Episode 109 - Practicing the King’s Economy with Michael Rhodes
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Dr. Michael J. Rhodes is a Lecturer in Old Testament at Carey Baptist College in New Zealand. He is a Teaching Elder in the Evangelical Presbyterian Church and serves as an assistant pastor at Downtown Church in Memphis. Michael co-authored a book on economic discipleship, “Practicing the King's Economy: Honoring Jesus in How We Work, Earn, Spend, Save, and Give” with Robby Holt and Brian Fikkert. He joins us today to share more of the story.
All opinions expressed on this podcast, including the team and guests, are solely their opinions. Host and guests may maintain positions in the companies and securities discussed. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as specific investment advice for any individual or organization.
Episode Transcript
Transcription is done by an AI software. While technology is an incredible tool to automate this process, there will be misspellings and typos that might accompany it. Please keep that in mind as you work through it.
Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Investor podcast. I'm here with Luke. Luke, good morning.
Luke Roush: Good morning.
Henry Kaestner: It's good to see you. It's not even morning here in California anymore. It definitely isn't in Tennessee. So I just I spaced out one. But I just want you to know that I'm thinking about you and I'm missing you and I'm fired up that we're going to do this podcast because it's hits on something that's really near and dear to both of our hearts as we get involved in investing together. We wanted to do something other than just just a regular private equity fund or an index fund or something like that. We wanted to do something that was more innovative and participated more in what God is doing in the world. And we've got a guest today who's written about that concept, the concept that we've kind of tried to live into very, very imperfectly. But when we think about the backdrop about us living and allocating capital and seeing entrepreneurs get out there and create redemptive products and services, it's in this larger framework or matrix, if you will. And I think that all too often I've been thinking about it in an incomplete manner and just I didn't do great my micro macro classes at the University of Delaware. I was too busy selling t shirts, but I remember just these different principles, like, this is the way the market works, don't mess with it, just kind of get on and you know, it just there's something bigger and there's a guy who's written a book on it and we've got him with us on the podcast. Welcome, Michael Rhodes.
Michael Rhodes: Thanks, Henry. It's great to be here.
Henry Kaestner: So, Michael, what do we like to do with every one of our guests as they come on as get a biographical sketch? Who are you? Where do you come from and what's brought you to today?
Michael Rhodes: Yeah. Thanks, Henry. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, I'm Michael. And right now I'm in Memphis, my home where I have lived for most of my adult life. I grew up here and sort of a lifelong follower of Jesus who was really taught early on that the key to a full, abundant life was to live under the Lordship of Jesus, guided by Scripture. So I took that on board pretty early, but I was a part of a church community with a really ugly racial history and a very wealthy church community in a very poor city. And when I was growing up, the church was trying to grapple with both of those issues. And so as a result, there were just some incredible leaders who came into our church and opened God's word and really exposed me to his heart for the economically poor and the heart for reconciliation and solidarity with all people. And so I kind of went into college, really fired up about participating. Living a full life under the Lordship of Jesus in line with Scripture in those areas. So I went to Covenant College. I studied community development with Brian Ficker, who we co-wrote Praxis in the King's Academy with. And it's always fun to write a book with somebody that you would have dedicated the book to if you hadn't written with them. And that was true of writing the book that we're talking about today with Brian and my pastor, Robby Hall. But anyways, I was at Covenant, learned about three developments, got married right after college and was headed to Kenya for two years. But sort of by what looks like an accident, it was definitely God's plan. I ended up for six months in this one very poor, predominantly African-American community in South Memphis, and I was working for an organization almost by accident that was doing job training and financial literacy and helping people get their GED. All adults, almost all African-American in this one shop, in this community. And it just totally blew up my world. It wasn't any credible experience. And so after two years in Kenya, my wife and I came back to Memphis. We moved into that neighborhood, and I went back to work for that organization called Advance Memphis for about five years. And that experience of living here in this neighborhood and working among economically poor people and being a part of a church that was trying to be involved with that has driven really all of my adult life and all of the kind of questions that I have. And so those questions that I have from living here and working here drove me back to seminary and then a Ph.D. program. Eventually, I left advance and worked for five years for an organization teaching community development and mission at a Bible college for adults predominantly black bi vocational ministries here in Memphis. And then the really crazy left hand turn in the last two years is that through a long process that caught Rebecca and I completely off guard. God now seems to be calling us to New Zealand, to Carey Baptist College in Auckland. And so the pandemic has made that complicated. But for the last year and now a little bit of some change, I've been teaching Old Testament to students who are in New Zealand. So that's a little bit about me. I have four incredible kids, Isaiah Amos, Nuba and Jubilee. My wife is Rebecca, she works at our church and. Yeah, Jubilee.
Henry Kaestner: Yeah, what an awesome name.
Michael Rhodes: Yeah, that's kind of fun because you know, when you write a book, people are asked to come talk about it. And I was out talking at a church and I was giving a talk on the Jubilee and Rebecca was pregnant and I came off the stage and she goes, We're going to name our little girl jubilee. And I'm like, We are. That's amazing.
Henry Kaestner: So it's pretty cool.
Michael Rhodes: Yes. I got two prophets As and Amos, one legal institution, Jubilee, and then Nova, the hippie name is actually named after Rob Holt's wife, whose name is Nova. Christine Holt. So my coauthor, Robby Holt, his wife is the namesake for our third child.
Luke Roush: It's exciting. How excited are they to go to New Zealand?
Michael Rhodes: Really pumped. The history of Rebecca Nye's relationship is that I come up with a crazy idea and then kind of get cold feet right at the edge and she like takes the ball and runs it into the end zone. And so I applied for the job in New Zealand. She was the one who was like, No, we have to do this. And the kids, you know, we've been teaching them words like bittersweet to try to think through this move. But they're really excited to me. Six months decide to do it. And when I came out of the room and I was like, I just wrote an email to New Zealand, I'm going to take the job. You know, Rebecca knew that, but I was sort of saying it and I came back a few hours later to the house and the girls, my two girls had packed their bags already. They got their.
Luke Roush: Wires crossed about what.
Michael Rhodes: It meant to say we were going. So, yeah, they're pretty pumped.
Henry Kaestner: That's all. Is there a chance you actually go from winter to winter, though?
Michael Rhodes: It is very possible. We're hoping that we'll be able to be there by this summer, our summer, which would be their winter. So, yes, that'll be kind of a maybe a worst case scenario on the move. But at this point, we just be happy to be there and for me to not be teaching online anymore.
Luke Roush: Yeah. You know, Michael, you talked a little bit about just what inspired you to write the book on practicing Kings economy. If you had to pick sort of one thing, you know, many great companies are born out of just a sense of calling purpose, maybe frustration with the way the world works. And then entrepreneurs want to do something about it. And I think many great songs, works of art books, are kind of out of that same kind of calling a sense of purpose and need to speak into it. We had to pinpoint that on one thing. What would it be?
Michael Rhodes: Yeah, so that's a great question. I have seen my whole life, adult life under this sense of call to help the church hear and respond to Scripture summons to become a community of justice and mercy and righteousness for the economically poor. So that's the big mission. That's a subset of God's mission that I feel particularly drawn to. But this book has an even more narrow sort of inspiration. So when I was working at advance, I was going out trying to help people with stuff on their criminal background find jobs and whatnot. And because I grew up here, I would get asked by churches to come who supported the nonprofit to come talk to Sunday schools and whatever. And, you know, I was used to giving the giving talk, right? And I had done that a lot, you know, raised money as a missionary. God wants to give your money so that we can go do this thing. But I realized working at advance that people could give us $16 trillion, you know, but if nobody was willing to hire someone with a violent criminal offense on their background, we didn't have a model, right? We could not do our work unless people were living differently in the way they hired and managed, not just in the way they gave. And that was the transformation point because, you know, I think if you think about our economics, your life or my economic life like an equation, and on one side of the equation, you have all the inputs, all the stuff that goes in our work, what we own, we invest, what we save, blah, blah, blah. And then on the other side of equal sign is profit. We take home the vast majority of the time when Christians have talked about our economic lives, we've laser focused on that take home pay, what Christians can give from what they've earned. And that is a huge piece of Christian economic discipleship. But from a biblical perspective, it is just one piece. If you look at the Bible, the Bible talks about how you work and with whom you work and how you treat your workers, and for that matter, how you treat the land and the animals that you interact with. It talks about how you interact with other farms, if you like, other small farmers, the whole of economic life. Right? That's the subtitle of the book Work, Earn, Spend, Save and Give. The whole of the equation is what God is Lord over in Jesus. And so economic discipleship then isn't just about what you do with what's left over. At the end of the day, it's about bending all of that towards Jesus's Lordship and Jesus Kingdom. And so on the one hand, you know, you can hear that it's like bad news because it's like kind of more stuff where Jesus is getting in my business literally. But on the other hand, it's like the most exciting news ever because it means that every aspect of our economic life can be an opportunity to experience God's presence, to participate in His mission. And that's like the most exciting thing. So when I was at Advanced Memphis, working with this company and I would see business guys who'd been asked for money for their whole lives get asked for, Hey, would you hire this guy or this woman? And when that worked, all of a sudden it's like a new aspect of my life has become a site of God's generous kingdom. People's eyes light up. They get super fired up. And that's the kind of joy that I wanted and desired for myself and for my neighbors. And so I really got disappointed that so much and I don't mean to be uncharitable, but so much Christian stewardship material, so much faith and work stuff, so much entrepreneurial. It just misses this idea that all of your economic life God cares about. And secondly, all of your economic life can be bent towards God's kingdom concern for the vulnerable and the marginalized. So that's why Robbie and Brian and I wanted to write this book and felt like, you know, I mean, it came out of talks that I started giving at these churches to say, look. God cares about it all. And it was largely as a way to get them to try to partner with this organization to help invest in. One of our entrepreneurs that we were working on were hire one of our job training graduates or whatever. So that's really the laser kind of catalyst for the book in a lot of ways.
Henry Kaestner: And it since I have is you just talking to us is that not only does God care about these things, but that as we look at these multiple dimensions, that we have this opportunity to step into something that's much more complex and beautiful and is less black and white. It's more like Technicolor. And presumably the joy that some of these employers experience when they're a part of being involved in relationship with some people, just gives them a new dimension and more joy, right?
Michael Rhodes: Yes, I think so. And it allows for connection. So one of the laws that has really animated me has been the gleaning walls in the Old Testament. I just love the gleaming walls. I think they're so cool because, you know, at one point when I was working at Advanced, the statistic that we were using was at six or seven out of ten adults in our neighborhood were not working right. So in a context where six or seven out of ten adults are not working, and then we were seeing the transforming power of a good job. Not just any job, but a good job can really be transformative in a person's life. You know, and this idea in the Old Testament that farmers who are kind of the family firm, if you like, are supposed to leave some of their harvest, which is functionally their profit in the field to create opportunities for the vulnerable, to work the orphan, the immigrant, the widow and the poor. That just blew me away. And that sort of became kind of one of the things that I would talk to guys, men and women about is like, Hey, what would it look like to create space, right, for the outsider in this company? And, you know, again, that can be a hard message, you know, because not only do we like money, which is maybe okay, some of the time and profit, but we've sort of been taught that the very purpose of a business is to maximize profits. Right. Which the gleaning laws just they just don't work along those lines. They require a different sort of framework. They don't reject profitability. The farmer wants a harvest, but they don't maximize it because they create space. So the one thing that seems like a hard ask, but then you look at a book like Ruth, right? The whole book of Ruth only works because of these cleaning walls, because the gleaning laws exist. Ruth, who is this like complete outsider? This outsider's outsider becomes a fully invested insider in the community. She's inspiring the neighborhood. When Boaz sees her in the field, he says, the entire Israelite village knows what you, foreign outsider, have done for our widow, Naomi. So the gleaning laws allow Ruth to become a fully invested member in the neighborhood. They allow Ruth to become the just woman who takes care of the widow, her mother in law, and the farm. All of a sudden it becomes this site for connection, where Ruth and Boaz meet right to the most powerful men in the story. Boaz and the least powerful person in the story, Ruth, meet in their economic life because of these cleaning walls, which I just think is a vision of what you're talking about. Henry, where like when we get that multi technicolor, you know, we complicate the picture a little bit. All of a sudden, every aspect of our economic life is an opportunity to encounter God and our neighbor, including some of the neighbors that we often don't meet. Right. That we often screen out, which is really important. You know, we live in an age where just economic segregation, right? Forget racial stuff. Economic segregation in our neighborhoods is on the rise. And there's some argument that economic segregation is on the rise in the workplace. And so it's more important than ever that we ask how can the spaces of our economic life be places of encounter with God and neighbor?
Luke Roush: Are there any specific examples just in terms of companies that you've interacted with or storylines that you've kind of watched unfold? That would be a great manifestation of what this looks like practically.
Michael Rhodes: Yeah, I love that question. So I mean, one of the huge privileges for me has been to get to know companies, not because of me who are living this out, you know, whose stories we kind of some we got to share in the book and some I've learned since, you know, and I've been working on a project with the Chalmers Center for a while now where we're gathering some of these stories as well. So just name a few. One is my friend West Gardner out in Colorado. He's a serial entrepreneur. He started this thing called prime trailer leasing.
Luke Roush: Love was an awesome story.
Michael Rhodes: It's such a great guy and his, you know, the youth pastor, his church at the time, Dave Runyon, you know, helped him kind of think through some of this stuff. And so they started hiring single moms from a halfway house that Wes had been giving to. Right. So they'd been generous with what's on the profit side of the equation. But now they're saying, how do we be generous? How do we bend the way we work towards those same concerns? And now all of a sudden, these single moms are coming in to work in the company. And I talked to Wes one time. This is the thing that has stuck with me from West Side Story. He said, you know, Michael, I used to see payroll as a liability. You know, I go look at my pal and payroll is, you know, a problem. Now I go look at all the money that we pay people, and I see my payroll as profit. I look at that number and say, look how much money we've earned, right? I think that shift is like so radical, right and powerful. And, you know, that company did great work. They didn't stop being a business and start being a nonprofit, but they did figure out how to bend their workplace towards these single moms. Cascade Engineering is a company I believe they're in Michigan. Their chief talent guy, Dave Barrett, and I have spent a lot of time on the phone together. They've helped, like more than 800 workers get off welfare through working in their companies. And one of the things that shifted for them was they made every single person in the company do some training on material poverty. Because what Dave would say is we tried several times to make this shift and we failed again and again. And finally we realized the reason why we were failing was because we looked down on poor people. And when we stopped doing that, we started seeing transformation. And these are all sorts of crazy stuff. They've worked with their local government to get a social worker like on site in their business and all this stuff. And then there's like some cool local stories. A couple of years ago we put on a conference where we were talking about some of these ideas and company here. Bryce Core in Memphis heard what we're doing and came and listened and they heard about it. And organization here called Economic Opportunities that takes men and women coming out of prison. And they have a model where they bring in a group to your company and you sort of pay the nonprofit and they pay the guys, the men and women. And it's sort of a transitional work opportunity. Now, this Bryce Care, they heard about this opportunity at the time. As I understand it, they were throwing away any resumé that anyone had any kind of serious criminal record on. Well, they went and got in partnership with this nonprofit. And a few years later, it's like 10% of their local workforce has a criminal record and they've promoted people into management and they're taking our guys. So it's really cool stuff on the employer side that I think is just really phenomenal. And I course tell stories about guys who said, You know what, I'm going to start seeing wages as an opportunity for generosity and I'm going to bump starting wage up to $15 an hour. I had a friend who called me up and said, Hey, I've been listening to you. I've been listen to your boss. I've been reading about the civil rights movement and one of the guys who was striking in the sanitation workers strike here in Memphis, which is a big part of our city story said, I just believe a full day's work ought to allow man to put food on his table. And he's like, I'm just going to bump up my starting wage as an act of just commitment because it seems like the right thing to do, you know? So there's all sorts of stories like that, you know. And in the book we tell lots of stories, tell stories about worker owner cooperatives and people who are sharing profits with all sorts of fun stuff at the level of the firm, the business for how we can bend our economic life towards God's good news, particularly for the economically poor, which is a real focus of the book and of Robby and Brian and us.
Luke Roush: That's great. I'm excited for Lightning Round, but I don't know if it's the right time yet. Henry We're.
Henry Kaestner: Almost there. We're almost there. You know, Michael, at the beginning of the podcast, the interview, you're talking a bit about your time in Kenya. Yeah. And as I think about this alternate imagination for how you run your business across these six themes that you have in your book, the worship and community, etc., I think that you've done a good job of scoping out what that can look like in cities like Memphis. Talk to us a little bit about your thought about how those of us in the West and this is actually a quote from you, but the church in the West is rediscovering the fact that God cares deeply for the poor. More and more churches and individual Christians are looking for ways to practice economic discipleship. But it's hard to make progress when we're blind. Our own entanglement in our cultures, idolatrous economic practices talk about that through the lens. Just any wisdom you have about a Westerner realizing things like they're going to be more entrants into the job market in sub-Saharan Africa over the next 20 years. Then like India and China, I mean, it's a big place. And yet there's also 50 years history of colonialism, right? So you want to kind of go in there and then, you know, you read a book like with your coauthor, Brian Fricker, you know, when helping her out. So what's a framework from your time in Kenya so that those of us are listeners and say, I think we need to invest in sub-Saharan Africa. How do we do it? But how do we do it? Well.
Michael Rhodes: Yeah, I mean, there's a lot there. I do think that in the first part of that quote from the back of our book about we in the West, I think it's worth saying and Henry, I think you were getting at this earlier, that the dominant economic picture of what humans are like in the West has been what Brian Ficker, who's an economist, calls the homo economicus, the economic man. Right. So, you know, this is going out of style a little bit, but most of us, if we took economics in college, we had books that talked about homo economicus. This is what people are like. And what Homo Economicus says. Is that what people are? Fundamentally is we are individuals with limitless desires in a limited world who are constantly seeking to maximize our own consumption of goods and services and experiences. So we are fundamentally individual profit maximizers. That's who we are, right? And Scripture has a very different view of what people are and what we're called to be. But our economic way of thinking has been based on a kind of homo economicus idea. So in our book, the first thing we say about our economic lives, first principle is what you worship God with your money. Right. That's the background is you love God. Right. To worship key is the first. The second here is the community care, which basically says that I am always part of a we and my economic well-being is always to be oriented towards that way. And, you know, we have this metaphor that we use in the book where we say typically when we think about care for the poor in the church, our functional metaphor is of a soup kitchen. You know, I have some leftover profit on one side of my equation, so I'm going to give that away to people who don't have whatever the resources. You think about soup kitchen, you got soup scoopers on one side and empty bowls on the other. And that's the theory of change. And we say, okay, food insecurity is a real thing. There are definite times when we want to do that kind of one way giving of goods and services. But the Bible's fundamental vision is not a soup kitchen where everyone gets fed, but a potluck where everybody brings a plate. So, like, if a soup kitchen divides the room up into givers and receivers. You can't have a potluck until everyone's a giver to everyone and a receiver from everyone. And that makes the community fundamental. Now, that's a long way around to say. My friends in Kenya know that deep in their bones and I'm on like baby step kindergarten level, learning it because we've been disabled into that western homo economicus. I am fundamentally a pleasure maximizing individual. We have trouble getting just how communally oriented the Bible is. My friends in Kenya do not have that problem. Right. They get it. And so the first thing I would say is when we're interacting with saints in the Global South, we should expect that in many ways their economic discipleship, they will be further along that journey than we will be because they have experienced less deforming discipleship from this kind of hyper individualistic economic way of being. And so I was part of a phenomenal church in Nairobi, and it brought together people from all these tribal and ethnic groups that really don't like each other outside the church. And we would have these potlucks and you would see everyone giving and receiving, and you would see the community becoming central to who we were. We were becoming family. And I think that picture of becoming family is central not only to the Bible's kingdom vision, but to the Bible's kingdom economic vision. And so, you know, one thing I think is when we think about how to invest, well, we need to defer a lot to the folks on the ground from the places where we want to participate. So often the and I say this as a former missionary, so, you know, I'm not trying to cast guilt somewhere else. It is so easy, so often for us outsiders to come, assuming we have all the answers because we are wealthier. And wealth is the sign of success. So really deferring to the folks on the ground, not only because they're closer to the issues, but also because sometimes they're just less screwed up than Jared comes. The money is really important. Also, I really am excited about folks who are investing in people in the global South's ability to bring their best plate to the potluck through their economic lives. Right? So there is a ton of need for food aid. There's a ton of need for health aid. There's an argument for direct giving in a variety of contexts. But I also think it's really exciting. And Christians are involved in the Global South in the way that allow people to bring their best plate to the potluck through their own energies and agency. So the trauma center has done incredible work helping some of the poorest people on the planet start savings groups. And the stories of these usually women who gather together and pool their resources are just amazing, you know? And I have friends in Kenya who are starting businesses in some of the poorest neighborhoods in Nairobi to try to help people who are in a community with just incredible unemployment find dignified work. And there are people you know, one of the reasons why I shifted away from like sort of direct nonprofit work into more teaching is because I realized sort of my gifts and where they are and where I'm strongest and where I'm not strong. So, you know, for people in the Faith Driven Entrepreneur and Faith Driven Investor network who are geniuses at figuring out how to make things work economically. And some of those folks. There are good ways of investing financially in businesses in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere. And I'm not an expert on that, but I think participating in that is really important. And I think when we go to invest in the Global South financially, we're partner with companies in the Global South. Economically, it's more important than ever to remember that just as God calls us to be risky and sacrificial with our giving at the end of our economic productive output. God might be calling us to be risky and sacrificial in the way we invest and partner and do business in those places as well, especially since there can be enormous roadblocks to doing all of that. So, I mean, those are some quick intuitions, although I'm certainly not an expert anymore at kind of thinking about that in a global context.
Luke Roush: There's so much to unpack there. We could spend a ton of time, but I love the idea of taking the last five or 6 minutes that we have and going lightning around. This is something that Henry and I just recently started doing. We both are really liking it. So I'm going to start off and then I'm going to turn to Guy Henry. He's gonna follow my lead better than I followed his lead last time. So first up, 30 seconds or less. Author you most disagree with and why?
Michael Rhodes: And author I'm so agree with and why.
Luke Roush: Yeah, just for the support of it.
Henry Kaestner: Just show somebody who's left. That's easy. Just showing things.
Michael Rhodes: Um. Oh, gosh, throw bombs.
Luke Roush: We encourage you to throw bombs.
Michael Rhodes: I didn't know you could pass.
Henry Kaestner: You can pass at any point time you could pass.
Luke Roush: You got 10 seconds and I'll try.
Michael Rhodes: I'll tell you, I don't like people who think that we need to be encouraged to appreciate material possessions, people who think we're too worried about being affluent. That bothers me. I think a plain reading of the New Testament says if we're the most wealthy people that have ever existed on the planet and we are, we have some tough questions to answer. So any author that's trying to blunt that a little bit drives me bananas. I like.
Luke Roush: It. I like it. Okay, that's.
Michael Rhodes: Good. You can fill in those blanks. These days are on your own.
Luke Roush: All right. It's good. It's good. There's nobody on today's call, though, which is great. Second question what is the belief that you hold that most of the world would probably disagree with? 30 seconds or less go.
Michael Rhodes: In addition to the thing about every aspect of our life being an opportunity to bend sacrificially towards the kingdom. So every economic transaction gives us that opportunity potentially. In addition to that, I would say that where we live is a fundamental aspect of our discipleship and that if we want to experience real community, where we live will matter a lot.
Luke Roush: So defend. Okay, so this is good. This is good. And again, just for the support of it, defend moving to Auckland, New Zealand versus Nairobi, Kenya in that light.
Michael Rhodes: Yeah, that's a great question.
Henry Kaestner: Still in the global south.
Michael Rhodes: Well, for one thing, you know, God opens doors. So, you know, I applied to this school in Auckland as a practice interview going to Old Testament jobs on the planet. I didn't know I wanted an Old Testament job. I just thought I'd got a Ph.D. in that, so it was worth exploring. I got a third letter of rejection from one of them, and then the other one was from Kerry, which I knew nothing about. But then as soon as we started talking, I realized these people were looking for someone to teach Bible but oriented towards mission and justice, specifically on issues of economic and ethnic justice, which is my passion. And Tim were saying it's for a long time I have really felt I have lived in kind of a black, white world, partially because of the make up of Memphis. One thing that I know that I have missed is getting my mind around the experience of Native Americans in this country and First Nations peoples more generally. And our school is very committed to being bicultural among basically descendants of the Brits and the Maori Indigenous people of New Zealand. And so that emphasis really got me excited for what I could learn from them and that has already paid huge dividends. So that's that's a big improvement.
Luke Roush: Okay, I've got one more that I'm doing. My partner. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Versus New Testament write as an Old Testament scholar, given some of your talk track. Right. In terms of the realities of what Jesus said about sacrificial living, I would have expected you to be a New Testament scholar. How did you end up getting kicked out on Old Testament?
Michael Rhodes: Yeah, I think because it's easy to fit the New Testament into that give more away box, whereas the Old Testament, because it covers more ground across more different kinds of economic systems, it's sort of the earthier testament. And so it gets into the fundamentals of how you manage the entirety of your economic life. Now, I actually think that Jesus speaks to that like forgive us your debts, right? That's something I actually think we misread as to where they're sharing their goods. We read that wrong because we make it all about generosity. But I think the only reason why I know that stuff is because I really dug into the Old Testament. So I love Jesus, but I think you get Jesus best when you start with Moses and the prophets and move forward. So little bit by bit.
Luke Roush: Thank you, Henry. Over to you.
Henry Kaestner: Okay. Lightning around 30 seconds or less. Best ribs in Memphis.
Michael Rhodes: Cozy corner, no doubt.
Henry Kaestner: Really. Okay. All right. Next. Next, what flavor of ice cream do you like to have after a great Memphis dry rub? Ribs.
Michael Rhodes: Man, any ice cream? Sounds good. Now, I'm a sucker for strawberry ice cream these days.
Henry Kaestner: Where do you get it?
Michael Rhodes: In Memphis. There's a place called the Beauty Shop that has phenomenal ice cream.
Henry Kaestner: Okay.
Michael Rhodes: All right. Nashville Beginnings. Back in the day.
Luke Roush: A baby. Bring it, bring.
Henry Kaestner: Okay, Ecclesiastes. Does Ecclesiastes offer up that our economy is fueled by coveting another's goods?
Michael Rhodes: Okay. So Ecclesiastes is really tricky. Started talking about in 30 seconds. But basically what you have is the narrator telling us a story about the teacher, right? So the narrator gives us the story of the teachers wrestling. So I don't think you can take anything the teacher says without a grain of salt. Right. You're always going, where is the teacher in this journey that he's on? Right. But I do think he has a very poignant observations that much of our economic life is driven by greed and competitiveness. And what conservative Christians need to know is you can build in the short term a functional, effective, growing. Economy on set. That's what Ecclesiastes would remind us. So the fact that it works doesn't mean that it's good, right?
Henry Kaestner: So it's meaningless or it's meaningless under the Senate, right?
Michael Rhodes: That's right. It can be driven solely by, you know, what you're describing, wanting to be better and all that stuff.
Henry Kaestner: Okay. Could you play Brian Ficker basketball? Who wins?
Michael Rhodes: Uh, he fouls a lot, cheats, so.
Henry Kaestner: So you play it? It's happened.
Michael Rhodes: It's happened? Yeah. I've run down the court with him trying to grab my shorts. I mean, he's like, nine feet tall. You shouldn't need to do that.
Henry Kaestner: But I said, okay, okay. We're going to say that you get it next when you're ready. Yeah. Okay. How cool was it for the boy in the story of the five loaves and two fish? And is that something is available for us?
Michael Rhodes: Yeah. I mean, I think that question, you know, what's in your hand? You know, what do you have? I think that's a beautiful I think the surprising thing about the story of the good news is that God chooses to use people and he never gives up on that. And so often, you know, God chooses Adam and Eve and they rebel. God chooses Abraham as the vehicle of his blessing to all nations, the world, and they fail. And so where Israel is faithless on the whole, God sends the faithful Israelite Jesus, right? And so often we read the story of Scripture as God had these big plans for people, they mess it up. So Jesus came and now we're off the hook. And that is a garbage reading of the New Testament. The story of the Bible is that God sent Jesus to get His project of crewing his world back on track. That's why the end of Revelation God's people are co ruling with God in the end, because God wants to use people, which is incredible. And so would that boy with his few loaves and fishes is experiencing is a glimpse of what God invites all of us into, which is to be used to participate by the King in making everything that is broken, new. Right. What could be more exciting than that?
Henry Kaestner: Okay, Spectrum, you can go 8020, you can go 60, 40, 40, 60. But you got to end this spectrum as we allocate our investment capital. On one hand, there's Ben sacrificially. On the other hand, there's leaning into the joy that is available to us by participating in the work that God is doing. His Kingdom Where are you in the spec version of Christ, our being and that spectrum?
Michael Rhodes: I don't know that I see the spectrum. I think that bending sacrificially is part of how we participate joyfully.
Henry Kaestner: Well said. Well answered. Well answer. I love it. I refuse. I don't think I hemmed in by that.
Michael Rhodes: Yes, I don't think that means that we're not ever investing in ways that we expect to yield a good financial return. Right. And, you know, really honestly, one of the same is for me to come on to a podcast like this that has investors on it is to say, look, I'm a Bible scholar. I'm going to try to give you some principles. You're going to have to work it out, right? You are going to have to figure out how to do this. But what I know is when we invest our money, we often have the opportunity to exploit. Right. And we often have the opportunity to intentionally bend our investments to impact words the way that God wants his world. And that what I'm saying has got to be better for everyone, for the world, for me, for you. So we talk about impact investing in the book some this idea that we can intentionally invest in companies and in spaces that bend towards God's kingdom, that could look a lot of different ways, you know, that advance. Sometimes we were helping people invest in small businesses started by women and minorities in our neighborhood. Right. Sometimes that means taking more risk or potentially a lower return to do something that matters. In my neighborhood, I've been able to do impact investing by buying homes on two occasions in a residential economy. That does not work to try to help some of my neighbors become homeowners. That's hard. I've made a little money on that. I think on the current one, I'm going to lose a little money possibly. But man, I know the joy of getting to put my money to work, doing something that God cares about. And there are platforms. You guys, Henry, are running a platform. I think marketplace is a new opportunity for accredited investors.
Henry Kaestner: Okay, sounds too much like a commercial in your through the 30 seconds. As much as I love the fact that you're going there.
Michael Rhodes: You want. Can I give one more advertisement? Yes. Nice try. Not for you guys. So because Marketplace is only for accredited folks. Right. And so if you're not an accredited folks like me, I'm not. Kiva allows you to make zero interest lending and we funder is a platform that a friend of mine helps run. Johnny Price Yeah, exactly. Allows you to make equity investments in companies. So just this week, my family was able to make an investment in a company that's trying to turn restaurants into worker cooperatives. Man, I'm not going to make as much on that as I might make in the stock market. Whatever, man. What if the money that God gave me I got to use to build an economy that he's going to be more excited about? And that's awesome. Yeah, it is. But you guys, it's you guys and your constituents, you're going to have to work out the details, right? Because I'm just a Bible teacher and.
Luke Roush: Hey, we always like to wrap up with something that God is teaching you and that you've discovered recently, in God's Word, a whole bunch of good nuggets from our podcast that would suggest and point to different things. But one thing that God's taught you recently.
Michael Rhodes: Well, I'll say two things. I am working on a new book right now on justice and studying justice in Proverbs. I've been really struck by this idea in the Bible. I think that justice and wisdom go together. And so if you seek justice without wisdom, it ends up being powerless. But if you seek wisdom without justice, it ends up being predatory. And I really want to meditate on what that means for my economic life for a while. And then also I'm on a couple of years journey in the Psalms of realizing just how much God wants a relationship with us, that he not only will say, Hey, Michael, you can say anything you want to say to me. He'll give me some scripts that require me to say some crazy stuff to him so that I can learn just how vulnerable God and I can be in our relationship together. And that includes scripts from the Psalms that have us asking God about where he is and why he hasn't shown up and whether justice is really working in the world. So those are some things I've been thinking about and writing about and they have touched me personally recently.
Henry Kaestner: Michael is awesome to be with you. Thank you very, very much. Heavenly Father, bless Michael and his family as they get ready to move, go in front of him to just be with him, to make new friends and to be able to have just great relationships with his students. And dear Lord, please speak to them. Continue to speak to them from your word in the Old Testament, the beauty from there and the wisdom that comes in mixed with justice and may your kingdom come on Earth as it is in heaven, in Jesus name. Amen.
Luke Roush: Amen. Amen. Amen.
Michael Rhodes: Thanks, guys.