The Life of the Heart
The Firestone Files: Letters to My Grandchildren — Dr. Chris L. Firestone
October 13, 2025 · Episode 8 · 47:00
https://drchrisfirestone.com/episode/the-life-of-the-heart/

Transcript is auto-generated from YouTube captions and lightly formatted; it may contain errors.

Hey, welcome back everyone to the Firestone Files. I am Dr. Chris Firestone and today I'm asking the question, is virtue and a pure heart always a good thing or should we sometimes look out for ourselves? That's today on the Firestone Files. Well, the Firestone Files are now moving into episode 8. And uh this kind of gets us back to our regularly scheduled programming. But I thought I'd give this brief introduction because well, we did a little something different, something unexpected. You will recall that in episode one, I introduced to you the Fire Stones and uh talked about um primary elements and how they can be explanatory of the Firestones.

We talked about why be a philosopher and the life of the mind. And then Charlie Kirk was unexpectedly assassinated. And so I couldn't be silent. I couldn't just sit back and let these things roll off as if nothing has happened. So we went ahead and we did a a uh a tribute to Charlie Kirk. We did another one on Charlie Kirk and Socrates. And then we did one on Charlie Kirk the apologist. And just last week I took you through Charlie Kirk uh Charlie Kirk's memorial service. And all four of those were hot off the presses because sometimes such historic moments happen that you can't really do business as usual.

But now we're going to get back to it. Uh episode 8 is the life of the heart. And the next several episodes will include the life of the body. So, we will have done the the uh uh mind uh uh body and and heart and um so we're going to interview President Eric Capacy. That'll be coming up. And there's a number of other I think rather interesting ones.

I've even interviewed my kids. So, we'll we'll run those here sometime soon. But, uh what I've learned about podcasting already, you know, the learning curve is just so so fast. Um, you know, you can see I'm in a new environment here at Turning Point Education Prep Year. Um, I've learned that, uh, that old famous quote from Mike Tyson, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. And that was kind of me here with the podcast. I I thought I had um I thought I had pre-recorded quite a few things here so I could teach uninterrupted at uh Turning Point Education Prep here, but uh life punched us in the face in the gut.

I punched us kind of all over with the death of Charlie Kirk. Um so we did those four unexpected podcasts. Um I learned something about myself in that process that what I learned was that I um enjoy speaking to contemporary events or big moments in history and I seem to have at least a some facility in that area if judging from some of the comments to my recent podcasts. I want to do more of these interjections in the future. I don't know when exactly.

If I feel like I have something important to say, I'll just do a fresh podcast and bring that to you and I'll try to let you know in advance through some reels or through uh you know a Facebook post or whatever. Um I know there's one coming up, a big event in January in Hot Springs, Arkansas. And that will be a world uh Guinness book of world record attempt by a fellow I've just gotten to know named monster Michael Todd, Christian strongman who's going to attempt to break that record. And so uh gearing up to do that. I'm going to introduce you to Michael Todd along the way.

I was at his facility not that long ago and took him on myself in a little arm wrestling. It didn't go as well as I would have hoped, but I guess that's not surprising. He is the arm wrestling world champion or has been numerous times. And so got to see his facility, his world championship belts, all the uh amazing amount of hard work that goes into rising to that level. And so I'm going to be bringing that special event uh to you down the road here somewhere.

In the meantime, let's get back to the offering we have today, which was once regularly scheduled. Now, we're going to bring that to you, and that is the life of the heart. I hope you enjoy it. Well, welcome everybody and uh so excited to be back again. My experiment here in uh podcasting is is been a lot of fun and I'm just kind of looking forward to continuing on and and and uh spending some time with you guys sharing some wisdom from the world of philosophy and everyday life and some of my experiences. Um the question that I'm posing today is something along the lines of but just put into layman's terms.

Is it better to cultivate a pure heart or to look out for your own self-interests or are they are those two questions, you know, a false dichotomy? Is there something more in the middle? I think I feel this moral tug many times when I'm driving or I'm in sort of a transport situation. I'm going from one place to another. People who travel have needs. I see people on the side of the highway with a flat tire or maybe there's something else going on and you wonder whether or not you should stop and stop what you're doing, seek to help out. And that could be a fairly lengthy adventure if you let it be. And so the question is how should we think and act in such circumstances?

Um these moments are common. They're small interruptions. There sometimes are big interruptions. They're always based, it seems like, in human needs. How am I going to help my fellow man um and uh especially when it's going to be inconvenient with regards to whatever it is I've purposed for the day. Um these interruptions sometimes are big and sometimes uh they need uh they need you to make a snap decision. Am I going to turn around and go back and help? Am I going to stop what I'm doing and uh step forward and and and make a difference in somebody's life? Um I'm not saying that this is a slam dunk.

In fact, to be honest, I would say nine times out of 10 I don't help. And it's typically because of some kind of rationalization process. Uh, I say rationalization because I usually if I don't do it, it's because I felt like there were intellectual reasons why I didn't help out in a given situation. Uh, maybe, you know, especially in the cell phone era, you always think, well, that person's got a phone. I'm sure they can get appropriate help. Um, you know, this sort of thing. By the time you're watching this, it may even be easier uh than than that. But something analogous is going to be happening in your life. And the question is, how do you handle that moral tug as it were to help out versus, you know, all the other considerations that go into making good judgments?

Well, let me give you a couple of examples here. Sometimes, you know, the one I just gave you about a seeing somebody with a flat tire or something else going on the side of the road. I would call you a passive participant in that event. You can't shy away from the fact that you're there. You may have the ability to help and uh you got a decision to make. There's a stranger who need who has a need and your day is packed. How are you going to handle that? Going to make a phone call? Are you going to stop? Are you going to put any kind of boundaries on it?

Or are you just going to dive right in and help them out? Um there's the plan day that you woke up thinking about, praying about, and then there's the real life tension of people in need in the world. Sometimes you can't rationalize your reactions. You just have to do them. Now there are other situations where you are an active participant in the events. Uh and I would say that there's a distinction to be made there. Let me give you one example of being an active participant in a moral dilemma that has uh been pressed upon you. Uh, in some of my other podcasts, you may have heard me talk about chess, chess tournaments and my role in them.

Well, one example that comes to my mind immediately when I think about moral decisions and being an active participant is uh another tournament event that I had downtown Chicago. I was in a in a ballroom kind of setting with bunch of games going on and I was in the final game of a uh of a uh um open tournament. An open tournament is different than a class tournament. At least it was when I was playing chess back in the early 80s. Um an open tournament is where you play everybody.

Like you you win, you go up the rankings, you play higher rated players. You lose, you go down the rankings, you play other players. But you could theoretically even if you're like a C player like I was in this particular tournament um when I was I believe it was 16 years old um you could keep winning and win the whole tournament. That's different than a class tournament. In a class tournament you only pay play people who are rated something like you're rated. And so you'll play only players in a given uh uh uh uh rating range. And so in this particular one, it was an open tournament.

I was in the uh in the final game and if I won, I was going to get I think I was going to tie if I recall for first place in the C class. And I was playing an expert player, very good player. Maybe it was an highle A player or something like that. And apparently this person had a chance, this guy had a chance at winning some money as well. So I'm playing in this game and some of my friends and some other people are watching. You know, it's kind of fun to be in a in a tournament chess game where you have a chance to win or win a win a prize.

And uh time control was moving right along. We were, you know, we were going to make time control, but um we only had like 5 minutes left, couple moves to make. It was still some tension in this particular game. I had the upper hand. I was winning. I wouldn't say winning handily, but I definitely had him on the ropes.

That's when a surprise event happened. A uh the supervisor of the tournament comes to our board and he stops our clocks and he says, "Uh, are you Chris Firestone?" And I say, "Why? Why yes, I am." And he says, "You have a phone call?" I said, "A phone call? Can you We have five minutes left on our clocks. Got a couple of key moves to make here before we make time control. And this is a important tournament game." Well, um I uh I you know, he insisted. In fact, he even raised the stakes. He goes, "Well, it's an emergency phone call. You need to take this thing."

And I said, "Fine, you're the supervisor. If you keep an eye on the game and stop the clocks, I'll go have a look." Now, immediately I thought it wasn't fair because my opponent was going to sit there looking at the board while I'm over here taking a phone call, but it's an emergency phone call. So, I probably have to uh you know, just do it and see see what this is about. So, my mind is racing. I go over and we had this analog phone on the uh on the wall and uh I pick up the phone and I say, "Hello, this is Chris Firestone." And the person says, "If you let him win, he will split the money."

I was like, "What? Let him win? He will split the money." Oh my goodness. This is a person on behalf of my opponent who wants to let me or have me let him win so that I would be guaranteed a little bit larger uh uh uh split of the prize money in the in the I guess it was a or expert class, a class above mine. Um, well, I'm 16 years old and my knee-jerk reaction was after shock was over. I I, you know, there were two things going through my w mind. Number one, I don't let anybody win. Um, okay, you know, I'm I'm a competitor.

I like to win. Nobody's going to win. Not. And number two is I'm not allowing Chicago corruption to corrupt me. I'm not that guy. You called the wrong guy. I hung up the phone. Didn't say another word to him. Didn't say yes. Didn't say no. Didn't say anything. I simply walked back to the chessboard and said, "Sir, please start the clocks." And the supervisor did start the clock. And uh I don't think I've ever been as motivated to win a chess game before. I was focused. I was on point and I cleaned his clock and uh and and uh was able to win the game and split a smaller prize money uh in the C-class.

Um anyway, my example is meant to show that sometimes these um these questions of how we interact with others, others who present needs that we didn't really even want to entertain. He wants to win this tournament. I don't know what you know motivates him. Was it the money? Was it the fame? Was it the you know reputation or whatever? But I was an active participant in that and I had a decision to make in a high stakes game interrupted by this personal crisis that was thrust upon me. So how do we decide what's the right thing to do when life doesn't go as planned? I mean that brings us to this intersection of thought and the heart.

And really what I want to talk about with you here is the life of the heart today. Now, in terms of philosophical framework, you'll recall from other episodes perhaps if if you haven't if you're not just jumping around that in the life of the mind discussion, I talked about how in the modern period um the two great spheres of intellectual inquiry were the empirical, which is more the scientific employments of the mind, and the moral or ethical employments of the mind. The two are thought to have some kind of separation between them.

Moral duty and facts of uh life uh are two different things. Um one is what describes the world and the other is what you're supposed to do in the world. Now before the modern period, moral duties and facts were more integrated. In fact, they were very integrated. I think helping someone was just what you did. and the social and moral uh fabric uh ex sort of expected it of you. There was kind of a communal accountability and within your community there was a personal responsibility to fit in and to be the best version of yourself that you could be. I liken this a little bit more to virtue ethics than to modern philosophy which is more deontological or utilitarian.

If those words mean anything to you, we'll we'll talk about these things along the way. But in the modern period, there's a movement away from ontology of life and the self to an epistemology. How do you know what the good is? How do you know once you've described the circumstances, what you ought to do? I mean, there's lots of things that you can do in a given circumstance, where is the moral ought coming from or ought it to come from.

So there's a movement away in the modern period from a communal responsibility toward the individual and this is exemplified in my favorite philosopher of course Emanuel Kant because for Kant moral duty comes from reason universal law that is written into reason in the human heart I mean this is how he describes the human heart is essentially a practical employment of reason and uh not circumstantial based now It's different than the utilitarians that are indebted to empirical philosophy, David Hume and then you know John Stewart Mill and Jeremy Bentham and these types where emotions and calculated pleasure drive the moral enterprise not so for K. That may be how the moral enterprise typically functions but it's not how it ought to function. our conscience and the moral law command absolutely on us things can't and so the question isn't just what's happening around me and who am I relative to it but rather what's the principle or principles that should guide me in order for me to become maximally moral. I want to know that I'm doing the right thing.

Not just act out of goodness, but to know that I'm being good. Well, that's some of the philosophical background. There's the in in in all of these cases, we're describing what I would call affirmative moral uh uh philosophical systems. They all believe there is a good and that we should be in the good. One centers in the individual's self-growth and the other centers in the intellectual understanding of what does it mean to be good and what is the my duty in any given circumstance. Now all of this is pretty cranial. I get it. You can take a philosophy class and learn more about it.

So what I decided to do is just talk through a few stories about moral choices and action because I do believe at the end of the day all this intellectualizing with regards to moral philosophy is rooted in our moral experience. Surprise surprise that we that we actually encounter the heart when we encounter others in the world. Um, so I'm going to tell about four stories here and I'm going to my typology of these stories has to do with transportation. And we talked about cars, but the first one has to do with a bike. The second one has to do with a car. The third one has to do with a train.

And the fourth one has to do with a plane. Um, I don't know why transportation became a sort of typology for me to talk about the moral enterprise, but that's just my experience. It happens a lot. these moral challenges when I'm traveling. Uh I see them more clearly at least in those circumstances because you're often encountering strangers, other people, and you have to determine are you going to lead with the heart or are you going to keep some distance and lead with the mind as it were? Or how does one go about dealing with these circumstances? The first one has to do with a bike.

Um, this one always makes me smile because it was uh it became part of Firestone family lore. Um, I was having a uh a garage sale at our house on Williams Street in Deerfield. And uh, one of the things the Fire Stones did to prepare for garage sales was we'd go um, dumpster diving. We'd go grabbing stuff from the garbage that people put out on on Wednesday nights or we would um go behind Target or the bookstore or whatever and look for things and it would thicken up our garage sale and it would also make us a little bit of money. So before this particular garage sale, my young daughter, I'm thinking she's seven or eight years old at the time named Hannah, she's the oldest one.

So, this is a pretty old story because at the time of recording here, um that would be about 20 years ago now, but uh anyway, we had garbage picked a small bicycle. Seemed to be in good working order. Not sure why they were throwing it away. It was out at the garbage uh corner uh in our in our dumpster dive the day before the garage sale. So, we grabbed it. We put a price tag of 10 bucks on it and we threw it in our garage sale. again, thickening up the garage sale and um perhaps making us a little bit of money.

So, days going by, we're we're we're selling stuff and um I go inside the house uh get some water or something and uh I'm I'm listening outside and my small daughter. I'm watching her deal with a customer. It's a lady who's walking by. I thought, well, this is kind of cute. And she says, "Ah, I like your bicycle. Um, I've got a I've got a a niece that comes into town, you know, once in a while. I'd like to have something for her to ride. This looks like it could be perfect. Um, you know, is is are your parents around? I I'd like to to to make a purchase. And Hannah says, "Why, yes, yes, they are. Um, yeah. I'm so glad that you picked this bicycle. it. We we we found it in the garbage yesterday and my heart sank.

I'm inside the house about to go out to take payment for this bicycle and my 8-year-old daughter tells her how we got the bike from the garbage can of somebody's on somebody's uh garbage layout. Now I'm just like, "Oh no, how do I handle this? What do I do?" And to be honest, I just froze. I was like, I uh maybe I can go get my wife. Um not sure what to do. Maybe I'll get somebody else to to step out there and and um deal with this situation. Well, I waited and waited. My dad and and Hannah said, "Dad, you're in there." And I I'm just keeping silent.

I'm totally frozen. And after talking a little bit more, she said, "I'll come back later." I I would rather her come back later than make 10 bucks on the bicycle we picked from a dumpster dive. Um, funny thing is we did sell it to somebody else not that long later. But what was so interesting about this story to me is that there was something pure and beautiful about her say moral response to this lady. She was a total transparent trutht teller and um that was a beautiful thing to behold and I did I certainly didn't get on her for for for for blurting out that we got it out of the garbage. But there was also something not quite right about it. You know, it's kind of an air and application of your moral intuitions and um that's going to take time to learn. You know, that's a that's a that's a thoughtful employment of the moral uh uh the moral moral purity even.

Um sometimes it's better not to tell everything. Um she's getting a value, we're getting a value, everybody's happy, but there's that little tinge of say social questionability. I don't know exactly how to put it when you divulge the details uh like like Hannah did. Okay. Well, that was my bike story. Um, the next one I want to tell here is a car story. Um, I was in Arkansas visiting my dad and I often um stayed out in his office. He had a cottage building there that he used for the office. Cars would come by, have his sign up on the wall.

And at night, I would go in there and lay out the bed there and sleep overnight and then get out so he could do his business in the morning. Um, but I'm up late. I don't exactly know why. It's like 1 1:30, closing in on 2:00. I shut my lights off, totally exhausted. That's when I hear a knock at the door. I'm like, "Oh, what in the world? Somebody is outside." And uh sir, can you uh can you help me? I'm like, "Okay, I flipped the lights on in the room. Probably a mistake on my part. And I think I flipped the the the the sort of uh porch lights on, but he's standing beyond the porch there and I can't even really see him. I said, "What what can I do for you?" He says, "My car ran out of gas down the block and I was wondering if you could give me 20 bucks for gas."

And I'm like, whoa, somebody had somebody has a nerve to stop, knock on the house door, or in this case, the office door, probably saw my light on, then flipped it off, and then quickly made his way down and knocked on the door and asked for money. Now, I know better than to just give people money in this neighborhood. Um, there's a lot of drug use. There's a lot of uh uh shady characters around. Now, it's not everybody, but there's enough people, especially out at 2:00 a. m. Um, so I said, "Oh, give me a minute." And so I pull myself together. I put my flip-flops on.

I walk outside and I said, "Look, you know, I can't go ahead and give you money. Here's what I'm willing to do, though. I'm willing to grab this gas can here and jump in the car with you, go get you some gas, and then come back, put it in your car, and get you on your way. Will that work for you? He goes, "Yes, sir. Yes, sir. That works for me." So, we jumped into this small um uh Honda I think Honda Accord that I had and uh turn it on, hit reverse, and then I hear just a really grindy sound. And I put it in park and the guy who's sitting next to me in the passenger seat says, "That didn't sound good."

I said, "No, that didn't sound good. I have no idea why this car is not moving and that's grinding and that's like brake grinding. That's a bad deal. Uh came to find out later that the car had um was fro it was frozen. Here I am in Hot Springs, Arkansas with frozen brakes. Um and so uh so that wasn't it didn't end up so bad for the car. But then I had another decision to make. I got this guy who claims to be down the road here with a car that's empty of gas. how do I deal with it? And I said, "Look, I'm going to give you the money and I want you to promise me you're going to spend it on gas."

And uh he says, "I can I Yes, sir. I will do that." And uh and uh he did something. I I couldn't really even see his face, honestly. It was so dark and I was so blureyed. I have no clear recollection of what he looked like. But then he threw his arms around me. He said, 'Thank you so much, sir. And he walked away into the dark. And uh that was last time I heard from him, as far as I know. I mean, could probably have come back in to say hello. And I wouldn't even know it was him unless he identified himself. But there's something about the moral tug at the heart.

And if you lead with the heart, it can change people's lives. It can be quite a good thing. It also can be a risky thing. I mean, I knew when I walked out that door that I didn't know who this guy was. I didn't know what his intentions were. And um sometimes you have to make those judgment calls, you know, in terms of safety concerns and your instinct to help. And uh you know, it's coming from a good place. So, you know, you can't always cross all the tees and dot all the eyes. Sometimes you just have to step forward in life.

So that's what I learned from that adventure. So we talked a little bit about bike and a car. Let me talk about a train incident that also sort of uh um got my moral, you know, instincts and and judgments going. I was uh I was a PhD student at the University of Edinburgh during this one. I was had a lunch break and I was down by Princess Street just walking on the street making my way back to New College in the middle of the day when this lady was kind of hustling right past me heading toward the train station and she had this huge bag and she was carrying another couple bags on her shoulder.

She's sweating and she's like all haste. And sometimes you can just read somebody's face and say, "Yeah, that's a person that's a person in need." And so I'm thinking, okay, uh, you know, it is it is a study day. It's my opportunity to get some work done on my PhD. And here we have this person who's in dire need. I said, "Ma'am," just first thing that came to my mind at that point was, "Ma'am, can I take that bag and help you get to the train?" I assume that's where you're going. She says, "Yes, that's where I'm going. Let me grab this bag for you." So, I pick up this big bag and I start hustling with it. And she's moving pretty fast. And as we're running, you know, or jogging or moving as quickly as we could, I asked her, "So, which train are you taking?"

and she said, "I'm taking the uh you know the the the 1:30 train to to London." And uh I said, "Well, let's go. Let's get moving. You're boy, you're tight on time." So, we hustled down into uh Waverly Station there and uh we we go downstairs and um I look up at the board immediately because I've been on this train station before. Goes all over Scotland and England. And I look up at the board. I see the London train. I see the track. I said is on track seven. Let's get moving. And so we just move. She keeps kind of trailing right behind me. I'm hustling with her.

We get to that train. And I walk into the train. I set her bag down. She gets into the train, gets her bags down. I step back and the doors shut like the moment she got into the train. And I stood there. I'm sweating at this point. And I'm like, I'm just smiling. And she just, you can see the delight on her face. And we just wave at each other. And I uh and that was it. I walked around that day like I had changed the course of history. Like it just made my day.

I don't I don't fully understand it, but there was something about the fact maybe it's because I was in the theoretical world of writing a PhD for so long that the just the ability to help somebody and to do a good deed meant something really extraordinary to me. Um, I had a uh just as an aside, I had a another small incident on a bus in London once where I was sitting there in a crowded bus when a lady gets on and she apparently doesn't have any money. She's struggling to find her money. She has no no change.

And uh my knee-jerk reaction was I got some change in my pocket. So I stand up, I walk over and I drop the money in and I say, you're good. I got you covered. and uh similar sort of face. People don't expect this kind of kindness these days and uh it's a rare thing for people to act out of a moral sense of obligation to their to their neighbor. So there you have a train and even a bus thrown in. My last example kind of turns the tables on me and that is a plain example. Um, in this case, I was wrapping up my, believe it or not, I was wrapping up my time at the University of Edinburgh.

Beth had already, my wife Beth had already left to uh to go home. She was in Minnesota and I was there selling things. had a had, you know, a boot sale that we sold a lot of stuff at and uh just just closing up shop and I had a ticket to leave uh 3 weeks after she had left so I could get all my PhD stuff under control and all of our stuff sold or shipped and uh I got done in two weeks. So I was like a week ahead of time and I said to myself, wouldn't it be amazing if I could surprise my wife?

Well, I tried to change my cheap ticket and it was unchangeable, but I was able to uh I called Iceland Air cuz I knew that was the cut rate airline at the time. I was just wondering if they have about if they have a cheap seat that they're willing to sell me, I could go up to three or 400, you know, kind of use all the cash I've got on hand and get home a week early.

and Iceland Air happened to have a flight the next day and I was able to get on it for a price I could afford. So in the morning I wrap up everything that I need to wrap up clean, you know, get the house cleaned up, ready to to hand over to landlords and all of that. And um I'm taking a bus from Edinburgh to Glasgow because Iceland Air flies from Glasgow to Iceland to Minneapolis and with this cheap flight and I got to get to the Glasgow airport. It was about an hour away. I go down to I take a bus, get down to the Edinburghough city center, get on another bus for Glasgow airport.

Um, well, I don't know if I mistimed it. I thought I gave myself plenty of time, but as it turns out, I didn't. I was uh I was I was looking at the clock on all the way to Glasgow and watching my time go away. And I got to the airport. I think I had 15 20 minutes before the flight was supposed to leave. So, I rush in and I'm looking for Iceland Air, not realizing that these small airlines close up shop. They don't even have a a place where they normally are. They just close up. There's nothing there. I have to make my way to the gate. I figure out which gate it is. And of course, the gate is on the far end of Glasgow airport. if I think it was a mile. Now, it may have been a half mile.

I don't know. It was a long wait and I still had to get through security and the plane was leaving in 20 minutes. I was like beside myself, but I said, "Look, I haven't gone this far to stop now. I got to take it to the very end." So, I jump into the security line, make my way through security. It takes 5 minutes and I am hustling as hard and as fast as I possibly can. Kind of like the lady was heading to the train station. The bags I had were heavy, big and because I was leaving for the final time after living there for 3 years.

Anyway, it got to a point about halfway to the gate when I couldn't go any further. I mean, here I am in my early 30s in reasonably good shape, but I came to my wit's end. I was totally totally spent. I couldn't go any further. I put the bags down. I sat down at a at a chair there and uh sweats pouring off of me. And apparently somebody noticed me. to this day, I don't know who you are or who they were, but a guy, I think I remember it being a guy, comes up to me and he says, "Let me get this for you."

He grabs the bag and he says, "Let's go." Not unlike what I had done in uh in uh you know, in Edinburgh for that lady trying to get to the train. Well, I'm like, "Let's go." And so I get up. I carry what I can. This person has taken this big bag. They're hustling with me all the way to the gate. I get to the gate.

They're closing the door and they go, "Whoa, Chris Firestone." I go, "Yes, open the door." They open the door. They take my big bag. They open the door. the plane. They slide it underneath the plane, I guess, and they let me on. Now, I sit down in my seat. I'm ripe as a tomato. I mean, I'm not I'm just hope the person next to me isn't isn't embarrassed. Well, I should be embarrassed, honestly, for what I must have smelled like at that point. Um, but I got on, they closed the door, and off we went.

And I was able and I'll tell the rest of this story some other time, but I was able to make it home and I was able to surprise my wife. Now, the point of this story is not the surprise, but the point of the story is sometimes this stuff comes back on you. I was desperate. I had given up my room to stay. I was a week out from my actual plane flight. I was desperate to get to that plane. I wanted to surprise my wife. I wanted to get home back to the States. And I couldn't do it. I ran into a brick wall and uh another person showed grace in a most unexpected way. Here was a big guy who doesn't look like he needs any help, who needed help, and this person was there to help me out.

Real life teaches us moral philosophy better than any textbook could. It forces us to weigh motives and consequences and character and make decisions for ourselves and for others. Something wonderful happens inside of us when we make good decisions, good moral decisions. When we wisely allow the practical to supersede the empirical or to enhance the empirical realities that we find ourselves in. It brought to my mind a passage in scripture that I kind of want to close with or bring up here. Uh that is Matthew chapter 10. Jesus is sending out his disciples to tell the good news, to um tell everyone the kingdom of God has come.

And in Matthew 10:16, he says, "But when you're doing this, be wise as serpents, innocent as doves." This is a beautiful image, I think, of what God requires of us in life. to have a balanced heart. That is to have sharp dis discernment and pure motive and to be ready to use the gifts that you have to benefit others to benefit yourself even. And the two are not unrelated. This is one of the uh things I learned from studying the philosophy of Kant. Sometimes Kant is lambasted as being too much for others like like it's an impossibly high bar. But Kant is pretty clear that in his moral philosophy that we should be thinking about ourselves as another one among the the moral participants in any given event. So you don't want to sell yourself short. You don't want to be unwise.

You don't want to give up your discernment and just lead with the heart. Um it it needs to be paired with wisdom. Let me give you one more example that comes to my mind. I heard a story about a girl at at my former school at Trinity College who was sitting at the pond there and uh reading her Bible when a man came up to her and said, "I'm ma'am. I'm uh I'm on the highway. My car has a tire issue and uh I need I need some money to to get it fixed. and she took this as to be a a calling for her and she wanted to help this guy out.

Was able to share with him her motivations and the gospel and so forth. And he and and he said and uh he said he needed to go he needed 500 bucks to uh to get this get this thing resolved. and she took him over to a cash station and she gave him the money and then he disappeared. Now, I'm not saying that her witness to him was a bad one. I think it was motivated by purity and that's going to have great results regardless. But I do think discernment matters. asking questions, making sure that you help the people out in sort of u thoughtful and discerning ways. And um I think that's what God calls us to. And so, uh, we need to think about how we can best help a person, not by giving into their desire to get money from you, but by walking with them and showing them what good moral behavior is like.

So, what's the moral of the story here? My guiding thought, let your default be love, a pure heart. Help, but don't open the door blindly. We're living in an already not yet world. If we were living in an already world, we'd all be leading by the heart and of course thoughtfully leading by the heart. But we're not living in that world yet. There's evil in the world. There are people who do not have your best interests in mind. And throwing pearls, moral pearls to swine is not a great thing to do. Be good, but be smart about it. Let people into your life with discernment.

I'm not saying this to check and to to to to keep you from doing good things. Not all action is equally pure. However, I think it has to be linked with thoughtfulness as well. So, the heart is shaped, I would argue, not just by knowledge, but by our actions, and those actions are best learned in the real world. We don't live in a perfect world, however, but we can live with purpose and with grace. So, ask yourself, what guides your choices? You don't want it to be fear. You want it to be discernment led by love, led by moral purity. Are your actions forming you into the kind of person that you want to become? A thoughtful, God-fearing um lovehonoring person. All right. Well, that's all I have time for here uh in this uh in this session. I hope you uh I hope you gleaned something from it. look forward to hearing something from you.

Uh if you want to uh write to me or uh or link or you know like this uh podcast or whatever. So I'd love to hear from you. All the best. Now bye for now. Thanks for stopping by to spend some time with me here on the Firestone Files. I hope today's reflections offered you some new insights and perspective on life. If you enjoyed the episode or found it valuable, I'd appreciate it if you'd take a moment to like, subscribe, and share it with someone you care about. I'd also love to hear your thoughts. What resonated with you? What challenged you? Or what would you like to hear more about in future episodes? Drop a comment below or send in your suggestions to the email in the description. Your input helps shape where we go next. This has been Dr. Chris Firestone. Until next time, keep asking the big questions and remember the kingdom journey is always best with your friends. Further up and further in. Bye for now.