212 – Voting Christian, But Investing Woke?

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Voting Christian, But Investing Woke?

Does your investment portfolio align with the way you morally vote?

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Are you voting with your values, but unknowingly investing against them? In this episode, Bob and Shawn uncover the importance of aligning your financial decisions with your Christian beliefs, particularly when it comes to voting one way but maybe investing another way.

Discover how you can vote and invest in harmony with your Christian faith by choosing to invest in companies that align with your Biblical values, such as pro-life and pro-family. If you are voting this way, then shouldn’t the way you invest also align with these principles? In today’s modern financial world, it’s actually quite easy to invest in alignment with their values through Biblically Responsible Investing.

Mentioned In This Episode

Shawn (00:00):
Are you voting with your values, but unknowingly investing against them? In today’s episode, we’ll uncover the importance of aligning your financial decisions with your Christian beliefs. Discover how you can vote and invest in harmony with your Christian faith. Let’s get some perspective. Welcome to another episode of Christian Financial Perspectives. We’re so glad you joined us. My name is Shawn Peters. This is Bob Barber, and today we have a very special program that Bob has put together that with election day coming up tomorrow. If you are watching this on the day we published it, it’s hopefully a message that you guys will be able to benefit from and listen to the whole thing or watch the whole thing. But this is something that we hope all Christians will take a stand on election day tomorrow and vote for pro-life and pro-family candidates.

Bob (00:58):
Absolutely, Shawn and I tell you, so today’s program, we’re calling it voting, right, investing left or voting Christian and investing woke. You can look at it several different ways, but hopefully during this election, all Christians will come forward and stand for truth. Truth is becoming so relative today.

Shawn (01:24):
In today’s culture.

Bob (01:25):
We want to keep you from believing one way and investing another. We want you to believe the Christian way, believe a Biblical truth, but at the same time also invest the same way. And there’s some great scriptures I think of, I knew they were in James, James 1:8 is, “A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.” So as you vote, I want you to think about truly if you’re an investor, are you voting one way and investing another way? And we’re going to get into that and we want to keep you from doing that because we don’t want you to be a double-minded man.

Shawn (02:04):
There’s another scripture, we didn’t list it on this one, but just came to mind about not being unequally yoked when it comes to investing, we will definitely get into that. But the scripture tells us we should not be unequally yoked with a non-believer. And I would say that that applies with whether it’s in business, you starting your own business or you’re owning a small fraction of a share of a publicly traded company, whatever it might be. You don’t want to align yourself with someone that does not have the same values as you or has very little in common with you. Another one is James 4:17.

Bob (02:40):
James 4:17. Go ahead, Shawn.

Shawn (02:41):
If anyone then knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.

Bob (02:48):
And 2 Corinthians 6:17 says, “Come out and be separate. Touch no unclean thing and I will receive you.” So today we want to make sure that when you vote, you’re not sending mixed signals.

Shawn (03:02):
As Christians, we don’t want to vote one way and invest another. That’s not a good thing. And like Bob said, it’s mixed signals.

Bob (03:10):
I put together six or seven of these things. I really looked at what are the reasons that we as Christians are voting today. And I know for myself, and I believe for many of you also, it’s because you have convictions based on Biblical guidelines and you want to vote your values. That’s so important. And also it’s a duty to our country and we want to have a voice not only in the nation, but we want to have a voice in our city, our state, and how our country are run. So it’s important that we vote for good local leadership as well. I remember a very well-known pastor, he said, when you have a messed up city, it causes a messed up county. When you have a messed up county, it causes a messed up state and so forth. So it starts at the grassroots level.

Shawn (04:00):
It’s kind of like we all get caught up in the presidential election, kind of like the Super Bowl or something. It’s like, remember, there are other games, there are other things. If you want to want to support your team, you need to make sure to get out there for more than just the final championship.

Bob (04:16):
We’re voting to protect our God-given freedoms. It’s very important, especially here in America and for economic reasons like taxes and free enterprise. Free enterprise is a wonderful thing. It enables you to go out and start. Anyone can start their own business in anything.

Shawn (04:34):
But we want to make sure to protect that right to be able to do that, to be able to have a chance to compete. Additionally, social issues. There’s a lot of different social issues. We’re not going to go into all of them, but there’s a lot. And to change the status quo because what we currently have is not working.

Bob (04:54):
It is not. It definitely is not. I think that’s the reasons we need to understand as Christians, why we are voting today. Plus there’s many others. I also think it’s important for Christians to understand that what liberals are voting for and what their agenda is. I think the number one agenda it seems to be is about abortion. Because I’ve been seeing all the advertisements. We watch Wheel of Fortune every night, and it’s just one advertisement after another, and it’s all about abortion. It doesn’t seem like anything else.

Shawn (05:28):
Not just abortion, but it’s the fact of wanting abortion for everyone regardless of the reason without any constraints. It doesn’t matter how late in the term, doesn’t matter, no questions asked.

Bob (05:38):
Right. We’re talking about abortions eight and nine months. I mean, that’s crazy. They don’t want any constraints on it. Another thing that we need to understand is that the liberals want a free reign for the LGBTQIA+.

Shawn (05:57):
LGBT+

Bob (05:58):
No, I know.

Shawn (05:58):
You can’t keep track of all the letters.

Bob (06:00):
But they want a free reign for that community to be able to indoctrinate our children and our grandchildren with their values, not Christian values. Those values really go against what we believe.

Shawn (06:11):
Those organizations, I’m not going to name any specific ones, but you all know which, there’s one big one. They basically got equal rights for the LGBT community, if you will. Like, okay, don’t discriminate based on who someone decides to love, which we’re not going to get into that, but basically they won. Okay, great. It’s a protected class. Well, you’ve got these organizations that have all this funding and all these people have jobs that, okay, well what else are we going to do now? So that’s why they keep adding all these letters. They need to keep coming up with a supposed cause to champion and fight for, even though it’s nonsense.

Bob (06:46):
And what you do is your own business. We’re not putting down, I mean whatever you want to do is your own business, but when it comes to indoctrinating our children with these values, we need to take a stand.

Shawn (06:57):
Amen.

Bob (06:58):
And also the liberal agenda is they want to put children’s rights over parental rights. And we’ve been hearing a lot about that.

Shawn (07:04):
We’re seeing that happening in California.

Bob (07:06):
With the sex change.

Shawn (07:07):
And right next door, our neighbor Canada, same thing. And now that’s kind of infecting states like California and other places where the state controls and owns our children.

Bob (07:19):
Versus

Shawn (07:19):
Not parents.

Bob (07:19):
The Parents, right. A couple more things. They want income to be equal for everyone except for them at the top, politically. The government owes everyone more entitlements. The federal government…

Shawn (07:31):
Did you see that latest Bob?

Bob (07:32):
No, I didn’t.

Shawn (07:33):
What about one fifth of the benefits or income? About one fifth of income on average for Americans comes from government benefits now. One fifth. That is up. That is doubled compared with what it was back in the seventies.

Bob (07:49):
And this is a big one with me that I don’t like this one is the liberals want federal control over local control, over state control and local control. They really want to dictate how states should run their business.

Shawn (08:06):
Well yeah, because California, New York want Texas and Florida and all these other states, they want them to fall in line with their ideals. So if they get federal control, well great, we’re going to force everybody to do the same. And we know that ain’t working over there.

Bob (08:18):
It is really interesting, too, how they want greater taxation on business. But you know what? Business is just going to pass this cost onto the consumer. And so it’s just going to cause more inflation. They want special rights for certain groups of people over equal rights for everyone, and they want minority rule over majority rule. So I think it’s important that we understand…

Shawn (08:38):
One racism that they supposedly think is in place for another version of racism.

Bob (08:43):
So I think it’s important for us to understand as Christians that the Christian conservative agenda is the polar opposite of the liberal agenda, and yet millions Christians are voting with their convictions, which is fantastic. I want you to vote that way. But they’re supporting these liberal agendas through their investment portfolios and retirement accounts.

Shawn (09:05):
That’s right.

Bob (09:06):
And they really don’t know it. I don’t know. I think it’s from a lack of knowledge.

Shawn (09:10):
Yeah.

Bob (09:10):
But it could be also conviction.

Shawn (09:12):
Bob, over 30 years and I mean, how many times do you still come across people that have just heard of how you can invest in this way or found out that it’s more accessible than ever? I mean, it’s most commonly, it’s not a matter of conviction, it’s a matter of people just don’t know it’s available.

Bob (09:30):
So we’re going to talk about that here in just a minute because does it make any sense at all for Christians to vote with their convictions yet support liberal agendas with their investment and retirement accounts? Of course it doesn’t. And the two main agendas that are on this ticket, as we know, for the liberal agenda is abortion and the LGBTQ agenda and millions of Christians are supporting these agendas, these woke agendas through their mutual funds, ETFs, and even particular stocks they own because they own companies inside of these ETFs and these mutual funds that are performing abortions or support the abortion industry, pharmaceutical companies that could use fetal tissue research from aborted babies to do their research, as well as companies that are pushing, again, the LGBTQIA agenda to minors in supporting liberal candidates. We’re here to help you today to figure out, okay, I want to vote – if I’m going to vote conservatively for Christian principles, you can align how you invest in your IRAs and your mutual funds, your brokerage accounts. You can align that with your values.

Shawn (10:50):
So one of the things that I usually use as an example to kind of wrap your head around the concept is, well, number one, everything we have in our life, our time, talent, treasure – treasure, money, all of our assets, everything we have, it comes from God first and foremost. So we don’t really own any of it. We are stewards of it. So that’s kind of like principle number one. Okay, well…

Bob (11:12):
That’s Psalm 24:1, “The earth is the Lords and everything in it.”

Shawn (11:14):
That’s right. So with that understanding as Christians, as believers and followers of Christ, we have a different level of responsibility. This is not just, oh, okay, are you making money? Are you increasing your assets? Are you preparing for retirement? But it’s also how are you getting to that end goal? There’s the parable where the master goes away on a trip and he comes back and the two servants with different, he gave to each according to their ability. But the first two they did well, they doubled the amount that he gave and then the last one buried it in the ground. But what I always think it would be interesting is if Jesus had added a couple more sentences to the story of what if the master then asked, “How did they gain it?” And if one of the ones that he said, “Well done”, said, “Well, I raped, pillaged, and stole and destroyed neighboring towns and took advantage of people to make this money.” I highly doubt Jesus would have said of the master in the story that, “Oh, well done thy good and faithful servant.” Like, no, no, no. That would be important, too.

(12:19):
And so, think of it like this. If you’re starting a business and you own it 100% your sole proprietor or however you set it up, and you don’t want to give money to these abortion clinics and these causes, the LGBT+ causes, an indoctrination of our children. Okay, well what about if you were 51% owner and you brought on some partners, what if you were 5%? What if you were 0.5%? At what point is the percentage for you to be an owner of a company, which is what it is when you own stocks or own stocks in mutual funds and ETFs that own those stocks underlying, it’s the same thing. It’s kind of like the whole poop in the brownie stories. If somebody offers you brownies and they say, oh, there’s a little bit of poop in there. Well, how much poop is okay in the brownies for you still eat them?

(13:03):
I Think most people would say, now that I know there’s poop in the brownies, I don’t want to eat them. So it’s kind of the same thing that stewardship aspect of it’s not about the money that’s directly benefiting these areas because you bought these shares. It’s really comes down to it’s a heart issue of if this belongs to the Lord, and I’m not supposed to be unequally yoked and I don’t want to be an owner of something that is profiting or benefiting these things that directly contradict my faith in Christ well, then why own it?

Bob (13:35):
So let’s get into the solution.

Shawn (13:36):
A little bit of a rabbit trail there, but hopefully that’s helpful.

Bob (13:38):
So the solution is Biblically Responsible Investing, which started with just a handful, five to seven financial advisors – I was one of them – about 30 years ago, and now it’s becoming a movement where conservative Christians who vote can also invest right. Okay. You get that. Instead of voting and investing woke, you can vote, right and invest right. And this is called Biblically Responsible Investing. And when I first got in the business 25, 30 years ago, gosh, there were only one or two choices. Today, there are so many choices, it’s hard to name them all. You’ve got everything from small cap value to large cap growth to international and everything in between. You’ve got lots of mutual funds to pick from, lots of ETFs to pick from. Of course, and then you have the entire stock market to pick from. And we have all the software that helps us to know what companies are up to. And so that on this day of voting that you’re voting, if you’ve never heard of this, we want to encourage you to learn more about Biblically Responsible Investing. This is the good news is that…

Shawn (14:51):
You can both vote and invest in an alignment with your values as a believer in Christ.

Bob (14:55):
And I know we have a lot of clients of Christian Financial Advisors that listen to our podcast, watch our program.

Shawn (15:01):
Hey y’all!

Bob (15:02):
Good news. Okay, good news. You’re all investing right. You’re investing with the way that you vote.

Shawn (15:09):
That’s right.

Bob (15:09):
But there’s still millions of Christians out there that are voting right and investing left or woke as we call it. That’s the big word.

Shawn (15:17):
That’s what all the kids are saying these days.

Bob (15:18):
Yeah. People, they call us, they say, now, I don’t want to invest in anything woke. I said, we haven’t invested in anything woke in 30 years. So it’s part…

Shawn (15:26):
We were avoiding that before it was a cool term.

Bob (15:30):
Exactly. Exactly. I want to ask you, if you’re listening to this today, help us get the word out about Biblically Responsible Investing. It is time for those that vote with conservative Christian principles to align their investments. And we can send a message to Wall Street and we have, I know Shawn, you went and opened up on Wall Street.

Shawn (15:54):
I was there. I wouldn’t say I opened up, but I was there for the bell ringing of the most recent Inspire ETF there, the P-T-L which is “Praised the Lord”. Robert Nestle, founder, I love all his, I don’t know how many more funds he can open. How many more creative names can he come up with?

Bob (16:12):
He’s got WWJD, which add an E to it and it’s Bible.

Shawn (16:17):
The point of that though is, and I know Robert is and Inspire are very, very outspoken with shareholder engagement, but we are seeing so many more opportunities opening up for Christians for us to be able to invest in alignment with our values. And Wall Street’s going to follow the money. If more and more of us want this type of investing, we’re seeing secular firms and broker dealers and others that are like, “Oh, well all these Christians seem to want this.” Okay, well we’ll do this because those who aren’t believers, they don’t really care that much about why we’re doing it, why we’re following the Lord in this way and what the Bible says. But if they see there’s some money to be made by doing it that way, they’re going to follow the money.

Bob (17:01):
Shawn, I just got an email yesterday from Eventide that they just opened up their new ETF.

Shawn (17:06):
That’s right.

Bob (17:06):
So…

Shawn (17:08):
Go Eventide. Finally got an ETF.

Bob (17:09):
And I want to mention Timothy Plan. They’re the founders of Biblically Responsible Investing, the Timothy Plan Mutual Funds. I’m very good friends with the founder and all of them that work over there. They’re like one big family. They all love Jesus. And in closing, we want to really encourage you to stay strong, invest for your Biblical values, along with voting for your Biblical values. Now, I want to say this in closing, because I was thinking about this. We’ve had a lot of phone calls. I had another one yesterday, and I want you to take heart in whoever wins this election if it doesn’t go the way we want, that God is still on his throne. And I also want you to take heart, also, that we’re not to live our lives based on who is President, but that many politicians…

Shawn (17:59):
Don’t live in fear regardless of who’s president or who gets elected in the different elections.

Bob (18:04):
And I’ve noticed over and over that politicians, they just tell people many times what their itching ears want to hear knowing full well they cannot deliver on all those promises. I know that many of the ones I’ve heard, I’m like, there’s no way, like capital gain taxes on unrealized gains – that’s not going to pass.

Shawn (18:24):
It would destroy our country.

Bob (18:26):
Well, the Democratic, they have a lot of investments too, so they wouldn’t do that. But in the end times, people will believe these things because 2 Timothy 4:3 tells us this,

Shawn (18:39):
“For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching years want to hear.”

Bob (18:49):
Kind of goes right with it, doesn’t it?

(18:51):
Yep. So if you’d like to learn more about aligning how you invest with how you vote, give us a call or text us at (830) 609-6986 or visit our website, www.christianfinancialadvisors.com. Thanks as always for joining us. God bless. Go out and vote and stay true to your values.

We invite you to listen to all of our past episodes covering many financial topics from a Christian Perspective. To make sure you don’t miss any of Bob’s upcoming episodes you can subscribe to Christian Financial Perspectives on iTunes, Google Play Music, Spotify, or Stitcher. To learn more about integrating your faith with your finances, visit ciswealth.com or call 830-609-6986.

[DISCLOSURES]

* Investment advisory services offered through Christian Investment Advisors Inc dba Christian Financial Advisors, a registered investment advisor registered with the SEC. Registration as an investment advisor does not imply a certain level of skill or training. Comments from today’s show are for informational purposes only and not to be considered investment advice or recommendations to buy or sell any company that may have been mentioned or discussed. The opinions expressed are solely those of the hosts, Bob Barber and Shawn Peters, and their guests. Bob and Shawn do not provide tax advice and encourage you to seek guidance from a tax professional. While Christian Financial Advisors believes the information to be accurate and reliable, we do not claim or have responsibility for its completeness, accuracy, or reliability.