328: Is Sexual Freedom Destroying Our Prosperity?

Andrea Schwartz (00:03)
Welcome to out of the Question, a podcast that looks behind some common questions and uncovers the question behind the question while providing real solutions for biblical world and life View. Your host is Andrea Schwartz, a teacher and mentor and founder of the Chalcedon Teacher Training Institute. Would you be surprised to discover that sexual freedom has an impact on economic growth and prosperity? My guest today does. Feler Bose has written a book dealing with this very issue entitled Sexual Freedom and its Impact on Economic Growth and Prosperity. In it, he expands on the work of J.D. unwin, whose thesis demonstrated that limiting sexual freedom is a crucial aspect of economic advancement. Feler Voase is an economics and finance professor at Indiana University east and holds degrees in engineering, physics, chemistry, mechanical engineering, economics and theological studies. His research is expansive in the areas of microeconomics, political economy, law and economics, and the economics of religion. Thanks for joining me today, Feler.

Feler Bose (01:25)
Thank you for having me, Andrea.

Andrea Schwartz (01:27)
Christians know that the Bible prescribes definite sexual rules and boundaries in order for God’s blessings rather than his judgments to fall upon them. But this reality is true whether or not individuals self consciously adhere to God’s commands or have even opened a Bible. If you would lay out your general thesis, or as others call it, your prescription for a free society and how various moral frameworks affect economic outcomes and how biblical ethics and morality are instrumental in the creation of what you call high civilizations.

Feler Bose (02:09)
All right, so let me take a few steps back. When I first went to graduate school, I went to George Mason University, which was for my PhD in economics. And there, you know, it’s a very kind of a free market kind of school. And so the people that I was hanging out with, they all saw freedom as economic freedom as good, political freedom is good. I mean, all, all freedom is good is kind of the idea they were kind of everybody’s kind of talking. I mean, there’s a lot of literature on how economic freedom is actually. Yeah, is actually good for economic prosperity and economic growth. There’s also some literature on the political side of things. Political freedom is good. But though that’s kind of a mixed bag, it’s not necessarily true. And then, of course, personal freedoms are good. You know, we don’t want people going after your raw milk purchase or something like that. Right. I mean, we want personal freedoms. And so that kind of also ties into the idea of, well, you should be able to do whatever you want in the bedroom kind of situation. And for me, when I was going to grad school, you know, being a Christian, that kind of got me questioning because it’s you know, why is sexual freedom good?

Feler Bose (03:13)
I mean, why is allowing for adultery or homosexuality or something? Why is that good? And so like you said, you know, scripture is very clear, right? God blesses nations that follow his word when it comes to sexual morality. And whether. And also if, you know, if people are not following his prescriptions on that, then we would expect to see judgment on that nation. And that judgment, many times, if, you know, many scripturally is right. It’s economics in many ways, right? There’s a lot of prosperity. They lose their. Their goal to the invading, you know, invading kings and so on. And so we do, you know, we do see economic harm that comes about because of, you know, disobeying God’s laws in the area of sexuality. So that’s kind of how, you know, that’s kind of how my project, I guess you could say it started me thinking about these things in an environment that saw all freedom as good. And I remember reading Rushdoony’s Institutes a few years earlier talking about Unwin, who, you know about sexual freedom and how, you know, this anthropologist in the 1930s has written about this idea of, you know, how sexual freedom results in declining civilizations, whereas sexual restraint results in expanding civilizations and civilizations expanding, trading around the world, achieving great things.

Feler Bose (04:40)
So I knew that story in one hand, and I also knew what the scripture said about the issue. And of course, being in a graduate school environment, you have people who disagree with you if you were to bring those points up. But the thing is, nobody has actually done research in this area. It’s not like a well researched area. Since Unwin, I cannot say too many people have really talked about it, dealt with this topic. And so I thought, well, I got to figure out a way to make, you know, make this kind of a calling, I suppose, where I would like to kind of push on this research topic.

Andrea Schwartz (05:13)
So had you ever heard of Unwin prior to reading Rushdoony’s Institutes or other others of his work?

Feler Bose (05:20)
No. I mean, his Institutes is where I first heard about Unwin. Now, one of the things I really appreciate about Rushdoony, it’s. Is that, you know, I think if I remember correctly, he reads like 100, 250 books per year or something of that, which is quite a prolific reader. And therefore he’s. His citations are tremendous. I mean, I like looking at his citations. You know, if there’s a topic I’m interested in and if he has written about it, I can also. I enjoy looking up all the citations that he has because it’s In a lot of the research, and modern research on certain topics is very limited by what Google puts out for you or something. It’s really. You don’t get any in depth anymore sometimes many of the research in the academia. And so I think, you know, someone like him and others also that are very prolific, you know, readers who can then take what they read and write, you know, transform what they read and write it, write about it. You know, those citations and sources are very valuable to kind of delve into a topic.

Andrea Schwartz (06:17)
That’s interesting that you say that, because having known him personally, if you ever went into his house in order to eat dinner, stacks of books had to be removed from the dinner table in order for, you know, plates to be put on. And I was always amazed at the extensive nature of his reading. Some of it was really what I would consider. Why would you read this? This is like, you know, he would. Sexual practices of such and such. And it’s like, why would you do it? And he said, because I need to understand out there what’s being said and then pair it up with what the Bible says. Now, as you pursued this study, based on what Rushdoony mentioned about Unwin, did you find that that’s exactly what you had to do? You had to start reading and researching things that normally the average Christian wouldn’t want to look into?

Feler Bose (07:10)
Yeah. So, you know, I graduated from graduate School, my PhD in 2007, 2008, around that time. And to be honest with you, I didn’t. I had an idea what I wanted to do with my research. But, you know, being an economist, it has to be data driven, which is kind of the thing that kind of gets you published in our profession, whereas in a different profession that’s not necessarily true. So it was actually in 2012 before. Well, I thought about it. I tried to figure out what to do. I mean, God providentially allowed me to spend a semester at a big research university in West Virginia where I was able to access a law library and kind of collect data. And so it kind of, you could say that visit there kind of kickstarted my research in this topic beyond just, you know, ideas in my head. And honestly, you know, the book was written, what was published in 2020, end of 2024. So, you know, 12 years later, I wrote this book. But over the period of these 12 years, I have been collecting articles. I’ve been writing, you know, empirical papers, I’ve been collecting articles, collecting books, collecting.

Feler Bose (08:14)
Right. Things. I just, you know, and in fact, it’s interesting because Even God brings people into your. Like, I had no idea how to think about Unwin’s thesis. I mean, Unwin has said these things don’t go together. Sexual freedom does not go together with economic prosperity. But he didn’t know why. You know, I mean, Freud didn’t know why. I mean, a bunch of people, nobody really knew why that was the case. But, you know, so, I mean, sometimes you just have conversations with people and suddenly that person say, hey, we thought about this or that, you know, saying God brings the right people in your life at the right time, and then the lights kind of go off and you start exploring further, you know, these topics. And then. Yeah. So the book is a product of, you could say, a dozen years. I collected a lot of research over the years and, you know, put to put it together.

Andrea Schwartz (09:00)
So you mentioned something being data driven. I’m not sure a lot of people understand what that explain why if you’re going to publish under the banner of economics, that it has to be data driven.

Feler Bose (09:14)
Yeah. So economics has kind of. It is kind of, you could say, evolved to becoming more data driven. So maybe 100 years ago it wasn’t. I mean, you could, you could have a lot of thought, you know, more of a political economy kind of situation in the past where you could write, you know, write in more pros, I guess you could say. But nowadays people are like, well, you’re saying economic freedom and sexual freedom don’t go together, or sexual freedom means less economic growth. Well, prove it. Right. And so the way you want to prove it is to see if you can collect data and run and run statistical regressions and see what do you get when you do that. And so I think that’s kind of where the economics has kind of pushed the research is. Yeah, I mean, if you’re going to say something, you’re going to hypothesize something, you know, you’re not just finding different sources and putting it all together. No, you gotta actually have data. And that shows that to be the case. Otherwise, it’s just your bias, you know, it’s just your bias that is saying this. Right? I mean, that’s kind of what’s kind of.

Feler Bose (10:14)
You’re just picking and choosing your story line to write a story as opposed to, well, here’s what I got. Here’s the data I collected, here’s what I did. And it’s also. You can also hopefully replicate it if somebody else wants to be like, okay, give me your data. Let me see if I find the same thing. Well, then it can be replicable. And so. And that’s kind of, you know, why data analysis is very important.

Andrea Schwartz (10:35)
So just to be clear, it’s not like any researcher shows up with a topic as a blank slate. He’s going to bring his presuppositions, his worldview, ideas, because I believe it’s inescapable, as others will. You know, this is not a new concept to me. But did you go into this saying the Bible says this because you said you were a Christian, you’d already read Rushdoonyand gravitated towards that. How do you as a researcher not find what you’re looking for as opposed to finding what’s there?

Feler Bose (11:11)
Yeah. So, you know, everybody has a bias. I mean, you know, we all start with the certain fundamentals we work off of, I think, and especially in, you know, I know whenever I talk to my colleagues in conferences and so on, they all come with their bias about this topic. I mean, it’s, it’s pretty incredible. And, you know, you can get questioned pretty roughly, you know, because of that, because they all have their bias. You can tell the data says this, but they don’t necessarily want to believe it. Yeah, I mean, I know. I expect it now. I did, like I said, one of the things I did write in my book is the data that I’ve. The analysis that I have done is just. Is really a very preliminary because I look at stuff at the state level in the United States and even I did some European countries also. I mean, there’s a lot of research that needs to be done on an individual basis. So there’s a lot more work that needs to be done. So it’s not. I don’t want to say I’ve done the final word on empirical analysis. It’s certainly at the state level.

Feler Bose (12:06)
I’ve certainly written enough papers that anybody who wants to write on this topic has to kind of, you know, cite my work, I guess, as to why they agree or disagree with me. But yeah, I mean, for sure, a lot of people have. Will come out and with their biases. Maybe one of the biggest concerns with data, data analytics and so on and empirical analysis is that sometimes, you know, under certain conditions, the data is. The results can come out slightly different. You know what I’m saying? That’s kind of part of the science. You might get someone who actually gets an opposite result and then you kind of have to go back. That’s when the debate starts and you start, you know, you use different techniques or you use better data sources to kind of you know, hopefully come at the. Come to the truth.

Andrea Schwartz (12:50)
Okay. Okay. So basically, as you go through the first parts of your book, you sort of lay the groundwork for how you’re going to approach the topic. And one of the parts that I thought was incredibly interesting were two scenarios, true scenarios that you use as illustrative of what happens when males degrade themselves into moral decadence. And you cited the situation that the story Mutiny on the Bounty portrays. And you also talked about the early years after the Bolshevik Revolution. I think both of those. And if you would expound on them, some set the stage for how we should look at the situation in our time in our day.

Feler Bose (13:39)
Right, right. So let me, you know, maybe talk about the Soviet Union. So in the Soviet Union, you know, when it became the Soviet Union, I guess when they. When the Bolsheviks overthrew the tsar, the Christian czar of Russia, they implemented. Right. And the Marxists saw the family as, you could say, a threat to society. You know, it wasn’t what they. They saw a family system as exploitative. And so they kind of wanted to liberate the families and liberate women and so on. And so they allowed for things like easy divorce, homosexuality. They. They basically said, you can’t even adopt kids if you wanted to. And I mean, anything today we see in America, I mean, you could, you know, what people are trying to do is what they did in the Soviet Union, but very quickly. I mean, it happened like in the US it’s been happening over many decades, you could say, but there it just happened within a few months or years. And so what happened is once the Soviet Union kind of liberated itself sexually is it started creating all sorts of problems in the society. You know, men having summer brides and then they’ll divorce after summer’s over, and then they’ll, you know, go somewhere else and have another wife, and then they’ll divorce and go somewhere else.

Feler Bose (14:51)
And so I think. I think Sorokin, who called it the glass of water theory, where, hey, if you’re thirsty, it doesn’t matter which glass of water you drink from, as long as you satisfy your thirst. I mean, that was kind of the mentality, if I’m, you know, if I want to meet my sexual needs, doesn’t matter which woman I do it with. Kind of the idea that the Soviets had done, and that resulted in basically in their collapse of their society. You can imagine a lot of kids were born out of wedlock. Then you started having growing gangs, you know, violence. And basically society was collapsing. The economic system was also collapsing. And of course with the war with Germany looming. Right. I mean, this talent decided, well, we need to, this is crazy. We need to kind of reverse course. And so they kind of impose this sort of a Victorian morality back on this, back on the Soviets, you know, and then basically stabilize themselves in many ways. I mean, though they still struggled, even the divorce, even though they kind of got, you know, made it illegal to commit homosexuality, you know, made, you know, divorce harder to get and all these other things, all these reforms that they instituted, it still was, you know, made abortion difficult to get and so on.

Feler Bose (16:01)
It’s still, it, the Reformation didn’t happen completely. It was kind of a top down imposed order. And so there’s, there’s still some problems today in the Soviet Union, Russia, for example, with the high divorces and the higher number of abortions that still kind of, you could, you could maybe argue it’s the result of that. The other example that I use was HMS Bounty. Again, it was a ship, you know, they’d look for breadfruit in Tahiti. And usually, I guess those years the captains didn’t allow their men to mingle with the natives. But this captain of the HMS Bounty allowed, you know, his crew to mingle with the natives, which, and the natives were pretty sexually libertine. And so they kind of, they kind of got lazy in the process and, you know, kind of lived, you know, very loosely, you could say, resulting in. Right. Many problems that occurred. And in fact, when they had the mutiny later on, when they were returning, sorry, when they’re going back, you know, to where they wanted to go back, they had it, there was a mutiny. And so a bunch of guys went and formed their own society in this island, Pitcairn Island.

Feler Bose (17:06)
And there they, that island, you know, again, sexual liberty. Liberty and so on. They had many problems. They couldn’t, even though they had, you know, one of the things economists think is very important, like good geography, right. You have a good weather, you have all, you know, you can grow crops all year round. I mean, that’s a great place where you should be able to become wealthy and prosperous. But instead, right, you had decadence and, you know, many problems in society. And until the end, in the end, I think when there was only one man left, he became a Christian, they found a Bible and he becomes a Christian. And you know, society kind of turns around and they have more stability and peace and less violence. And you know, they start, you could say, rebuilding society from. Because they followed the Christian worldview, right?

Andrea Schwartz (17:56)
And that’s the part that I think was really telling. First of all, I had not known what you outlined about Russia in the early days after the revolution. And when people hear that certain countries decide to go back to what we would consider moral codes that are consistent with scripture, that in essence they’re doing it for religious reasons. In other words, they have come to faith. But you point out that oftentimes it’s the economic motivation that says we’ve destroyed our economy. And where a lot of people will say, and I’ve read that women being moral is the most important aspect of a society. When the women stop being moral, the society goes down. But you’re talking in terms of the morality of the men, which would be consistent with scripture holding men to a higher account.

Feler Bose (18:50)
Right, right. So that’s kind of the interesting thing. Even like a lot of the literature and a lot of people will say that, yeah, women kind of, you know, drive society. But ultimately, I mean, even kind of when Unwin kind of suggests that also that it is actually women’s. Yeah. Sexual morality, that’s very, a lot more important than men’s. But I mean it’s very, but it’s very obvious. Scripture talks about, you know, men also being sexually, you know, like they find fulfillment, sexual fulfillment in marriage only it’s not outside of marriage in any way or, you know, or marrying more than one woman. Right. I mean, doesn’t the Bible also discourages that. Admin also calls it Pauline monogamy. And he said basically, I mean, if you think about Pauline monogamy, I think the British are the right. I think in Unwin’s example, the British were the ones that kind of got it right the first time around and which became. And they become a world empire. And so yeah, I think his, I think, yes, I think scripturally is pretty clear that it is. Men and women have to be self restrained when it comes to sexual actions and all sexual actions should happen within marriage.

Andrea Schwartz (19:57)
So one of the things that came to mind as I was reading this, knowing what took place in the US in the 20th century, I would say most people would view it as a decline in sexual restraint. Certainly the 60s promulgated that. But then at the same time we’re saying, but look at the technological advancements, the Internet and being able to do various things on, you know, a worldwide scope. Do you think that that’s a contradiction to your thesis or do you think it’s just sort of an early stage of viewing it?

Feler Bose (20:33)
Yeah. So Unwin suggested that, you know, when a society gives up Its, you know, monogamy, strict monogamy, it takes about three generations for collapse to kind of occur. So we could argue that, you know, maybe if you think of three generations as, you know, 100 years or something like that, you’re not, you know, you still have some, some ways to go. So that’s one thing. I guess it’s a long process. The second thing, of course is, right, we know what is, but we don’t know what could have been. So that’s kind of the other aspect of it. I mean, yeah, things look like we’re doing good, we are prospering, and we are certainly, you know, things have gotten better over the last 50 years or so. But, but right. What could have been right? I mean, if you didn’t go through that sexual revolution, how would life have been? Maybe right, ideas would have been even better. But we don’t know what that is, right, because we didn’t go through. We’re going through a process, we’re going through a timeline that is kind of a declining timeline, maybe. So that’s, that’s the only way you can kind of discuss this as an, you know, as.

Feler Bose (21:32)
Because we don’t have a parallel universe where America doesn’t have a sexual revolution on one hand and another side where we have a sexual revolution. And we can’t compare the two things. You know, we can only, you have to assume that things would be, would have been better.

Andrea Schwartz (21:47)
I see. What about the numbers of children? Certainly with abortion, people are killing their offspring. But the average American I remember growing up and six or seven children was not abnormal. Nowadays you tell people you have three or more and they think, wow, that’s so unusual. How did the numbers of children factor into this?

Feler Bose (22:11)
The way I try to explain why sexual freedom and economic freedom don’t go together is because sexual freedom is about getting immediate satisfaction, pleasure and not worrying about the long term consequences of your behavior and actions. Whereas economic freedom is the notion of thinking about the future. Because if I were to start a business, I want to think, okay, hopefully I’ll build a successful business, maybe pass it on, my kids or maybe my grandkids can take over the business. And so now when you think in terms of economic freedom and thinking, you got to think long term, multi generational perspective. Whereas sexual freedom is about, hey, I can get satisfaction immediately kind of thing. So children, of course play a huge role in this because children are in a sense our way into the future. Right? I mean, our behavior, our actions, if you have children, it tends to be long term. Oriented. Um, so that was the, the key causal story that I mentioned in my book. And so, yeah, having fewer children or not having children. Right. For example, some relationships cannot have children. For example, you know, if you engage in homosexuality.

Feler Bose (23:22)
Right. That’s a relationship, that’s a sterile relationship. And so it is with modern day transgender. Right. If you’re castrating yourself, well, you can’t have children under those scenarios. You tend to be very short term thinking. Whereas if you want to have economic freedom and economic growth, you need to have a long term perspective and that includes having children. Now one thing I cannot say for sure is how many children do you have to have to be long term thinking? Is having two children enough or do you need to have six or seven children? That’s something, at least from a data perspective. I don’t have an answer to that and that’s certainly a topic that needs to be researched further.

Andrea Schwartz (23:58)
But the Bible does say in Psalm 127, Blessed is the man who has a quiver full. I, I’m not a archer, but I do know that a quiverful would involve I think at least seven, you know, the, the number of completion. So obviously we have gone away from the viewpoint that children are a blessing, are a heritage, and they’re looked at interestingly enough in an economic perspective as a down thing. I mean, even, even in Christian churches, Feler people with large families are often derided in terms of their carbon footprint or, you know, don’t you know how children come about? Would you say that this is a carryover from the humanistic view that has been accepted even within the church?

Feler Bose (24:49)
Correct. I mean, certainly, like I said, from a data perspective, I don’t have any information, but certainly from a Christian perspective, having more children, God says, is a blessing and it’s God who opens the womb and closes the womb. And so I think, yeah, if I were to come with a bias and do this analysis, I would certainly assume having more children tends to improve economic growth and prosperity in terms of long term thinking and so on. So that’s kind of the bias I would have if I were to go into the researching this topic. But like I said, yeah, it hasn’t. I don’t think it has been done yet.

Andrea Schwartz (25:21)
You also pointed out in the book that your eschatological views of how things culminate will have an effect on this. Talk a little bit about that.

Feler Bose (25:34)
Right. So there was some research that was done, I believe it was, in Guatemala by some other economists who looked at the impact of your belief in the millennium. Right. Are you a pre millennialist? For example, do you believe Christ coming is around the corner, it could happen anytime and so on. Or more of a post millennialist where you, you know, you believe things are going to get better and Christ will come at the end of the millennium, so to speak. And they have found that, the studies have found that if you’re kind of this Pentecostal kind of church because you’re kind of a pre millennialist, you don’t do anything that you know, your goal is to convert as many people as you, as you possibly can, but they don’t build any institutions. You know, you might build a Pentecostal church and Assemblies of God, might build a Bible college, right? But they’re not going to build a law school or a medical school and you know, things that you know, build civilizations. And so, so that’s kind of what they found in Guatemala. Whereas the more mainstream churches there, which are more post male and so on, so that are more long term oriented like, like I said, law school, medical schools, orphanages and so on.

Feler Bose (26:40)
So they were more focused on the long term institution building as opposed to churches that were premill, they were focused on short term institutions. Because if Jesus is coming tomorrow, well, why do you want to spend millions of dollars building a law school? I mean it doesn’t make any sense, right? Use that money to get as many people saved as you can. So that’s kind of what they found in Guatemala, which is the study that I highlighted in my book.

Andrea Schwartz (27:02)
So as I continue through the book, the last couple of chapters surprised me and the reason they surprised me is that you unabashedly bring in a biblical world in life view. Now talking to you, that doesn’t surprise me. But you always hear about these views would not be accepted among scholars or academics. How has your book been received?

Feler Bose (27:27)
Well, let me just say over the years that I’ve spoken on this, it’s, it’s, you know, I, I can, when you talk to people about your research, you know, it’s striking a chord because I have a feeling a lot of people have sexually broken lives. I mean that they haven’t found forgiveness for what they’ve done. And so when you bring it up, it’s like topic that I think you can see people’s faces changing, you know, when you talk about it, you know, and you know, they, it’s like, it’s, I think people, a lot of people have guilt about things they may have done. So I think there’s a lot of, you know, and of course people there’s Some people push pushbacks more strongly. They don’t want to hear what you have to say. And that’s, that’s fine. I mean, in academics, you want to be challenged. What you, what you’re saying, you want it to be challenged because that these kind of makes you better in terms of trying to present what you’re trying to present. But then there’s. There are people that, you know, if I were to present it at a Christian college, it’s probably more likely to, you know, it’ll be more acceptable.

Feler Bose (28:25)
More, you know, people might be like, hey, this is great, you know, kind of thing. So it’s. The reactions can be all over the place, depending on the audience and depending on, in a sense, also depending on people’s histories, personal histories. I think this plays a role and.

Andrea Schwartz (28:39)
I imagine in academic circles, you know, I grew up in the 60s and norms changed, and a lot of the people who lived as young people then and who are still alive have to see how things have changed. And a lot of them regret a lot of the things that they did. But when I talk about your last couple of chapters, it’s because, Feler, you actually opened my eyes to something that I had never considered. And, you know, anytime I come across something, it’s like, wow, I’ve just read this like a zillion times and I never saw it. You talk about the apparent contradiction between Genesis 1 on the sixth day, what God commands, and then Genesis 2 in terms of God’s restriction. It was a concept that I had never really considered before. And I’d like to give you an opportunity to share that because I actually think it’s vital to how we as Christian people will be in a position to educate others in terms of how important your thesis is. So do expound upon the apparent contradiction, which you don’t see as a contradiction at all, right?

Feler Bose (29:52)
So in Genesis 2, Adam is told by God, don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Whereas in Genesis 1, God tells Adam and Eve, you can eat from all the trees. And so, right, everything is food for you. And so that seems like a contradiction. And. Right. So, I mean, so the only way you can, you can kind of make this contradiction go away is the prohibition, right, to eat from the tree of the knowledge. And good evil was temporary. It is not a permanent prohibition. And God also tells Adam further, he doesn’t tell. He tells Adam. And then, which means that Adam had to have told his wife later, hey, we’re not supposed to eat from the street you know, it’s a temporary, but you’re not supposed to eat from it. But eventually we can eat from it. It’s kind of what Adam should have figured out. When I was in high school, I remember a teacher used to always get on the students, say, why doesn’t God want us to not want us to eat from the knowledge in the tree of good and evil, right? Does he not want us to know good and evil?

Feler Bose (30:50)
Does he just want us to be good, you know, be like robots? You know, it’s kind of what he was. His big criticism was. But then I realized the knowledge of good and evil is just being. That is being able to be a good judge. You know, it’s something that you gain with time. You know, Solomon, when he, when he became the ruler, he asked God basically to know how to judge the people, right? To know right and wrong, to know good and evil. And so knowing good and evil wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. It was a. It was something that Adam and Eve were supposed to learn over as they deal with the serpent, right? Maybe they would have dealt with the serpent multiple times, just like Jesus was tempted many times. The serpent might have come back again and again and kind of try to tempt them. And in the process, they would have kind of grown and matured and, you know, and that at some point, I guess God would have told him, hey, eat from this. You know, you can eat from this tree now. And so that was kind of the.

Feler Bose (31:43)
The point I was trying to make. And so for me, the idea of original sin was not they disobeyed God by eating from the tree of knowledge. And good and evil is just that they were impatient. They wanted to eat from the tree in their own time, their own timeline, and they want to eat from it immediately. I mean, if you think about it, right, God wants us to, for example, how does it apply to us, right? I mean, God wants us to, for example, wait to have sex, don’t have sex until we get married, you know, but some people, God doesn’t condemn having sex. You know, he says you got to wait. And so a lot of people can a sense grab the fruit too soon or a lot of people want to get rich, right? They might steal, be patient, right? It might take you 20, 30 years to get wealthy or something by obeying God and so on. So I think that was kind of the point I was trying to make, that the sin was the sin of not being patient, you know, kind of grabbing something prematurely. And in a sense, I kind of come to the idea that the new Adam, Jesus Christ, I mean, his.

Feler Bose (32:42)
The restoration that’s happening to Christians is for us to start thinking long term, being patient, being self controlled in our actions. And so that’s kind of where I went with that topic, that chapter.

Andrea Schwartz (32:53)
Think of all the times and places where patience is elevated. In 1st Corinthians 13, the first description of love, which Jesus says elsewhere is fulfilling the law, is patience. And that patience has its work in people customarily. Anybody who’s read Rushdoony said Genesis 3. 5 is the desire to determine good and evil for yourself. And in your description and discussion on this, you point out that Adam and Eve were born or not born, were created physically mature, but that doesn’t mean they were intellectually mature, emotionally mature. And just the same way that a child is fully a child, you wouldn’t give a child the keys to the car and say, hey, go to the grocery store and pick up some stuff that we need. We see a process of maturation. And a lot of times kids get impatient and they do things. And you’re like, I never told you you could do that because you’re not ready. So instead of God doing what Satan indicated, he just doesn’t want competition. It was as a loving father. He wanted Adam and Eve to grow into the role that he had for them. That paradise or Eden was not the end of the line.

Andrea Schwartz (34:12)
I’ve heard it described as a pilot project so that then you could go into the entire world, right?

Feler Bose (34:17)
I mean, they, I mean, you know, got in the story of Adam and Eve. We learn about places where there’s gold and stuff, right? And all the stuff was way out there. You gotta get on the boat, get it, get in a, you know, maybe get on a boat and go down and, you know, find the gold and, you know, build an altar or something with it, you know, you know what I’m saying? So, yeah, I mean, it is something that he was supposed to learn and grow and mature and. And spread God’s kingdom, you know, but he, yeah, he got impatient, wanted to do his own timeline.

Andrea Schwartz (34:45)
And you cite examples how Abram had to learn patience, Joseph being in prison for 10 years, all. Even Jesus having to be patient with the people who were his people, his elect, that I think we undervalue patients in a world where you have a question, you can ask Siri or Alexa or Google it, and now you have an instant answer that built into this quote unquote progress we have is building impatience in people.

Feler Bose (35:20)
Yeah, it’s that I think that’s what unique about Christianity is this idea of patience, long suffering and self control and so on. I think the Bible, I think once you see the Adam and Eve story that way, it the whole, for me, scripture, you know, opened up in terms of trying to see what’s going on. I mean, for me it kind of made more scripturally made more sense to think about, you know, like every story. Yeah. Like you even pointed out in Corinthians about love being patient and so on. It’s, I think it’s a big part of the Christian walk that we learn and that impacts economic growth and prosperity. The idea of patience and long term thinking long term having longer time horizons and not expecting things to be done immediately. Right. I mean God is not a genie or something that if you do this, God is going to give us this right away. I mean, I’m not saying Christians don’t fall into the temptation. Right. We do see people saying, well, you know, if you give money to God, God will give it back right away. I mean it’s not like, well, God can do it in his own timing.

Feler Bose (36:21)
It’s not like, it’s not like we shouldn’t expect them to do it, you know, in our timing. So we get very impatient and I think scripture, yeah, like I said, is very clear. We got to think long term horizons into the future.

Andrea Schwartz (36:33)
When I was growing up Feler, it was not unusual for families to celebrate grandparents 50th anniversary, 60th anniversary. Well, my husband and I are coming up this year in our 50th and you should see the people’s look. The look on people’s faces is kind of like, oh my goodness, how do you do it? Well, nobody ever asked grandparents, how did you do it? Didn’t assume that everything was hunky dory. I like telling people, yeah, almost 50 years and some years were better than others. Right. That you have to be patient in the process. But not just your book, but certainly other books I’ve been reading stresses how important marriage and family is to the point that you would almost have to think that the communist knew exactly what would succeed in terms of people’s relationship to God and society and sought to undermine it whole cloth.

Feler Bose (37:29)
Right, right. I mean, I guess when you could say you can think about it when God judges a nation. Right. And let’s say we impose communism in America, certainly a very quick way to destroy the country. I mean it’s, it will be very pleasant. So yeah, let’s hope you don’t come to that point in society and you know, I’m hopeful that the United States, that we have more people that are, you know, whether Christianity is making an impact in changing people’s lives to this idea of patience and self control and long time horizons and so on.

Andrea Schwartz (37:59)
So for the listeners, it’s. The book is entitled Sexual Freedom and Its Impact on Economic Growth and Prosperity. The author is my guest today, Feler Bose. In closing, I would like to ask you this. You’re not presupposing somebody reads your book and then says, oh, I should stop being sexually promiscuous so that I can have a better portfolio. You’re not discounting the fact that the Holy Spirit is that person of the Godhead that’s going to change a person so that rather than being impatient and going for quick gratification, that they’ll change. So talk a little bit about that.

Feler Bose (38:43)
Yeah, I mean, you know, if somebody reads the book and says, you know, I gotta stop committing adultery or something, I mean, that’s great. I mean, I think that’ll be certainly heading the right direction. But you know, I, you know, like the story of Abraham, I think that I highlighted in the book. You know, it talks about a multi generational perspective. I mean, you can’t, certain things may not happen in your generation. Right. I mean there’s a lot of brokenness you may have to work through that hopefully the next generation does not have to work through. And so the prosperity that you might see, your portfolio, so to speak, might occur in the next generation and not in your generation. But you got to be patient for that. You got to let God work it out and not rush things. You know, I’ve known people who become Christians who start giving and so on in this is in India where I grew up and you can see immediate turn around in their financial status and so on.

Andrea Schwartz (39:32)
The Bible says we’re not going to be able to outrun his blessings. And I love that picture because no matter how fast you run and you might be a fast runner, God’s going to beat you in terms of blessings to you.

Feler Bose (39:45)
Right? Right. Yeah. Ultimately it’s in his time and his, you know how he does it. Because sometimes you’re not ready for the blessings, maybe. You know what I’m saying?

Andrea Schwartz (39:53)
Yeah. Well, I read it and I’m hoping this book will be read especially by Christian homeschooling families who often have to, quote, unquote, sacrifice financially or get derided because they’re denying their children full expression. But, and this is something I purposely want to not discuss at length to get people to read your book, your whole chapter on Kinsey. It’s really an indictment against nothing strict stood against how all aspects of American society changed when the Kinsey report was accepted as truth without being challenged. So what would you say to people who have already embraced this idea that God’s word is central? What encouragement would you give them for individuals?

Feler Bose (40:41)
I think we need to be faithful to what scripture says about sexual morality. And you know, and like, and like you said, you know, that impacts, that’ll impact us. I mean for the better. Being sexually immoral has lots of problems. People dealing with guilt and you know, disease and all these other problems that come with sexual immorality. And so I think being faithful to your spouse, I mean there’s a lot of peace of mind and all that is important. I mean in terms of economic growth and prosperity also not just for the individual, but, but if more and more people in the society live the scriptural injunction to on marriage and so on, then we will see society prosper. And in fact, I think in my book also I highlight a story that in India there were some, the Brahmins, the priestly caste, that they were curious as to why the British, a small country, an island nation, was able to conquer a lot of the world. And, and the, the priest in India they came to the conclusion is because British followed monogamy. This isn’t the 8, this is a study, this is a observation in the 1800s because of the health district, marriage standards and monogamy that resulted in England going out and conquering the world.

Feler Bose (41:56)
And so I think that is for our children, us being faithful and our children continue being faithful and so on. I think we should be able to get to the commanding heights, so to speak of the America. I mean, why not, right? Why shouldn’t Christians be running things in this country?

Andrea Schwartz (42:12)
Yes, I’ll end off with saying this, that knowing Rushdoony and reading Rushdoony, I’ve read probably all his books and then I had the opportunity to interact with him. He would always emphasize that he is just scratching the surface that the idea was that every area of life and thought needed to be subject to God’s word. And you’re a great example. You didn’t think you have gotten to the depth of it completely, but you started and said nobody’s talking about this and why shouldn’t somebody who has a biblical world in life view talk about this? And so I applaud your work. I hope people will read your book. Are there other ways for people to keep up with what it is you’re writing, doing, speaking that you could share with us.

Feler Bose (43:01)
Like, a lot of my research is published in academic journals, so I’m not sure how useful it is in terms of trying to, you know, if you like that kind of stuff, you’re more than welcome to read my other, other topics that I worked on. I know that, you know, I’m guessing you’re putting this podcast up at some point to make it available. So I’m, you know, I have, I’ll be talking to people. There’s someone who has invited me on there to talk an X, you know, in spaces about the book. So I’ll be talking. I know about the book. You know, I don’t know. You know, whatever God opens up, you know, I know that some universities have asked me to come and talk about it. So those are the places I generally would talk about. I mean, if somebody wants me to talk at a convention or something, I’m more than happy to come.

Andrea Schwartz (43:46)
And how would they reach you?

Feler Bose (43:48)
They can if they just type my name on online. You know, my university contact information is. Will pop up. They can email me at my university bosef@iu.edu. IU stands for Indiana University.

Andrea Schwartz (44:04)
Well, thank you very much. I’ve really enjoyed your book. I enjoyed talking to you about your book and I really encourage other people you can imagine. Get it on Amazon.

Feler Bose (44:15)
Yes, it’s on Amazon. Walmart. I think there’s some other places you might find it cheaper, but it’s. Yeah, it’s. It’s available online in a bunch of places.

Andrea Schwartz (44:23)
All right. And once again, the title Sexual Freedom and its Impact on Economic Growth and Prosperity by Feler Bose. Thank you so much for spending time.

Feler Bose (44:31)
With me today and thank you for having me here.

Andrea Schwartz (44:34)
Outofthequestionpodcast@gail.com is how you reach us and we look forward to talking with you next time. Thanks for listening to out of the Question. For more information on this and other topics, please visit Chalcedon.edu