Os Guinness (Author of The Call)

The episode you're about to listen to was released back when the Mere Christians podcast was called the Call to Mastery. Now, if you love Mere Christians, you're still going to love these older episodes because the majority of each conversation focuses on how the gospel influences the work of our guests. With that disclaimer out of the way, please enjoy the episode. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Call to Mastery. I'm Jordan Raynor. This is a podcast for Christians who want to do their most exceptional work for the glory of God and the good of others. Each week, I host a conversation with a Christ follower who's pursuing world class mastery of their craft. We talk about their path to mastery, their daily habits, and how the gospel of Jesus Christ influences their work. Today's guest is Oz Guinness. He's the author or editor of more than 30 books, including a lot of them that you probably read. The Call, Fool's Talk, and Carpe Diem Redeemed. Oz is a very prominent social critic. He's addressed audiences worldwide from the British House of Commons and to the United States Congress to the St. Petersburg Parliament. Oh, yeah, and he's the great, great, great grandson of one of my heroes, Arthur Guinness, founder of the Guinness Brewing Company. Oz and I sat down recently, had a terrific conversation about the surprising friendship between Arthur Guinness II and William Wilberforce, another one of my heroes that you probably heard me talk about many times before. Wilberforce, of course, was largely responsible for abolishing the slave trade throughout the British empire in the 1800s. We also talked about why a rhythm of engagement and withdrawal is a key to redeeming our time. And finally, we had a great conversation about why Christians should be bold to carry, quote, the future key of history into our places of work. Please enjoy this conversation with Oz Guinness. Oz Guinness, an honor to have you here. Thanks for joining me.

No, great privilege to be with you.

Yeah. So let's start here. You're the great, great, great grandson of Arthur Guinness. Did I get that right?

I am. You did.

Okay. I'm a massive fan of Arthur and his contemporary William Wilberforce, who, as our audience probably knows, is largely responsible for the abolition of the slave trade in the British Parliament, early 1800s. And, you know, I've read biographies on both of these men, and somehow I've never heard something that you recently mentioned in a video. That these guys knew each other, that Arthur Guinness and William Wilberforce knew each other. What's the story behind this relationship?

Well, actually, it was Arthur number two.

It was number two.

Okay.

Interesting.

It was his son, who knew Wilberforce, but Arthur number one, Arthur I, the first Arthur, as we call him in the family, he came to faith through the teaching of John Wesley in the Irish revival. And so his faith was at the very heart of his business, right the way through his. His career. And his son, the second Arthur was equally ardent in the faith and he was the one who knew Wilberforce. And I love the links between them. One of my prized possessions is a beautiful leather bound book of Wilberforce's, his bestseller. And in the front he signed it, but in the front is a letter tipped in. And he saw a young couple getting married. So he wrote to them and he says, I'd like you to know the. The reason behind the big change in my life. And in other words, how he came to faith. And it's clear that the young couple have read it, they've ticked it, and then signed it at the end when they finished it. But what's moving to me is it was only three months before Wilberforce died. In other words, he's still fighting for abolition. As you know, he's only past three days before he died, but at the same time, he's reaching out and sharing his faith.

I love it. Is the book his big one? Practical view of Christianity?

Yes. Yeah.

That's amazing. I love that. I'm curious, was working in the family brewing business ever in the cards for you? Did you ever consider it?

Not really, no. My great grandfather, Arthur Guinness, grandson went a different way and our side of the family has done so ever since. In fact, I'm descended from Arthur's youngest son, who was not a good businessman. He. He went out and fought with the Duke of Wellington and he was a soldier. And actually, while he was away, the money left him from the brewery was squandered by one of his brothers. So he came back and he didn't have too much, but he wasn't a gifted businessman anyway.

Interesting. So speaking of vocational choices, one of your great books, obviously is the Call. We talk about this idea of primary and secondary callings. And can you give us a brief definition of these two ideas?

Well, that's the Reformation distinction. I think it's important. The primary call is by the Lord to the Lord, for the Lord. In other words, follow me. Or right back to Genesis 12 Abraham, leave where your country, culture and kin and go where I show you. That's the primary call by the Lord to the Lord. Then everything we do from then onwards and the whole of our lives is done as unto him. And so, as the Reformation put it, that's our secondary calling. Now, that's important because the greatness of the Reformation impact was it was work too. In other words, your vocation and vocation and calling are the same. One's Latin and the other's Anglo Saxon. Work, too, became a part of calling. But then that was so powerful and gave rise, Max Weber thought, to modern capitalism, that occupation and vocation became synonymous. And you can see today, with people talking about vocational aptitude training and vocations and so on, work has swallowed up calling. So we've got to bring back the primary. There's no calling without a caller. And the primary calling is to the Lord and by the Lord, Amen.

Yeah. You were born in China to missionary parents expelled from China to England after the Chinese Revolution in the early 50s, and you ended up serving as a reporter for the BBC. I'm curious how you came to choose that as one of your secondary callings, if you will. Why that choice?

That was a long time later. I came to faith at 18, and when I went to university in London, there was a real tension in my life, because on the one hand, we had incredibly good teaching in the fellowship at London University, and people like John Stott and Martin Lloyd Jones giving us incredible, rich, deep blocks of theology. But here we were, the 1960s, drug, sex, rock and roll, Fellini, the free speech movement, Ingmar Bergman, you name it. There was no relation to that world at all. And it created something of a schizophrenia, which for me was resolved when I met Francis Schaeffer and he connected all the dots. And I saw that my faith could be free to think about anything and everything freely. And so that post university time after meeting Francis Schaeffer was liberation for me. But then I went to Oxford. I met my wife in Switzerland at Labrie. We went to Oxford. I did my DPhil. It was after that, with many things in between, that I worked for the BBC for a while.

Why that vocation? What interested you about writing for the BBC?

Well, the actual job came up almost accidentally, but I've always been fascinated. Before I came to Faith, I was interested in the Foreign Office diplomacy and representing Britain around the world. And then I came to Faith and understood the notion of calling and had a completely different sense. But part of my calling as it grew was a sense of trying to make sense of the good news of Jesus to the world and make sense of the world to people who are interested in living responsibly in it. So working for the BBC and reporting on things was absolutely fascinating.

It's been said before that there's essentially three lines of Arthur the First's descendants, right? There's the Guinness brewers, the Guinness bankers, and the Guinnesses for God. Right, Those who served as preachers and missionaries, like your parents. But of course, and this is so prevalent in all your writings, all of these Guinnesses who were faithful followers of the Lord were Guinnesses for God. Right? So can you help us dismantle this idea that brewing beer and banking and reporting for the BBC can't be done to the glory of God?

Well, as you know, as I said earlier, the first author was a devout follower of Jesus, and the second and the third, Benjamin. So there's no question. But at the same time, money can do strange things to you. And you can see that the greater the wealth became. And early in the 20th century, the brewery was the largest in the world. And the family, one of our family, was the second wealthiest man in Europe. And there's no question it became. Faith became a little more formal and public and eventually disappeared altogether in one part of the family. And when I was at college, there were drug cases and suicides and all sorts of scandals and dark stories, and people talked about the curse of Guinness, which is wrong, too. They were just tragedies. But you can see wealth can undermine faith if you're not careful. But my side of the family has kept the faith. Thank God.

Praise God for His grace in that. Right? As our listeners know, I'm about to release this new book called Redeeming youg Time. And one of the first books I read for researching my book was your book Carpe Diem Redeemed. Can you give us a short summary of that book and why you wrote it?

Well, I've always been fascinated with time, from early childhood in China and seeing the dramatic crises in history taking place all around me. So I've been fascinated for a long time. But it was when I understood the differences between the Eastern view of cyclical time and the biblical view of covenantal time and the secularist, atheist view of chronological time, a mere succession of moments, that I began to see the incredible significance. So one thing I don't have in the book, I've actually got it in a more recent book, is the idea that we all pass through a couple of moments in our lives, even if we're not deeply aware of it. One is very early when we say I am I. In other words, we're born with a flooding awareness of oneness with our mother in the womb, of course, and then Our families and so on. Then we discover we're individual people. Too little of that, you have separation anxiety, too much of it, you have narcissism. The second great moment, equally important, is when much later on you say, I am I and I won't be here forever. In other words, the day is coming when I'm not going to be here, and the day is coming when every trace of me from the earth will have disappeared. And so that gives an incredible sense, well, how am I living now? I mean, think of the pandemic. I love the fact that as the Jews point out, you know the verse in Ecclesiastes which comes more than 30 times, vanity of vanities. The Hebrew is actually short breath. And you think of the pandemic. Short, short breath. Short, short breath. Life is but a short, short breath. So the challenge always how are we living to make the most of this extraordinary life?

But to do that, you say in the book, hopefully I get the quote roughly right, that if we're going to master time, we've got to know the author of time, what time means, and know the part that God calls us to play in this grand story. And you really spend the entire book kind of unpacking that idea, the meaning of time, the part God calls to play in it. But can you spend a few minutes giving us a synopsis of that here, unpacking an idea for us here?

Well, I don't think we ever do master time. Yeah. And one of the points I make is we can conquer space and occupy it exclusively, but not time. We, as Thomas Hardy says, are time torn creatures. Time will eventually master us. We're mortal. But for me, and it's still a challenge for me in my late 70s, three things in the Scriptures are always almost daily a challenge to me. The first and maybe easiest is in Chronicles, the men of David who were skilled in reading the signs of the times. We've all got to do that. Our Lord criticized his generation. They could read the weather, meteorology, but they couldn't read the signs of the times. That's one thing. Then the second and deeper way the Bible puts it is in Acts 13, where you have that incredible statement about King David by Paul. He says David, after he'd served God's purpose in his own generation, fell asleep. I think that's absolutely incredible. Seeking to understand what God is doing in our time. And then each of us, in our small way, in our spheres and our calling, serving God's purpose in some small way by our faithfulness and obedience, reading the signs of the times and serving God's purpose as we're able in our generation, we do somehow redeem the time. And the Lord knows we're in a time, as Paul says, that's evil and chaotic and confusing and all sorts of things going on. So if ever the people of faith follows Jesus, we're called to redeem the time. It's our time.

Yeah.

Amen.

Very well said. You said a couple minutes ago how incarpe d' or redeem, you compared the Judeo Christian view of time, this covenantal view idea of time, versus this Eastern religious idea of time being cyclical. What are the practical ramifications for that and how we think about stewarding this short breath of a life? How does the covenantal view of time give us hope and practical resources as we seek to steward our time? Well.

Well, let me share one that I'm wrestling with this week, and that is the lure of the mythical and the cyclical view of time. The idea that you constantly have disorder and then some hero overcomes the disorder through his victory, and you have a return to order. And you know, the original meaning of the word revolution was of a celestial heavenly body going round and round and round and going back to where it started from, which, of course is cyclical, like much of nature and like much of Hinduism, Buddhism. But that's not the biblical way. And in the Scriptures, we are not just conserving the best, we are conservatives. The best is often lost. So we want to restore and maintain the best of the past. But the Scripture looks forward. I love the fact that many of the rabbis say, you know, Exodus 3:14, when Moses says, lord, what name shall I use of yours to the people? And the Lord says, in a way, I'm indescribable. I am who I am. But as the rabbis point out, that could equally be translated, I will be who I will be. God is always in the future tense. So we're not only conservatives, we are progressives, rightly understood. And there are always unrealized ideals of freedom and justice and human dignity, et cetera, et cetera, which we haven't seen yet in history. We've talked to Will before. It's incredible what he did in his time. But we're not just trying to return to his time. We're trying to be faithful as followers in our time, looking forward and of course, ultimately looking forward to the day of the Messiah, when what we can't do, he will do, and so on. So recapturing that forward thrustiness of a biblical view of Time, I think is incredibly important because even I mentioned revival. A lot of Christians look at the mess today and well, we need revival. And it becomes a kind of return to the past and a kind of security blanket rather than, yes, we do need revival. We individually and corporately need to repent and go forward. But it's that going forward, we got all the armory of the Lord and all the truths of Scripture. We should be the most progressive, the most confident people thrusting into the future of history. And it's that side of it that I try and recapture.

Yeah, we should be the most progressive, most forward thinking because we have such a clear vision of what the future is. Right. The kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven. But there's also a deep peace in recognizing that we don't have to finish that work. Right. Ultimately Christ will finish it at the consummation of heaven and earth. Doesn't that give us a deep soul level rest as we toil to reveal the kingdom here and now?

No, absolutely. In other words, providence is over everything at best, and our highest, our utmost for his highest. We're only junior partners, sub creators. Yeah. So I love Hebrews 11. We're acting into history, but looking over the edge of history by faith. And it says that the Lord is a city prepared for people who live like that. It certainly never was all up to us. And that's the whole point of the Messiah. It will never be affected. We're not wise enough, we're not strong enough. Our impact in history is far too small. Only when the Messiah comes will these dreams be fulfilled in a solid reality.

It reminds me of maybe my favorite quote from your book. I'm going to read it. It's a little lengthy, but it says, quote, success, achievement, fame and legacy are not the goal of those who live by faith. The timeframe of the here and now is too short to be an accurate measure. Men and women of faith act into history. There you're alluding to Hebrews 11. All the time gazing over the edge of the horizon of history. And many times they die with their visions unfulfilled, their successes incomplete, and their legacy unachieved or unclear. End quote. You know, on the surface that's depressing. Right? It's true, but depressing. But there is great hope. Right. And this is going back to the consummation. Yeah. We act in history. We're all going to die with unfinished symphonies, as Carl Rahner said. Right. But we as Christ followers have hope knowing that time is going somewhere and that Christ alone is going to finish it, right, Oz?

Absolutely. Now, I first understood that through Reinhold Niebuhr, that word incomplete, but it's a tremendous stress of our Jewish friends. I mean, you take Moses called to lead his people to the promised land, and he only sees it, and he doesn't cross the river. And, you know, I used to listen seminars and Christian preachers and others saying, you know, you get to 50 or 60 or whatever, and you've got to start thinking of your legacy. What are you handing on to your children and grandchildren? And I thought, that's humanism. That isn't the Christian faith. We've got to come to terms with the fact our lives, they end, but there's no ending. In other words, the dreams of the kingdom coming is not one generation. Moses couldn't do it all. He got them to the edge. He didn't get them in, and so on. And we got to come to terms. All our little lives will be incomplete. It takes generations to do it.

Here's the piece that I find right. Recognizing that I am just one of billions of actors in this grand drama, that God doesn't need me to finish my to do list in order for his purposes to prevail. Moses is such a great example, right? He didn't need Moses specifically to take his people into the promised land, so he did it through Joshua. You know, he did need David specifically to finish building the temple, right? So he finished that work through Solomon. He doesn't need you or me, Oz, to finish the work that we're doing in our lives. And there's great freedom in that, because the pressure to achieve any sort of results is gone. Because at the end of the day, as Job says in Joe, I think it's job 42. His purposes will not be thwarted ever. Right? And to me, man, there's just great freedom, great peace, and great joy, and recognizing that and just joyfully partaking in the work that he's doing in the world while he's giving me breath in my lungs. I'm thinking a lot about that.

That's terrific. I like the way you put it.

Yeah.

So you're obviously writing on it, too.

Exactly. There you go. Well, listen. Very much influenced by you. So this podcast is really about two things. Number one is what we've been talking about. How does the biblical narrative in general and the gospel more specifically shape our work? And then number two, in response to the gospel, how might we better master the crafts, hone our gifts that the Lord has given us to do from his glory and the good of others. And you, in my opinion, are unquestionably a masterful writer. You've been practicing this craft for decades. So, from one writer to another, I'm curious. What do you think distinguishes great writing from merely good writing? What's the delta there?

Oh, my. I'm not sure I can answer that one. No. But I always say I am not a great writer. Now, it happened. I never set out to be a writer, never thought of being a writer. But I became fascinated with trying to understand the times, as I said earlier. And I came over here in 1968 for six weeks. East Coast, West Coast, Harvard, Berkeley. I met Mario Savio, who led the Free Speech Movement, all sorts of characters. And I came back and put together a rough series of about 10 talks on the 60s, the making of the counterculture. And people came up after them and said, you should write this. And I went, what? I just slept it off time after time. And eventually my old high school teacher heard them and he said, you should write this. And with him saying it to me, I thought, well, maybe. And so I had a crack and enjoyed doing it. And my first book did extremely well. And so I sort of fell into it accidentally. But let me be very clear, Jordan. I don't consider myself a great writer. It's the message, in my case that burns out of me. And I do the best I can. But I don't think I'm a great writer. You've got people like Phil Yancey and others who are really stylish writers.

But there's some interesting advice here, I think, in your vocational path, you know, you didn't set out to write, but you paid attention to what other people were telling you, like, hey, these talks really should be a book. I think there's wisdom for that, regardless of what somebody's career is. Who's listening to this episode, right? Just being willing to listen, especially to other Christ followers who are filled with the Holy Spirit, who are prodding you and saying, yeah, this is the direction you should go. Looking back, do you think that was wise to follow that path that you did?

Well, let me be clear. When I came to faith in 1960, it was almost explicit. It was certainly implicit. And I remember John start agreeing with me on this. And he'd come to faith a generation before me, and he felt the same thing. If you were all out for Jesus, you were a minister, a missionary, or an evangelist, and I was all out for Jesus. So I had to burn my way through each of those three until I realized they were not me. And then, mercifully, someone gave me a Xerox copy of William Perkins the Treatise and calling a 16th century book. It completely opened my eyes to what calling was. That was back in the 60s. And so I had to fight my way out of the wrong ideas. And then of course, what was my calling? I had no idea because the things I'd been pursuing clearly weren't. And so I fell into writing. Yes. Looking back, I mean, I went to an English boarding school. There were no multiple choice questions and exams. Everything except mathematics was an essay form. So I'd written, written, written, written, you know, from the youngest age of school at 6 or whatever. So it seemed natural. Now I had to fight my way of what you might call the Oxford way of writing with long paragraphs.

Right, right, right, right. Very wordy writing, you know.

But I do love writing and I've always loved words. I love theater, I love great acting and Shakespeare and so on. I don't claim to be a great writer and not an intellectual either. Always make clear I'm not an intellectual, I'm not a scholar and I'm not a great writer.

You're a commentator.

The message burns out.

There you go. You're growing up in the faith amongst these giants, Martyn Lloyd Jones, John Stott. You got some bad theology of if you really love Jesus, you got to go be a missionary, quote, unquote, full time missionary. What was the impact for you when you read something like what you read from Perkins. Right. And recognizing that all work can be done at the glory of God, what changed in you when you started to grasp those ideas?

Well, you know, I got a chapter in my book, the Call Everyone Everywhere in Everything. And the story I use is William Wilberforce, friend of the family and you remember, came to Faith in his early 20s and he'd lived, as he said, whoring, clubbing, gambling. And then he was a follower of Jesus and thought, well, I better leave what I'm doing politics and become a minister. And thank God John Newton, a minister, said to him, for heaven's sake, don't. And he stayed where he was, prayed and thought, and two years later wrote down what I reckon is the greatest and most audacious personal mission statement in history. God Almighty has set before me two great objects, the suppression of the slave trade and the reformation of manners. And it was stories like that and seeing the profound impact. I mean, it's highly controversial, but if you look at Weberian idea, Max Weber's idea that calling gave rise to modern capitalism, I think he got it slightly wrong the way he said it. But calling gave rise to the dynamism of everyone, everywhere in everything. And I love that.

Yeah, I very first chapter of redeeming your time, it's all about Wilberforce. And I talk about the great change, right, his conversion. I think he was 26, 27, something like that. And I tell the Newton story, right? But thank God that John Newton was there telling Wilberforce not to change his work in parliament, but to radically change his relationship to his work. And I would argue, you know, looking at Wilberforce's story, there's really two big changes that happened post conversion. Number one, got really clear on what his great object was in Parliament. The abolition of the slave trade and the reformation of manners. And he also got hyper intentional about stewarding his time and his wealth wisely. Right? He got really intentional about redeeming his time. And in your book incarpe d and redeemed, you argued that Sabbath is, quote, a key to redeeming the time. I'm curious how so where's the connection there for you?

Well, Sabbath in the scripture is not just stopping work, it is that cessation. But it's connected with the praise of the Lord for creation. And so I love the fact of the rhythm. You know, people say we should remon the church. I say, no, our Lord was engaged and then withdrew up a mountain across the lake. And you have an incredible rhythm of engagement and withdrawal. And in the same way, six days of hard work and then one day of stopping. And remember, yes, we're creators, but but sub creators, as Lewis put it. But we're created. And on the Sunday we stand back from our work and from everything like that and realize it's not all up to us. We're created and we're creatures and we need to worship the one who's our creator. So I love that rhythm of work and rest and work and refreshment rather than the driveness that so many Americans have.

And it's also this rhythm not just of ceasing, but also feasting on the Lord's good gifts, his word, fellowship with other believers. I think a lot of times in the church I knew growing up, I had this view of Sabbath as Sabbath is this day filled with things you can't do, rather than a day to just enjoy what the Lord has already provided you. Where strivings can cease, as Keith and Kristin Getty say, right, Striving cease. I can enjoy what is what God has already provided. I think we miss out on that in our modern construct of Sabbath. So for you, how do you feast? What does feasting look like on Sabbath for you?

Well, everything's been knocked for six by Covid. And the coronavirus time that you've been feasting on the Sabbath in quite the normal way. But my wife and I are members of a fellowship group and we meet on Sunday night. We didn't. We met by zoom during COVID But we always share a meal and share fellowship and then worship and pray together.

Oz, in this season of life, I'm curious what your day looks like. How do you steward your time on a daily basis, from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed?

Well, I always have a wonderful cup of coffee with my beloved wife. And then we pray for the day, and then we go to our own times of personal worship. And then I move into. It depends what the day holds, but move in, usually to things that have to be attended to, like emails and all that nonsense. And then either speeches I've got to give or things like that in foundations or committees downtown or in other parts of the country, or more ideally, I have the afternoon to write. And I love writing. So my day is filled with too much of the office type of stuff.

But you write in the afternoon. That's interesting to me. Is there a reason for that?

I write in the morning. I write anytime I can if I have the time. Only in the afternoon, because it sometimes takes the morning to clear off some of the nonsense that has to be tackled.

Yeah, I hear you. I thought the quotes. You have pages and pages and pages of quotes at the very beginning of Carpe Diem Redeemed, which, frankly, I think the quotes alone are worth the price of admission of the book. I used a bunch of them.

That was my idea.

Was that your idea?

Yeah. No, I'm not the greatest writer in the world, but when you come to time, the things people have said from all sorts of different angles. Serious, funny, deep, shallow, you know, it just. I think you're right. You just read that. The quotes alone think deeply about time.

It was great. One of the ones I really loved, I'd never heard before, was from John Lennon. He said, the happiest people are those who are being more times a week than anybody else. I'm curious how, if at all, do you practice simply being.

Well, John Lennon? I think that was a rather Eastern idea. It is, yeah. And I have no desire to do that, having grown up in the east and I studied under a guru in my 20s. So I have absolutely zero interest in sort of present mindfulness in that sort of sense. But clearly the past, the present and the future. And the part that we usually miss is the present enjoying the moment, the beauty right in front of us, whether it's flowers or the textures, something sent to us or listening to music or whatever. In other words, it's capturing the present that is often missed when we're thinking too much about the past, or more likely, constantly worrying about the future. So the present is incredibly important for all of us. To enjoy it before the Lord today is what matters, to live faithfully and obediently to the Lord, not yesterday and not tomorrow. Important though they are, that's really good.

Oz, three questions I love to ask as we wrap up every conversation. Number one Other than your own, which books do you recommend or gift most frequently?

Oh my. People who love to share the faith, as I do, I challenge them to read Blaise Pascal Pensee, because I think too much of our persuasion and apologetics has got hijacked by the Greeks and by Aristotle and Aquinas and William Lane Craig and people like that. And we've come a long way from the biblical view. And I think Pascal captures something that's much more biblical and Jewish and truly Christian. So that's one. It's a good answer. I've mentioned him several times in my recent books. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, I encourage people to read his series. It's called Covenant and Conversation on the five books of the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, Covenant and Conversation, Genesis, the Book of Beginnings, Exodus, the Book of Redemption, and so on. Because he has opened my eyes to those books far more than any Christian commentary I've read. And my whole understanding of the Scripture, my view of the world has been expanded enormously. But generally I say to people, and one answer to what you're saying is I never mention the same book to everyone. In other words, people are on a journey. You mention a book this year, might turn them off completely. Next year they'll lap it up. It's exactly where they are.

Definitely.

I'm very, very wary of reading lists. I don't give out reading lists.

Yeah, yeah, that's wise. But those are great answers. I like those answers.

Are on their journey and get something that fits where they are today.

That's good. Oz, who would you most like to hear? Maybe on this podcast, maybe not. But having a conversation about how the Christian faith influences the work they do in the world.

I'm not sure I can answer that one. I think maybe I just like to hear practitioners, CEOs who've wrestled with this, or lawyers who've wrestled it and so on, rather than people like me or theologians or whatever. In other words, the practitioners who've done a great job.

That's why it's very rare that we have the Os Guinnesses and the Tim Kellers of the world on the podcast. We talk mostly with CEOs and we had a carpenter recently and that's what we're really interested in. All right, Oz, what's one thing from our conversation over the last hour do you want to reiterate to our listeners before we sign off? And again, this is an audience of Christ followers who believe that the work that they do in the world matters greatly to the Lord, to others. What do you want to leave them with?

Well, you know, my last book, latest book, Magna Carta of Humanity, argues that the Sinai Revolution is the once and the future key to freedom now, as you don't understand the American Revolution at its best unless you understand Sinai, Deuteronomy, but that's only half the story. So many Christians today are demoralized, discouraged. They're aware of the scandals, the divisions, the defections, the so called deconstructions and deconvert, all that nonsense. So everywhere you go in this country you find Christians demoralized. But the simple fact is the Gospel is good news. It's the best news ever. And we've got to see the whole of scripture, human dignity, the solid view of truth, the rich view of words in a day of the social media, freedom. We're the champions and defenders of freedom, justice. Our view of justice is infinitely better than the radical left. In other words, in the Scriptures, our Jewish friends and we as followers of Jesus, we have the future key to history and humanity. And we've got to move out with that sort of confidence and boldness. This is a civilizational moment and we mustn't miss it.

Very, very well said. I love that we hold the future key of history. Really well said. Oz. I just want to commend you for the exceptional and important work you've been doing for decades to help us see how our work contributes to God's redemptive purposes in the world. Thank you for helping us better understand the author of Time, the meaning of Time, our role in it. And on a personal note, again, thank you for choosing to write Carpe Diem Redeemed. Like I said, it was so helpful as I was writing my own book. Hey, you guys can find all of Oz's work @oz, guinness.com oz, thanks again for joining us.

No real privilege. Thanks for having me on. God bless.

I hope you guys enjoyed that conversation. Hey, if you want a lot more William Wilberforce and a lot more Oz Guinness, it's Chapter one of Redeeming your time. Chock full with Wilberforce stories and these five biblical truths about time and productivity that really map out chapter one of the book Locked of that was influenced by Oz and his work in Carpe diem Redeemed. And remember, if you pre order, the book comes out on Tuesday, October 19th. But if you pre order it right now, you can enter to win a trip to the Holy Land or the equivalent cash prize of the trip. Step one Go prayer to the book redeeming your time on Amazon or wherever you buy your books. STEP 2 Go to jordanraynor.com Fill out the form right there and you can be entered to win. Guys, thank you so much for tuning in to the Call to Mastery this week. I'll see you next time.