Eddie is full of despair. He wants to give up and take the welfare checks forever. He said the best time of his life was COVID, because he got to watch TV and got $600 a week for doing nothing. What would you say to Eddie?

Hey, welcome to Politics by Faith, brought to you by the Patriot Gold Corp. We have a really interesting moment in the show today. Eddie, from Massachusetts, called in. It all built to this, so let me give a quick review. We started off talking about Alexis de Tocqueville and how when he came to America in 1831 and wrote, in 1835, Democracy in America, he talked about what tyranny will look like

in this free country we call America. Now here we are 200 years later and he was spot on. That turned into a conversation about personal responsibility. We've talked a lot about making America healthy again lately on the show and it's great.

You talk about RFK getting rid of food dyes and all these other things, okay? But that has its limits. That's, let's just say, half of the equation. We can debate over what percent it is, but let's say half. There's another half, if we really want to make the difference that needs to be made.

So, sure, we can take the red dye 40 out of Froot Loops. But also, maybe we shouldn't eat Froot Loops. You with me? We'll take the red dye out of it, but also we shouldn't eat it at all. So what could happen is we take the red dye

out of Froot Loops and then we just eat a bunch of Froot Loops still. Are we gonna be healthier? No, maybe, I guess, but not really.

We're not gonna be healthy.

Maybe we'll be healthier, but we're not gonna be healthy. So that got into a conversation about hillbillyology and some tough love that J.D. Vance, our next vice president, gave us in that book. He wrote, we read a bunch, but let's do this. J.D. said, psychologists call it learned helplessness.

When a person believes, as I did during my youth, that the choices I made had no effect on the outcomes of my life. Whenever people ask me what I'd like to most change about the white working class, I say the feeling that our choices don't matter. The message of the right is increasingly, it's not your fault that you're a loser, it's the government's fault.

I don't know what the answer is precisely, but I know it starts when we stop blaming Obama or Bush or faceless companies and ask ourselves what we can do to make things better. People talk about hard work all the time in places like Middletown, Ohio. You can walk through a town where 30% of the young men work fewer than 20 hours a week and find not a single person aware of his own laziness. A lot of students just don't understand what's out there. A teacher told me, shaking her

head, you have these kids who plan on being baseball players who don't even play on the high school team because the coaches mean to them. There's a cultural moment in the white working class to blame problems on society or the government and that movement gains adherence by the day. So we talked about learned helplessness, we had some people call in who work in welfare offices

and what they've seen, some people work as therapists, some addiction counselors. And then we had someone call in who's like in the exercise world and he's like, just go get him, like get to work, bootstraps, workout, that whole thing, like let's go.

And it was great. And then Eddie called in. Eddie is 56, works at a printing press and Eddie is tired he's tired he said I got my bachelor's degree didn't help I make $23 an hour he's got a wife and two kids and he wants to give up and so we just did all the show about you know let's go let's get going, motivational talk, be better, all the rest.

And he's like, I just want to give up. And I just want to take the welfare check. So does that make me a bad person? He said the best time of his life was COVID. Got 600 bucks a week, check in the mail, didn't do nothing. Watch TV all day.

I've never talked to this person. I've never talked to someone like this.

And then we had to take a break.

And I'm like, all right, well, let's, what do we do for Eddie? What do we say? What do you say to someone who's tired? Let's meet him where he is first.

I feel for him.

He's been working his whole life, making $23 an hour. He got his bachelor's degree because everyone told him to. So he got scammed.

Let's just be real about it. It's a scam.

hour. He got his bachelor's degree because everyone told him to. So he got scammed. Let's just be real about it. It's a scam. Oh you're gonna make this much more. He won't and he didn't. So that was a waste of time and money and I'd feel really bitter about that too. First thing that comes to mind is sloth. Sloth is bad. Sloth is a sin. If you read Dante's Inferno, which you should, layer five is sloth. And the punishment for people who lived in this sin

is you are drowning in the river Styx for all of eternity. And so you're in perpetual drowning forever. And you're stuck underneath the water and you can't climb your way to the top because you lived a life of such sloth that you can't even be bothered to try to get up

and breathe inside Dante's Inferno here. So you're just stuck underneath drowning constantly forever. So Eddie has that sloth in him. We all do. It's all part of our sinful nature, some more than others. And I think someone has called, he said the word spark.

That word stuck out to me, whether maybe he didn't say it, maybe the Holy Spirit did, but I heard the word spark and I think what I would say to Eddie is you're never going to get the money you want. That was part of it.

All right.

23 bucks an hour.

It's not going to happen, man. It's not. You're never going to live that life of wealth. And that's hard in today's world because I've talked to many World War II veterans who are like, I grew up in poverty. I didn't even know it.

So now if you grow up not making a lot of money, you know it. So that's hard. And it's never going to happen. You're never going to get ahead. So you just got to put that aside. And you got to be content with 23 an hour.

But the good news is, that's not the point of life. When you go to heaven, it's not based off of, or when you die, and God's deciding whether or not you go to heaven or not, it's not based off how much money you make per hour. Not even close. And while we're here on earth, it's all about your daily bread. So we got to focus, be grateful for that

and then focus on the things that are in our control. That is serving the Lord and loving people. It doesn't matter how much money you make. You can make a million a year. Loving God and your neighbor and serving your wife and kids is the most important thing right now. When you die, Eddie, no one is going to be at your funeral and say, Here lieth a man who made $23 an hour.

Well, it's possible that your kids could say, here's my dad who loved me and played with me and helped me when I needed him and listened to me and worked so hard, got up every day and worked hard at the printing press and was able to scrape together what he could

and bought this thing for me for Christmas one year and I'll never forget it and all that whatever right but those stories are still within your reach even if you're only making $23 an hour so if that's getting you down you gotta refocus your life on something else because you're never going to find fulfillment in your job and maybe you shouldn't either but there are other parts of your life where you can definitely still find that fulfillment. Now I know that's easy for me to say.

I'm not on my feet nine hours a day like he is. That was the best I could offer something like that. We had a bunch of other calls after that saying, hey man, there's no freedom in that life that you think you want. And this is what Alexis de Tocqueville talked about. You think sitting on the couch watching TV all day is freedom, but it's not. Someone called

in and said, sitting and watching TV all day, that is the life of someone in jail. Someone in jail sits around and watches TV all day. And so does Eddie. So he's incarcerating himself. I always go back to the Bible, this may not speak, I bet it speaks to everyone listening to this podcast, but not to everyone on SiriusXM radio, but I mean it's all in the Bible, Colossians 3, 23, it says, whatever you do, work heartily as for the Lord and not for men.

That's so incredibly insightful. You're not working for you or money or this business or the man. You're working for God and your work glorifies Him. Our pilgrims knew this profoundly. Sloth is running away from your responsibilities. It's running away from heartily working.

It's running away from your potential. And you're choosing to remain spiritually and morally stagnant. I read someone said you're running away from God and the fullness of life He's offering you. You're not cultivating the gifts and the talents that God gave you or the people that he put you around, put around you.

You're not participating in God's continual work of creation and redemption. You're just giving up on it all. And that's sinful. The Greek word is akidia. It means absence of care.

I read this, spiritual listlessness. This is how the fourth century Egyptian monk, Avargrius Ponticus, describes Aikidia, the spiritual malaise whose name has no equivalent in a modern language and whose nuances include disgust with life, boredom, discouragement. This is Eddie Tuati, if you heard his voice. Laziness, sleepiness, melancholy, sadness, lack of enthusiasm and motivation. Aikidia is a sort of asphyxiation or suffocation of the spirit that condemns those

who suffer from it to unhappiness by causing them to reject what they have or the situation in which they live, whether it's work, emotional, social, and to dream about another situation that's unattainable. That's it. That's perfect. That's the old, that's the biblical word, the Greek word, I'm rejecting, I'm unhappy because I'm rejecting where I am, and I'm going to dream about another situation and just become bitter about it, and then not care and give up and be discouraged and all the rest.

I bought a couple of books on Puritan prayers. That's all this, just prayers that the Puritans gave, said. And a common theme of all of them is our own wretchedness, which is not very fashionable today, but also how weary life is in our fallen world. It is a weary world. Weary is a great word, isn't it?

Weary.

Here's one of these prayers. I confess my sin, my frequent sin, my sinful, my willful sin. All my powers of body and soul are defiled. A fountain of pollution is deep within my nature. There are chambers of foul images within my being. I have gone from one odious room to another, walk in a no-man's land of dangerous imaginations, pried into the secrets of my fallen nature. I am utterly ashamed that I am what I am in myself.

I have no green shoot in me nor fruit but thorn and thistles. I am a fading leaf that the wind drives away. I live bare and barren as a winter tree, unprofitable, fit to be honed down and burnt. Lord, you have mercy on me. To just live in that state is no good. And that's where Eddie is. He's just there.

But then we have God. Oh, what blessedness accompanies devotion, when under all the trials that weary me, the cares that corrode me, the fears that disturb me, the infirmities that oppress me, I can come to you in my need and feel peace beyond understanding." That's what Eddie doesn't have, the peace beyond understanding. The Puritan said,

Let me willingly accept misery, sorrow, temptations, if I can thereby feel sin is the greatest evil and be delivered from it with gratitude to you acknowledging this as the highest testimony of your love once you know how depraved you are that just makes you all the more grateful for your salvation and I know it's maybe is it a sin to be discouraged in the moment I don't know. Elijah, my favorite story in the Bible.

I usually in my brain like stop the story after the triumph of it all. But when he's done, he gives up. He's like, I can't go on. The Bible says, but he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a broom tree. This is actually the most triumphant, amazing man that's ever happened. And he asked that he might die, saying, It is enough now, O Lord.

Take away my life, for I am no better than my father's. This weariness is real. But God didn't let Elijah die, and God calls for us to go on, and to be content, to love God and love others. That's all we're called for in this life. So I don't know, I can ramble on forever.

I don't have any advice for Eddie. Other than to simplify to the most basic things ever. This is what happens whenever you're in trouble. Go to the basics. Okay, what's the purpose of life? To glorify God and enjoy him forever.

Do that and that's a really good start.

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Just eliminating evil isn't good enough. Jesus says that if an unclean spirit leaves a man, he'll just come back with seven other spirits and you'll be worse than before! Even if your house was made "neat and tidy" in the mean time. We have to do more than just replace evil with nothing. We must replace it with good.

Welcome to Politics by Faith, brought to you by the Patriot Gold Group. I'd like to make a parallel, best I can here. Read a little Luke 11 this morning. But before we do that, can we just reflect on politically, how you feeling? How you feeling? It feels good, doesn't it?

How much things have changed in just the last two and a half weeks. Just to give one example, it was just a couple years ago when we had NFL players kneeling for the national anthem and now we have NFL players doing the Trump dance when they score a touchdown. The world is going on. Trump has earned the respect of so many people, perhaps many begrudging respect, respect but it is undeniable and it all feels really good. So it's been a fun two and a half weeks and I think all of his picks will make it through.

Don't stress about any of that. The media is going to try to make you all anxious and worried about not enough senators are going to support Matt Gaetz. Don't worry about it. It's all good. God is in control anyway but it's all good.

It will all pass through. But here's what I want to talk about today. I hope I'm not too soon making this point. Winning an election is not enough and even purging our bureaucracy is not enough. All of this needs to also be filled with good. To bring our government back down to size, Elon and Vivek are talking about cutting 80% of it and I have confidence right now that they will just pretty

wild and on my radio show we'll talk about these five Supreme Court decisions that were just decided in the last two years so even if Trump won in 2020 he couldn't have done the things to get rid of the bureaucracy like we like he can do now it's unbelievable so we'll get rid of the government waste fraud abuse corruption but if we don't replace it with a good then it won't do anything. And here's what I mean, because hold on, because I know you're thinking, well, hold on, now

you just want to make it, I don't mean replace it in size. I don't mean, let's say there's a thousand bureaucrats. I don't mean we cut it down to 200 and then replace them, you know, hire 800 more good people. So now we're back to a thousand. No, no, no, no.

Keep it at the 200, right? Keep the 80% reduction. But the 200 that remain have to be good. They need to be forces for good, working for good, so that the government doesn't then just bloat back to what it was, or even worse. So we need to put in the cuts and then the structural reforms, and then forces for good

to keep it all in check for longer. If I may, there's a parallel here, I feel, to the all more important thing our souls here's what Jesus said in Luke 11 24 when an unclean spirit goes out of a man he goes through dry places seeking rest and finding none he says I will return to my house from which I came and when he comes he means like you a person and when he comes he finds it swept and put in order so he runs away and never comes back. Nope. Then he goes and takes with him seven other

spirits more wicked than himself and they enter and dwell there. And the last state of that man is worse than the first. It's worse off than when it all started. So the point here is very fascinating. Removing the evil spirit, good. But the spirit flies around for a while looking for another human to possess because that's what demons do. The human is their weapon to wage war against the enemy God. So this demon's looking for another human and he says, you know what? I'm gonna go back to the person I came from. And things look great. Things look nicer.

Things are swept and put in order. Things look good on the surface but the demon takes even more spirits, or I should say, spirits even more wicked than him to dwell in that man, and that man is now worse off. So a couple of things. First, don't rely on the false security of a morally improved life. It ain't enough.

Just trying harder may work for a moment, but it won't last. You need a true inward spiritual transformation. And nature abhors a vacuum. So you think you've emptied your life of vice, but if you're not then filled with the Holy Spirit, then the evil will rush back in and be even worse. Second point, even if you think you've had a spiritual awakening, that's great, but if it's not, it's centered on Jesus. If it's not centered on Jesus, then you haven't had a spiritual awakening at all.

So my third point is you can rid your life of evil, but you have to fill it with Jesus. Behavioral changes, behavior modification won't cut it's end of clothes. We had a couple calls today, a couple emails, that all kept pointing back to sanctification. And I remember when I first learned about this, maybe like six years ago, and I was like, oh yeah, wow, that makes a lot of sense.

A couple people calling in, making comments about how, you know, they're a Christian now, but they keep making mistakes. God keeps forgiving, it's great. It's all good, but we gotta know what sanctification really is.

So justification, it's two words, justification and sanctification. Justification is once and for all, it's a final liberation that you are free from the wrath of God forevermore. Your sins are forgiven.

You're a new person, born again. Then, from that point forward, is a process of sanctification. But that's the key, it's a process. It's an ongoing work in your life forever. So justification, we're immediately saved,

and then sanctification is a process of becoming more and more like Jesus every single day. So you get saved and then you work out your salvation. And Paul says, he talks about straining and pressing on towards the goal of becoming more like Christ. Justification and sanctification.

So in government land, this election was the justification, like, oh, won, great. Okay, but now we have a process to make things better and to keep things better if we don't go through the proper process Then the bureaucracy will blow back up again Parallels the all more important Process of Salvation in our lives. There's a justification and give your life to Jesus make Jesus Lord of your life and then there's a process

Sanctification and if you don't go through that process of justification then every day becoming more like Jesus, then Jesus says those evil spirits will come back with seven others, even worse than the first, and you will be worse off than before. Paul wrote in Philippians 3, 13, Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own, but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, there's the straining, I press on towards the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Mike Slater dot locals dot com. Transcript and commercial free on the website Mike Slater dot locals dot com.

We need to know how last week happened. Without this first point, we'll never get any of the next important things done.

Welcome to Politics by Faith, brought to you by the Patriot Gold Group. Got an email from John yesterday. He said, I want to echo a lot of what people are saying about being thankful for the election results. I liked the comment this morning about how God gave us our president back. We had a wonderful woman from Virginia call in and talked about how we need to pray for

our president. And she said this, I've never heard it like this is so good God gave us our president back that's a really nice way of thinking about but I hear a lot of explaining and analyzing going on that tends to pave over God's role in the whole process if you stopped and asked any conservative three years ago if Trump was gonna win reelection in a landslide the best answer you would have gotten was unlikely three years ago

we weren't even sure if he was gonna run let alone will he win? And who was the person who was like, oh yeah, landslide. Many would have said it would have been a miracle. Well now here we are. But since it's happened, it all seems perfectly reasonable and even expected. Looking back though, God's fingerprints are all over this. I think we need to be aware of our tendency to steal the glory that is due to God and attribute it elsewhere. I've been encouraged by the conservative

commentators who put Thanksgiving and glory to God at the forefront of their responses to this election. We do that all the time with everything. I think about this all the time with history. It's like, oh yeah, well of course we won World War II. And you just think that just because, well, that's what happened, but there was no of course. It's like we barely won it. Like miracles throughout the whole process that resulted in victory.

But you look back, you're like, oh yeah, of course the Founding Fathers won the Revolutionary War. Duh. Well, no, not duh. It's impossible for them to have won it. And there's so many stories like that in our history where you look back, you're like, well yeah, of course Trump won.

What do you mean of course Trump won? There was no... I got that email and then I read, got that email I think on Monday night and this morning I read Psalm 108 and they line up perfectly. The end of Psalm 108 says, who will bring me into the strong city? Who will lead me to Edom?

This is David writing. He's talking about attacking a city. Is it not you, O God, who cast us off? And you, O God, who did not go out with our armies? Give us help from trouble, for the help of man is useless. Through God we will do valiantly, for it is he who shall tread down our enemies.

So what's going on here? So Edom, super strong people, David was attacking them, and he was asking for God's hand in this battle. Petra was that strong city in particular. This is a commentary that says, David prayed this prayer in light of recent defeats,

recognizing that those defeats came because God's favor did not shine upon Israel's army. Is it not you, O God, who cast us off, and you, O God, who did not go out with our armies Right, so God did not shine upon Israel's armies That's why they lost their previous battles and if God did not go out with our armies again this time

Then there's no hope for victory Because the help of man is useless When people go into battle and win we pat ourselves on the back we did such a great job Yeah, you forgot about God's blessing that resulted in your victory same thing with anything that good that happens in our life or in our country we sit back and say oh man I did a great

job there I am really something special no you can't do anything you can't walk beat without God. You did nothing. And we can be brave, we can do impressive things, but without God, it's nothing. He's in total control and in charge and has all the power. David used to look for military solutions to military problems, but that's nothing compared to God's will. So we got to make sure we give God all the credit for everything always. The classic story of this, of course, is Gideon started out with his army of 32,000,

because we've got to go defeat the bad guys, and we need as many people as possible, because we want to win on our own. And then God told him it was too big, too many people, make it smaller. So he whittled it down to 10,000. And God's like, nope, still too big, whittled it down to 300. Why?

Judges 7-2, the Lord said to Gideon, you have too many men for me to deliver Midian into your hands, in order that Israel may not boast against me, that her own strength has saved her." I'm going to whittle down your army even more and more and more. Down to 300. Then they won.

And then it's like, wait, what? There's no way 300 men could have defeated that army. There were 135,000 of the enemy. So 300 versus 135,000, is it because the 300 were so strong? No. So great reminder from John and then just happened to have read Psalm 108 this morning to give glory to God in all things. I'll leave you with one more. Also read Psalm 102 this morning. This idea of forever stood out to me.

This morning's show, we talked about how we need to make MAGA bigger than Trump and make the movement last longer than just the next four years. And there was a lot of hurrying going on right now with things. It just feels like we've got to hurry up, we've got to speed through, we've got stuff to do now. And it's true, we gotta do this

because the deep state's gonna swallow this whole thing whole if we don't act fast and get it done. And I've said a lot, a lot of the last two days, that we don't have four years to get stuff done because we got an election in two years. But those two years are really set up in the first 100 days.

And we don't even really have 100 days, it's really just now. It's the set up, the foundation, the people that Trump is putting in power now is what's gonna make the difference for the next 100 days. So it's really every day. And we don't even have the rest of the day. We really got this afternoon.

We got to go, go, go. Right. And it's like, ah, but Psalm 102 can put things into perspective nicely. The end of Psalm 102 says, your years are throughout all generations of old. You laid the foundation of the earth and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you will endure. Yes, they will all grow old like a garment, like a cloak, you will change them. And they will be changed, but you are the same.

And your years will have no end. So while we're thinking politically about, you know, MAGA in four years, in eight years, and J.D. Vance setting up, you know, and then Ron DeSantis, right? We're thinking about like all these elections move forward

and, you know, we're talking about the 2026 Senate election and what the map looks like. We're so focused on time. That can lead to anxiety.

Just know that God is forever. Know that God is good and God is forever. And he has no end. Mike Slater dot locals dot com. Transcript and commercial free. Mike Slater dot locals dot com. Transcript and commercial free. Mike Slater dot locals dot com.