Ramsey interjected, “I’m telling stepmother not to use this as a carrot and a stick.”
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“There you go,” Delony said. “And I know ya’ll are both on the phone here, so I’m gonna say this directly as I can: It’s very common that when somebody gets remarried, that other kid from that other woman, that other kid from that other man, they’re not getting my stuff. And so, the red flag for me in this call was ‘not living by the Bible.’”
Delony said that “500 churches” will give “500 interpretations” of what it means to live by the Bible. “What does that actually mean when you sit down across the table from your daughter and say, ‘I’m worried about you’?” he asked.
Ramsey said that the idea of “living by the Bible” at his company is a “very broad thing,” and that it does not include the nuances of every biblical doctrine. It’s one thing, he said, to be “doing cocaine on the back of a yacht.” But if a disagreement is over going to a church that uses musical instruments in worship versus not using instruments in worship, “then it’s probably ok.”
“That’s exactly right,” said Delony. “And here’s the thing. If you want to drive a wedge between you and your adult children, try to control their adult behavior with the threat of, ‘Well then, I’ll just take you out of the will.’ You will lose—you will lose your children. Don’t do that.”
Ramsey said that in the case of his own children, they would be moved out of a trust, but there are “steps for the brother and sister remaining after Sharon and I are gone to walk that person back in as they straighten up their lives.”
“It’s not a stick,” he said again, where “we’re constantly hitting somebody with our wealth trying to get them to behave, and they’re 37 years old and actually have a brain. No, that’s not what we’re doing—in [the caller’s daughter’s] case, she’s 24.”
“But you have to balance that,” said Ramsey, “juxtapose that, if you will, with this idea that [my wealth is] not mine to start with, and I’m managing it for [God].”
