"What Should I Do?"

I want to answer a question I have received over the years from younger Christian men who want to make an impact and leave a legacy. The question is, “What do I do?” Sometimes the question is, “How do I start a podcast?” The question behind these questions is, “How can I be most useful in the battle of good over evil?” The answer to this question depends on context, capability, and character.

There are many worthwhile causes for a young man to get behind. Paul Washer used to say that young Christian men, because of their physical ability and natural wisdom deficit, should spend their younger years on the mission field. This may be the right path for some. Spreading the gospel to difficult areas is important, and so is learning to trust God. I would expect this kind of emphasis from the leader of a missions organization. But this is not the most important task for everyone.

As I wrote in The Men Who Stayed, someone has to keep society functioning, which means things like staffing emergency services, providing spiritual leadership, volunteering, having children trained in the nurture and admonition of the Lord who love their land, taking on social leadership roles, and being a general bulwark against innovative and anti Christian threats. Without a strong home base, where are missionaries supposed to gain support?

Sometimes the most spiritual thing to do is get married, have babies, keep the family farm or business, pass it down to your children, get involved locally, and be a faithful churchman. That is a good life, and it is one business moguls dream about.

C. R. Wiley, a Renaissance man in his own right who occupies a place in at least three different worlds, recently shared how business executives often envy his carpentry skills and express to him how they wish they knew how to build houses.

Right now, there is a high demand for elevator, escalator, and wind turbine technicians, aircraft mechanics, plumbers, electricians, and many other trades that pay competitive wages.

One of my grandfathers became a carpenter. The other was a shoe salesman. Both led fulfilling lives filled with the things associated with children and community involvement. They outlived most of their friends, but their impact is still felt in their great grandchildren, if only they were here to see it. One of the reasons I recorded Heritage was to convey the good life from their perspective. America would not be America without the George Baileys who stayed home even when bigger opportunities called their names.

This does not mean men should stifle their God given ambition. I remember Rodney Chrisman, a professor at Liberty Law School, telling the story of his own regret at not being more attentive to his Greek studies in the New Testament so he could be on the cutting edge of biblical scholarship. This struck me as unrealistic when I first heard it. How can someone so accomplished be eyeing a very different professional field with such a high wall for entry?

It reminds me of the story Tom Brokaw told about Ronald Reagan. During Reagan’s presidency, he remarked that he wished he had spent more time on his education because there was still so much more he wanted to accomplish. Even the President of the United States felt he could have prepared himself better and wished he could do more.

If the most impressive men, from a popular perspective, still sense there is more they can be or do, what makes you think you will ever reach that pot at the end of the rainbow?

The lesson here is to expect your ambition to meet certain goals to continue throughout your life. “The glory of young men is their strength” (Proverbs 20:29). The limitation on all men is their time. “For what is your life? You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away” (James 4:14). You will never accomplish everything you would like to, and this is a good thing. It means you will always be working toward goals, improving, and becoming the best version of yourself if you do not squander your God given ambition. All of this must be wrapped in contentment, giving up your unmet goals to God, adjusting your desires based on providence, and acknowledging your unique skill sets. In the words of Clint Eastwood, “A man’s got to know his limitations.”

A man born into a carpenter’s family will likely know something about carpentry, and it may be the means God uses for him to feed his family. A man born into money and connections may have a leg up on making decisions for many others beyond his family because of his attachment to power and influence. Then there is someone’s skill level. All of this is afforded to us by providence, and none of it is to be lamented.

Sometimes I feel like my major role in life is to plug holes in dikes. I was given a traditional mindset that values the institutions that make for stability and flourishing. My soul resonated with Moses, Plato, and Edmund Burke. Why cannot people just function the way they should be expected to? When law, social expectation, or bigotry, in the Burkean sense, are subverted, Pandora’s box opens. We need healthy societies capable of producing a stable, educated, and virtuous population if we are to hold on to our cherished liberty.

Most men of any worth step up to the plate when something important they love is in jeopardy of dying, so long as they have the bandwidth to do it. Those with a more far reaching bird’s eye view may do it sooner than others. The Building and Loan must continue if our children are to avoid growing up in Pottersville.

At the same time, needs cannot drive every decision. Many of the men of renown throughout history are revered for the simple reason that they occupied their post when it mattered or filled a gap when it really mattered. If someone else had been there to lift the burden, we may never have heard their names. Timothy needed the training ground of Ephesus during Paul’s absence.

In a world with so few Pauls, it becomes important to raise up Timothys at a reasonable scale. Imagine a factory where the products are so hastily made, their paint so thin, their bolts so loose, and their builds so shoddy that they fall apart as soon as someone tries to depend on them. I was in furniture refinishing for many years and got used to working on this junk, but it is not what I want for my own home.

The temptation for a controller, especially if he has management skills, is to spread himself too thin, which puts everyone in a position of dependence on him. But if everyone on the plane is breathing oxygen except the person helping everyone else put on their masks, then no one will have oxygen soon. There is a hard truth in this. No matter how invaluable you think your abilities are, they have limitations, and one day you will not be around to use them at all.

Sometimes needs dictate duty. Moses had no choice. Sometimes they open up possibilities. David went from being a shepherd to a warrior gradually as the occasion called for it. Sometimes competing needs force prioritization. Paul traveled as far and wide as he could, but he could not be everywhere. God directed him to Macedonia through the vision of the Macedonian man calling for help (Acts 16:9), and prevented him from preaching in Asia and Bithynia at that time (Acts 16:6 to 7).

Consider this. Jesus, whom no one would dare say they could outperform, spoke of the needs of discipleship outpacing the ability of men to meet them. “Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, and then comes the harvest’? Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields, that they are white for harvest” (John 4:35). Jesus’ answer was simple when the need went beyond the scale of the resources able to meet it: pray.

Just because something is a need does not mean you are the person to meet it, but it might mean that. The difference between the two should be discerned through discussion (Proverbs 15:22), desire (Psalm 37:4), and duty (2 Timothy 4:5; 1 Thessalonians 5:8). At the end of the day, unmet needs can become worries. It is best to pray about them and entrust them to God (Philippians 4:6 to 7).

Speaking of needs, if you have some time and talent on your hands, it would be great if you could populate one of the more socially influential realms of American life. In Against the Waves I wrote:

Evangelicals—who make up about 28% of the U.S. population—are significantly underrepresented in other influential sectors. They account for only about 4% of the scientific community, 7% of the legal elite (by one estimate), likely less than 8% of journalists, and fewer than 19% of college professors.

There is no doubt that influential sectors have contributed to the moral slide downward in our culture, but there are few people with both the authority and conviction to push back from the places where it matters most. Institutional capture is a terrible problem, and it will not ultimately be solved through social media posts and podcasts alone, as important as those things might be. At some point, someone has to take the helm of authority and wield actual power at the key choke points.

I went back and forth for years over whether I ought to go to seminary, law school, or both. Ultimately, I settled on seminary. I did not really want to be a lawyer or do what lawyers do, but I knew we needed good Christian lawyers. This need of the hour tugged at my heart. I had a good business that could have scaled quite a ways by the time I graduated from seminary, but I was offered an opportunity to attend graduate school with a Graduate Assistant position. This was not the most financially lucrative decision for me, but I knew it would credential me in a field where I might be able to wield some important influence in the future. So I accepted the position.

I am practical about life. It does not give you do overs, and it does no good to consider what could have been given God’s providence. Using myself as an example, here is what is true for me right now. I learned a trade I can fall back on. This allows me to be bold where I need to be and not be tempted to become enslaved to special interests or audience capture online. My experience at seminary allowed me to start a podcast. It is a long story if you have not heard it, so I will spare you. This same seminary experience contributes to my current role as a church elder. My graduate school experience taught me how to approach information, as did my studying for the LSAT. I do not know where this will all take me, but it has definitely helped me write books and produce documentaries. Everything from learning guitar to working on my house has given me skills that I have been able to use, and some of those skills have allowed me to have a measure of influence in arenas threatened by revolutionary forces.

Your life does not need to look like mine, but it would be wise to gain a marketable skill before spending money on degrees. Consider what you want to explore and where it converges with God’s will, which will inevitably include duty and need.

One of the great crises we are facing as a civilization involves the disappearance of voluntary associations. The Walmart greeter is not going to give your child life advice, and you probably do not want him doing that, like the old shopkeeper might have. The Boy Scouts are in disarray. Veterans organizations and voluntary charitable organizations are losing members, and sporting clubs are closing down. It is difficult to grasp the extent of this decline when comparing civic participation today with the past two or three generations, which reflected much higher rates of volunteerism.

I was at the gym the other day and happened to overhear one of the local VFW leaders lamenting that their chapter closed its doors because of a lack of participation. A number of areas near me are struggling to find volunteer firefighters as people from New York City move in but do not participate at high rates in the communities in which they live.

In 1830, Alexis de Tocqueville observed:

“Americans of all ages, all conditions, and all dispositions constantly form associations. They have not only commercial and manufacturing companies, in which all take part, but associations of a thousand other kinds, religious, moral, serious, futile, very general and very limited, immensely large and very minute.” (Democracy in America, Vol. II, Part II, Chapter 5)

If we are to rescue our own country from decline, we will need to know each other and organize to solve problems the government should not or cannot solve. There is much opportunity right now, both with small businesses that are staples of their communities and with voluntary associations composed of older leadership. A young man can join these organizations or take out a business loan to acquire a business that a retiring Baby Boomer without an heir needs to sell. If you are a young man willing to strike out on your own in the small business world, you might look at BizBuySell.com. Not only would you be taking advantage of lucrative opportunities, but you would also be reinforcing your community in the process.

Or, if you live somewhere where modernity has erased some of these staples, you can simply plant a new seed. This is the idea behind things like Rockwell’s Gas, a small business concept to bring back the American style gas station. Where I live, I can walk into a Stewart’s Shop and expect local fare staffed by locals who speak English, but as I have traveled, I have seen firsthand that this is not the case in many places. Bringing back the American gas station, supplied not as a dingy vape shop but as a family friendly place with bait and tackle, ice cream, and other community staples, may seem like a small thing, but it is not. This is how you strengthen your land.

You could probably summarize what I am about to say by simply saying: “Stop trying to save the world before you can buy a home.” There are obviously exceptions, but its a good general rule for our current context.

If you are talented in multiple arenas, and especially if you look and sound good behind a camera, you will need to wisely navigate the emerging incentive structures that exist on the internet.

One of the mistakes often made by younger Millennials and Zoomers, in my estimation, is that far too many members of these generations think passive income on social media is easily achievable and the key to happiness. There are a few problems with this.

We need good Christian voices on podcasts, social media, and in video content. People, even in your local church and community, are consumers on these platforms. But there are a few things to realize.

First, it does take work. Just because you saw someone make it big with a viral video produced on their phone does not mean that is your future. For most content creators, myself included, there is a mountain of preparation and networking that happens when you are regularly producing quality content that people need.

This brings me to my second point. Most of what exists on social media and in the podcast world at this point is basically garbage. Quality control mechanisms hardly exist, and mass audiences do not seem to be that concerned. This tempts content creators to take shortcuts and become sloppy.

If you are looking to do more than simply enrich yourself personally, and you should be as a believer, you will need to resist the temptation to take shortcuts, such as letting AI write your articles, pontificating about subjects you know little about, and letting whatever is popular in the moment dictate all of your content. Often, the things most needed are not the things that are most popular. Are you prepared to say “no” to audience capture, slop, and massive third world audiences?

Remember, social media, as it currently stands, exists in an egalitarian world where tabloidesque stories and outrageous behavior are the lingua franca. You, as someone who cares about the health of your community and country, are walking into an environment that simply does not.

There are also limits to what can be done on social media. You can certainly effect change when you have a clear goal and actionable ways to achieve it. I would like to think my podcast, Conversations That Matter, has done much to expose and refute errors in Christian organizations and that work has been used to purify them to some extent. There are many cases of neutralized threats and positive action in places like the Southern Baptist Convention, Cru, and Liberty University, in part because my platform was part of the team attempting to reform, purify, or strengthen these institutions. But what about the person playing the long game who has a shot at becoming a leader in one of these major culture shaping institutions? He can do far more than a podcaster on the outside ever could.

This is part of the reason I suggest younger people run for local political office, get involved in the community, and obtain credentials and relationships that will help propel them to places where they can eventually call the shots, not just criticize or advise those who do, as important as those things can be.

Sometimes a podcast can help with that, but most of the time, from my perspective, it cannot. The internet is filled with guys spending their formative years pontificating about things they know little about, sometimes hindering themselves from accessing actual influence at lower stages because of what they say to attract a certain audience, and becoming absorbed in niche arenas that offer the illusion of national appeal. Do not get me wrong. These pitfalls can all be avoided and navigated, but they are not easy.

The internet will want you to say stupid and sensational things that resonate with a particular mass audience but become a stumbling block in the real world. If you go down the podcast path, just keep in mind the reason you are doing it in the first place, and do not be afraid to say things an online audience may hate but that move the needle forward with a strategic group of listeners in the real world.

If you take one thing away from this article, may it be this: Your virtue must be stronger than your ambition. As long as your ambition overcomes your virtue, you will fall into trap after trap. Your record will be filled with regrets regardless of how capable you are. “Better is a poor man who walks in his integrity, Than he who is perverse in speech and is a fool.” Proverbs 19:1

Your character matters more than your capability. Scripture is filled with stories of men who felt incapable, but God used them. Moses did not think he could speak. Gideon lacked bravery. David was just a shepherd boy. Peter was impulsive. Each of them had to learn their lesson, but each of them was faithful. If you really want to save your civilization and protect your family, the best thing you can do is first learn to be faithful. Make sure you have mentors if you can get them, are grounded in a local church, and are spending personal time with God. Recalibrate yourself every day. You will inevitably learn this as you are pursuing your skill sets.

Now, let us talk about skill sets for a moment. The Left knows that transforming culture requires both a top-down and bottom-up approach of deconstruction and reconstruction along revolutionary principles. One of the tendencies of the political Right is that they tend to focus on one thing too heavily. Elections are one mechanism, but not the only one necessary for recovering our society. We do need people staffing positions in all the sectors, including the arts, trades, and business worlds.

It is in style right now, at least online, to support aspects of Italian political theory, especially a Machiavellianism that seeks to acquire power at all costs in order to transform society. There are many great things to learn from this tradition, and I highlight some of them in Against the Waves, but there are also risks and limits to this approach.

Suffice it to say, for our purposes, you are not wasting your life being a shopkeeper or a welder unless you know that is not what God wants you doing. I know a farmer who does construction and just started to get into local politics. He is an honest man who locals likely trust because of his stake in their community. He provides a stable environment for children who will grow up to exert their own influence.

I also know a family where both husband and wife got too deep into political ladder climbing and neglected their children. Whatever they did teach them, it was how to manipulate and ladder climb themselves. You do not have to guess which family is happier and more successful in the long term.

The point is, top-down change and bottom-up organic change are not mutually exclusive. For example, if marriages are in decline, it is good to have just laws that disincentivize divorce while also having pastors to help navigate such situations and reinforce good social mores.

As a general rule, it is probably best to spend a few years in the “bottom-up” ranks before wielding significant magisterial power, simply because a magistrate connected to the environment he governs will know better what his constituents will respond to and how to govern well. Even the righteous kings of Israel faced limitations in purging idolatry partially because of the stubborn hearts of the people (name which kings this applies to). Unenforceable or disrespected laws can foment a general disrespect for lawful authority.

“Because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed quickly, therefore the hearts of the sons of men among them are given fully to do evil.” Ecclesiastes 8:11

A wise ruler knows how to righteously apply God’s universal law in a particular setting.

So what should I do, Jon? Pursue power or the quieter life?

I will tell you how I have navigated this question. At different points in my life, different opportunities arise as I am pursuing the next step that makes the most sense for my reachable goals. I wanted to get married, so I got a job that paid. I was not picky about what kind of job. That helped pay for the schooling I needed to be a leader in my church. That, in turn, prepared me for grad school and helped launch my podcast, which I never expected to be a career. This gave me a platform to market my music and books. Did I mention I just released Heritage? I am in my mid-30s, and I do not know what is ahead. It may be that the need of the moment calls for more political action, or it may be that family needs require me to be more available on the home front. One thing I did not mention is how important podcasting has been for my flexibility. Speaking, writing, and podcasting take time, but I can do it from my desk, which means I can work on my fixer-upper and be there for unexpected family needs, which we have had our share of.

It all seems to make sense on the other side of the decisions after years of living with them. The important thing at the outset is openness, faithfulness, and excellence.

I basically try to craft my decisions around the order of loves (ordo amoris) as best I can. Where do my responsibilities lie? How does helping the people I care about direct my goals? How do my skills determine which goals are prioritized? Some things will be sacrificed in the process, but that is okay.

The last thing I will say is that having a long-term focus helps. We are warned in Scripture about get-rich-quick schemes (Proverbs 13:11). It is better to plan for gradual leveling up. Imagine your family, or a future family you would like to have, ten years from now. Where would you like to be at that point? Start walking in that direction. Some dreams may die. Some dreams may live.

Our society reinforces never giving up on your personal dreams. I say dream bigger. Dream about your little neck of the woods and extend outward to the entire universe. There are no small people or places, as Francis Schaeffer liked to say. Your dream is about what God can do in the grand scheme and how you fit into His unique plan.

The answer to the question, “What should I do?” depends on context, capability, and character. For some of you, this may not seem clear in the moment. I promise you, as you live and pursue the things you know are right, even if you do not know the whole picture or where it will take you, the picture will become clearer with age and experience.

You will be glad you did that first aid course when you could not find a summer job, or volunteered to help your neighbor after a storm when there was an open Saturday, or spent time becoming more familiar with the Bible so one day you might help others match their lives to it in a church leadership context. One day, you will look back and be thankful you took the steps you did take, however small, when you knew you should take them.