Leadership Lessons From The Great Books

Foreign hello,

my name is Jesan Sorrells, and this is the Leadership

Lessons from the Great Books podcast, episode number

177 and

reading from our Book Today the Preface

from Our Book Today the Introduction form for our Book

Today it seems that

men do not rightly understand either their store or their strength,

but overrate the one and underrate the other. Hence it

follows that either from an extravagant estimate of the value of the arts which they

possess, they seek no further, or else from too mean an estimate of their

own powers, they spend their strength in small matters, and never put it fairly

to the trial in those which go to the main these

are as the pillars of fate set in the path of knowledge, for men have

neither desire nor hope to encourage them to penetrate further

and since opinion of store is one of the chief causes of want and

satisfaction with the present induces neglect of provision for the future,

it becomes a thing not only useful, but absolutely necessary,

that the excess of honor and admiration with which our existing

stock of inventions is regarded be in the very entrance

and threshold of the work, and that frankly and without circumcision

stripped off and men be duly warned not to exaggerate or

make too much of them. For let a man look carefully

into all that variety of books with which the arts and

sciences abound, he will find everywhere endless

repetitions of the same thing, varying in the method of

treatment, but not new in substance in

so much of the whole stock, numerous as it appears at first view,

proves on examination to be but

scanty.

Now Christians have known

something for about the last 2,000 or so years

roughly, that apparently must be rediscovered

once every generation in the west, without fail,

at least by the more secular and pagan oriented believers

among us. This knowledge isn't Gnostic, and this knowledge

isn't secret. It's recognizable to anyone who

has lived long enough and been surrounded by frustration, particularly with

unmet goals, unquenched desires, and suppressed

appetites. And what's worse is that Christians,

if any of the secular oriented folks around them were paying attention, or

maybe even giving them their due, have been providing the solution to

all the problems this knowledge creates, or this lack of knowledge

creates for at least the last 2000 years as well.

But as John Wayne once infamously said, I think my

kids might have bought me a shirt with this on it. Some

people just can't be helped.

The knowledge that Christians grasp loosely is now in our own time being

rediscovered by very secular people, such as

it was at the start of the Enlightenment project back at the 17th century

last episode which I would encourage you to go back and listen to

episode number 176. We read from Candide by

Voltaire and the author today would have been, would have influenced

Voltaire's writing and approach to the narrative restructuring

via human reason and human skepticism that our author today

absolutely championed. Of course, he

championed it only after knowing the thing that all Christians in

his time, particularly Puritan Christians,

knew in his time by heart

today on the show. Today, on this episode of the

podcast, we are reading and examining the

themes for Leaders from an essay by the great grandfather

of empirical skepticism, a man who laid the

foundation for the scientific method that created the technology

that brings you this podcast today.

But it's the same empirical

skepticism that can't tell you what

bringing this podcast to you actually means.

We are reading from a very long essay certain

select parts of the great

installation by Francis Bacon.

I'm going to hold it up here. That way you can see my copy of

this today.

Leaders, there is no secret to restoring the world and

there is nothing new to be quote, unquote discovered.

In order to fix things for the future, in order to restore things

for the future, I would assert we've got to go backwards,

disciplining ourselves and doing the same hard work that those in

the past committed to doing that got us here

in the first place.

And of course, anytime I talk about

theological based

works or works that touch on theology or place where

works maybe should have a theological bent,

I have to invite my good friend and theological

backstop, Brian Bagley to the show.

How you doing, Brian? I'm doing great. Thanks for

having me. Brian, how is your new year

going? It's going, it's going well. You know,

we're staying busy with work and

kiddos. I've got older, older kids. They're still in the house.

And so as they are active in

school and, and kind of becoming adults,

things, you know, activities, just, you know, you don't get fewer

things to do, I'll put it to you that way. So. No, but we're

enjoying, enjoying that season of life and, and staying

busy with work. So, yeah, doing, doing well. How about yourself?

I am. I'm doing just as well as I could possibly be

doing. You know, we've got a lot of work. We started off with a bang,

you know, because I still got my, still got young kids, you know, living in

my house, so. Larger age ranges than your children, but

fewer children have a larger age ranges. So it's. A buddy of mine was joking

with me about it the other day and he Said, you know, it's like you're,

you're, you're going from one developmental challenge to the next developmental challenge and

you have to like shift gears really quickly because the

20 year old and the 9 year old, while it looks like on the surface

they have the same developmental challenges, they really don't they things going on

in a bunch of different, a bunch of different places. And so you're just, you're

constantly shifting and downshifting and it's true. You are.

Yes. Yeah. That is so true. So true.

So let's, let's dive in a little bit. Let's talk

a little bit about, let's talk a little bit about

Francis Bacon. And we covered

a lot of him and we talked a little bit about his background on

our shorts episode, which you should listen to before you listen to this

episode shorts number, I believe it's 208. The great

inspiration in Francis Bacon. We got to do a little bit about his, about who

he was as a philosopher,

as a writer and of course, and this is going to be where the main

focus of our episode here today is going to be about as

a political and philosophical actor, really coming

to his conclusions around scientific

empiricism and natural philosophy that have laid the

foundations for a lot of the things that we find ourselves in now in the

United States of America overall and in the west in general

over the last, you know, 300 and some odd years of the

Enlightenment. And so we've covered a lot of that

already. We cover a lot of that ground. But for the benefit of Brian, who

I'm sure has not listened to that episode and perhaps

knew very little about Francis Bacon before I sort of accosted him

vigorously about the head and shoulders with this book.

Let me just, let me just, let me just cover a couple of things here

on old, on old Francis that we could sort of jump into this. So

as I said before, Francis Bacon was a writer, a scientist, a philosopher, a

politician, and as a human being, he presents an enigma to the

postmodern, of the postmodern mind, as do a lot of

Enlightenment authors, like even Voltaire. We even had a vibrant conversation

about Voltaire. Bacon believed

fervently that the world could be remade through empiricism and

observation. But he also recognized, weirdly enough, the

barriers that idolatry presented. And we're going to talk a little bit about that

today. Raised in England during a time

of religious conflict and tutored under the precepts of

Puritanism, Bacon was the original postmodern

secular man. Before that was actually a thing. And he

stated that the point of his life was, quote, to uncover truth, to serve

his country and to serve his church. But then if you go back and look

at his biography, look at how he actually lived, he proceeded

in the course of his life to behave just about as nakedly and

grasping as any social climber in

the 21st century would in

the 17th century. Elizabethan court and of

course, the Parliament. And. And Bacon was sandwiched. His

career, his entire career and his entire life in Parliament and in politics

was sandwiched between Queen Elizabeth the First and King James the

First, during a time when Catholicism

and Catholics were being run to ground in England.

And he even advocated for the execution of Mary Queen of Scots

in. In Scotland, who was the cousin of Queen Elizabeth.

And he was also there during the rise of

Puritanism, which much later on in America would become a dirty

word. But he was there at the beginning of that, the beginning of the

Protestant Revolution, and was educated in the principles of the

Protestant Revolution, just as later on, Voltaire would be educated

in France by the Jesuits. And just like Voltaire

wound up biting the Jesuits in the butt with his particular brand

of writing and satire, Bacon wound up.

Well, I would assert Bacon wound up taking Puritanism, or at

least Protestant thought, to his logical conclusion

once it was divorced from, in his mind,

God.

Now, where Bacon actually proved to be influential was not

in the pursuit of empiricism in and of itself and

in observation in service of the scientific method. Other folks would eventually

take on that, take on that ground. Where he proves to be influential,

though, for leaders, particularly in our time, almost exactly 400

years later, is in that he recognized precisely what

the spiritual problems were that would prevent humans from attaining

greater heights materially. And this is the kind of

dichotomy that existed inside of Francis Bacon. If you look at his life

from how he, like I said, was a grasping social climber in the court and

in the Parliament. How he drifted from one position, I'm not really drifted.

He moved vigorously

and I would say intentionally from one

position to another and really played the court like it

tried to play the court and tried to play the Parliament like a chess game.

And sometimes that worked, sometimes it didn't, all the

way to his alleged homosexuality, which is also something very

interesting about him during a time when you could actually

get killed for that in the West. He

was an enigma of a

man, and he's forgotten or

confused with the writer or, I'm sorry, not the writer, the painter, Francis

Bacon. And we

forget that in spite of all of his

dichotomies, and this is something I think, that we're going

to talk about today with Brian, with his theological background, the

theology still mattered. And this is the thing I think, one of

the major things I think, that we have to revisit if we are going to

engage in any kind of restoration project for the west in

general and for America in particular, moving forward into

our next, dare I say, golden age.

So that lays the foundation for Francis Bacon and I, I. Brian, I

sent you a bunch of links, and I hope you had a chance to look

at some of those, but what do you know about Bacon? What are your thoughts

on this man? And I know I don't think you'd read the Great Inspiration before

I brought it up or even heard of it, but I. I hope you had

a chance to take a look at it sometimes. It's published, by the way, underneath

the title of Novum Organum, because he wrote a bunch of different essays

and he sort of cobbled them all together, and then they've been reordered and put

together over the last 400 years. So my order, or your order, may not

match. But, um. But what did you think of Bacon? What did you

think of his essays? What did you think of his writing? You're a deep. You're

a deep thinker in these theological areas. And of course, the history. Lay out the

history of Puritanism for us, for those of us who don't. Who don't know.

Yeah. So I would just say that I,

I hadn't delved too much into Bacon before you and

I talked about it originally. The, the one thing that

is interesting about his lifespan is

that, you know, he was born in kind of the early.

I believe it's the early 1500s. I thought something like that. And. And

then, you know, was lived into the. Into the 16. Maybe it was the

mid-1500s or something. I don't know. But yes. January. January

1561. So he was born 61. And he died in.

And he died in 1626. Yeah.

And I think. I think the Protestant Reformation didn't

quite end until. Or, or run its course fully

until after he had passed away. So he, he was born

after Martin Luther nailed the, the 95

theses to the church door in Fintenberg, Germany, and then

he passed away. So you could even say before. Before it was all

over or had run its course. So he really.

His whole life was spent in that development

of, Of. Of Protestantism. And so

it was not even fully developed by the Time he had

passed away, it wasn't, it wasn't done developing. And so, so

what, what I find very interesting about this essay, the

great inspiration is. And, and

again, not knowing much about him personally, of course. I, I mean, I

understand kind of a surface level about all the complexities and everything, but

what struck me was the, the humility

with which he wrote. You know, like he, he's,

he's talking about, hey, I want to propose this new way, but

here are the limitations. And, and, and he talks about. At

one point, I think he said, you know, human reason. He didn't say it this

way, but he said human reason has its limits. There are limitations on what we

can actually know and what reason can do.

And anyway, he, he made a, and he made another point in there about

the, the, you know, we, the

senses, the a person's ability to

sense, you know, it's limited in a couple of different

ways. It, it can just be flat out wrong

and, and then it, and then it can't sense every single thing like,

you know, it. And so I was just really struck by

his willingness to pursue something difficult, which

is a renewal. Okay, renewals are always difficult, but they're always

necessary. A renewal of, you know, how, how do

we think through empiric empirical information in the, the

collection and organization of, of knowledge of our universe.

But he did so with a warning and

saying, hey, look, these pursuits have their limitations

and I think with, to kind of tie it all together for you.

The, the Puritans, I think, were

largely misunderstood in, in many ways by the

modern mind. I think they were an attempt to try to

ground the Enlightenment that was kind of,

in a lot of ways a loose cannon in, in some, some

sense it, it did some great things, but it, it took

some excesses. I think the Puritans were in a sense

trying to sort of ground the reground the reality

in, in, in Christian thought, in,

in what is true, with working from the assumption that Christian

thought is true. And, and, and I was just struck

by Bacon's humility. And I, I was one. You know, I,

I haven't studied it thoroughly enough, but I wonder if there's not a connection

there, you know, with, with Bacon trying to,

to trying to just say, hey, look, I want to start something new, but also

want to just from the outset just say, hey, we face

real limitations and we face pitfalls in this, in

this endeavor. Well, he seemed

to be a person who, as I, as I've said before,

he seemed to be a person that was full of Contradictions. Right,

so. And it's interesting that you

sort of grounded him at a particular historical moment because

he was writing about

renewal during a time of chaos,

during a time where. And of course we

don't have, I mean, we don't have writings like

we do on.

Well, no, I'll frame it this way. The, the, the

average English person, English peasant, okay.

Was not, for lack of a better term, tick

tocking out to their objections to the Queen

or to the King. And even if that technology

had existed, they would not have been allowed to, allowed to tick tock out

their objections. Okay. We live in such a time. And I,

I've said this in the previous episode too. We're talking about Voltaire and, and

Candide and the Enlight. I fundamentally believe that

America is the final

argument on the Enlightenment. We're the place, we're the shores

where, just as a philosophy, if you could take America as a

philosophy, which, okay, but if you're going to take America as a philosophy,

the United States of America is a philosophy. We're the philosophical end of the

Enlightenment. Everything that comes afterward, either we are going to

be philosophically the seed for the next thing,

or it grinds out here and it's just done, it's over.

And then whoever picks up that, that,

that baton, whether it be the Chinese or the

Russians or the Brazilians or the Saudi Arabians or pick

your poison here, they're not going to do it the

way we did it because they're going to start from a completely different set of

historical assumptions that are not Enlightenment

based. And so that will be a completely different thing. And I think, I think

there's some, there's some in my brain, there's some

truth to that argument. Now,

with that being said, if you go back and look at

Bacon and it's interesting that you brought up this idea.

So Bacon looked at scientific experimentation

as a way of glorifying God and fulfilling Scripture. He didn't

think or he didn't believe as we do now as post

the post modern folks or post postmodern. How many posts were past, and

I have no idea how many posts we are past modernity.

But he would have been, I think,

shocked to. Just as I think

Voltaire would have been shocked, but for different reasons. He would have been

shocked in that we have to explain

the assumption of Christian, of a Christian

grounding to people. Yes, he would have been shocked by this.

He assumed a Christian grounding even before he got

to the Scripture, in spite of all of his personal failings by the way

or his personal predilections, which is of

course what we moderns focus on because we think that that then

allows us to deconstruct Bacon and then we can just throw them out with the

bath water like we've thrown out everything else. Right.

When writing in a chaotic time,

like the time between, you know, I mean, like he was the Lord High

Chancellor of England between 1617 and

1621. He was the Attorney General of England and Wales

from 1613 to 1617. You know, he

served underneath James the First, by the way, James I was the person who

authorized the King James Bible, you know.

So, you know, I'm not, I presume he was somewhere

floating around the edges of that project as well.

I guess the question is, talk with us a little bit because you said the

modern mind doesn't understand Puritanism ground.

Bring the modern mind or the postmodern mind or

post postmodern mind, bring us back to the

grounding in Puritanism. I'm going to ask you how that is going to help leaders,

but bring us back to that grounding. Well, Puritanism was a

project of the

believers in Christianity in England at the

time to try to

reestablish, reassert

the primacy of Scripture. Right. And so there were,

there was so much tumult and so much like you,

you're talking about, you know, that Francis

Bacon's life was a dichotomy or, you know, there's so many

different. On one hand he was, you know, he

spoke in this pious way, but on the other he was conniving and he, you

know, he might have indulged himself in,

you know, affairs and things like that.

And I think that was

not abnormal in that day. I think there were,

there since there was a lot of moral tumult that

the, the Puritans said, hey, we need to re ground

the, the Church of England. And the Puritans were

hated for that in a lot of ways. They were not.

They were in the way they were constantly trying to pull,

pull England back towards a, a

much stronger grounding in the Bible and, and, and

towards a more firm understanding of the Christian

tradition. And

as a result they were persecuted. And so that's why you have a lot of

Puritans that fled on the Mayflower

to other places. They, they, they first they went back to the

European mainland. They were in Holland because they were allowed to be safe there. Then

they were, many a group of them took off to

the New World and settled New England. And so you have a, a

very heavily Puritan influence in New England. But

anyway, all that to say, you know,

Francis was in was

part of the, part of that, that cultural landscape. He

was breathing that same air that the Puritans were breathing

and not just, you know, and from a, from a cultural perspective

is what I mean by that. But, but anyway, so,

so I, I can't help but think that

he, not only was he aware, he may have,

I mean, and I don't know, I'm totally conjecture he may have agreed

with them on some points. He seems to be a fair, open minded person.

He, you know, I'm sure he probably didn't agree with him on everything, but, but

anyway, I, I did appreciate his humility and his willing to,

his willingness to, like I said earlier,

acknowledge limits, which is something that I think the

modern mind has, has a hard time doing.

But anyway, does that, I don't know if that answers your question or if there's

more you want to say. Yeah, no, no, I mean, so if you go and

look at his, you know, you scroll through his Wikipedia article, I'll, you know, again,

where fact checking ourselves on the podcast this year.

So if you go and look at the Francis Bacon Wikipedia entry,

you scroll down to where it says his personal beliefs, says underneath

religious beliefs, it says. Bacon was a devout Anglican.

He believed that philosophy in the natural world must be studied inductively,

but argued that we can only study arguments for the existence of God.

Information about God's attributes, such as nature, action and purposes can only come

from special revelation. Bacon also held that knowledge was

cumulative. That study encompassed more than just a simple preservation of the past.

Bacon's well, we'll talk about that in a minute. I'm going to skip. Bacon was

against the splintering within Christianity, believing that it would ultimately lead to

the creation of atheism as a dominant worldview, as indicated with

his quote that quote. The causes of atheism are

divisions in religion, if they be many, for any one main

division addeth zeal to both sides. But many divisions introduce

atheism. Another is scandal of the priests when it

is come that to that which Saint Bernard saith, one cannot

now say that the priest is as the people, for the truth is that the

people are not so bad as the priest. A third is custom

of profane scoffing in holy matters, which doth by little and

little deface the reverence of religion. And lastly

learn in times, especially with peace and prosperity,

for troubles and adversities do more

bow men's minds to religion. Close

quote.

I think he was right.

And I'm not asking our heroes or our villains to be

morally, to, to match my moral framework

of the, of the world. I think we can learn both from, from those who

have matched the moral framework and those who have not. It just depends upon

what you want to keep and what you want to throw away. Right.

He. Well, okay, so let's,

I want to ask you a question here to sort of. And then we're going

to, going to kind of maybe take a turn and talk about his, his perception

around idols, because I want to talk about that. I think that's a good framing

for our time. When you think about Bacon, you mentioned humility,

you mentioned regrounding reality during a time of chaos. We are

in a. Well, depending upon who you, who you talk to,

Right. If you're among the people who are perpetually online,

we are in an endless cycle of chaos, and

we're going to be in a civil war, shooting each other in the face in

10 minutes. Okay. And maybe not even 10

minutes or down. Maybe we're already doing that. If you talk to people who are

not perpetually online, who is everybody

else or for whom, what is happening online is

for them a sideshow and irrelevance and an

irrelevancy to their real life. We're not, we're close to a civil

war, and there's just some wackadoos that just need to come along,

and we'll eventually get the wackadoos to come along because there's always been wackadoos

and it's not going to be any different. Okay.

I think both of those perspectives would agree that we are

in a chaotic time. If

we could transpose the spirit of Francis Bacon to here

and now, which I think we can, via the great inspiration,

what would Bacon tell us tell both of those folks right now? What would

he tell leaders? Because he'd be looking at leaders because he,

he had a, he had a, he had a. What do you call it, a

strain. He had a sense. He had an instinct for

politics. Right. So he would probably try to get involved

in Trump's White House and he would probably try to get

involved in the Congress because that's where he would understand

that spirit, understands the spirit of Francis Bacon, understands that that's where things happen.

What would that spirit, grounded in Puritanism, say to us now

around regrounding reality for our chaotic times?

Yeah, well, I think you hit the nail on the head earlier when you said

that they would have a difficult. That, that he would have a difficult

Time understanding that we,

that we're so far removed from a Christian

understanding of the world. I think so. I think

first he would, he would want us to try to

reclaim that and understand what that.

What that means. Exactly. So we've.

Have you ever seen the movie? It's an old movie. Sa. Old

movie that's not super old, but Gods and Generals. Have you seen that movie?

Yeah. Okay. So in that movie, what is

so fascinating to me is the way that the

characters talk to one another. They use

very direct biblical language as just part of

everyday speech. And, and I believe

that, that that movie was produced

by Mr. Turner. I forget

is his first name that used to own cnn. Do you know I'm talking

about. Yes. Jane Fonda's husband. I can't remember who

his name was, but yes, but, but he, and he was not a Christian at

all. But it was very important to him that the

dialogue capture accurately the,

the. The Christian understanding of the world.

And that was just what, 160 years ago?

It wasn't that long ago. And so in a relatively short

amount of time, matter of fact, I believe it was in 1892,

the, the late 1800s, there was a

very famous court case, the United States versus

the Holy Trinity. And it was a. It was a

Supreme Court case and the United States declared in a

landmar that the United States is a Christian nation. And then it went and

cited pages and pages and pages of evidence to

support that finding. And so I think by the time

you get to, you know, I don't know, 100 years

later, the American culture is largely

secularized, divorced itself from that Christian

understanding and, and

imposed sort of this neutral. All religions are

the same. Not. And freedom. Freedom from. Freedom of religion

became known as freedom from religion. In other words, we don't have to

have any religion at all. I think

for Francis and for a lot of

men of that age who had such a firm Christian understanding

of the world, I think they

would ask us. And

it seemed like Francis said this in his writing that

when. And, and maybe this gets to the, the point of idolatry that

you're talking about earlier is that

every single person is religious. Like we

are hopelessly religious. Nobody can

not worship something. So.

So in other words, everyone is.

Is going to elevate some,

some type of God to, to the point of. Of

worship and to. And

we've kind of lost our way in. And when we, when we

said, when we sort of declared this religiously neutral

landscape academically, everything else we said, okay, hey, you

know, Islam Christianity, Buddhism,

atheism. It's, you know, it's, it's anything goes.

And, and you just pick what's best for you. Well, that,

that in itself is a religious belief. And so

to adhere to that is to adhere to a new religion. And so

I think France, I think one of the things that, that Francis and, and those,

those philosophers who had such a strong Christian

understanding of the world would. Would want us to kind of

reclaim that, get back to that understanding of. Of the

world in a. In a Christian way. So

I just looked up Gods and Generals.

That was a 2003 movie, so 23 years ago,

starring. It was directed by Ronald F. Maxwell.

And yes, it was. It was. It

was personally financed by Ted

Turner. Ted Turner, that's his name? Yep. Personally Financed by Ted

Turner, ran over budget, and interestingly enough, here's the numbers, because

I'm a movie guy about the numbers. It had a

budget of $56 million and the box office was

12.8 million. So that was back in the day, which you would call

a disaster of epic proportions.

And apparently both the director

and one of the. Or not the director. Yes, the director and

the author of the novel, Jeff Shara,

both expressed displeasure at the theatrical edition of

the film. And the Poor Returns, this is, according to Wikipedia,

forced Ted Turner to cancel Maxwell's planned adaptation of

Sharer's final Civil War novel because apparently this guy wrote three of them,

including Gettysburg. The. The Last

Full Measure. The Last Full Measure did not

get made. So. Yeah,

anyway. And apparently Shara wrote Gods and

Generals, which. Killer angels. Yeah,

killer angels. That's right. And then the. And then the last.

The last Full Measure. So, yeah,

you know, I. Well, it's

interesting because we have to. On the one hand, we want.

We want people with. With power and authority

and money to lead the charge on these things,

on these areas. But when people with power and authority and money

are corrupted, as is in our era,

I wonder how we get there right

from. From here. And maybe one of the ways we get there is by

confronting some of those idols. So let's

pick up with. With Francis Bacon's essay.

We're going to. We're going to move away from the preface and we're going to

go into the sections called the Idols of the Mind.

So the way that this is divided up, at least in. In my. My.

The way that my copy of the Great Inspiration is divided up,

the Idols of the Mind is separated out and it has

the various. The various headings. And so it starts

with, let's see. 38. Ryan goes 38,

39. The different headings go down. And so we're going to start

off here with. Well, with 38. Well, we're going to read a few of these

just to kind of get a flavor of what Bacon is talking

about here. And I quote

the idols and false notions which are now in possession of the human understanding and

have taken deep root therein. Not only so beset men's minds that

truth can hardly find entrance, but even after entrance obtained,

they will gain in the very installation of the sciences meet and trouble

us, unless men, being forewarned of the danger, fortify

themselves as far as may be against their

assaults. There are four classes of idols which

beset men's minds. To these, for

distinction's sake, I have assigned names, calling the first class idols

of the tribe, the second idols of the cave, the

third idols of the marketplace, the fourth idols of the

theater. The formation of ideas and

axioms by true induction is no doubt the proper remedy to be applied for the

keeping off and clearing away of idols. To point them out, however,

is of great use. For the doctrine of idols is to the interpretation of

nature, but the doctrine of the refutation of sophisms is

to common logic. The

idols of the tribe have their foundation in human nature itself

and in the tribe or race of men. For it is a

false assertion that the sense of man is the measure

of things. On the contrary, all perceptions, as well as of

the sense of the mind, sense as of the mind, are according to

the measure of the individual and not according to the measure of the universe.

And the human understanding is like a false mirror which

receiving rays irregularly distorts and discolors the nature

of things by mingling its own nature with it.

By the way, pause for just a second. I absolutely agree with. That

is a stellar examination of the idols of the tribe. I'm going

to ask Brian. Actually, I did not put in our notes here for today,

but I'm going to ask Brian. So I'm going to tee this up right now.

The challenges that we are currently having in Christianity that I'm seeing

rising on the Christian right around ethnos in particular

coming out of anti Semitism, which I suspected this is

where this was going to go, but it's not something this weekend that I want

to get your commentary on. Back to the book.

The idols of the cave are the idols of the individual man.

For everyone, besides the errors common to human nature in general,

has a cave or den of his own which refracts and discolors the light of

nature, owing either to his own proper

and peculiar nature, or to his education and conversation with others,

or to the reading of books and the authority of those whom

he esteems and admires, or to the differences of impressions

accordingly as they take place in a mind preoccupied and

predisposed, or in a mind indifferent and settled, or the like.

So that the spirit of man, according as it is meted out to different individuals,

is in fact a thing variable and full of perturbation and

governed, as it were, by chance, whence it was well

observed by Heraclitus that men look for

sciences in their own lesser worlds, and not in the

greater or common world.

So I'm going to tee up those two right there first,

because I want to talk about some of the idols of our

secular age. So Bacon lists

those four idols, right? Those idols of the mind, which in our time we might

call secular beliefs, right? The, the idols

of the tribe, the idols of cave, the idols of the marketplace, the idols of

the theater. And in our time,

I think, and I wrote this in notes in my book, these

idols manifest themselves as personal and social identity.

That's idols of the tribe. Individual hedonistic freedom.

That's idols of the cave. Vagueness and sheer

incompetence in our language. That's idols of the marketplace.

And of course, propaganda and entertainment in media,

social and otherwise. That's idols of the theater. And

in the 21st century, we have become, 26 years now into

the 21st century, we've become increasingly weary of these idols

because the worship that they demand has judged us and has found

us wanting because ultimately we are judging ourselves and our

judgments are always harsh. Now,

we're recording this right around the time of

civic social strife in Minneapolis. And you can go

Google that if you want to find out more about that. I'm not going to

address that specifically only because it is only

because it serves as a current flashpoint in our

cultural moment of chaos that

reflects the power of these idols. And so

let's start off with this. How does the worship of our modern

idols, Brian, manifest now in the culture of the United States?

Are you seeing the same things that I'm seeing, or am I way the far

off? Yeah, no, I, I would say, if anything, that

the, you know, and I, I, I find this

fascinating that Francis Bacon, what he the, the four idols,

the four main idols categories. I guess maybe I would say it might

even be, well, not might. I would say it's exploded well beyond that

at this day and age. I think our idols Are

many, many idols. And I was reminded, as I was reading

this, I was reminded of. It's in Acts.

I believe It's Acts, chapter 17, where Paul

confronts the Athenians in the

Areopagus. And in that place,

the Athenians are just inundated with, I mean, there's

gods, there's statue to all kinds of gods, and there's idols all

over the place. And hey, you go here

and you find the God that you want to worship and you

worship that God. And, and if there's no God here that suits

your fancy, we have one over here called the Unknown God. And you can just

go over here and just, and that way we, we got you covered. We

got, you know, Heinz 57 sauce of

religious preferences. And, and I think,

you know, what's interesting about our day is we have

a, a cascade of religious preferences, right? I mean, it's,

it's. And that itself kind of becomes,

in a way that becomes the dominant religion

of the day is the cascade of religious

preferences. And so I think

to establish, like, what is, like getting back to,

okay, what is truth, what is

actually true? And

it's, it's not. The, the, the, the freedom

to have a religion is important, but I think what we're starting to discover is

that what's more important than the

freedom to have a religion is actually having

the correct religion. And that not all of your

religious preferences are equal.

Right. And in fact, some are true and some are false. And,

and so getting back to what I think all of the Christian

writers, or these, what I'm going to call them, Christian

thinkers, even though they may or may not have been Christian, who knows? But like

Sir Francis Bacon was clearly operating from a Christian worldview. Like he

understood the medieval structure of the world.

Like all of those things, those were profoundly

Christian and that gave them the framework

from which they could

reintroduce the idea of dominion. You know, when you think about,

like in the, in the Old Testament, what it, what did God tell

human beings to do in the Old Testament? Genesis chapter one, he said

do two things. He said, God creates the world and he puts man in the

garden. He says, multiply and

fill the earth. And then the second thing is have dominion over it.

In other words, I've given you the tools. I've given you this

creation. You're my stewards. Rule it and make

something beautiful out of it. And so,

and so I think, and, and he, even

Bacon, he actually references the creation story in

here. I believe it's in the preface somewhere.

And, and he, he assumes that mantle,

okay, of, of dominion. It's almost like he's saying, I'm

assuming that role of dominion by introducing

or reintroducing maybe even. I guess we can talk about that.

But, but, but this concept of,

hey, let's, let's ask questions and begin to explore

and take dominion, take the dominion that was, that was

charged to us by our Creator, by the One who made us.

And, and I don't think if, if you don't have a Christian understanding of the

world, you're not gonna, you're not going to be

able to receive that dominion mandate

because, you know, I mean, in so much of our secular minds, human

beings aren't the solution, they're the problem. I mean, think about, you know,

if it's, if, especially if you're, I mean, think about all the climate hysteria. I

mean, the human beings are the scourge of the earth. You know, if we weren't

here, this place would be, you know, just a hunky dory. But that's

not true in any stretch of the imagination.

There's a, there's actually a, an old

story, kind of a humorous anecdote that.

So there was a. Charles Wesley was a,

a Methodist preacher in, in England.

And he was going around, he was an itinerant preacher and he would travel around

and visit different estates and he would preach at different places while he was

riding around on his itinerant journeys.

And he, the, the story goes that he drove up on this or he wrote

up on this estate. And, and there's this farmer

working hard in the, in the pasture. And,

and he said, he, he went up to the guy and said, and it was

this beautiful farm. I mean, the guy just, you know, it made this, this

beautiful estate. And he approached the, the, the farmer

and said, he said, hey, God has really blessed you

with a wonderful, with a wonderful property. And the

farmer looked back at Charles Wesley and said, well, yeah, that's great

and all, but you should have seen it when he had the place to himself.

And Eddie, he's getting at the,

the fact that, you know. Yeah, that's right. It is beautiful, but it's

beautiful because I put in the work. Yeah, God gave it to me, but he

gave me the talents and the abilities, but, but I employed those

and, and, and we turned it into something beautiful. And I think that's kind of

what Bacon is getting at. He's like, hey, grounded in

Christianity ground grounded in, in, in

the Christian understanding. Let's explore some things. Let's try to

renew and, and recapture this dominion mandate.

So in recapturing the demand, the dominion mandate, I want to pull up the reference

to Acts that you made. So that was Acts 17, Acts 17 16.

And I'll read from that because I think it's worthwhile. We're also going to read

from another piece of scripture in the, in this podcast as well, because I want

to talk about Nehemiah here because I think that that's, that's an

important point to get to when we talk about what to

do, how to get to restoration. But, but

Acts 17, 16, 22. While Paul was waiting for them in

Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols.

So he reasoned in the synagogue with both Jews and God fearing Greeks, as

well as in the marketplace. Day by day with those who happened to be there.

A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began

to debate with him. Some of them asked, what is this babbler trying to say?

Others remarked, he seems to be advocating foreign gods. They said

this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection.

Then they took him and brought him to a beating of the Aropagius, where they

said to him, may we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting?

You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears and we would like to know

what they mean. All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their

time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.

Verse 22. Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagius and said,

quote, people of Athens, I see that in every way you are

very religious. For as I walked about

and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar

with this inscription to an unknown God. So

you are ignorant of the very thing you worship. And this is what I

am going to proclaim to you.

Close quote. By the way, that is from

BibleGateway.com that is the New International

Version. Acts 17, 16, 22.

Less rolling language in the King James Version, but I guess it'll have to do

for our show today. Gets across the point.

Can I just add one thing to that? Yeah, go ahead. Yeah. So

what's, what's interesting to me is

I've been doing some reading and you know, there's,

it's, it talks about the rise of.

I've been doing reading. I'm sorry, I've been doing reading about the rise of

spirituality and religion in America recently, in

the last, you know, 10 years or so. And I think

it's worth pointing out that just because you're religious

does not mean that you're right.

And so in other words, the type of religion

matters. And just like in the areopagus, you know, there

were many types of religion, but only one of them was true.

And so I think what could happen

that would sort of maybe derail our renewal would

be this multiplicity or, you know, these,

these cornucopia, the smorgasbord of

religious renewal. But it's not Christian, it's,

you know, it's pagan or it's, you know, Islam or

whatever. Like in other words, that the, the

recipe for success has to be and must be

explicitly Christian in order for this

project to actually work. Now

it's interesting that you bring this up because one of the challenges that we

have as a, as a nation state polity

being at the, again, the logical end of the Enlightenment, one of

the challenges we have as a nation state polity is that

we have taken to its logical end

multi ethnos and multi

religios practice

within a sprawling country

that goes across a third of a continent.

And even in Christianity itself,

okay, the

splits, the conflicts,

the challenges, forget in our own era,

just five minutes after the Puritans showed up, because the people

who started off in the Massachusetts Bay Colony

were not the same people as those who started off in Jamestown. Those

were two fundamental different strands that then

moved out over, over the continent over the course of 150 to

200 years. And

the interdenominational strife

because of a full throated, I would

almost say idolatry, but let me not be harsh. A full

throated commitment to freedom of religion

then creates a dynamic where the pagan

secularist person looks at

Christianity and says, okay, well, you got Methodists, you

got Baptists, you got Congregationalists, you got Mormons,

you got Seventh Day Adventists, you've got Church of

Christ, you've got Christ Church, you've got the Branch

Davidians, you know, you've got the Scientologists.

And I'm not saying all these are correct. We know what the differences are in

inside of the game, we know what the differences are. But to the person

looking at it from outside the game, they don't understand

the difference, nor are they interested, quite frankly, in the difference between the

Lutherans and the Baptists. At a doctrinal level, they're not interested

in it. And it doesn't help

when, and this is something that I was going to bring up again, something that

occurred to me this weekend, something that I saw. It doesn't help when

the intervarsity arguments between Christians

are about things that, quite frankly.

And look, I have a lot of problems with post World War II American

Christianity, don't get me wrong. But one of the

things that Post World War II, particularly big evangelical Christianity did

correctly was

put a kibosh on the intramural fights around,

quite frankly, ethnos, race. And

because of the deconstruction and the

collapse of the big evangelical church post Covid,

we are now seeing the intramural

sniping, starting first with anti Semitism

and whether you support the Jewish nation state and what they

did after October 17th or not. You know, all that now devolves into a religious

argument between the dispensationalists and the end time folks and then

the folks who are not right, who are not dispensationalists and the newer, the newer.

More, more, you know, the dispensationalist folks who say more radical.

But, but again, the newer folks who have a different, different

philosophy based on a different reading of the theology that

then devolves into what I've been seeing recently

from like, Joel Webin, who's getting turned inside out

around interracial marriage. Oh, you knew I was going to

bring this up. And so,

and, and me, for me, I look at, I look at the work, I look

at, I look at neither Jew nor Greek. I look at the history of

ethnos, I look at the history of ethnicity in the Middle east

and, you know, I look at the arguments that

not just Weybond but other folks are making, and I

see where they come out of and I go, shut up,

number one. Number two, you're out of your lane. Like, you clearly haven't,

haven't understood the right thing. But yet again, this is one of

those intramural fights that causes division within the body

and in a society that claims freedom of

worship and freedom of religion and by the way, freedom of association.

I shall not be coerced into associating with somebody I don't want to be coerced

with, into being associated with. Okay, fine. You have freedom of the

association. Okay, that's fine. Now

we've got a stew inside of the Christian body

that I don't think can successfully. No, not I don't think.

I wonder if it could successfully mount an eschatological

framework that can restore them. Not

necessarily restore, but bring back the modern secular mind.

And I'm not saying that everybody needs to get on the same page.

I'm not even saying that big evangelical same page is the

way to go. I'm not stating any solutions to this problem. I'm

merely pointing out that these are the fractures. And my

challenge question to you is if I'm on the outside looking at this

and I don't even understand the thing from the beginning, all

of this just seems like more of the same from what I'm already coming out

of. So why would I jump over to that? I'm already comfortable with the thing

I got. Oh, and I don't have to get up on Sunday. I can have

mimosis. Yeah. Well, to

that I would just say. And there's a lot in there. I threw a lot

in there. Now there's several layers, there's several layers of things

there. But, but the, you know, back to the original

point of, you know, somebody on the outside looking in and they're like, there's so

many differences. You know what, you know, you, you may not be interested

in the differences, but the differences are interested in you.

And, and so, and you will be impacted by

those differences. And so I think I, I

think for someone who's on the outside, I

think you should make a, I, I, Francis

Bacon. Okay. For all his faults,

at least he seems like he's making a good

faith effort to exercise humility and to try to

figure this thing out. Okay. And, and not a prideful way.

And so here, here would be my challenge. Here, here would be my ask to

unbelievers out there to say, hey,

yeah, the, the, there is truth that is

out there there. And you owe

it to yourself and to your society to do your best

to come to a, A, an honest

and thoughtful and nuanced understanding

of, of, of reality as it exists and not to bring your

own, you know, we're all going to, we all have our own biases, we all

have our own presuppositions. That's, I got that. That's part of it. But,

but we have to also come at it with the humility that

maybe I don't have it right? Maybe there's something

I'm missing and what is it. And I think Christians

to, to our credit, you know, and

to having lived in negative world for so long

where, you know, you go to a university and you say you're

a Christian and, and you, oh, God forbid, believe that the

Genesis account of creation laughed out of science

class, right? Like having had to endure that level

of scrutiny, mockery, all of that. You

know, we, we had to spend a lot of time understanding

the secular mind and understanding the atheist arguments and

understanding evolution and, and why the evolutionists believe

what they believe. And so I would say out of

necessity, I think the secularists have to do the same thing. They have to apply

this. And they, for. And they haven't had to. They haven't had to.

Yeah. And, and now they have to. And you should. And, and what I

would say is approach it with humility, with

understanding. Maybe I'm not right about everything. And, and

that's something that, that I've had to say about many, many things

to the point about the, the ethnos. I think what's interesting,

when you, you brought that up, I, I would say

that we, of course,

you know, you're familiar with the, the concept. You and I have

talked a lot at length about the fourth turning and

the, you know, the four turns. And so, you know, in a period of unraveling,

there's, there's going to be chaos. And, and so what

I would say about the, the, the, what's important to

understand from a Christian perspective about the ethnos, okay, is

that, you know, a lot of people want to attribute

culture to race. And,

and I would say that's not true. Now that's

not to say that ethnicities don't take on

particular, you know, cultures

or, you know, tendencies or something like that.

But, but culture is way,

it's not tied to the, to the melanin, the color of your melanin or

your facial structure. That has nothing to do with culture.

Culture has everything to do with religion.

Everything to do with religion. So you're so,

so culture is downstream from religion. Religion is the headwaters,

okay? Whatever your religious beliefs are, that forms the

headwaters of your existence. And from, from your

religion flows your culture, and from your culture

flows your politics, forms your family formation forms everything

else. And so if you want to critique

someone's some ethnicities, ethnicities, culture,

it's, it's not to just, it's not to critique their skin color or

their facial structures or the, the geography of where they came from or where

they, they're found. What you're critiquing is their religion.

I mean, everybody says Christianity is a white man's religion. It's only

the white man's religion because it took root in Europe.

Europe was profoundly pagan. Europe

was just as godless as any other place on the face of the earth.

And so the fact that Christian society

took root in Europe has nothing to do with skin color. It just

has to do with the providence of God. And oh, by the way,

the providence of God is that all nations

would come to know him. That's not to say that all, all

nations would become European. That's not what that says at all. It just says that

all nations would become Christian. And so there should be

some similarities. We would think that, that,

that if everyone has a Christian understanding of, of the world,

of creation, of their own human

anthropology, that, that certain things would

follow. That would be kind of basic to every

society. And, but would there be variations within

those cultures? Of course, of course there would be. But, but

the basic, the, the, the, the basic bones would be

the same, right? Christ died for, for sinners, right? We,

we need, we, we are all sinners in need of a savior,

right? I mean all of these, all of these basic

presuppositions would be the same. Now how would they

play out in certain instances? You know,

like you mentioned Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist, all these things, okay, There,

there may be some differences in understanding

the more nuanced portions of, of our faith,

but we can all agree on the Apostles Creed, okay?

That's what defines a Christian church. Can you accept the

Apostles Creed? Can you accept the Nicene Creed? Those

have been the historic standards by which Christian

churches have been marked. And then from there people can

make, they can read about the

ordinance of baptism in a different way, right? Is it, are infants

baptized or are believers baptized? But there are certain non

essentials, okay, that, that would mark every Christian

culture, regardless of skin color. Ethnos. And if you

think about where did the ethnicities come from?

Ethnicities came about at the Tower of

Babel. And the reasons that the ethnicities came about was

because when mankind was joined together

in defiance against God, when, when man raised

his fist and said, I'm going to build a tower to heaven,

I'm going to reach out to God on my

terms. The, the human race was on

the verge of destruction. They were on the verge of

destroying themselves. And God in his

mercy struck them with language and

confusion, struck them so that they could, they couldn't understand one another, they

couldn't conspire anymore to bring about their

own annihilation. In other words, God saved them by

creating the nations. And then

in the, in the Gospels, right at the end, he says, go into all the

nations, baptizing them, making them, you know,

making them basically Christians who would, who would follow me.

And if you look at, in Acts, I believe it's Acts chapter two,

where the, the Bible talks about the day of Pentecost. That

is a reversal of the Tower of Babel. So now

all of a sudden people are hearing the Gospel in their own

tongue and they're asking Themselves. How is it that we're able to communicate

with one another? How is it that all of a sudden

we understand this story in our own language,

in this place, the temple? And it's the

spirit of God enabling the nations to understand

the message of Christ and the message of which ultimately brings

about peace amongst the nations. So, so I would

just say to, to anyone on the outside

who maybe hasn't taken an interest, maybe because you haven't had to, maybe

because just lack of interest. I don't

know, maybe you just don't see the point. I would say that the. You may

not be interested in the differences. The differences are interested in you. And

those differences will have you, they will. And

if you don't take the time to understand them correctly,

you could very easily end up either missing out

or in the wrong place. And I say that with a lot of humility, like

I don't even know. I pray to God that I'm in the right place. I

pray to God that we're all in the right place. And so I think we

just have to approach this with humility. Understanding there are

non essential or there are non negotiables. And

then there are things that we can negotiate on. We can have

our differences and still have a unified

base from which a,

a healthy culture, a healthy nation can emerge. Does

that make sense? That was a lot. Yeah, no, that was,

that was good. That, that again, that, that rolls us back into the book,

back into the great installation

by Francis Bacon. This allows us to, to pick up. Because I want to

pick up something else that, that,

that Brian has, has brought up. Because

the question now becomes, what do we do

in order to get there? How do we. How do we. Which way

Western man like that, that meme shows up

occasionally, sometimes. So back to the book, back to the

great inspiration. I'm gonna pick up with. I believe it

is 53. We're gonna read.

33, 54, 55.

Little, little snippets. I think he would have really liked Twitter, by the way. Or

maybe substack. Actually, GRI strikes me as more of a substack

guy than a Twitter guy. Yep. All

right. Speaking of idols, and I

quote, there are also idols formed by the intercourse and association of men

with each other, which I call the idols of the marketplace on account of the

commerce and consort of men there. For it is by

discourse that men associate and words are imposed according to the apprehension of

the vulgar, and therefore the ill and unfit choices of words

wonderfully obstructs the understanding. Nor do the definitions or

explanations, wherewith in some things learned in men are wont to guard and

defend themselves by any means set the matter right. But

words plainly force and overrule the understanding, and throw

into all confusion, and lead men away into numberless

empty controversies and idle

fancies. 53. That's 53.

54. Lastly, there are idols which have immigrated into men's minds from the

various dogmas of philosophies and and also from wrong laws of

demonstration. These I call idols of the theater,

because, in my judgment all the received systems are but so many stage

plays, representing worlds of their own creation after an

unreal and scenic fashion. Nor is it only of the

systems now in vogue, or only of the ancient sects and philosophies that I

speak for many more plays of the same kind may yet be composed, and in

like artificial manner set forth, seeing that errors

the most widely different have nevertheless causes for the most part alike.

Neither again do I mean this only of entire systems, but also

of many principles and axioms in science, which by

tradition credulity and negligence have come to be received.

But of these several kinds of idols I must speak more largely and

exactly, that the understanding may be duly cautioned.

55. The human understanding is of its own nature prone to

suppose the existence of more order and regularity in the world than

it finds and though there be many things in nature which are

singular and unmatched, yet it devises for them

parallels and conjugates in relatives which do not exist. Hence

the fiction that all celestial bodies move in perfect circles, spirals and

dragons being accepted name utterly rejected. Hence too the element

of fire, with its orb is brought in to make up the square with the

other three which the sense perceives. Hence also is the

ratio of density of the so called elements is arbitrarily fixed to 10 to 1,

and so on of other dreams and these fancies affect non

dogmas only, but simple notions also.

And then this from 56. The

human understanding, when it has once adopted an opinion, either as being the received

opinion, or as being agreeable to itself, draws

all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be

a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet

these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and

rejects, in order that by this great and pernicious

predetermination the authority of its former conclusions may remain

inviolate. And therefore it was a good answer that was made by

one who they showed him hanging in a temple a picture of those who had

paid their vows as having escaped shipwreck, and would have him say whether

he did not now acknowledge the power of the gods.

Ay. Asked he again, but where are they painted

that were drowned after their vows? And such

is the way of all superstition, whether in astrology, dreams, omens, divine

judgments, or the like, wherein men, having delight in such vanities, mark the

events where they are fulfilled. But where they fail, though this happen

much oftener neglect and pass them by, but with far more

subtlety does this mischief insinuate itself into

philosophy and the sciences.

Francis Bacon talking about cognitive dissonance and cognitive biases

long before 20th century psychology got a hold of it,

proving, of course, that there is no new thing under the sun.

Yep, I want to take a turn here. I want to talk about a little

bit about what we're going to do as we sort of round a corner towards

the end of our project here today, the end of our book today, talking

about restoration.

There's an idea from 2nd

Chronicles 34. 7 so

Israel had a king, several kings, and they all

fell into idolatry. And eventually they had a good

king named Josiah. And in 2 Chronicles

34. 7, the good king Josiah was noted as

having taken the. Taken this action which I'm about to

describe upon becoming an adult and ruling over the folks

in Judah. And I quote and when he had broken down the

altars in the groves and had beaten the graven images into powder and cut down

all the idols throughout all the land of Israel, he returned to

Jerusalem. That's second Chronicles

34. 7 KJV.

There is not yet a quote unquote good King Josiah on the

political horizon of America. But the groundwork, and I think this is what

we were just talking about in that last section, the groundwork is being laid for

that person's coming. I believe a tidal wave of idol

breaking with youth and vigor will accomplish what old age and weariness

cannot. But waiting for the appearance of a

savior before doing the work yourself is a foolhardy waste of

time. And leaders owe to their followers to gird their loins

for the upcoming work. By the way,

doing the work without the benefit of the Holy Spirit.

Brian referenced acts. That's Acts 2:1,

13, which I believe fundamentally, if

you read the Bible, is, is fundamentally the third entry

of the Spirit of God into the world. And we'll just

leave that at that. I think the first entry came in with creation. The second

entry comes in, in the, in the. In the manifest body of Jesus

and his life, death and resurrection. And then the third entry

comes in with the Holy Spirit coming in at Pentecost, by the way, if you

don't believe me, if you go back

and look historically at what happened after Pentecost, the Roman Empire fell,

took a little while, but this was,

this was the start of something interesting happening that has wound up with all

of us here.

At a practical level. So let's move this out of, out of theory

and theology. Let's move this to practicality and more pragmatism, right,

Brian? So at a

practical level, if I'm a leader in my home or

I'm a leader in the civic world, or I'm a leader at

work, right? And

I, I, I, I, I've read a little Francis Bacon.

Maybe I've, I've taken the time to actually treat Christianity

seriously. Maybe I don't necessarily believe it, but I've

decided to treat it, treat it seriously. And I'm

being moved to something about the idols I see around me, either in my

home, my community, or in my, in my work.

Now, the idols that we worship in our time are not

physical and material, although you could say the phones is probably the

material essence of the, of the, of the temple

the Greeks were worshiping at, that Paul showed up at. You can

maybe make that parallel. But how do we begin to

tear down, how do we begin to tear down the idols in the

groves, the psychological idols in the groves?

And by the way, I think people like Jordan Peterson are doing some of this

work. I think people who are questioning the shibboleths

of a modern society, like Doug Wilson

are doing some of this work. I think the tearing down process, or at

least the beginnings of the tearing down of the idols process

has started. But there's so many idols, it's like whack a

mole. And I'm not, I'm phrasing this question from the perspective

of a person who's not Jordan Peterson. I don't have a platform. I'm not Doug

Wilson. I didn't spend 50 years, you know,

building a church. I'm not that guy. I just am the

precinct chair of my local political party in my community. I'm just

the, I'm just the small business owner who has like,

you know, two gas stations. I'm just the

person who's trying to show up and be a good coach at my, my

kids soccer game. And I'm surrounded by all these wackadoo parents. Or maybe

not wackadoo, maybe they're fine parents, but I See, because

I'm coaching their kids, I see the effect of the idols, the

psychological, spiritual and philosophical idols in their lives.

This is very much a pastoral question. So how do you advise

a leader who wants to begin to sort of cut down the sun

statues that are the spiritual groves in our time?

Yeah, I think. I think it

begins in our own hearts. And we have to

realize that we are blind to our

own idols, that we all, like I said earlier, we're all prone

to worship something and, and even

the most pious hearts. Okay. Out

there, that and that. And, and I mean that in a

generous, you know, kind way. What I'm saying

is even. Even the. The best of

us can be. Can be prone to mistakes and

to believe or say things that are not true or we can be misled.

Even good people. I say. And I say good people. And I. Again,

I'm saying that as if, you know, in reality, what I'm trying to say is

none of us are good. Okay? Even, you know, regardless

of what we might think is that our hearts.

The Scripture tells us that our hearts are deceitful and desperately

wicked just in nature. And so

in order to. We're not even capable of truly

recognizing the own idolatry that we have in our own hearts. And so

I think the Psalms are instructive

in how to begin. Where do we start? And

I believe it's Psalm.

I believe it's Psalm 139. It's either Psalm 139 or

137. The Psalmist, he's. He.

David is calling out to God and he's saying

a. He's saying, lord, search my heart and

try me and see if there's any unclean way in me

and, and. And lead me in the way everlasting. In other words, there's a.

There's a humility involved in, in

David. And David was, you know, was one of Israel's

godly kings. You mentioned Josiah earlier. David

was. Was one of the. The godly kings as well. And, and

he was actually referred to by God as a man after my

own heart. A man after God's own heart is how the scripture refers to him.

And so this idea that.

And even the prophet Isaiah says, all we,

like sheep, have gone astray. We've turned everyone to his own way.

And our tendency is to reject God. Our tendency

is to be blind, to be helpless.

And so we have to be utterly

dependent on God and realize that that's the starting point for.

For identifying idols and, and tearing them down, which

is part of the reason why I really appreciate Francis

Bacon's humble approach to this whole project, saying,

you know, hey, we, you know, we. I want to start a a new

a new renewal process, right? Let's renew the sciences. Let's,

let's try to take dominion over the earth again

and with with something new. But he approaches it with,

with a lot of humility, with recognizing his past and trying to build

on the shoulders of of the the

spiritual giants before him. So I think that's where it starts.

All right, folks, so we actually just lost

Brian there, and we'll be inviting him back in a future

episode of the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast,

but wanted to wrap up today's show by wrapping

up with the Great Instauration by Francis Bacon.

So I'm going to pick up here in the book and

we're going to round the corner and close our

show today. And I quote from the Great Instauration

the Preface for my own part, at least, in obedience to the

everlasting love of truth, I have committed myself to the unto uncertainties and

difficulties, and solitudes of the ways, and, relying on the divine assistance,

have upheld my mind both against the shocks and embattled ranks of

opinion, and against my own private and inward hesitations and

scruples, and against the fogs and clouds of nature, and the

phantoms flitting about on every side, in the hope of

providing at least, or at last, for the present and future generations,

guidance more faithful and secure.

Wherein, if I have made any progress, the way has been opened to me by

no other means than the true and legitimate humiliation of the human

spirit. For all those who before me have applied themselves to the

invention of the arts, have but cast a glance or two upon facts, and examples

and experience, and straightway proceeded, as if invention were nothing more

than an exercise of thought, to invoke their own spirits to give them

oracles. I, on the contrary, dwelling

purely and constantly among the facts of nature, withdraw my intellect from them no further

than may suffice to let the images and rays of natural objects meet in a

point, as they do in the sense of vision. Once it

follows that the strength and excellency of the wit has but little to do in

the matter and at the same humility which I use in inventing, I employ

likewise in teaching. For I do not endeavor, either by triumphs of

confutation, or pleadings of antiquity, or assumptions of authority, authority,

or even by the veil of obscurity, to invest these inventions of mine

with any majesty which might easily be done by One who sought to give

luster to his own name rather than light to other

men's minds. Then skipping

down, wherefore, seeing that these things do not depend upon

myself at the outset of the work, I most humbly and fervently pray to God

the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, that remembering the sorrows of

mankind and the pilgrimage of this life wherein we wear out our days, few and

evil, they will vouchsafe through my hands to endow the human family with new

mercies. This likewise I humbly pray that things human

may not interfere with things divine, and that from the opening of the ways

of sense and the increase of natural light, there may arise in our minds no

incredulity or darkness with regard to the divine mysteries, but

rather that the understanding be thereby purified

and purged of fancies and vanity, and yet not the less

subject and entirely submissive to the divine oracles, may give to

faith that which is faith's. Lastly, that

knowledge being now discharged of that venom which the serpent infused into

it, and which makes the mind of man to swell, we may

not be wise above measure and sobriety, but cultivate

truth in charity.

For my part, I agree at the close here of our

episode today on the great installation, I agree with

Brian Bagley. I agree with our guest today.

We are blind to our own idols. We are

blind to the things that grab

hold of us and the things that we put the highest, the things that we

worship. We are blind to those things. And Bacon.

Bacon was more aware of this empirically probably, than any

other, any other thinker or philosopher or

even scientist who was working through the chaos

of the transition from a world of

medieval thought and medieval processes to a world of

Renaissance, Reformation and through to a

world that would be dominated by human reason,

human skepticism, and above all, be driven

by an endeavor towards human enlightenment.

We are on the other side of that endeavor. And the idols we worship as

a Western culture have been tested in various ways

over the last 80 years and they have all been

found wanting to provide meaning.

However, we cling to them because we don't have leadership

that has any better ideas.

We don't have any leadership that has any better ideas than rampant

consumerism, more marketing and propaganda, more

entertainment, more media driving

behavior, and of course, more use

of slovenly language. We don't have

leadership that has any better ideas than putting

CCTV cameras on every single street corner

and AI inside of every single device that you have to

monitor your clicks and of course, control

your behavior before the

husk of historical Christianity is completely sucked dry. In the west,

though, there needs to be a restoration project that begins by first

pointing out the ideas, approaches and opinions, opinions that don't

produce optimal outcomes, and then second

rejects those ideas, approaches and opinions

and proposes new solutions and new ideas.

This is why while Christian nationalism might be scary

sounding to people with a secular or culturally Christian

mindset, at least it's a proposed

solution. No more banging

about about the problems.

We do need solutions and we do need new

ideas. But we also need to appropriately position

the people who have given us the ideas that have led to so much

trouble. We talked about

Voltaire and this time, this episode, we're talking about Francis

Bacon. But we've covered Nietzsche on this podcast and we've talked

about Derrida, Kant, we've talked about

Rousseau, these men of the Enlightenment, these

philosopher thinkers, Marx, Lenin.

We've talked about these individuals, Freud, Young.

And what we have noted is that all of these

people, these people who were

people who were well, believed in the

primacy of ideas rather than products, believed in the

primacy of thoughts rather than the primacy of

actions, and whose words were taken by others

and then led to the building out of utopian

schemes that didn't work. These men,

we almost never look at their lives. We almost never look at how

they actually lived, what they actually did.

Rousseau fathered anywhere between five and seven children and abandoned them

all to orphanages. Marx beat his servants and

sat in the library all day and couldn't hold a job.

Kant, well, Kant elevated his own

personal ability to basically be slightly

autistic to societal level. And I'm not saying

that's a bad thing, but that's what he did. Diderot,

if you'll look at him and the French Revolution, he hated women

and could not make a relationship with them. And Francis

Bacon, well, Francis Bacon was a social climber,

a schemer, a man who at the end of the day

may or may not have had predilections that we would look on

as ghastly.

I'm not saying that we should hold these men to be gods, but

I am saying that if we're going to take on their ideas and

look at the results of their ideas, and if we're going to go in a

different direction, we need to pick different

ideas. Because if you don't have the

power to walk the idea out yourself that you're proposing for others,

how good can that idea actually be?

I would also assert that we need to confront and repent of the

idolatry deep in our own personal lives,

away from work, away from civic leadership, away from community

volunteering, away from social media, away from the show,

away from our hobbies, away from our friends. We need to

confront and repent of the idolatry in our own lives and hearts, and

to paraphrase from Second Chronicles and break down the

altars and groves and beat the graven images into powder that exist inside

of ourselves and cut down all the idols throughout all of the

land, the psychological land in particular, that exists

inside each and every one of our minds.

That is the first work we have to do

in order to begin the restoration project and

abandon approaches that no longer, quote, unquote, quote work.

This act will be in the beginning of the

restoration of an individual narrative more lasting

than the false individual narratives we've all been fed by

those individuals who proclaim themselves to be leaders but have no

better ideas than constant surveillance

and scolding.

I want to thank Brian Bagley for coming on the podcast

today. Always a pleasure to talk with him, and it's really too bad we

weren't able to complete our conversation with him today. I want to thank you all

for listening, as usual, to this episode of the Leadership Lessons

from the Great Books Podcast. And well,

that's it for me.