Conflicted Interest

Stone Choir

Hosts

Corey J. Mahler

coreyjmahler.com

@CoreyJMahler

Woe

aka Eschatologuy

@treblewoe

Every man has a collection of interests. A man has an interest in his family; a man has an interest in his job; a man has an interest in his financial positions; a man has an interest in his city; a man has an interest in his nation. These interests can sometimes come into conflict. To have a conflict of interests does not mean that the man in question is necessarily compromised or untrustworthy, but it does mean that he is in a position where he will have to make a choice between those competing interests.

In our legal system, we recognize this in a number of ways. We take the interests of a witness into account when weighing his testimony (and not just for credibility purposes); we take into account whether a statement is made against interest; we dismiss jurors who have certain interests in the outcome of a given case. The same is true of many other parts of our government (e.g., regulators are supposed to at least disclose any interests they have in the entities they regulate).

It is not that having an interest means that a man is automatically disqualified; rather, it is that the interests of the man must be taken into account when assessing his arguments, and it is also that men should generally disclose their interests — and those who fail to do so are suspect. However, there most certainly are instances where a man with a conflict of interests should or even must be disqualified from participating in the discussion — this is not only to protect the discussion itself, but also to protect the man from having to make a choice between his legitimate (and possibly even equally important) interests.

Handling these issues is a matter of wisdom, and one that has been neglected for far too long in Christian circles. God does not command us to be fools; rather, He commands us to be wise and to be wary of wolves.

---

Subscribe to the podcast here.

---

Show Notes

• The Small Catechism — The Ten Commandments

See Also

Further Reading

Parental Warnings

None.

Transcript

The transcript for this episode can be found here

Other transcripts can be found here

Current Sponsor(s)

Coming soon?

Support the Podcast

• Recurring Donation
• One-Time Donation
• Cryptocurrency Donation
• Mahler’s Amazon.com Wish List
• Woe’s Amazon.com Wish List
• The Stone Choir 2024 Challenge Coin

Comments?

Join the discussion on Telegram, visit the feedback form or comment below.

function waitForElement(selector, callback) { const interval = setInterval(function() { const element = document.querySelector(selector); if (element) { clearInterval(interval); callback(element); } }, 100); // check every 100 milliseconds } function updateTranscriptLink(audioSrc) { const episodeNumber = extractNumber(audioSrc); if (episodeNumber) { const transcriptLink = document.querySelector('a.transcript-link'); if (transcriptLink) { transcriptLink.setAttribute('href', `/transcripts/transcript-episode-${episodeNumber}/`); } else { console.error('Transcript link not found.'); } } else { console.error('Episode number could not be extracted. The audio source was: ' + audioSrc); } } // Function to extract the number from the audio file name function extractNumber(src) { const match = src.match(/e(\d+)\.m4a/); return match ? match[1] : null; } // Start waiting for the audio element to appear in the DOM waitForElement('audio[src*="s.stone-choir.com"]', function(audioElement) { const audioSrc = audioElement.getAttribute('src'); updateTranscriptLink(audioSrc); }); jQuery(document).ready(function($) { // Hide the comments initially $('#comments').hide(); // Inject the "Show Comments" button before the comments div $('#comments').before('<hr><br><button id="show-comments">Show Comments</button>'); // Handle the button click event $('#show-comments').on('click', function() { $('#comments').toggle(); $(this).text(function(i, text){ return text === "Show Comments" ? "Hide Comments" : "Show Comments"; }); }); });