poor people would be rich compared to historical standards of living. But there is like deep psychological suffering, which kind of proves a point that stuffing yourself with all the things you want doesn't lead to happiness. it leads to psychosis and mental health issues and depression and pills.

And, you know, like, so I don't know. How do you view suffering for those of us living in the affluent West? What does that look like? Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I think the reality of suffering is that it's existential, that it's, that it's, it's your experience of suffering, right? And so if you build a cosmic scale, which you can't fundamentally do, and then weighed people's objective suffering and whether they should be suffering equally, then sure, you can say people in the West shouldn't be suffering as much as people elsewhere in the world on the whole. Right.

But the reality is you've got sexual abuse, you've got physical abuse, you've got physical abuse, you've got all kinds of trauma. that people have experienced. And I know this because I've, you know, I've had conversations with the students that have, they experienced these things, right? And then you've got mental health problems. Some of them caused by our technology and the structures of our society, but some of them just genetic and environmental and biological, just the way, just there, right? And then you deal with those and it still causes tremendous suffering, right? And so, the cosmic scale doesn't exist. The reality of suffering does.

The experience, the experience of suffering exists. The existential experience of suffering exists. And so then the question becomes, the reality is that everyone experiences suffering in some meaningful ways in life. So then the question becomes, how do you live with suffering well? And that requires the virtue of courage.

That's such a great point. Yeah. We often think of suffering as material or physical or not just physical, but like a specific kind of physical suffering. You're pastor, you know, in another country where you're beaten and in prison and those are the people suffering. But like you said, the people who have been abused by their father were born with some mental health condition that is, at the drag along with them for their entire life, on and on and on and on. The loss of a loved one is universally a kind of suffering, you know, which happens, again, regardless of how wealthy you are. So, yeah, broadening our horizons around what constitutes suffering and not diminishing a kind of suffering that might, from one person's perspective, seems less than another kind

of suffering. Right. How do you have cultivate courage when your specific kind of suffering is the result of somebody else's sin is a result of injustice? It's not I was born with some ailment that I had to carry with me, but I was sexually abused by my father. Yeah, that's a tough question. I mean, I think ultimately, yeah, I think ultimately, the answer is always going to be the same in that you have to focus on, you know, the way courage works is you endure suffering for the sake of the good. Now, in this case, you're not enduring suffering. You're not submitting to the abuse. right, to be extremely clear, right? You're not doing that for the sake of the good, right? But the after effects, right, you're still going to experience those after effects.

And those you're going to, as you seek treatment, if you seek help, right, you're enduring those, you're enduring that as opposed to, as opposed to giving into despair. and turning to maladaptive coping mechanisms, let's say. So distractions, other forms of abuse, narcotics. There are all kinds of ways to give into despair, giving up on your life, right? So you're not turning to those. You're not turning to despair. You're turning instead to accepting your life and embracing your life,

accepting that God loves you and that your life is meaningful, right? That takes courage. That takes courage because if you've been abused, then you've been taught that your life is meaningless. And it takes courage to accept that actually your life is good and that you're loved. And so that is accepting the good. That's accepting the good. And you're doing that courageously. and that includes seeking justice. That includes seeking justice and and not recon, you know, reconciliation of, but justice, you know, justice, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Not vengeance.

Justice. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Not vengeance, but justice. Yeah. I'm curious if you're willing to share. What virtues do you both struggle with or which one and which one comes the most naturally to you?

Probably temperance. Temperance is hard for all of us in the contemporary world, right? Can you define temperance? Temperance is the inner order of our lives, the inner order of our lives. So that means it's not just moderation, but it's ordering our lives inwardly, ordering our loves inwardly so that it's glorifying to God. right so um my phone time will still get you know to be too much sometimes you know sometimes i'm using it appropriately for work related things or what i need to do to do my you know whatever i'm doing but sometimes i'll it'll creep up you know i'm doing stuff that um you know i'm on you know politics

will get out of control right um you know just recently you know i don't know you get some latest political news and you're like, what's happening is the world burning down? And you just keep scrolling, waiting for an update to see if the world burns down tomorrow or today or whatever. And that's not temperance. And so it's temperance for me. That's the one that gets me. That gets me. Yeah. So temperance, I would say. And then the one I'm probably most inclined to Yeah, that's a harder question. It's easy to point out what I'm weak at. It's harder to, I think probably hope.

There's a part of me that is very hopeful, which is funny because people talk a lot about or criticize the sort of negative parts of my books. You are not your own. It starts off very critical. But I'm a very optimistic person, very hopeful. about what we can do to move forward in our dehumanizing society. And so, yeah, I would say hope. Yeah, I would imagine if somebody's naturally more optimistic, hope probably comes a little easier. Yeah. That's interesting. You mentioned politics. How would you describe yourself politically? I'm curious.

This isn't part of your book. Yeah. Yeah, I would say I'm a, uh, traditionalist conservative. And so what I mean by that is I want to conserve what is true, good, and beautiful. So that doesn't align very much with what conservatives are doing politically in the Republican Party today very much. But I believe in, you know, I don't believe in saving the in a kind of Christian nationalist sense, that kind of thing. But I do believe that there are things worth conserving that are valuable. And I do believe in I'm not a believer in, I'm very skeptical or wary about human progress and acceleration, including by some people who consider themselves.

conservative today, you know, by the Elon Musks of the world who want to accelerate through AI and save humanity through those kinds of transhumanism and things like that. But that's how I would, that's how I would label myself. So traditional views of life and and sexuality and things like that. And yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think people make the equation, the wrong equation between conservative and Republican, but those are... Right. I mean, maybe more Republicans would also be traditional conservatives and vice versa. Maybe more Democrats might be more traditionally liberal, but like a classical liberal,

but even classical liberalism and even like a conservative libertarianism is almost very close in some ways. Yeah, right. Yeah, there's not that the whole left-right. vibe is just so weird and messy and blurry and isn't easy to categorize, you know. Yeah, that's, yeah. What do you think is going to happen this next election? Are you looking forward to it? No. Why would you, why would you look forward to this election? Why would you wish that impossible? No, no, I'm, you know, I'm concerned and just, you know, all you can do is pray and, and, and, yeah. Yeah, yeah. What's the, what's the vibe, uh, the, the color?

teach you. It would be a conservative Christian, generally speaking. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So do you feel like you fit in well there or do you feel? Yeah, I feel, I feel comfortable here. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. For those who don't know, I had the opportunity to speak there a couple years ago, I think. Yeah. I forget. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I had a great time. Oklahoma, that's, if you're not from there, that'd be an interesting place to live. I'm not from. Yeah. I mean, is it the south? Is it the Midwest? Is it the Midwest? I think it's the Midwest. What is it? It's Midwest. Okay. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. You got any tornadoes whipping through there recently? It, a couple of years ago, it, uh, hit my previous house in Shawnee. I live in Oklahoma City now, but it hit my house in Shawnee. Yeah. And did $50,000 worth of damage. Oh, geez. Yeah. So. Yeah, because it call it. Yeah, Shawnee is out in the middle. I mean, it's, it's out there. It's out there.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you said you're working on another book now. Are you allowed to talk about what you're working on? I don't know if I am, but I am. I will. I don't know how those things go, but I will. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, it's a book on institutions. You know, so I wrote, I wrote to live well in response to a lot of feedback I got from You Are Not Your Own, which was that. it doesn't have a lot of practical application. So I made this case that the contemporary world is dehumanizing in many ways, but what are you supposed to do about it? And so I wrote this book, To Live Well, this is the practical application. This is how you walk it out. The problem with to live well is it's a very personal application. But if our contemporary society is deeply dehumanizing in the ways that I make the case and you are not your own, that we need more than just

a personal response. We need a corporate response as well. And that requires families, churches, schools, art institutes, civic organizations working together to push back against not only the government in some cases, but also large corporations, big, tech, not necessarily in legislative means or not necessarily in petitions and things like that, but just making space as mediating institutions to give an alternative plausibility structure so that people can see that you don't have to live this way, that you can actually live in different ways. So the argument I'm going to make in this book, as I'm revising it and writing it, is that big tech and the state is in many ways working together with this assumption that the

individual, that the goal of the individual is to live their personal individual dream. And their job as the state and big tech is to equip us to do that. So they give us the tools, the social media platforms, the Google email, the AI to do this. They give us the tools to do this. And in exchange, we give them the data and the privacy and all these things a little bit more of our privacy day and day. We give that up security and privacy in order to, or privacy in order to have that security. security and these tools to live our dream, right? Part of Elon Musk's idea is superabundance so that we don't have to work anymore so we can

just live out our dreams, right? So this is the exchange. The problem is that we were not made to live like that. We were made to live for God, to belong to God, and we're made for community. And so what we need are mediating institutions that stand between us and these large corporations in the state that help remind us who we are, who we belong to, and how we're supposed to live. And so when, for example, you have smartphones introduced to families at a younger and younger age, introducing ideas and values to teenagers and young kids, and you don't

have thick families, thick mediating institutions that are a family that can produce better stories, better ideas, better values, than those kids are getting directly influenced by these voices, these outside voices. And so you need stronger institutions like the family to mediate between those voices. So the family is a mediating institution. That's going to be one of the mediating institutions, the first mediating institution that I talk about, yeah. Okay. Do you think these mega corporations are intrinsically evil? No.

Because there's something, no? Okay. No, I think they intend, I think they are intending to do good. I think they want to liberate us. I think that's, I think they have good, sometimes they have faithful Christians working at them. And I think that they have a lot of people who are desiring to serve us well by liberating us. I think the problem is that their understanding of liberation is a flawed one. But their understanding of liberation is that each individual is free to pursue their own life as they see fit.

Right? So their own life as they see fit, their own definition of meaning, purpose, value, etc. and their job is to give us as many tools to do that as possible, which sounds really exciting, but the reality is that our lives are not radically individualist, right? That's a flawed understanding of what it means to be human. First of all, we're communal, and second of all, we belong to God. So that whole framework is flawed.

Yeah. So the motivation, their intended goal might be, noble, but yeah, helping us live the good life, okay, that's a good motivation, but what the good life is is skewed.

If you get that good life wrong, then what happens? But some mega corporations are surely not that. That are that they are using people, to bolster profits and we'll do whatever it takes to maximize profits based on people

and they're not behind closed doors. They really don't care if people are living a good life. They just care if they are convinced that your product is going to help them to live a good life. And those are two different things, right? Isn't that? I mean, again, I'm not saying categorically, but I don't even know. I mean, of course, people are part of the thing of Amazon or whatever.

But I mean, I don't have anyone in mind. I just, maybe it's my view of human nature. I would be, you know, more on, you know, the Calvinist reform side-ish. Don't, yeah. Hey, don't turn off the channel. Okay, I'm not just in the sense of like total depravity. And I think that that's maximize when people with humans who are bent towards sin are given a ton of a ton of power.

Like I just think that is... And again, maybe this is my Anabaptist, you know, kind of anti-government to some extent. You know, like, when humans have a ton of power, it typically is not going to go well. No, no. Okay. So here's my thought about this. Because I, I'm, you know, I'm reformed, very reformed, Presbyterian, so I'm on, I'm on the same page.

But here's what I think happens. If you want to get... give people their desires. And if people are inherently, they inherently desire to be self-sovereign, giving people what they desire is giving people the desire to fulfill their own dreams, their own desires, their own, their own capacity to stand sovereign from God. So I think what happens is if you are a large corporation, it is in your best profit interest to give people the ability to stand as a radical individual. Okay.

Do you see what I'm saying? Yeah. So in some cases, somebody's, the mega corporation's motivation and somebody's genuine, like the stars might align. Exactly, right.

So your ideology and your bottom line might be conveniently, right? Because if it's from the, the bottom up, if it's from the consumer desire up, or if it's from, you know, libertarianism or whatever it is, you know, down, you know, I don't know if it's libertarianism, but it's, you know, a certain idea of liberty down, you're getting a secular idea of liberty down. You're getting the same idea, I think. It makes me think, like, if you make, if you make a, I don't know,

So some, let's just say, some kind of supplement, some protein powder, some energy drink or something. And if it's actually really good, it doesn't have a bunch of fillers and chemicals, it gives you energy, it's clean energy. There's maybe not too much caffeine, don't have a huge, like, if it's actually a really, really good product, people are going to buy it. And you're going to make a lot of money. And they're going to tell others about it. And so it is kind of a win. So I don't want to, this is where, yeah, I don't think just because you have a corporation or business. that ends up being successful financially.

No. It's intrinsically wrong. They could have just made a really, really good product and not overcharged for it. Yeah, that's right. Hmm. Well, we open up a huge can here at the end of our conversation. Yeah, I'm excited to hear more about that project. But, Alan, it was great to talk to you.

Again, the book is to live well, practical wisdom for moving through chaotic times. Again, you really capture me in the first few pages. I mean, you paint a picture of something that resonated with me and I'm sure will resonate with a lot of people. So thanks for being a guest on the Algeria once again. Thank you. It's been a pleasure.