RCC 2021 Guidelines to Ethical InvestingParting Thought
Every dollar we manage is ultimately God’s treasure, entrusted to us for His purposes. As Christians, our financial decisions should reflect our faith, guided by virtues like courage and prudence, ensuring that we honor God not just with our words but also with our wallets.
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Greatest Theology Newsletter on the Planet
Transcript
Remy: Should be it. Yeah. This is live. So anyway, the way my apartment is set up behind me over here is the kitchen and then that's my front door.
Daniel: Oh, funny.
Remy: So I can't. This is the only place I can put my computer because it's like an open floor plan. Oh.
Daniel: Yeah.
Remy: So I just have the old shower curtain. I. It's funny, I. Sometimes I put it like upside down or sideways so, like the books are wrong and so far no one has noticed.
Daniel: So, I mean, I would have noticed, brother.
Backgrounds are kind of fun, man. It's like I spent a lot of time on my background actually.
You can actually see some of my artifacts. I have a lot. Quite a collection of artifacts. We can talk about that too.
Remy: Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, so far the only thing that I'm getting out of this is that you're a Catholic billionaire. Once again, that's.
That's, that's what I'm getting.
Daniel: I don't think that's a good idea.
Remy: I.
I don't have artifacts. No, no.
Daniel: You talk about that a little bit. I. It's funny. Every year I try to find one or two topics that I both know nothing about and have no interest in. And my theory is I don't have an interest in it because I don't know anything about it. Everything, in a way, is fascinating if you really think about it. I think, yeah. And one year, this is years ago I thought, you know, I don't know anything about Egypt and I have less than zero interest in Egypt. I started taking some online courses and I found basically it was the love of my life. It was one of the most fascinating subjects I've ever studied. And wow, dove in head first and started collecting artifacts. Went to Egypt a bunch of time. Been to Egypt. You know, that's like much times. It's fine. It's great. Archaeologists and stuff out there helped me out and done a little digging.
Remy: Wow. So this actually, I think initially we were going to talk about finance because that's what you do.
Daniel: Yeah, right.
Remy: But it actually, this gets me into.
I joke about you being a Catholic billionaire or whatever, but you are an incredibly successful person.
Daniel: Thank you.
Remy: I would say financially, materially, like in the world, but also familially. You seem pretty.
Daniel: Thank you.
Remy: Pretty successful. It seems like you get a good family and spiritually as well. You're. You seem to be a very well studied, devout Catholic.
Daniel: Thank you.
Remy: So I guess. Well, it's, it's just the truth, man. It's just what I'm seeing and I I, I guess what I want to ask is. So like, you appear to be a very high functioning individual. Yeah, you said you're very regimented and all that. Uh, do you think that's, do you think that's part of it? Do you think that's required for attaining a certain level of success or, or what have you?
Daniel: It's an interesting question. You know, it's like a chicken the egg kind of situation, isn't it? Yeah.
You know, Nassim Taleb, I think his name is, he wrote a book called Fooled by Randomness. It's a very good book actually. The first 2/3 of it's very good. The last third is. Gets in a little philosophy and he doesn't know what he's talking about, but he's an economist, a statistician, and it's not a math book per se. There's a little bit of math in it. But he makes an interesting argument. He basically says that success is randomized and that we over emphasize our contribution to the success of whatever it is. He's talking about portfolio management, but he kind of extrapolates it to other areas of life too.
Remy: You know, studies have shown that.
Daniel: Oh yeah, oh, oh yeah. And then people who become successful, you know, we just get pride and arrogance and think, well, you know, I did all this and the reality is you're born in the right place at the right time, the right parents and you know, this and that happened. What we would think is seemingly random. It's not, of course, it's God's will, but you know, the sun shines on the good and the evil alike and the rain falls and the good and evil of like. And so it's. I would not say that my quote unquote, financial success or career success or things like that is indicative of some hidden trait or characteristic that I have that I could reveal to your audience or to you. I mean, and everybody can just apply that and suddenly it works.
I mean, I certainly have some peculiarities of the way in which I engage in the world professionally and personally and other things too.
I'm not a goal setter, for example, I mean, a lot of people are like, you know what?
Remy: She's.
Daniel: I watch these like TikTok videos and it's like somebody telling you, you do these three things and you're going to be successful. And one of them is like set goals or something. I'm not, I'm more of a virtue guy. So. And the idea is we lean into the virtues because whatever comes our way, it's filtered through the lens of virtue and works out to our benefit. So, you know, if you're a courageous man because you've practiced courage your whole life, you know, whatever comes, you can apply that particular skill like a violinist can apply the skill of playing a violin. If you have practiced courage and other virtues and things like that, you just apply those to the decision in front of you. And I think the outcomes are generally better.
Remy: Yeah.
Have you read the Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell?
Daniel: No, I'm familiar with it.
My favorite business book is Nicomachean Ethics, which is Aristotle, but that's a whole other thing.
Remy: Yeah, well, so it's, it's not necessarily a business book either. It's just, it's just about sort of general success and winners and losers and what makes winners and losers. And it's fascinating because you take someone like Bill Gates and you say, oh, well, he, you know, he started Microsoft in his parents garage.
Daniel: Right?
Remy: Well, he did, but prior to that he also had completely free and unlimited access all through high school to the MIT computer lab because of a guy his dad knew. And that like, that makes a significant difference in his story. Right, like, so there it's, it's the idea that we are in fact fooled by randomness. We, yeah, we think he was the guy that worked hard and you know, camp, but really he just, he had a good connection and was able to leverage that.
Daniel: Well, you know, it's evidenced in the story. Morgan Housel wrote a book too, called the Psychology of Money. Highly recommend that I recommend anybody I work with professionally read that book.
Morgan Housel. H O U S E L Anyways, he's a finance journalist and he wrote about Bill Gates too. And he said, you know, there are three guys. It was Bill Gates and what was his partner?
Gosh, forgot his name off the top of my head. Anyways, there were these three kids, they were in high school and they were interested in computers and the PTA got together and built some computers for the. Or bought some computers for the school, which allowed him to really flourish in what he should have been doing. One of the three guys, Balmer. Ballmer's the other guy. Right. So not Ballmer. So there was a third Wozniak, was it Wozniak? Yeah, yeah, yeah, Maybe that's what it is. But there was a third guy who wasn't, who was also in the high school but didn't end up owning Microsoft because he died. Actually, I think his senior year of high school.
Remy: Wozniak was Apple. I'm sorry.
Daniel: Yeah, now it was apple, but he died in his, like, senior year on a rock climbing thing he was doing. And so, you know, here he had this random chance event where this guy who probably would have been just as brilliant and successful as Bill Gates, doesn't even get to see adulthood. And that had nothing to do with capability. And so there is a randomness to things that we under emphasize. It's not really random. I mean, as men of faith, we know that it's the Lord's doing, per se. It's his will.
Remy: It's one of the things I say. So right now I'm taking my church adult Bible study through Ecclesiastes. And one of the. One of the things that keeps getting hammered throughout the book, richness and poverty. And like the, you know, around chapter three or four, Solomon talks about the. A young man who was imprisoned as a youth, and then he grows up to be king, but by the time he becomes king, he forgets what it was like to be in prison. And there's this idea that, you know, you said God makes it rain and shine on good and evil alike. And there's this idea that everything God does for you is to draw you to him. So when you are successful, God aligns the car, the. The stars, as it were. He stacks the deck to give you success so that you would say, I don't deserve this. I. This all came from the hand of God. And when things strike you down, you say, I need God to help me get through this. But no matter what, you're always trying to lean on God.
Daniel: Yeah.
Remy: And that's why God gives reward and punishment, favor. And. And this disfavor.
Daniel: Yeah.
Remy: Is always to draw people to Him.
Daniel: Right.
Remy: There's better.
Daniel: It's for our better. I mean, he. God is love. What is love but to will the good of another? What is the highest good? God himself. And so God is always trying to pull him to the highest poles, to the highest good. Just God himself. I think that's clear in my life, at least in my experience, in my faith.
But. Yeah, so, I don't know. I think there's something to be said for randomness. And I don't think there's like three easy tips to make it in life.
Remy: Worth a shot anyway.
Daniel: I mean, I have some tips and tricks, but I wouldn't say they're so broad. I mean, there are some broad tips and tricks.
Remy: How deep. How deep into crypto do I need to get?
Daniel: You know, I get asked that a lot when I'm on podcasts.
I owned a crypto mining company at one point, and this was a while ago with my best friend, actually, hence my, my profile name on Twitter, Venture Co Mining. That was the name of our crypto mining company.
Remy: Gotcha.
Daniel: It was kind of fun. I mean, it worked out well for us.
I have strong opinions about crypto. You, you know. Well, some strong opinions. I don't think it's a currency. A lot of people say, well, it's a currency. You know, it's like a dollar. Not really.
So if you think about a bitcoin, for example, if I were to say, you know, hey, dude, I'm going to sell. I'm going to sell you this car and you've got bitcoins, and you say, well, I'll give you 0.24783 bitcoins. And what do I do? In my head, I then Translate that to US dollars. Right, right.
You don't do that with the US dollar. If someone says, I'm going to give you 2,000 bucks, you don't then translate into something else. You just know, 2,000 bucks. But we are always having to take crypto and convert it back into US dollar for it to have true currency value or meaning at all. And so there's, there's a disconnect there. It's not to say that that crypto is not useful. It is useful.
It's useful as a speculative instrument. Clearly, I mean, people have made billions and billions of dollars on this. It's a trillion dollar market now, still tiny relative to currency, but it's not a currency, in my opinion.
Remy: Fascinating.
Yeah, I guess you're right. I guess you're right. Because if I were to use anything like chickens, you know, I'll give you this car. Great. I'll give you, you know, how many, how many chickens is a car? You know, it's a figure. A $20,000 car, five bucks a chicken.
Daniel: Right.
Remy: You know? Yeah.
Daniel: What you. All you've done is you've just reverted back to a bartering system, right?
Remy: Yeah. You're just.
Daniel: Currencies are like down the line, you know.
Remy: Yeah, yeah. Well, because the point of currency is to give you. So you don't have to barter. Right. It's. It's something you can all use. Yeah, yeah.
Daniel: To store value. And, you know, the other problem is the volatility. The volatility on crypto is so high. And so you never really know what your currency is worth. Not really. It's constantly moving fast and up and down. A lot currencies need to Be relatively stable. And that's the trade off. Like we trade the stability of the US Dollar in exchange for consistent inflation.
That's the trade off. So you get the inflation, so you get the devaluation of the currency over a long period of time relative to goods and services. But you have very high stability. So you know what it's worth all the time. And that's the point of currency.
So that's why I'm a US dollar guy more than a crypto guy.
Remy: Yeah.
The most fascinating money fact I ever learned was I had a guy at my last job who gave me. He went to Trinidad to visit his wife's parents. That's where they're from. And he came back and he gave me a Trinidadian dollar. And it was a polymer bill.
Daniel: Oh, true.
Remy: And it's really cool. And I've seen, like speculative designs for polymer bills for the US And I see Canadian polymer bills. And all of a sudden I said, well, why don't we, why don't we use this? And I looked it up and based, correct me if I'm wrong, but based on my understanding, countries that use polymer bills have the ability to cancel bills. So if they find that this specific 20 is always being counterfeited, they can cancel that, take it out of circulation and issue a new kind of 20. But in the US all dollar bills are legal tender.
Daniel: Right.
Remy: So if you have a dollar bill from 1907 that's been stuffed in your mattress from your great great grandpa, you can still spend it. It still spins today.
Daniel: That's a very interesting point. I didn't know that. But, you know, there's, there's something to be said about the security of these advanced denominations all over the globe. But very few transactions are cash, like, relative to the total trade in the world. So currency fraud, you know, Iran, Iran is known to print hundred dollar bills. They do that. We know they do that.
And then they just distribute them in order to, you know, generate currency. Generate money for themselves, frankly.
But it doesn't really matter that much because, you know, when you're trading three shiploads of oil, you know, it's like you're bringing in, you know, wheelbarrows of cash. I mean, it's a digital transaction, which is really, really hard to do fraud on. But it happens occasionally, I would assume. But I've never heard of it.
Remy: Fascinating. What's the biggest financial mistake you see people making?
Daniel: Oh, wow, that's an interesting question. This is broad. You know, finance is broad topic. It's like medical, like what's what? Biggest medical mistakes? Depends on the topic, I suppose.
Remy: Smoking.
Daniel: Yeah, yeah, yeah, smoking's up there. 40%. I just read it like a 40% increase in the probability of death in any one year if you're a. A regular smoker.
Remy: Whoa.
Daniel: Yeah. 40 increase over the baseline, right? Yeah. 1.0 equals 1.4.
Well, I could break it down into categories. First and foremost, not understanding who you are as a human being in relation to your money is a massive error. And here's what I mean by that. Well, back in 1987, I think it was. 87, yeah. Black Monday. Minus 22% on the S&P 500. Bad day. Warren Buffett wrote a letter, very famous letter to his shareholders, and I am not a Warren Buffett fan. We can come back to that, too.
He wrote a very famous letter and he said, when everyone is greedy, we are fearful. And when everyone is fearful, we are greedy. And basically what he was saying is prices are low and everyone's scared, we buy them and vice versa. Buy low, sell high. But the way he's framing it actually is really interesting because he's saying it's a behavioral question. It's the application of behavior to the finance that makes the difference. And in order to apply proper behavioral finance techniques to your decision making, you have to understand your biases, you know, where you're kind of coming from, you know, your money, DNA of sorts. And a lot of people go into the financial markets having no idea what their blind spots are.
I like to say you really need the three T's to manage money properly. Time, talent, and temperament. Three T's. A lot of people have time. Even more people have the talent. Temperament's tough one. And that relates to behavioral finance. And so one of the things that I advocate for folks to do is not to jump between fear and greed and then from greed to fear. Because if you are consistently fearful and consistently greedy, you become a fearful and greedy person.
This is a bad way to live.
Remy: Yeah.
Daniel: Instead, I think rather than making that mistake, I think you apply the virtues. So you know, what is a good virtue to counter fear? Well, courage, of course. Courage is the first virtue. And so when you feel that instinct of fear, you know, this kind of, oh, no, it's going to keep going down, feeling, you know, I'm going to lose everything. Well, you pick yourself up by the bootstraps and you lean forward and you do the right thing.
That's courage. Well, and you have. The other issue is being greedy. How do you counter this instinct of greed? And everybody has these, but you lean kind of one way or the other. Everybody I work with, money managers, professionals, non professionals alike, it doesn't matter. We all have a tendency to lead or lean one way or the other. Usually we're like more aggressive or we're more fearful. So we're either greedy or we're fearful. Well, the way we counter greed is with prudence. So when you have that moment where you open up your Bitcoin statement online or whatever and you say, oh my goodness, I've doubled my money in three days, I want more of that good feeling.
Well, we take a step back. We don't need the feeling at all. Let's just look at this with right reason. That's prudence. And so the turning off of emotion is a very difficult thing to do. And it takes a lifetime really to learn that well, and you probably will never master it. I never mastered it. But I'd say the number one mistake people make is engaging in these things without knowing who they are as persons. For example, I'll meet somebody and they'll say, you know what? I don't believe in debt. Like Ramsey, what's his name? They'll say, I don't believe in debt. Well, this is a silly thing. It's like saying to a doctor, I don't believe in scalpels.
Debt is just a tool. A scalpel is just a tool to perform the surgery, the same as debt. But my point is we learn these things from our parents and then society, you know, Kramer and Ramsey, the world there's constantly feeding us more and more information and that builds us up as investors of this is who I am. I don't believe this. I do believe that. I don't believe this. I don't believe that. You know, biases and not understanding those is a recipe for disaster. And I, and I'd argue, Remy, that the number one determining factor for financial success, especially in portfolio management, is not whether you picked Coke over Pepsi or Bitcoin over Ethereum. It's behavior. It's when you bought and when you sold. How that, how your influences affected your decision making process, that's going to have a tremendous effect on your financial success. It's why these people that, oh, you know, they, they, they dabble in the market, so they dabble in theory. It's like dabbling in medicine or dabbling in dentistry. It's like, okay, I mean, you can do that. Folks in the industry will make fun of you, right? But that's fine. And it's like, why? How come they always have $10,000. Why don't they ever turn 10,000 into 20 million? Why is that so rare? It's rare because the behaviors and the. And the values of the person are. Are also rare.
Remy: So you're not a Dave Ramsey fan?
Daniel: No, I mean, I've never met the guy. I'm sure he's a wonderful person.
Remy: I'm sure he's nice enough.
Daniel: I hope so.
Remy: Yeah.
Daniel: I did hear a story though that he pulled out a gun in a staff meeting. I've never done that in a staff meeting.
Remy: Oh my God.
Daniel: Yeah, yeah, look it up. I don't google it or whatever, but I guess he did that. It was like a whole controversy or something. That seems kind of crazy and dramatic. But no, I mean, I think this is a guy who has failed bank, he has filed bankruptcy, he lives in a trillion dollar house and has used debt. And you know, so I find it a bit hypocritical.
Remy: Well, okay. So the important thing, and it's. Yeah, Dave Ramsey's a soapbox for me. It's not that. It's not that like his snowball thing doesn't work. Like if you have a high load of personal debt. It does work.
My wife and I used it to offload a serious amount of debt. That from stupid financial decisions.
Daniel: Sure.
Remy: But the problem is his advice going forward. His financial advice going forward after getting out of relative debt because people don't understand. Dave Ramsey did not get into debt the way you got into debt. Yeah, right. That's true, Dave. So you got into debt because you got a bunch of credit cards when you were young and didn't know any better and maxed them all out and bought a card.
Daniel: I did that.
Remy: Yeah. That's how Dave Ramsey. That's not how Dave Ramsey got into debt. He got into debt because he was flipping 90 day. 90 day loans. And then there was that crisis in the 80s and there was a lot of housing regulation that came down and all of his lenders on commercial properties. I believe he had 90 day mortgages on million dollar commercial properties in the 80s. They all came due.
Daniel: Yeah.
Remy: That's how Dave Ramsey got into debt. Which is significantly different than how I got into debt.
A credit card. So yeah. And then Dave Ramsey got out of debt different than he's telling you to get out of debt. That's the other important piece. Dave Ramsey didn't get out of debt and get rich by snowballing his debt. He got out of debt and got rich by selling you a get out of debt course.
Daniel: This is very true. And, you know, and I think there's something kind of gross about getting rich that way.
It's not my style, per se, and I wish them well. And your story of getting out of debt resonates. I mean, I know a lot of folks that have used Ramsey's ideas to improve their lives and their debt situations and. Cool, you know, kudos to him for that.
What I don't like is, for example, he has this like, financial advisor referral program that he does where you basically pay to be on a list and you become like an approved financial advisor with Ramsey and then they feed you leads and, you know, it's just kind of. I find that a little bit scummy. Yeah, actually a lot bit scummy. I don't like conflicts of interest when you're handling other people's money.
So, you know, he has things like that that I don't really like. And I think he pray maybe preys upon is a too severe of a phrase, but I think you get my point. Yeah, kind of praise upon the Christian community.
Remy: You know, I don't think praise upon is too severe at all. I think it's exactly what he does. I think it's 100%.
Daniel: He.
Remy: He lets churches buy his course in bulk.
Daniel: Yeah, you know, Yeah, I don't like that. And I work, specifically, my work is with Catholic institutions for asset management. And so, you know, I see these parishes, they. They bring, you know, a version of him into their parish and, you know, everybody gets sold a bill of goods and it's mediocre at best. I mean, that's maybe being optimistic. It's mediocre financial advice. It's. There's no such thing as financial advice that works for everyone. So it's like, even you ask me, like, what's the number one mistake that people make? Well, you know, it kind of depends upon the person too. I mean, each person has their own fun mistakes that they get to make that are unique to them in a lot of ways. And the same is true for the advice that can get you out of it. There's a reason that financial advice is done on a one to one basis and isn't super effective on the Susie Orman kind of reach everybody style. Even though they'll say some things that are of use, it's just not the way it's meant to be. Just like medical advice, you know, it's this. It's a similar type of animal. You know, if some doctor gets on the radio and says everyone should take a baby Aspirin. Well, no, that's not true. Not everyone should avoid debt. That's, you know, that's not true. So there's a bespoke nature to investment management, financial planning. That's.
Remy: I remember. I. I read his book.
Daniel: Yeah.
Remy: And there's a part in it where he talks about when you get to be as rich as him by just socking away, like, you know, 500amonth or whatever. You know, you'll get to be a multi billionaire like Dave Ramsey maybe. And when you, when you get there. He said the best part of it is being self insured is what he said. Okay. He was like, I don't have life insurance. I don't have health insurance. I'm self insured because I'm so rich I can just pay for it. Right.
Daniel: Must be nice.
Remy: Yeah.
Daniel: It's not reality.
Remy: Yeah. I was like, that's actually really. That was the part that was when I started, like, really paying attention, because I was like, that doesn't sound. That doesn't sound right. Like, I can't think of a time in my life where I can't think of an amount of money I would ever have where I would not want health insurance. Still.
Daniel: No, I don't have health insurance, but. But I have a health share program.
Remy: Exactly.
Daniel: Yeah. So it's.
Remy: Right.
Daniel: Not health insurance, per se. But, you know, it doesn't fund, you know, transgender surgeries and abortion and stuff like that.
Remy: But if you get into medical trouble, they help you pay the bill. Oh, yeah. Or they reimburse you or something like that.
Daniel: Oh, yeah, I've used it. Yeah. My family.
Remy: My brother. My brother had one of those. I think it was a Catholic thing like that. And he had his son that way. And they, they fronted the bill, but they submitted it to the. And they. People all around the world. Yeah, just people all around the world donated. That was basically what it was. It was a big donation network.
Daniel: Yep. And you pray for each other and all that kind of stuff. It's actually really cool.
Remy: Yeah.
Daniel: But, you know, if you spend $4,000 on a medical bill, you get, you know, ten $400 checks from different folks to pay for it, you know, over the course of a couple months. But you do have to. But, you know, mostly the hospitals will carry it anyways. You don't have to front it, per se. But, you know, I'm a big believer in an integrated life. And so even your health insurance needs to fit your values, and that's difficult in the United States, but not impossible.
Remy: Yeah.
Daniel: Yeah.
Remy: Well. And Just about healthcare. A lot of people don't realize that many hospitals will just write it off.
Like if you just call them and ask them, they'll write it off because they, they. A lot of them have a nonprofit arm and they have a lot of money that they specifically need to spend by the end of the year.
Daniel: That's true. And they, they always offer cash discounts. I mean, that's something everybody can get. You know, it's usually.
Remy: I got, I was hospitalized a couple of years ago. I passed out and I hit my head on the way down. And so then they wanted me to be. It was just like a vasovagal thing, you know what I mean? Like, I stood up too fast and I passed out and I hit my head. But they wanted to keep me overnight. And the bill on it ended up being it was like 21 or $23,000 for all the tests and the overnight stay and everything.
My insurance picked up all, but I think 4800 of it. And I called the hospital and said, hey, I can't give you $4,800. And they said, can you give us $500? And I said yes. And they said, good enough, we'll pay the rest. Great, thanks.
Daniel: Okay, that's cool.
Remy: You just sometimes just got to call and ask. I mean.
Daniel: Yeah, well, there's a lot of Christian hospitals too. That, that, that's missionary for them. You know, it's. You know, it's a non denominational too. It's just the way they operate.
Remy: I was reliably informed that it was the atheists that did the hospitals.
Daniel: Oh, yeah, that's what I. That's right. Yeah, I see that meme too, but I don't think that's accurate.
Remy: It's not.
Daniel: Oh, Twitter, X, whatever.
Remy: It's the worst, dude. It's the worst.
Daniel: Yeah, I saw Trent Horn, you know Trent Horn, competitor, you know, he's got the Gansers direct competitors, but he, he just kind of like deleted his social media. He's not even like doing Twitter.
Remy: Good for him, dude. Honestly.
Daniel: Well, I'm addicted. I can't. If I were, I'd have withdrawals.
Remy: I same.
Daniel: Am I gonna yell at. I have to yell at somebody. So I got online.
Remy: I had a. I had a thread today go viral with. Within the Roman Catholic community.
Daniel: Oh, lucky you. I'm sure that's a delight to read.
Remy: Dude, it's like every 20 minutes I look at my phone and I have 800 notifications and it's like, it's just a whole bunch of people telling me Luther's in hell.
Daniel: Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah, it's bizarre, to be frank. I mean, I don't run into these people. Like, I try to find. I've kind of tried to find them a little bit like the world, dude, they must be somewhere. It's the ones with the anime pictures. Oftentimes not all of them. I'm sure there's some people. I don't even know what anime is, but I'm sure they're. I'm 45. I guess it's a kid thing maybe, but I'm sure there's, like. There's like, an anime thing about it where they have, like, an anime picture and then there's. There's flags. Like either a church flag of some kind and usually like a monarchist thing, or there's just some. My profile is equally crazy, but there's like, a different kind of crazy. And you're like, what is this? There's, like, this brand of Catholicism and orthodoxy. I see it there. I don't know if I see it in the Lutheran so much. There's not that many guys, but okay, so. Oh, the Nazi thing, that's a whole other thing, you know, But I never meet these people. They almost be, like, 19 or something like that. They just. We just don't run in the same circles or something.
Remy: They're a lot of them. And so. And when I was. When I was young, I was also dumb and.
Daniel: But look at you now.
Remy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Slightly less dumb. I'm not dumb, but I know to shut my mouth. Mouth. So people think I'm smarter than I am. Right. There's. There's no. There's something to. First off, getting married.
Daniel: Right.
Remy: Getting married changes your perspective on a lot of things because here's another person that you have to sacrifice for. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And I'm sure we. We never had kids, but I'm sure having kids amplifies it even more, where it's like, here's another person that I actually give everything for. Yeah.
Daniel: Yeah. I got four kids and a wife. And.
Yeah. There is something about marriage, kids, or military that mature a man.
Remy: Yeah.
Daniel: And, you know, with the delay on marriage and, you know, relative peace, it's volunteer army and all that. We don't have, you know, 34. Yeah. Conscription, all that kind of stuff.
There is something. There's something missing, you know, And I don't want to be like, the guy scolding the young people like, oh, you know, back in my day, you know, But, I mean, I was an absolute idiot when. I'm still an idiot, but I was a super idiot when I was 19 years old. I can't even. I. I am so grateful that there was not social media. Could you imagine the nonsense that I would have written?
Remy: Yeah.
Daniel: When I was 19. I write nonsense now, but like when I was 19, oh my goodness, it would have been. I'd never had a job. I would never gotten a job.
Remy: Dude, I am glad that my original Facebook profile is gone forever because I deleted it before they started, like, saving everything. And then at some point, MySpace got bought out.
Daniel: Oh, yeah.
Remy: And my MySpace profile is gone, thank God.
Daniel: Yeah, yeah. Do you put your favorite song up there or something or something like that?
Remy: Oh, yeah. Your top eight friends or whatever.
Daniel: Yeah, yeah. Well, I don't have any friends, so it's easy for me. But you know, in all seriousness, there. There is something weird about X and this, this movement that's been happening over the last six months. And it's. It began with that psychopath Nazi Karen guy, the Lutheran guy. Got excommunicated by. You guys.
Remy: Mahler.
Daniel: Mahler. It really kind of. I mean, he used to be like Persona non grata and everybody just mocked the guy and like. And then suddenly, like, it became normal. Like it's a normal thing to see on Twitter, like full on Nazi propaganda.
Remy: Yeah. What happened?
Daniel: Something changed.
Remy: Elon Musk bought it, dude. I'm not lying.
No, really, because he bought it. And look, I'm not saying. I'm not saying that his, like, Trust and Safety Council that, that Jack Dorsey had set up.
Daniel: Right.
Remy: Was good because they were. What they were doing was silencing anybody who is even slightly right of center was getting banned and suspended.
Daniel: That's right.
Remy: But my old profile.
Daniel: Banned.
Remy: Yeah. Well, Elon Musk, though, the problem is he's come in and done the now. The pendulum is swinging the other way now. Nobody gets banned for anything.
Daniel: Yeah.
Remy: And it's like, dude, there's. There's a. There's a happy medium that we can have here. There's some stuff you just. I'm sorry, you shouldn't be allowed to say.
Daniel: Yes, I think I agree with you.
It's funny. I waffle between, like, free speech guy and like. Nah, I think that guy should be arrested for saying that. I'm like, both extremes.
Remy: Yeah, it's. It's. Dude, I don't know, man. I. So it's. Well, so like in the financial market, let's put it this way. And, And I'm not saying I'm not saying we shouldn't have free speech. We should have free speech. Yeah. But like, in the financial markets, there's regulation.
Oh, yeah, right. Okay. So I'm not saying we should regulate free speech, but what I am saying is Twitter needs regulation. I'm saying these companies that give people platforms, they ought to have regulation. There ought to be regulation on that.
Daniel: Yeah, I agree. Because it's interesting, because I think one of the arguments that the absolutist free speech folks would argue would say is if you tamp it down, it grows like a mushroom, and you just don't see it.
Like, it's kind of almost like making martyrs of folks.
Remy: Yeah.
Daniel: And I think that was true under the Jack Dorsey reign under Musk. He's obviously taken the opposite tact, and that is allow everyone to say everything at any time without basically any restriction, unless there's like, maybe threats or something. Maybe. I don't even know if that is even regulated.
But it's also grown like a mushroom. Just. I have to see it. Which makes it more annoying.
Remy: Yeah, well, and it's. There's. Man, there's this.
I.
I don't know, man, people. People used to get bullied when I grew up. Oh, yeah, you said something stupid and all your friends laughed at you and never lived it down. But you know what you learned was not to say things like that anymore. Now, thanks to just sort of the Internet in general, anyone can find an echo chamber where there's a hundred other lonely, sad people that believe the exact same weird thing you believe about the moon being made of cheese. And now here we all are.
It's.
Daniel: Or. Or like the Luther thing. That is strange. That is strange, because in the circles that I run one, we don't even talk about Luther. It's like, not even in our. Just not. It's 500 years ago, too.
Remy: So it's like, yeah, Every single Roman Catholic I know in real life, I'm very good friends with.
Daniel: Right, Right.
Remy: None of us care.
Daniel: There's just other, like, underclass. I don't know where these people are, but I don't run into them very often.
In fact, maybe never. And I literally work in the Catholic Church, so it's like, I talk with Catholics all day long, and they are all over the spectrum, but that part of it, I just seem to miss that. And I'm sure they're there. They're out there somewhere. Maybe they don't even go to Mass. I don't know.
Remy: Well, and here's the thing, right? So people, like the the weird neo Nazi Lutherans, the weird ethnic nationalist orthodox, the weird anti Luther Romans, what have you. All of these people that are so vocal online, I guarantee you they're people that get all of their theology from the Internet. They don't read the Bible, they don't read books by actual theologians. They, what they do is they read book reviews about books.
Daniel: Yes.
Remy: On Twitter. And that's where they get all of their theology. They don't have any practice because they're not married, they don't have vocations, they don't live in the world. So they don't have any practice interacting and applying this theology on a daily basis.
Daniel: That's.
Remy: That's what it is. And the solution.
Daniel: They've never been punched in the mouth before.
Remy: Yeah, no, honestly, I mean, I'm dead serious.
Daniel: Like, that's like a part of like growing up to me was like, oh, yeah, well, you know what? Sometimes you get hit because you say something really stupid.
Remy: Yeah, yeah.
Daniel: But that, that doesn't happen anymore. Which, you know, maybe it shouldn't, but there's, you know, side effects of this. But I, it's like when I, when I interact with the set of a Cantus, I don't think I've ever met one in real life. I mean, that's. They're that rare.
Remy: Yeah.
Daniel: But online they're very loud. And I say, you know, your, your what your religion is a website, basically. That's literally what your religion is. It's literally like a website.
Remy: And you know, you know, you're well read. You'll understand this the more you study something like that.
So I'm in my second year of seminary. I'm about to start my third year of seminary.
Thank you.
And the deeper I get into studying the confessions, reading Lutheran theologians, reading the church fathers, the more I get into particular theological issues, the more I realize that half of the people that are talking about these issues online have no idea what they're talking about.
Daniel: That's right.
Remy: They have never interacted with a primary source. They do not even understand the argument that's actually happening.
Daniel: Right. Let alone read the language that it's written in.
Remy: Yeah, no, honestly.
Yeah. Well, you see, like a lot of these guys that want to, they want to bandy about various in, in our circles, early American Lutheran theologians or medieval Lutheran theologians. Um, and none of them understand the context. None of them understand the actual theological work that's been done up to the point. Right. They're not even having the same conversation. They're just cherry picking quotes and Trying to win an online argument.
Daniel: Oh, yeah, I. My favorite Luther quotes are the Table Talk ones.
Remy: Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.
Daniel: I don't even think those are real.
Remy: State. No, most Lutherans do not think those are real. That's that. So that's the exact, exact thing I'm talking about is people will quote the crap out of Table Talk. And it's like you realize that every Luther scholar on the planet would reject Table Talk.
Daniel: Oh, yeah. I don't think it happened. I think it's baloney. But I. I've never read it myself. I don't even know how you'd get it.
Remy: No, so the. So there's tons of them. The. The Table Talk is a compendium. So what? No, when. When Luther got. So you have to think of Luther in this context of like the first celebrity. Sure. Because the Gutenberg Press hit. Right. A little bit before it. And so now, for the first time, books are being widely distributed. He was able to write a manuscript and have it to print very shortly. And then now it's widely distributed in the world.
Printers made a lot of money printing Luther's work. So they write. And so then what you had was people who would follow Luther around and write down the things he said off the cuff and then rush them to print in a book so they could make money. And that's where Table Talk comes from.
Daniel: It's like no editing. There's no context. It's just like, here's some random thing that somebody said in the middle of.
Remy: A paragraph and it's all hearsay. And how much of it. How much of it did Luther actually say? How much of it was somebody saying, well, this sounds kind of like Luther and I need a couple more pages to get in here, you know?
Daniel: Well, we kind of have that with the Pope. That's why we get. Every once in a while we get like something he said on an airplane and we're like, oh, new Catholic theology just dropped. Yeah, no, it's just an off the cuff comment out of context to a reporter.
Remy: Yeah, dude. My favorite. My favorite thing is whenever someone. So I, I confessionally believe the office of the Papacy is Antichrist. I, I believe that. Okay. And that's a whole thing. But aside from that, I am sure that Pope Francis is the nicest, sweetest man. And I am 100% certain that he does nothing other than uphold Roman Catholic doctrine. So, yeah, whenever someone says to me, oh, he's a heretic, and he doesn't. He's blah, blah, blah, I always say, source, that for me. And they'll give me. They'll say, oh, well, he said that gay people should get married. And I will say, great, can you find me that quote in context and say that? That's what it teaches. Find me one Francis quote in context that teaches contrary to the Catholic Church.
Daniel: Me waiting a long time. I mean, does he say some things I disagree with? Yes, he does. Is he a theologian also? No. You know, we were used to Pope Benedict xvi, you know, basically one of the greatest theologians ever of any estimation, I would say. And then we have Pope Francis, of course, who is the exact opposite. He is not a theologian. And so, you know what he is.
Remy: He's a pastor.
Daniel: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, Absolutely. I mean, he chose St. Francis as his guy. He didn't pick Benedict, you know, or, you know, he's innocent, the 15th or something.
He chose Francis, you know, and so there is something to be said for that that people just, you know, I don't know what it is. I mean, maybe it's like, just look at its way of people expressing online to the world.
This is what I believe. It's like a signaling moment. Right. So when people get out there and they say, you know, Luther is, you know, they post that silly picture, you know, like, Pastor Don, he has to have had that picture for a little while on his profile, which I thought was super funny. And, you know, they'll post this. It's like, what is the point of posting this?
Remy: Yeah.
Daniel: Like, what's the argument? What are you trying to do? Because you're not going to win anybody. I mean, nobody's gonna be like, huh, you know, that's a really good point. Luther's in hell. I think I'm gonna stop being lcms. I'm gonna switch over to orthodoxy or whatever religion it is. It doesn't matter.
It's not doing that. So what is it they're doing? Yeah, I think. I think it's a signaling issue. I think they're trying to say to the group, I'm one of you.
Remy: Exactly. Exactly.
Daniel: And I ain't one of me. I don't want the heck.
Remy: Well. And the problem. The problem they run into. The problem a lot of these guys run into is that the group that they're trying to be a part of does not actually exist in real life or.
Daniel: That's right.
Remy: If you met all of these people in real life, you would be so disappointed.
You would be so disappointed. You'd be like, wow. So what I have here is a single, balding, overweight man in his 40s that lives in his mother's basement.
This is the guy.
Daniel: There's nothing wrong with balding. There's a lot of folks out there that don't have hair.
Remy: That's why I'm wearing a hat. This is. But this is the guy. This is the guy that I am. You know, it's like the most milquetoast looking, least viral looking man that I have ever seen in my life. He lives with his parents still, he's unemployed. And this has been my guiding light for the last two and a half years.
Daniel: For Christian masculinity. Yeah, exactly like, yeah, brother, brother, I don't think you're that masculine, man. I don't. That's not like, that's not. Way I look at it. Well, and they always pick these profile pictures, like some buff dude, you know, I'm like, well, and like two plates, brother.
Remy: These Christian. Well, in these Christian masculinity, guys would laugh Jesus out of the room, dude.
Daniel: Oh yeah, well they do literally do that now.
Remy: Yeah, well, like, and it's like, dude, you think Jesus was like some hyper fit guy? He spent 90% of his time starving himself and praying, like.
Daniel: That's right.
That's exactly right.
Remy: Isaiah said he had no form, that men would look upon him. Right?
Daniel: Yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah. And yes, and of course, you know, he is the prince of peace and mercy incarnate. I mean, it's these ideas of, of Christ, the warrior Christ, the Chad is disgusting because that's not who God is.
And you know, the picture of masculinity is Christ crucified on the cross. Yeah, that is the picture of masculinity.
Remy: Yeah.
Daniel: Complete service, the weight of the world. He doesn't bench two plates. He's benching the universe.
Remy: Wow. Yeah, that's.
Daniel: That's Christian masculinity, in my opinion. You know, but there's no greater love than to lay one's life down for one's friends. I mean, it's the soldier who jumps on the grenade or you just. Our daily lives, you know, the things, the little things that we do for others, for our friends, which is everyone, frankly. That is Christian masculinity.
Remy: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Daniel: The rest of it is just virtue signaling to other dudes that you're one of the, one of the guys. Because they're probably not one of the guys in real life.
Remy: There is, I will say there is the, the warrior king, Jesus. Um, but that, that is the return of Christ.
Daniel: Right?
Remy: The trumpet sound. Right, That's A different. And that's a different context. Right up until that point. We're not called to be that guy.
Daniel: No. And it's also.
I think we can fall into the trap of literalism in reading that. Those passages too.
You know, the lion of Judah. Right. Kind of concept. And just as the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the Essenes and everybody had a particular vision of who Christ would be when he's described in Daniel and other places in Isaiah and whatnot, and then when he shows up, they don't recognize him at all. And I think we can fall into that same dangerous crevice. Right. Because we expect trumpets to blare and a general God to come down and a sword to smite enemies. And I don't think that's exactly what God is getting at there.
Remy: Yeah.
Daniel: And who is God's enemy? God is. God's enemy is death and sin. And death and sin have been defeated.
Remy: Yeah.
Daniel: And he's collecting the prize.
Remy: It's. It's interesting, too, that the. The. A couple things to point out here is that when Warrior King Jesus comes with the shout of an archangel and the blast of a trumpet, and he rens the heavens apart, and the earth melts away in fire, and he gathers his army to him, It. It's a revelation. We're told by St. John that he has all this army, and he has this sword and all this power and this might. And he doesn't use it. It's a word he speaks that defeats the enemy. That's right. So that the A, there's that. And then it ties into B, which is revelation. Does this thing where what we see and what we hear are different. We hear what we expect, we see what we don't expect. And this happens. This happens every time. So John hears, Behold, 12,000 from the tribe of Judah, 12,000 from the Tribe of Whatever. And their number is 144,000. And he turns, and what does he see? A multitude too great to count. Behold, the lion of Judah is what he hears. And he turns, and what does he see? The Lamb of God slain from the foundation of the world.
Daniel: Yeah, that's a very interesting point. I had not heard that before, but I hear what you're saying. That makes a lot of sense.
But, you know, if we can go back to Pope Francis for saying something that people mock, you know, he said that God is the God of surprises. And people like, oh, you know, this is hippie dippy talk. Okay, so. So what? It is a little bit, but it's true. Our expectation is true.
Remy: Yeah.
Daniel: I mean, we. Our expectations or God are one trillionth of what reality is. I mean, we have no idea eye has not seen nor ear has heard what the Lord has prepared for those who love him. And what has the Lord prepared for those who love him Himself.
We have no idea the magnitude of God's love and mercy. It is an endless ocean. And I think that's a much better picture of masculinity than the nonsense that we see from, really, the Reformed guys. I think, you know, I hate to pick on them, but I will.
Remy: I love to pick on them.
Daniel: We could pick on them together.
Remy: So I don't know if you listen to my interview with G Age that just dropped, but we were picking. We were picking on the Anglicans for quite a bit. He was like, oh, you know, I kind of feel bad. I was like, bro, this isn't Anglican. Answers get wrecked. Who cares?
Daniel: It's funny, I have a lot of Anglican friends and people I've met off of Twitter, actually, that are just delightful human beings and. And they're the most. I think they're the most genteel on Twitter, the Anglicans, for the most part. I think they're, generally speaking, a little highbrow, I think. I don't know.
Remy: Yeah.
Daniel: What do you think?
Remy: No, I. I definitely see that. I think.
I think Anglicans.
I think that is what is most important to Anglicans is to appear that way over. Over the doctrine.
Daniel: So they have doctrine.
Remy: No, and that's. That's exactly the point.
Daniel: That's right. I don't think that's true. I mean, they do have, like, some confessional documents.
Remy: I talk to. No, they don't. I talked to. I talked to an Anglican one time, and I. I brought that up. It was on Twitter, and I brought that up. I said, you don't. I said, the problem is you guys don't have any confessional documents. You can believe anything and be an Anglican. And he said, well, that's not true. We have the 39 articles of religion.
Daniel: Yeah.
Remy: And I said, do you hold to the 39 articles of religion? He said, well, no, not me personally. Right, Exactly. Exactly.
Daniel: Constitution for thee, but not for me.
Remy: Yeah. So, like, the thing is, if. If you said, well, I'm a Lutheran. And I said, great, you subscribe to the Book of Concord. You said, no. Well, then you're not a Lutheran. That's it. You believe what Lutherans believe. If you're a Lutheran. Right. But for Anglicans, it's about.
Daniel: So, like, you would Say, like, elca.
Remy: No, not Lutheran. No, they. They. They had a recent thing. Bishop Eaton, in a recent meeting, talked about removing Lutheran from their name, actually, so that they could cross more denominational lines.
Daniel: Okay, well, that's what. Oh, what is that? The asset manager that used to be Lutheran.
I can't remember the name of them. Oh, what is it? Anyways, they used to be Lutheran, then they went Christian, and they went woke.
Remy: Yep.
Daniel: But it was like a Lutheran asset manager. Oh, thrivent, thrivent, thrive. And I went off the deep end. Not only are they terrible at theology, but their asset management's not good either. So they really scored on nothing.
Remy: Our. So our church, we brought it up before the church council that they, like, that they were going, like, woke and doing, like, whatever. And we actually had a project with them where they were going to fund a church renovation project for us, and we canceled it because one of the things was they were going to take our pictures and whatever and use them during Pride Month. And we were like, nah, nah, we're good. So we canceled that renovation project. But then as we got into it, looking into it, did you know that their portfolio includes, like, porn industries?
Daniel: And that's my job.
Remy: Oh, my gosh, dude.
Daniel: I'm an asset manager for Catholic Asset Management. I know all about that. So the most common screening system in the United States, the most common ones, there's sustainalytics, MSCI and ISS and some other big names. You know, they're all secular for the most part. And they will put, like, a Catholic screen on securities to filter out things that they think should be filtered out. And I'll tell you what criteria they use.
But they'll actually permit a Catholic institution to own a company that generates up to 5% of its revenue from the production of pornography. And so when I meet with a bishop or I talk with a institution, I'll just ask them, like, how much pornography do you want to produce this year?
It's a good question, because the answer, if it's not zero. We have an issue, because when you own stock, you own the company, you are materially benefiting from that action.
Or you have these companies where they'll pay up to $10,000 for a woman to transport from Texas to Colorado to commit an abortion. You know, and should we be investing in companies that are paying for abortions? Like, how many abortions do we want to pay for this year? And the answer is none. And so, frankly, the Catholic Church has led the way in this space, easily led the way in this space. And in 2021, a document came out which I think LCMS should really just read, just adopt.
There's nothing particularly Catholic about it, per se. That's denominational, I would say. And their 2021 guidelines on investments, and they articulate, this is the way in which we invest as Catholic institutions. And it's really quite good.
It says, for example, we are prohibited as institutions in the Catholic Church from investing in any company that directly or indirectly provides abortion or abortion services or promotes abortion or supports abortion.
So it's very explicit. And Lutheran churches, generally, Christian churches, Catholic churches, I think, are obligated to not support evil with their dollars. I mean, we are. I mean, how about this man? You know, one day I'm going to close my eyes for the last time and reopen them. And I will be face to face with my maker. And when I meet my Lord, he's going to ask me to account for every careless word that came from my mouth. But he will also call me to account for every careless dollar that left my wallet. I mean, it's no different. I mean, these are our treasures. These are God's treasures. And so our mission, so my company's Arimathea. Our mission is to help every Catholic invest without compromise of conscience. And it's a big mission and one that we're hopefully on our way for very successful to do. But this is the state of finance in the faith. And I know it's a problem in the Lutheran churches, too. Problem in all the churches. And it's something that needs to be addressed. Thrive. It just abandoned ship. They just said, you know, we're just going to do whatever. There's no Christian anything to do with it. Which is too bad.
Remy: Yeah, it's just too bad.
Daniel: But so when you look at, you look at ELCA and you're like, okay, those aren't Lutherans.
Help me understand that. Like when we. So we would say everyone that is baptized is Catholic. Like, we would even say you are a Catholic, technically speaking, from. From our perspective, separated brethren and all that kind of thing. But a baptized person, Trinitarian water, is a member of the Catholic Church, even if they're not attending. And they reject the Catholic Church.
Remy: Yes. So that is what we would call the distinction between the visible and invisible church.
There is the visible church, which is the organization, the Roman Catholic church, the pontificate, etc. And then there's the invisible church, which is the individual believer. Because there are plenty of people that are a part of the visible Roman Catholic Church, the pontificate, even priests. And Bishops and whatnot that are not at all Christians and are definitely going to hell. Right. There. Are unswelled. I mean, you know, universalists. But beyond this.
Daniel: Oh, I still believe in hell. We can talk about that.
Remy: Yeah, well, but like, you know. You know what I'm saying? Like there.
Daniel: I understand.
Remy: They're absolutely. People who are not Christians who are. It's a job for them and they are there.
Daniel: Or they're practically atheists.
Remy: Yeah. People who just attend on Sundays but aren't Christian. They're cultural. So that's the visible church. And you can be a part of the visible church and not the invisible church or a part of the invisible church and not the visible church, or you can be a part of both or a part of neither. Right, right. So that's. That's where we're at. That's that distinction. But to say you are. To say I'm a Roman Catholic. If I were to say to you, I am a devout Roman Catholic, but I do not believe that the Pope is the apostolic successor of St. Peter. I do not believe that the body and blood of Christ are present in the Eucharist. I do not believe that baptism saves you. And I only attend Sunday worship at Billy Bob's Independent Fundamentalist Baptist Church. Am I a Roman Catholic?
Daniel: Technically, yes.
Remy: Well, okay. I mean. But the answer is no in terms of.
Daniel: Yeah. Practical effect. No. I mean, you. You are on to lots, you know, because we would say ontologically, the person is a Catholic.
Remy: Right.
Daniel: It's just like being a member of the Cotone family.
Remy: Right. Well, so. Yeah. So let's swap in this context. Let's swap. Let's swap Catholic for Christian in this context. Am I a Christian? Yes or. Yeah, but am I. Am I specifically a member of the Roman Catholic Church?
Daniel: Right.
Remy: No, I can say I'm a member of the Roman Catholic Church, but if I don't believe anything the Roman Catholic Church believes, I've never attended Mass in my life and I only go to a Baptist church where I have a membership. I am not a member of the Roman Catholic Church.
Daniel: We would not say that. We would not say that.
Remy: You should.
Daniel: I hear you. I hear what you're saying.
Remy: Right.
Daniel: What we would say is you are. It is an indelible mark on the soul when you're baptized.
Remy: Okay.
Daniel: And so no matter what you do, you are Catholic, you are a member of the body. You may be cut off from the body or you may be separating yourself in some way or in error. We're all in error, frankly, or whatever. But you are still ontologically Catholic.
Remy: Okay.
Daniel: And that, That's. That might be just something we don't see in the same way. I don't know. But I'm trying to get at is like when you look at the LCMS or look at the LCA folks and you say, you know, those aren't Lutherans. And I have, and I have to, forgive me, I have not read the Book of Concord in many years. So I think I read it probably 15 years ago, 20 years ago, something like.
Remy: Okay, so I've never read it, so.
Daniel: Really?
Remy: No, I fretted. I fretted.
Daniel: Okay, that's good.
No, but in all seriousness, is there something about that document that would. In the document you say, well, it says you aren't X if you don't believe Y.
Remy: No.
Daniel: How do you.
Remy: No, no, no, no, no. But it just comes down to. It just comes down to. So the question you ask is, what does it mean to be a Lutheran? So we would say definitively, it means believing that the.
That the Book of Concord, at the very least, that the Augsburg Confession in the Small Catechism, at the very least, those two documents definitively explain the Christian faith and outline the proper doctrines of Scripture. Right. It's adherence to those. To be a Lutheran is to believe at least those documents. Right.
So if you say I'm. I'm a Lutheran, but I don't believe these documents, then, like, well, like, you're. So you're not a Lutheran.
It's. It would be like saying, oh, I'm a. Yeah, professionally, I'm a forklift driver. It's like, well, are you forklift certified? No. Do you drive a forklift at work? No, I've never even seen a forklift in person. Well, then you're not a forklift driver. Like, it doesn't matter what you say. You can call yourself whatever you want, but at the end of the day, if you don't believe what Lutherans believe, you're not a Lutheran. And it's just Right.
Daniel: So for me, it's really easy because I am not a Lutheran and I can say I don't believe in the Book of Concord per se and everything. And so therefore, I'm not a Lutheran. So that makes sense.
Remy: Exactly.
Daniel: So, I mean, I guess I'm just curious, like, on your criteria for this, if someone dissents from one thing in the Book of Concord, like, where is the line and who draws it?
Remy: One thing is the line. Yeah, yeah. One thing is definitely the line. And so. And it's. And it's it may not even be so like the elca, for example. The reason we draw the line with the ELCA and the line. The line is drawn generally, but it's very fuzzy generally. So I would say elca, not Lutheran, but I'm talking about the denomination. Right. Specifically individual people. Individual churches. Yeah. Could be very faithful. And that's wonderful. And we love that. But the denomination as a whole and the problem we have with the denomination as a whole. Whole is they.
They have what we call a quatinous subscription to the Book of Concord, which is Latin for insofar.
So they believe that the Book of Concord is the correct ex. Exposition of.
They subscribe to the Book of Concord insofar as it is the correct exposition of Scripture.
Daniel: Huh.
Remy: Whereas on the confessional side, we have a kia subscription to the Book of Concord, which means. Because. So we would say we subscribe to the Book of Concord because it's the correct exposition of Scripture. So it's like saying. It's like saying I believe the Bible is the word of God versus I believe the Bible contains the word of God. Those are two very different statements.
Daniel: Sure.
I understand where you're coming from. So then how do you do something that's a little bit more distinctive? Like Wells, where you guys have a significant difference, where you don't share communion due to your difference on the ministry, being a pastor and all that kind of stuff?
They would say they do subscribe to the Book of Concord, right?
Remy: Yes.
Daniel: But yet there's a really big difference in the way in which you view the role of a pastor or even the fact that an office exists.
Remy: That's correct. So the Wells have what's called a functionalist view of the office, which means that the role of the pastor is determined by. By function necessarily. So any. The guy doing the function of pastor is the pastor, and he's only the pastor while he's doing the function of the office. Right.
Daniel: That's why I'm on Lutheran. Lutheran answers. I'm trying to get answers about Lutheranism.
Remy: We. That's not. I don't think that that is at all how the Book of Concord reads about the Office of Holy Ministry.
Daniel: Would you say they're Lutherans?
Remy: I would say they are Lutherans. Yeah. I would say they're Lutherans. I would say so. And at this point, they're abstract. We're abstracting away.
Daniel: Right.
Remy: And this is where the Catholics are all going to be excited about the magisterium of the Catholic Church teaching authority. Yeah.
Daniel: It's real.
Remy: Yeah.
Daniel: You guys have a magisterium to. Everybody does.
Remy: So they're. What we're doing now is we're abstracting away. So, yeah, the Book of Concord outlines the exposites, the doctrines of Scripture, and now they're interpreting the Book of Concord in a different way than we're interpreting the Book of Concord.
Daniel: But you both are saying the Book of Concord is the defining.
Remy: Yes.
Daniel: Trait.
Remy: And so. And I would also point out that for most confessional Lutherans, the gap between us and the Wells is entirely on the Wells side. It's not that it's. It's entirely.
Daniel: I don't know. I thought Pastor dawn lay into it, dude.
Remy: Yeah, well, the. And. But the Wells bring it on themselves, man. They're. They don't want to play with anybody else. You know what happened?
Daniel: This whole Catholic universal concept. Come on, dude.
Remy: Yeah, no. Well, I tell you what, man. As far as Catholic, Universal, etc, one day they're gonna start killing us, and it's. I promise you, none of this will matter very much at all.
Daniel: I agree with that, and I'm as universal as it gets, you know? So little inside joke for us.
Remy: Yeah.
Daniel: Yeah. When I was in Egypt last time with my son, I was in a. In Egypt. A small town has, like, 6 million people. It's crazy there. But I went to this small town on the Nile, and we were riding around, like, I guess. I don't know what it's called in Arabic, but it's like a rickshaw kind of thing to get around. And we told my archeologist friend who's Egyptian, I said, hey, you know, can you. It's Sunday. We'd like to go to Mass. No idea what I'm talking about. I'm like, we want to go to, like, a Christian church. He's like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But, you know, it could be a Catholic church or maybe an Eastern Orthodox one. I often attend an Eastern church. Anyways. And so he's like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So he takes us through the back alleys, and we go all over the place, and we end up at this pile of rubble.
And I'm like. He's like, oh, that's right. This one got blown up, Mike.
Remy: Yeah.
Daniel: Oh, okay. That's not great. I said, can you take us to a Catholic or Coptic church or something that's not blown up? He takes us to the most Protestant church you can go to. And it was like neon. Literally neon cross on the wall, and it's like this little tiny thing run down, you know, not fancy, whatever. We kind of Break in sort of to get into it. And we're sitting there and I'm like, well, you know, we can just read the Sunday mass from our phones and do our prayers together, my son and I, which is fine. And we start doing that and all. The pastor walks in and he doesn't speak any English, but you would have thought it was the Second coming with our arrival in his church. He was so happy that we were there praying, and in our broken way, we ended up celebrating Mass together.
Remy: Yeah.
Daniel: So here's this very Protestant pastor, super Catholic father and son in Egypt, Muslim country with the neon cross.
And it was like a type of unity you would never experience without persecution.
Remy: Yeah.
Daniel: But we're all fat and happy.
Remy: So Pastor Chris Jackson told this story once, I think it was Chris Jackson back before he deleted his Twitter and then restarted it. He told the story about how he got into a cab and he was collared. And the cabbie said, oh, you're a priest? And he said, yeah, I'm a Lutheran. And the cabbie was like, oh, that's so great. I'm like Armenian Orthodox or something like this, you know. Okay. And, yeah. And they start talking and all this, and they get to the end and. And he says.
He says, so you don't mind that I'm a Lutheran? And the cabbie said, well, they're going to kill us all anyway. They're going to kill us the same anyway. Something to that effect. And I mean, like, that's the truth. Like, the guy. The guy that eventually does come for the Christians doesn't care what kind of Christian you are. He's not bothered by it.
Daniel: That's right. Do you know the story of St. Maximilian Colby?
Remy: No.
Daniel: So talk about ecumenism. So there was a very, very famous priest in Poland, and his name is Maximilian Kolbe, and he created a religious order, and he was quite famous before, you know, as the Nazis were coming into power.
Eventually he was arrested by the Nazis because he wouldn't shut up. And they put him into a concentration camp. And while he was in the concentration camp, some of the Jewish people there escaped, and they were captured and, of course, and executed. But they brought all the prisoners out and had them line up outside. And it was very hot that day, and they were literally standing there all day in the sun, no water, people were passing out, that kind of thing. And they said, well, we want to know who helped these Jews escape.
And nobody stepped forward to admit that they helped. And so the satanic Nazi guard said, well, I'm just Going to count by tens, and each 10 person is going to be thrown into single cells and starve to death.
And so they start going, 1, 2, 3, and they reach number 10, and they hit this guy next to maximilian Colby, number 10. And Maximilian Colby would have been number one. And the man said, no, please don't do this, because I have a wife and children.
And Maximilian Colby stepped forward and says, take me instead of this man because I have no wife and children.
And they said, are you sure? You know, kind of thing. And he said, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so they took Maximilian Colby into prison with, I think it was, you know, some number of Jewish people. And they were all in these cells where they can kind of communicate with each other a little bit. And Maximilian Colby would celebrate Seder meals with the Jewish people, and he would talk with them and pray with them, and they would celebrate their Jewish, you know, festivities and whatever their traditions, until one by one, they all started dying. And eventually they all died, but Maximilian Colby didn't. And he went for weeks, as the story is told, without food and water and kind of a miracle. A miracle for sure. Until eventually they had to come in and inject carbolic acid into his body to kill him. And then he died.
And, you know, years later, of course, it is beatification by Pope St. John Paul II.
You know, here you have one of the. I think it was one of the grandchildren of the survivors, of the Jewish survivors or something, or it might have been one of the Jewish people that survived or something like that was there at the canonization to say, you know, this is our guy, too. And there's something beautiful about that. Like, even though we don't even share the faith per se.
Remy: Yeah.
Daniel: There is a unity of good and evil. A good against evil.
Remy: Yeah.
Daniel: And I think that's marked in Christianity, but it extends beyond Christianity.
Remy: That's fascinating.
Daniel: Yeah. Beautiful guy.
Remy: Yeah.
Daniel: Beautiful story.
Remy: I like that. I like that a lot. I'm gonna read more about that. Yeah. One of my.
Daniel: The story is, like, shocking. I mean, one of my.
Remy: One of my favorite things is. And this is another thing that you find no matter. Okay. And this is something that people online also balk and scream about. But it is something that you do see across denominational lines, is that you do see, like you said, this alignment of goodness.
But you also see saints and miracles.
The Orthodox say, oh, well, we still have miracles. The Catholics say, we still have miracles. There are Protestants that also still have miracles. And it's like you can actually see this. You know, it's like, wow, maybe God is bigger than me.
Daniel: Yeah.
Remy: Yeah.
Daniel: It's almost as if God can perform miracles anywhere, anytime, any. Any way he wishes.
Remy: It's. It. Maybe. Maybe I'm not controlling him. Maybe he's controlling me. Who knows? Yes. Who knows?
Daniel: I don't. I don't know if it's, like, super healthy to stack up miracles and say, see, we've got.
Remy: Yeah.
Daniel: 47 more than.
Remy: It's not. It's not at all. No.
Daniel: You know, it's. I mean, the greatest miracle of all happened to a Jewish woman when Christ incarnated. So I think that would be the. The cherry on everything. It's.
But there's a lesson there, I think. I don't know. You know, I. I don't know anything about Lutheran miracles.
Remy: It's. It's interesting talking about Mary.
She. The Luke. Luke gives us so much, but he gives us so much because he assumes that we aren't going to know.
Oh, yeah. So he tells us. He tells us Mary from this town, in this region, because he knows that this is a backwater, bro. You like to really understate the fact that she was just a poor nothing. God picked her.
Daniel: Yes.
Remy: And said you.
Daniel: Right. Because God sees what's inside.
Remy: That's right.
Daniel: And saw the beauty of her soul that he had created and made pure. And that's beautiful. You know, And I'll tell you another saint that is my. My patron. So my patron is St. Joseph of Arimathea. That's the name of my company, Arimathea. And it's. He's an underappreciated saint. A lot of times I'll mention him and somebody will say, I've never heard of him. Is he a saint? Yeah, he's in all four Gospels, bro.
Remy: Yeah.
Daniel: So let me tell you about St. Joseph. I'm building a shrine in northwest Wyoming. Eventually, I'm working on. I'm hiring artists and things like that. But St. Joseph, Arimathea, he's in all four Gospels. That's rare.
And I think he's the only one other than the Blessed Virgin and the apostles, who is in all four gospels. I believe that's a good person. Not like Pontius Pilate. And he is the personification, in my opinion, of courage and faith and generosity. So his story is in the hinge, right between Jesus's life on earth and his resurrection. It's this hinging point. And we see he goes to Pontius Pilate, and that's an act of courage and bravery. Right. Pontius Pilate, you know, super powerful. Evil dude who could have executed anybody he wished, anytime he wished.
But Joseph goes to him and says, hey, that's my friend and I want to take his body with me and punch by. Of course you have to take him away. You know, I want nothing to do with this. Yeah, you know, we should be like that. Of course, like St. Joseph in that regard. But his new hewn tomb, that's a fascinating statement. You know, I am an amateur Egyptologist, says it on my Twitter profile and actually I can see it around me.
Your, your tomb was your most valuable possession. It was more valuable than your home. And they were multi generational so you'd be passed down from generation upon generation upon generation. Great, great, great grandfather.
But his was new, which means he was self made man. Now he hewn that himself with his own servants, with his own money, that kind of thing. And he gives it to God, which is a tremendous act of generosity. But God is not to be outdone in generosity. Right. And so God just borrows it for a couple nights.
Joseph had no idea. But think about it. He didn't know about the sacraments, he didn't know about the church, he didn't know about the resurrection. He didn't know about any of the things that, that we have as crutches in a sense or means of grace for us. All he knew was his friend was dead and needed a burial and nobody would bury him. And so that is an act of faith. And so you have this courage where he goes to Pontius Pilate, incredible courage. Then you have this generosity where he gives his greatest possessions to God. And then you have this incredible act of faith where he just leaps into the abyss. And what does God give him in return but the inheritance of the kingdom with his Son. And this is a beautiful thing. And so any podcast I'm on, I always talk about St. Joseph Arimathea because he is a tremendous example for us to live our lives by. And I think in, in finance specifically.
Remy: And that, that brings us right back around to virtues. Yeah. And yeah, living out virtues as a.
Daniel: Kind of a virtue guy myself. Big fan.
Remy: Yeah.
Daniel: But yeah, he, he, he, he personifies the virtues. Like you know, like Christ personifies the Beatitudes when he's saying them on the, on the hill. He's talking through basically himself. You know, he is all the things that he lists that we are to be, to be blessed. And then we look at St. Joseph Arimathea. He is a model of courage, faith and generosity.
Remy: I like, I like the other Saint Joseph the Worker I always cry at that Gospel reading where Joseph finds out Mary's pregnant and. And he says, well, I'll put her away quietly.
And it always, like, it gets me every time because he's still, like. Even though at this point I'm sure he probably feels betrayed and he, you know, he doesn't know what's going on, even still, he's not willing to destroy her or ruin her reputation. Even though I think probably in that day and age, he could have called for her death. Right. Under Mosaic Law. Absolutely. And he's not even willing to ruin her reputation. Even still, he does everything he can to protect her and protect her reputation. And that's like, so noble Christian masculinity. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Daniel: That's what that is. I mean, he protected. He. He wanted to protect his wife.
Remy: Yeah.
Daniel: Even though she wasn't his wife yet. But.
Remy: Well, and it's. And it's. And it's that he still wants to love and protect her, even though at this point, the. It's adultery to him. Right. He doesn't know what's going on. He thinks there's been infidelity, and he still loves and protects her, which is.
Daniel: God arranged it all.
Remy: It's the arranged of what these Christian masculinity guys would tell you to do.
Daniel: Oh, Abs. I mean, they do it to women online now.
Remy: Yeah.
Daniel: They don't put anyone away quietly. No, that's not the methodology. You know, it's.
You know, I. It's hard to even talk about this on a public channel, but it's like, this woman. I don't know this woman, she tried to break this record in pornography.
Remy: Oh, yeah, I saw that.
Daniel: I don't know if you saw that story.
Remy: Yeah.
Daniel: And I don't. I watched, like, an interview of her, and there is, like, a woundedness in her face that is if. If you've ever been around someone who's dying or has lost somebody or something like that, that's the look. It's. It's almost like, oh, God, what have I done? Look.
Remy: Yeah.
Daniel: And, you know, and what. What is. What happens to her online?
She's just dragged out, as you know, she's dragged out into the public, and she's dragged herself out, too. I mean, of course, whatever. I don't know anything about the woman. I don't even know her name. But, you know, that's what Christian quote, unquote, Twitter does. It drags people, women especially.
You know, it's like, if there's not humiliation, they're not done.
Remy: Yeah, that's sad. It is. I tweeted one time that I've never met any Eastern Orthodox people in real life, but based on the Internet, they're the most hateful people that I have ever seen and I would never go to one of their churches. I tweeted that, dude. And I have never had so many Eastern Orthodox guys in my inbox apologizing so profusely. Like, it's amazing what the Internet brings out. Like, it just true. It brings out some of the worst in people.
Daniel: It's true. It does. You know, it's. I. I started a non profit in Northwest Wyoming to bring the Byzantine Ukrainian Rite of the Catholic Church up here, which is what I like to attend when I can. It's. It's a little bit further from my house, but there's probably 50 to 60 people that attend Divine Liturgy there every week. And these are some of the most holy, gentle, kind people that you will ever meet in your entire life. You know, they're not Eastern Orthodox per se, although you'd be hard pressed to find a difference. Other than that we say that the Pope is the head of the church on earth.
Remy: Right.
Daniel: But, you know, it's stark contrast to what you see online. And it's true for Lutherans. I've never met a Lutheran that was like, awful online.
Remy: There's a ton of them. A ton of them.
Daniel: God, they're not real Lutherans.
Remy: I'm not God. I'm not a real Lutheran. I'm the worst.
I feel sometimes, like, sometimes I'll, like, I'll start dragging someone that truly deserves it and then, like, I'll feel bad about that and I'm like, oh, God, I shouldn't, brother.
Daniel: I'm really good at it.
You see my tweets, I like, if I find something, somebody that it needs to get pulled out and you know, given a 1, 2, I'm happy to do it. I, like, bring it, bring it on. If somebody does that to me, I am instantly offended.
Remy: Exactly. Yeah.
Daniel: It's like, come on, man, don't be a hypocrite. Well, that's. That's me.
Remy: It's. Yeah, man. I mean, it's human nature, dude. It is, it is.
Daniel: It's human nature.
Remy: Daniel, thank you so much for coming on, having this chat with me.
Daniel: It's a pleasure.
Remy: It's a pleasure. Anytime you want to come back, let me know.
Daniel: Oh, I'd like that very much. I feel like I've gotten a lot of answers to my Lutheran questions. I have more.
Remy: Great.
Daniel: I have a lot more. Maybe we'll have, like, a debate or something. Like, not debate, but like a discussion about.
Remy: I wouldn't mind a discussion sometime.
Daniel: I'd like that very much. Okay. Well, thank you very much, brother.
Remy: Appreciate it. Anything specifically you want to plug before I hit the button?
Daniel: No more people should listen to your show. It's cool.
Remy: Oh, thank you.
Daniel: Of course.
