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The Slow Implosion: How Rome Destroyed Itself · Chapter by Chapter — The Lost Library

• 0:00
  Imagine looking out your window and seeing an empire that has
• 0:03
  stood for over 1000 years just, well, just vanish.
• 0:07
  Right, just totally gone. Yeah, and not because of like a
• 0:11
  sudden alien invasion or a freak meteor strike, but because the
• 0:14
  very foundation of the society simply dissolved from the inside
• 0:18
  out. It really shatters the illusion
• 0:20
  we all carry around, doesn't it? I mean the idea that massive,
• 0:23
  seemingly permanent structures only fall when some giant
• 0:27
  external Wrecking Ball hits them.
• 0:29
  Oh, for sure. We desperately want disasters to
• 0:31
  be external, so we can, you know, point to an enemy and
• 0:34
  totally absolve ourselves. Well, welcome to the deep dive.
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  Today we are taking you on a journey into one of the most
• 0:41
  found historical mysteries, which is how does the
• 0:45
  unconquerable Roman Empire suddenly collapse?
• 0:47
  Yeah, it's a huge question. It really is.
• 0:49
  We are looking at an absolute monument of a text today,
• 0:53
  Augustine's City of God, and our mission is to unpack his radical
• 0:57
  thesis. Which is pretty mind blowing
• 0:59
  when you get into it. Exactly.
• 1:01
  He basically argues that civilizations do not simply fall
• 1:04
  to barbarian swords. They decay spiritually,
• 1:06
  psychologically, and morally long before the political
• 1:11
  collapse ever makes the headlines, right.
• 1:13
  Long before. So we're zeroing in on the
• 1:15
  catastrophic sack of Rome and 4:10 AD, and trust me, we are
• 1:19
  going to find some deeply unsettling mirrors to our modern
• 1:22
  societies, our institutions, and, well, the media diets we
• 1:26
  consume every single day. To even begin grasping
• 1:29
  Augustine's argument here, you really have to put yourself in
• 1:32
  the mindset of someone living in the year 410 AD.
• 1:35
  You have to feel the sheer, just paralyzing shock of that moment.
• 1:39
  Because it wasn't just another city falling.
• 1:41
  Not at all. Rome was the organizing
• 1:43
  principle of the known world. I mean, it had been expanding
• 1:46
  and dominating for over 11 centuries.
• 1:48
  And then the Goths, led by a king named Alaric, actually
• 1:51
  breached the walls. They sacked the unconquerable
• 1:54
  city. The psychological trauma across
• 1:56
  the globe was unimaginable. Saint Jerome, who was living in
• 1:59
  Bethlehem at the time, actually wrote that when the news reached
• 2:02
  him, his voice literally faltered.
• 2:04
  Yeah, he was choking on his own sobs.
• 2:07
  He was just unable to comprehend that the city which had captured
• 2:10
  the whole world was now a captive itself.
• 2:13
  It must have felt like gravity had suddenly just stopped
• 2:15
  working. That is the perfect way to
• 2:17
  describe it. The fundamental laws of their
• 2:20
  reality were suspended, and in the immediate aftermath of that
• 2:25
  trauma, human nature did what? Well, what human nature always
• 2:29
  does it? Panicked.
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  It panicked, and it looked for a scapegoat.
• 2:33
  The pagans remaining in the Empire immediately pointed their
• 2:36
  fingers at the relatively new official religion, which is
• 2:40
  Christianity. Their logic was actually
• 2:42
  incredibly straightforward. They said.
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  Look, Rome grew into a global superpower under the protection
• 2:48
  of the old Pagan gods. Now the Empire has adopted
• 2:51
  Christianity, the old sacrifices are prohibited, and the old gods
• 2:55
  have abandoned us. So they thought the new religion
• 2:57
  was the literal cause of the ruin.
• 3:00
  OK, let's unpack this. Because blaming Christianity for
• 3:03
  the fall of Rome is like blunging a sudden massive heart
• 3:06
  attack on the garden salad you ate yesterday.
• 3:08
  That's a great analogy. Right, while completely ignoring
• 3:12
  like 40 years of chain smoking and terrible habits.
• 3:15
  You can't just point to the absolute newest variable in the
• 3:18
  ecosystem and ignore decades of chronic systemic disease.
• 3:22
  And Augustine saw that exact logical fallacy.
• 3:25
  I mean, he was a brilliant philosopher and a Bishop and he
• 3:27
  wrote this, this massive 22 book masterpiece to counter that
• 3:32
  specific narrative. It's.
• 3:33
  A huge undertaking. It really is.
• 3:35
  But before he even gets to his own positive theology, he knows
• 3:39
  he has to dismantle the comfortable myths the Romans
• 3:41
  were telling themselves. He has to RIP away this illusion
• 3:45
  of the good old. Days, which is a bold move.
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  I mean, how do you convince A grieving, angry population that
• 3:51
  the golden era they're crying over was actually rotten?
• 3:54
  Use their own heroes against them.
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  Augustine actually bypasses scripture entirely in this
• 3:59
  section and goes straight to Salas and Cicero.
• 4:02
  Oh wow, the heavy hitters. Right, the most revered
• 4:05
  historians and literary giants of Rome.
• 4:08
  He pulls their own historical records to prove that the Roman
• 4:10
  Republic was morally bankrupt long before Christ was even
• 4:14
  born. That's fascinating.
• 4:15
  Yeah, he brings out texts where Celis describes the youth of
• 4:18
  Rome being swept away by luxury and avarice like a torrential
• 4:22
  flood. So the.
• 4:23
  Cave was already documented by their own guys.
• 4:25
  Exactly. He quotes Cicero, who lived well
• 4:29
  before the Christian era, describing the Republic as a
• 4:32
  faded painting that had entirely lost its original colors.
• 4:35
  A faded painting that's a powerful image.
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  Cicero fled out, admitted that they retained the name of a
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  Republic, but had already lost the reality of it through their
• 4:44
  own internal vices. So the structural integrity was
• 4:46
  just gone, and if the Republic was already rotting, it leaves a
• 4:51
  glaring question. Where were their gods?
• 4:54
  Right. I mean, wasn't the whole point
• 4:55
  of the Roman religion to keep the society on track?
• 4:58
  That is exactly the pressure point Augustine pushes.
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  He asks the pagans. Where were your gods when the
• 5:03
  moral fabric of the city was tearing apart?
• 5:05
  Yeah, what were they doing? Why didn't Jupiter or Mars issue
• 5:09
  any laws to guide their worshippers toward a virtuous
• 5:11
  life? The Pagan gods demanded endless
• 5:14
  bloody sacrifices, but they never demanded good character.
• 5:18
  They didn't care about the internal state of the citizen at
• 5:20
  all. You know, looking through the
• 5:21
  notes, there is this incredibly ironic detail about the Trojan
• 5:25
  Gods that absolutely blew my mind.
• 5:28
  Oh, the Troy connection, Yeah. Right.
• 5:30
  The Romans trace their lineage back to Troy, right?
• 5:32
  And they worship the gods of Troy.
• 5:34
  But Augustine points out that those exact same gods couldn't
• 5:38
  protect Troy from the Greeks. Yep.
• 5:39
  Troy was burned to ashes. He quotes Virgil showing the
• 5:43
  Trojan priest dragging his conquered gods away from the
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  burning city. It raises this hilarious and
• 5:48
  honestly devastating point. Why on earth did the Romans
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  trust conquered gods to protect? Rome It makes no sense when you
• 5:57
  really think about it. Exactly, they entrusted the
• 5:59
  defense of their empire to guardians who literally couldn't
• 6:02
  even defend themselves. It just totally exposes the
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  sheer absurdity of their historical narrative.
• 6:07
  And Augustine doesn't stop there.
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  He highlights a vital detail about the actual sack of Rome in
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  410 AD that completely flips the script.
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  OK, what happened? When Alaric and the Goth sacked
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  the city, they did something truly unprecedented.
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  They spared anyone, Christian or Pagan, who fled into the
• 6:24
  Christian churches. Wait, really?
• 6:26
  The invading army just stopped. Yes, the massive basilicas of
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  the Apostles became impenetrable sanctuaries.
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  But that seems totally counterintuitive for ancient
• 6:36
  warfare. Weren't temples usually the
• 6:38
  ultimate prize for a conquering army?
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  I mean, that's where the wealth was.
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  Universally, Julius Caesar himself documented that the
• 6:46
  standard custom of war involved plundering the temples and
• 6:49
  dragging people away from the altars.
• 6:51
  Right during the fall of Troy, King Priam was slaughtered right
• 6:55
  on the altar of his own gods. The Sanctuary of Juno was used
• 6:59
  as a holding pen for captives and a storage unit for looted
• 7:03
  treasure. So it was usually a bloodbath.
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  A complete bloodbath. But in Rome, these bloodthirsty
• 7:08
  barbarian Goths, who had actually converted to a form of
• 7:11
  Christianity themselves, halted their swords at the thresholds
• 7:14
  of the churches. That is wild.
• 7:16
  The very pagans who were spending their surviving days
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  insulting Christ only survived the sack because they ran and
• 7:22
  hid in his sanctuaries. Augustine totally calls them out
• 7:25
  on this profound ingratitude. I mean, they owe their breath to
• 7:29
  the very institution they are trying to blame for the
• 7:31
  collapse. So if abandoning the Old Gods
• 7:34
  wasn't the Wrecking Ball, what actually caused the collapse?
• 7:39
  To answer that, Augustine shifts the focus from external threats
• 7:42
  to internal psychology. He looks closely at the societal
• 7:45
  mechanisms of fear and prosperity, and he brings in
• 7:49
  this fascinating historical debate regarding the destruction
• 7:52
  of Carthage. Now, Carthage was Rome's great
• 7:55
  rival across the Mediterranean. Right, the Punic Wars and all
• 7:58
  that. Exactly.
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  But a prominent Roman leader, Sepia Nausicaa, strongly opposed
• 8:02
  destroying Carthage. See, my instinct would be to
• 8:05
  crush my biggest rival so my country could finally relax.
• 8:09
  Why did Scipio see that relaxation as a threat?
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  Because Scipio understood human sociology on a really profound
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  level, he knew that a shared, terrifying external threat acted
• 8:19
  as a societal glue. Ah, so it kept everyone in line.
• 8:22
  Right. The fear of Carthage kept the
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  Roman citizens unified. It acted as a psychological
• 8:28
  pressure valve that curbed their worst, most selfish impulses.
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  That makes a lot of sense. Scipio argued that if Carthage
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  was destroyed and Rome had absolutely no one left to fear,
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  the resulting absolute security and massive wealth would breed a
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  toxic cocktail of unchecked luxury and what Augustine calls
• 8:46
  the libido dominandi. The lust for domination.
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  Yes, the lust of rule. And without an external enemy to
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  dominate, that lust just turns inward.
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  Exactly, and history proved Scipio tragically right.
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  Once Carthage fell and the fear was removed, the internal
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  conquered of Rome just shattered.
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  The pressure valve was gone. Completely gone.
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  The dopamine hit of constant expansion turned into her
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  prolific civil wars, political backstabbing, and utter moral
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  profligacy. The society basically consumed
• 9:15
  itself because it couldn't handle its own prosperity.
• 9:17
  You know, here's where it gets really interesting reading about
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  how they handled this prosperity.
• 9:22
  It feels eerily familiar to today.
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  How so? Well, Augustine points
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  specifically to the cultural inputs, like the entertainment.
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  He notes that the Pagan gods demanded to be worshipped
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  through these incredibly obscene, degrading theatrical
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  plays in games. Yeah, the gladiatorial games and
• 9:38
  the theater. Right.
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  He talks about spectacles so filthy that decent people would
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  be ashamed to even describe them.
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  And thinking about it, it's the attention economy, isn't it?
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  Oh, that's an interesting connection.
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  Yeah, the Romans were essentially being
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  algorithmically fed outrage and degradation just like we are.
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  That is a phenomenal parallel breakdown, how you see that
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  mechanism working both then and now.
• 10:02
  Well, just as the Roman games demanded mindless, degrading
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  entertainment that slowly bypassed the intellect and
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  rotted the culture's spiritual gut, our modern digital
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  ecosystem often does the exact same thing.
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  It really does. Algorithms prioritize the most
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  sensational, outrage inducing content because it captures
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  attention. It feeds our base instincts.
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  We just can't look away. Exactly.
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  We are sitting there scrolling, getting these little hits of
• 10:26
  tribal dopamine while the actual foundations of our society are
• 10:29
  trusted institutions and our community bonds crumble around
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  us. We're entertaining ourselves
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  into oblivion. And that is precisely how
• 10:37
  Augustine says a civilization falls.
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  He argues that the evil spirits, these demons posing as Pagan
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  gods, didn't need to physically storm the walls of Rome to
• 10:47
  destroy the empire. Because they were already
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  inside. Right, They had already stormed
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  and sacked the morality of the citizens through these toxic
• 10:54
  cultural inputs. By convincing the Romans to
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  celebrate cruelty, lust and impurity as divine worship, the
• 11:02
  internal compass of the people was completely destroyed.
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  Once the morality is sacked, the physical walls of the city are
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  entirely irrelevant. They will eventually fall on
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  their own. That is just wow.
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  So if Rome was rotting from the inside and these foundational
• 11:17
  structures were essentially designed to self destruct, it
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  leaves us with a huge question. What does a society built on the
• 11:23
  right foundation actually look like?
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  That is the big question. How do we build something that
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  doesn't inevitably rot? This is where Augustine
• 11:30
  transitions from diagnosing the disease to offering his brand
• 11:34
  framework for understanding all of human history and all human
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  institutions. He introduces the concept of the
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  two cities. OK, the two cities.
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  He divides all of humanity into two invisible, overlapping
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  communities, the city of the world or the earthly city and
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  the city of God. And these aren't physical places
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  with borders and passports, right?
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  No, not at all. There are psychological and
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  spiritual realities defined by what their citizens love.
• 12:00
  OK. Break that down for.
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  Me. So the city of the world is
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  driven by the love of self reaching even to the contempt of
• 12:07
  God. It's defined by pride, self
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  aggrandizement and that libido dominandi we mentioned earlier.
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  The lust for domination and the other one, The city of God,
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  conversely, is driven by the love of God reaching and even to
• 12:20
  the contempt of self. It is characterized by humility,
• 12:23
  mutual service, and true justice.
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  You know that concept of the lust for domination is wild when
• 12:29
  you really look at how the city of the world functions it.
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  Really is. Because if everyone in a society
• 12:34
  is fundamentally driven by a desire to dominate everyone
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  else, it creates A fragile 0 sum game.
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  It's mathematically doomed. Exactly, it eats itself.
• 12:43
  There is a story Augustine shares in the text that
• 12:45
  perfectly captures the pure audacity of this system.
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  It's about Alexander the Great and a captured pirate.
• 12:53
  I love this story. It's so good Alexander has this
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  pirate brought before him in chains and demands to know what
• 13:02
  gives him the right to keep hostile possession of the sea.
• 13:04
  Right. How dare you steal on my ocean?
• 13:07
  Exactly, and the pirate just looks right at the Emperor, and
• 13:10
  boldly replies, What thou meanest by seizing the whole
• 13:14
  earth? But because I do it with a petty
• 13:16
  ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou who dust it with a
• 13:19
  great fleet art styled Emperor. It is one of the greatest
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  ideological mic drops in ancient literature.
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  He just totally called him out. He did.
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  And if we connect this to the bigger picture, Augustine uses
• 13:29
  it to make a radical, almost dangerous political statement.
• 13:32
  Well, this is statement. He is arguing that without true
• 13:34
  justice, which he believes can only exist where God is truly
• 13:37
  worshipped, earthly kingdoms are nothing more than large scale
• 13:40
  robbery syndicates. So just massive pirate gangs?
• 13:44
  Essentially, yes. Think about the mechanism of the
• 13:47
  state. If true justice isn't the
• 13:49
  foundation, then the law is. Just violence with a better PR
• 13:53
  team. Wow, violence with a better PR
• 13:56
  team. What is the difference between a
• 13:58
  pirate gang and an empire? The only difference is scale and
• 14:02
  the impunity that comes with scale.
• 14:04
  The earthly city is structurally doomed because it is built on
• 14:08
  this desperate desire for human praise and domination.
• 14:11
  But we, I have to push back here.
• 14:13
  Didn't the early Romans have incredible virtues?
• 14:15
  We always hear about their courage, their frugality, their
• 14:18
  extreme loyalty to the state. They definitely had those
• 14:21
  qualities, yes. They build aqueducts, they
• 14:23
  established laws. That doesn't sound like a mere
• 14:25
  pirate gang. It's a great point, and
• 14:27
  Augustine actually spends a lot of time addressing it.
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  He admits the early Romans accomplished massively
• 14:32
  impressive things, but he introduces this brilliant
• 14:35
  psychological concept. He argues their virtues were
• 14:38
  ultimately just lesser vices. What?
• 14:40
  Does that mean how could a virtue be a vice?
• 14:42
  Think about the mechanics of human motivation.
• 14:45
  The early Romans suppressed their greed for money, and they
• 14:48
  suppressed their desire for physical pleasure and luxury.
• 14:51
  Right, the Stoic ideal. But why?
• 14:52
  Did they suppress them not out of true humility or love for
• 14:56
  justice, but because they had a massive overwhelming greed for
• 14:59
  human glory? Oh I see, they wanted to be
• 15:01
  immortalized in statues and epic poems.
• 15:04
  So they weren't truly virtuous in a pure sense, they just
• 15:08
  traded a socially destructive vice like laziness or petty
• 15:11
  theft for a more socially productive vice, which is
• 15:16
  massive societal pride. OK, so their pride is what built
• 15:20
  the aqueducts and won the. War.
• 15:21
  Precisely. It acted as a temporary societal
• 15:24
  glue. But here is the fatal flaw.
• 15:26
  Because that entire system was built on human pride and the
• 15:29
  endless pursuit of glory, it could never last.
• 15:32
  That's a built in expiration date.
• 15:34
  Exactly. Eventually, when there are no
• 15:36
  more foreign enemies to conquer for glory, that pride turns
• 15:39
  inward and the citizens start trying to dominate each other.
• 15:43
  The lesser vice inevitably mutates back into the
• 15:45
  destructive disease. OK, this brings up a glaring
• 15:48
  question. Yeah, if you were listening to
• 15:50
  this right now, you might be thinking, So what does this all
• 15:53
  mean if you are a good person? Right.
• 15:57
  If the earthly city is fundamentally doomed to collapse
• 16:00
  because of its own baked in corruption, why did the good
• 16:04
  people have to suffer right alongside the wicked when the
• 16:07
  Wrecking Ball finally swings? That's a.
• 16:09
  Very fair question. If you are a good person, trying
• 16:12
  your best to live humbly may be quietly operating in the city of
• 16:15
  God, but your house gets burned down by the Goths anyway, what's
• 16:18
  the difference? Why doesn't God just spare the
• 16:20
  good? Augustine anticipates this exact
• 16:23
  objection. It's the classic problem of
• 16:24
  pain, and he offers one of the most haunting and beautiful
• 16:28
  analogies to explain the mechanics of suffering.
• 16:30
  OK, let's hear it. He says imagine a blazing
• 16:33
  furnace in the exact same fire. Gold glows brightly and is
• 16:37
  purified of its dross. But chaff, the useless waste of
• 16:40
  the wheat crop, just smokes and burns away into nothing.
• 16:43
  So the fire is the same, but the reaction is different.
• 16:46
  Right. Or think of an agricultural
• 16:48
  threshing floor under the exact same heavy crushing flail.
• 16:53
  The useless straw is shattered, but the good grain is cleansed
• 16:56
  and separated. Wow.
• 16:57
  Or an olive press. Under the exact same intense
• 17:01
  physical pressure, the bitter leaves are separated, but the
• 17:05
  pure valuable oil flows out. So the external event, the
• 17:08
  actual suffering, is absolutely identical for everyone, yes.
• 17:12
  The physical suffering, the famine, the loss of property,
• 17:15
  the violence of war, the economic collapse is identical
• 17:19
  for both the good and the bad. The physical inputs don't
• 17:22
  change. Then what changes?
• 17:24
  The difference lies entirely in the inner spiritual state of the
• 17:28
  person experiencing it. Augustine argues that the exact
• 17:31
  same pressure that causes mud to exhale a horrible stench causes
• 17:35
  a sweet ointment to emit a beautiful fragrance.
• 17:37
  That is a profound way to look at.
• 17:39
  It in the midst of calamity, the citizens of the earthly city
• 17:42
  curse their fate, they despair and they blasphemy because they
• 17:45
  have lost the only things they ever loved, which is their
• 17:48
  worldly possessions and status. Right, because that was their
• 17:50
  whole foundation. Exactly.
• 17:53
  But the citizens of the City of God endures patiently.
• 17:56
  They pray and they are spiritually purified by the
• 17:59
  trial because their ultimate treasure was never in the
• 18:02
  Burning City to begin with. That completely reframed how we
• 18:05
  look at societal disaster. The collapse isn't necessarily a
• 18:09
  blind punishment. It's a Crucible.
• 18:11
  It reveals what you actually love.
• 18:13
  It. Does.
• 18:14
  But Augustine doesn't let the good people off the hook
• 18:18
  entirely, does he? He points out a really
• 18:20
  challenging truth about their complicity in the collapse.
• 18:23
  He issues a piercing critique here.
• 18:26
  Augustine says that the good are often justly subjected to these
• 18:29
  temporal disasters alongside the wicked, because during the long
• 18:33
  years of prosperity and peace, they were cowardly.
• 18:36
  Cowardly. How so?
• 18:38
  They saw the moral decay happening around them, but they
• 18:40
  refused to speak out against it. They saw the termites, but they
• 18:43
  didn't want to ruin the dinner party by pointing them out.
• 18:45
  Exactly. And this raises an important
• 18:47
  question. Think about your own workplace
• 18:49
  or community. Have you ever noticed
• 18:51
  institutional rot but stayed quiet?
• 18:53
  I think most people have at some point.
• 18:55
  Augustine says the good citizens of Rome stayed silent because
• 18:59
  they didn't want to lose their social status, their wealth or
• 19:02
  their comfortable friendships with people in power.
• 19:04
  So they chose comfort over truth.
• 19:07
  They didn't personally participate in the grossest
• 19:10
  sins, but they tolerated them in others because rocking the boat
• 19:14
  would have threatened their legitimate worldly comforts.
• 19:17
  They loved this present life a little too much.
• 19:20
  They like the stock market returns of a corrupt empire.
• 19:23
  Wow, yes, exactly. So when the collapse finally
• 19:27
  comes and God humbles the empire for its pride and luxury, the
• 19:31
  goods suffer the loss of those exact earthly things they were
• 19:34
  too afraid to risk losing in the first place.
• 19:36
  That is wow, it hits hard. Augustine's telling us that our
• 19:40
  silence makes us complicit in the architecture of decay.
• 19:43
  When the collapse comes, we share in the fallout because we
• 19:46
  shared in the silence that allows the rot to spread.
• 19:49
  We have covered a massive amount of ground today, pulling back
• 19:51
  the curtain on one of history's greatest cataclysm.
• 19:54
  We really have. We started with the terrifying
• 19:56
  sack of Rome in 410 ADA moment where the world seemed to
• 20:00
  literally be ending and the panicked population pointed
• 20:04
  fingers at a new religion. The easy sweep goat.
• 20:06
  Right. But through Augustine's
• 20:08
  brilliant systematic takedown, we've seen that the script was
• 20:12
  entirely backward. Political collapse is merely the
• 20:16
  final visible symptom of a terminal, long standing
• 20:19
  spiritual disease. The rot happens first.
• 20:21
  Civilizations fall when they replace true justice with the
• 20:25
  endless lust for power. They fall when their foundations
• 20:28
  are built on human pride instead of divine truth.
• 20:31
  And they fall when their culture becomes utterly consumed by
• 20:34
  distracting, degrading spectacles that bypass the mind
• 20:38
  and rot the soul. And crucially, we have to
• 20:40
  remember that the good old days are almost always a myth.
• 20:43
  Oh, absolutely. They are a comforting lie we
• 20:45
  tell ourselves to avoid dealing with the slow generational creep
• 20:48
  of our own societal failures. The city of the world is always
• 20:52
  unstable because a society organized around self love and
• 20:55
  domination is at its core just a very successful pirate gang.
• 20:59
  Just a pirate gang with a better PR team.
• 21:01
  Exactly. And eventually, whether through
• 21:04
  external invasion or internal collapse, the bill always comes
• 21:07
  due. So as you step back into your
• 21:10
  day, we want to leave you with a final thought to Mull over.
• 21:13
  Something to really think about. Yeah, if Augustine is right that
• 21:17
  all earthly cities, all human institutions and all political
• 21:21
  parties are fundamentally unstable because they are built
• 21:24
  on human pride and the fragile pursuit of glory, where are you
• 21:29
  anchoring your ultimate hope? Where is your foundation?
• 21:32
  In an era where algorithmic digital spectacles and intense
• 21:36
  political tribalism almost perfectly mirror the dying days
• 21:39
  of the Roman Republic, are you building your life in the
• 21:42
  fragile temporary city of the world?
• 21:45
  Or are you looking elsewhere? Right.
• 21:47
  Or are you investing your time, your love, and your courage in
• 21:50
  the enduring, eternal values of the city of God?
• 21:54
  Because at the end of the day, you can't just worry about the
• 21:56
  Wrecking Ball swinging outside. You have to check your own
• 21:58
  foundation. You really do.
• 21:59
  Because if the foundation is built on pride and distraction,
• 22:02
  it's not a matter of if it will fall, but when.