The King's Hall - The Influence and Power of a Mirthful Father

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00:00:45.240 Are you angry with me, Gandalf?

00:00:47.500 He said as their guide went out and closed the door.

00:00:50.600 I did the best I could.

00:00:52.480 You did indeed, said Gandalf, laughing suddenly,

00:00:55.540 and he came and stood beside Pippin, putting his arm about the hobbit's shoulders and gazing

00:01:00.560 out of the window. Pippin glanced in some wonder at the face now close beside his own,

00:01:06.500 for the sound of that laugh had been gay and merry. Yet in the wizard's face he saw at first 0.67

00:01:12.800 only lines of care and sorrow, though as he looked more intently he perceived that under all there

00:01:20.200 was a great joy, a fountain of mirth, enough to set a kingdom laughing, were it to gush forth.

00:01:28.160 J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King, ministereth.

00:01:33.700 The King's Hall Podcast exists to make self-ruled men who rule well and win the world.

00:01:43.120 Well, welcome to this episode of the King's Hall Podcast. I'm one of your hosts. I am

00:01:47.860 eric khan dan burkholder is joining us dan how are you today sir fantastic fantastic and then we

00:01:55.360 have and then we have brian sovee brian brian he's had an interesting morning the sweets almost

00:02:00.060 of ogden has had an interesting morning i'm just hot right now guys someone was rude to me on

00:02:03.980 twitter you wouldn't believe it on twitter on twitter and i'm just you know so annoyed so so

00:02:10.540 flustered dan i i'm like feeling like tweeting i'm almost feeling as if i might tweet like eric

00:02:15.760 con for 24 hours you don't enjoy being slandered and called a heretic you know what believe it or

00:02:20.760 not i actually don't huh yeah it seems like eric enjoys it eric is like i was forged in it born to

00:02:28.840 it oh you think darkness is your ally uh though it's good to be here eric how are you doing i'm

00:02:35.400 doing fantastic uh gentlemen we're talking by the way about being fountains of mirth yes uh which is

00:02:41.040 sort of uh i came out of the womb being like that a fountain of earth uh but dan i just want to ask

00:02:45.800 you a question originally we we you were reading the cold open originally we had voices yeah i'm

00:02:50.960 actually a little i let down to be honest you know what i was too just give us a little taste

00:02:57.040 didn't have the stones to do give us a taste all right fine i'll make a fool of myself just for

00:03:02.700 it's a podcast about joy it's between friends and thousands of other people thousands of other

00:03:08.340 people are you angry with me gandalf he said as their guide went out and closed the door i did

00:03:14.660 the best i could you did indeed said gandalf even though there probably has to be a different accent

00:03:21.060 there it's fine i liked it the only one that i've heard that was better was andy circus

00:03:26.160 yeah that's it it goes any certain it goes dan burkholder andy circus those are the only two

00:03:31.100 competitors here that is basically how it goes high compliments yes i missed my call i mean all

00:03:35.920 of us when if you're doing it right we should do a whole episode on this it's fathers read story

00:03:40.520 books to their kids in voice acting style it was actually really distracting as i went through

00:03:45.460 the the story because i wanted to do voices and i kept telling myself don't do the voices

00:03:50.000 but you have to and then you have to like think of a new one for like okay what does faramir

00:03:54.500 sound like and then what did the what did pippin sound like before and how is it different than

00:03:58.620 mary how did i and then you just realized that there's kind of a shifting there's a hobbit yeah

00:04:04.280 sound there's a general hobbitry yeah and that's it you know what's really annoying so i'm reading

00:04:09.000 the boys uh the mouse and his motorcycle and i keep doing the mouse voice for ralph and then but

00:04:14.720 then i get confused for the boy keith so all of a sudden i'm reading keith in the mouse voice oh

00:04:19.260 never mind and then i correct myself anyway it's kids don't notice no they don't care actually

00:04:23.840 they prefer no voices they are wrong they are no voices uh gentlemen this is tied very closely

00:04:30.840 something we'll be talking about in this episode which is fathers who bless their home sometimes

00:04:35.580 it's the way they read books sometimes it's like gandalf they're a fountain of mirth yes so one of 0.87

00:04:41.780 the interesting things we we talk about a lot in-house is how our feminist culture loves to

00:04:47.020 associate things like patriarchy with sternness and harshness and a somber joylessness of tyrannical 0.92

00:04:54.600 oppression and sometimes unfortunately this can be how many homes are with or without patriarchy

00:05:00.140 It doesn't necessarily mean it's associated with patriarchy at all, but a lot of homes are joyless.

00:05:05.860 But gentlemen, this is not the picture the Bible gives us about patriarchy.

00:05:10.840 Instead, as Doug Wilson has said, fathers are to be the blessing man in their homes.

00:05:15.260 So we're going to talk more in this episode about what that means and how you can do it.

00:05:19.360 But I want to start by talking about an article that we were talking about in preparation for the show, and that's from Joe Rigney, titled First In, Last Out, Laughing Loudest.

00:05:28.220 Brian, you had actually mentioned this because we were talking about how do you handle criticism in a past episode.

00:05:34.800 And perhaps your morning this morning is a good example.

00:05:38.840 How do we win long term?

00:05:40.260 This is something that's kind of struck me about like Tucker Carlson.

00:05:42.720 Yeah.

00:05:43.400 Is he's always laughing.

00:05:44.740 Tucker is a little like Gandalf in that scene in that even when he's stern, he's always just a moment away from this like really deep, sincere laugh.

00:05:55.100 Yes.

00:05:55.460 And he also has several modes of laughter. 1.00

00:05:57.820 One of them is laughing over his enemy's stupidity. 1.00

00:06:00.240 It's like mocking you off. 1.00

00:06:01.380 Yeah, or someone says something and he just goes, ha!

00:06:03.920 And it's so good.

00:06:05.300 Even with like the, there was like the trucker conversation with Ben Shapiro.

00:06:09.060 And he was like, he was laughing in his face and he was like, are you joking?

00:06:12.820 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:06:13.840 He just kept saying that.

00:06:14.740 It was so funny.

00:06:15.540 Are you serious?

00:06:17.620 I love this.

00:06:18.580 I love this article.

00:06:19.340 I've actually heard this from Joe Rigney who wrote the article.

00:06:23.280 many different times and places. He's written about Narnia and talks a lot about King Loon

00:06:28.480 and just the model of King Loon as a fatherly jovial figure in his kingdom. And it's a great

00:06:36.360 article. You should go read it. It's on Desiring God. And you should pick up Joe's books,

00:06:41.580 The Things of Earth. What's his Narnia book called?

00:06:44.660 Living Like a Narnian.

00:06:45.380 Living Like a Narnian. Yeah. One of the chapters is on King Loon, if I'm not mistaken. It's been

00:06:49.360 a minute since i've read it but he he just has a a great way of capturing in this article in those

00:06:55.460 works the heart of masculinity being something that is strong and stern and grave and dignified

00:07:03.560 and and very much has gravitas to it and yet we can all sense when somebody has those things

00:07:10.860 in a denethor way where it's like a cold sternness like he was wise in many ways oh absolutely

00:07:18.180 In fact, the blood of Numenor ran truer in Denethor than it did in Boromir, for example.

00:07:26.900 He was much more related in Tolkien's world to the kings of old in that he had a high sternness to him and a wisdom, a farsight.

00:07:36.620 and yet Denethor was

00:07:39.400 I think this was a character trait

00:07:41.620 that was exacerbated

00:07:43.320 by the ring's power

00:07:44.880 as you find later

00:07:45.980 by his, not the ring

00:07:48.600 by Sauron, striving to Sauron through the Palantir

00:07:50.740 he's cold and high

00:07:53.120 and distant whereas Gandalf

00:07:55.040 who's actually far greater than Denethor

00:07:57.380 is grave

00:07:59.220 and quick to anger

00:08:00.800 but he's also quick to laugh

00:08:02.320 and he has this well of mirth in him

00:08:05.020 um lewis describes points to lewis to i'm sorry rigney points to c.s lewis's description of king

00:08:11.020 loon as the archetypal king who's first in last out laughing loudest laughing over a scantier

00:08:18.020 meal when hard times come up on the land in you know brighter clothing uh the first in every

00:08:23.880 attack the last in every desperate retreat there's like a heart of masculine glory that should have

00:08:31.140 a well of joy in imitation of our father in heaven who is the epicenter of indestructible

00:08:40.020 eternal unchangeable joy because he's righteous well i think one of the most interesting parts

00:08:45.020 of the lord of the rings is that the most powerful person i believe in middle earth

00:08:50.360 is tom bombadil arguably and does not fit the mold he's a jolly i'm actually going to bring

00:08:59.060 up tom bombadil later but but i just had to had to put that as a comment because i mean and i

00:09:04.640 think there's an argument that sauron had more power in the sense that gandall says that if

00:09:12.440 everything else fell bombadil would fall last sauron would defeat him but bombadil's power is

00:09:19.220 more primal and true it's good and he is literally runs around rhyming in yellow clothing and singing

00:09:27.380 to animals and woodland creatures and trees.

00:09:31.080 Amazing.

00:09:32.320 Incredible.

00:09:33.040 Absolutely amazing.

00:09:34.100 Yeah, it's great.

00:09:34.680 I love in Joe Rigney's article, he references Psalm 19, verses 4 and 5, which I'll read.

00:09:40.100 And it says,

00:09:40.640 In them, the heavens, God has set a tent for the sun, which comes out like a bridegroom

00:09:45.860 leaving his chamber, and like a strong man, runs its course with joy.

00:09:50.340 So I love this as a picture of a father in the home, that you should be like the son.

00:09:53.540 and i think what's being pictured here is the shining face of a bridegroom as he sees his

00:09:58.880 bride coming of course dan will you've seen the little video where they always show the guy like

00:10:03.520 crying no i haven't seen that yeah they always they always transpose it so it's like a guy crying

00:10:08.560 as the bride's about to walk through and then it'll show like a giant buck walking

00:10:12.040 it's a great clip however in this case like uh like the son fathers are supposed to have this

00:10:21.500 shining face of joy within their homes again joe will talk about having gravitas but also having

00:10:28.160 gladness as we sort of run our circuit with joy you think about the sun as well everything on

00:10:34.260 earth is touched by the sun's heat right so this this glory this glow this reflective energy is

00:10:40.580 felt by everyone in its presence and we'll get into this more but you can understand how if a

00:10:45.740 father is dour and he's bitter and he's grumbling and he's complaining well that also has

00:10:51.480 a a denethor effect in his kingdom so we're encouraging fathers to think of that uh sort

00:10:57.940 of that kingdom element and are you like the son in that way so gentlemen i want to ask you a

00:11:02.800 question though we often talk about gravitas as a weightiness or dignity of bearing but why do you

00:11:09.180 think gladness uh in so many homes is often forgotten neglected or it's just so difficult

00:11:14.280 to cultivate when we're thinking about manliness and fatherhood well so i've got a thesis i've

00:11:20.140 thought a lot about this question i think that because people don't have a good picture of

00:11:24.880 masculinity they make it up almost like a caricature and i think it proves out if you

00:11:31.380 look at the pictures uh given to us as a display of masculinity in particularly stories that are

00:11:38.320 told in the modern day that you'll find most of these characters despise joy almost like joy is

00:11:44.640 an anti-virtue for these men of gravitas and i'll give you some examples so movies like and

00:11:50.680 these i'm not saying these are bad movies so just take that with a grain of salt but movies like

00:11:56.240 diehard predator dirty harry uh the godfather scarface gran torino all these displays are

00:12:04.680 definitely masculine but all portray men whose characters and plot lines would kind of fall

00:12:11.440 apart if there was joy grand trino might be a little bit of a an outlier there but yeah but

00:12:16.660 he's mostly walt is mostly grumpy yeah he's a grumpy dour like you know and that's i mean there's

00:12:22.960 there's flaws in this argument but my point stands at that masculinity that is being displayed to us

00:12:31.480 is generally joyless and i think that these characters tend to be one-sided for a reason

00:12:39.380 And that's because our culture doesn't have a good grasp or they're confused on what true masculinity looks like.

00:12:46.720 So writers are essentially grasping at caricatures of masculinity, and they're somewhat missing the mark, I think.

00:12:54.420 Instead of virtuous masculinity, most of these masculine characters that have shaped our society display anti-virtues, like anger and vengeance and bloodlust.

00:13:05.300 um and i again that's not universal but i think the reason that joy seems to be forgotten and

00:13:11.960 almost opposed to masculinity is because of the lack of good pictures and understanding of true

00:13:17.040 masculinity told in stories and probably also in real life because we also have another picture

00:13:23.460 of what what does a joyful man in a movie usually look like by these storytellers and it's usually 0.98

00:13:29.860 silly and immature 0.99

00:13:31.620 sort of guy. And you'll find that in comedies 1.00

00:13:34.120 like Will Ferrell and Chris

00:13:36.100 Farley and others. They act

00:13:38.080 essentially as happy idiots. 1.00

00:13:40.280 Or you have characters that are 1.00

00:13:42.120 the comic relief.

00:13:43.980 Yeah, it's like Riley Poole in the greatest

00:13:46.040 movie of all time, National Treasure.

00:13:48.360 Who is the bit character

00:13:50.160 next to Nicolas Cage. It's a funny movie.

00:13:51.880 And he's like adult.

00:13:54.060 He's funny, but he's adult.

00:13:55.880 The greatest movie of all time. I'm sorry, did I say that?

00:13:58.220 No, it's actually – the Shawshank Redemption is the greatest movie, but it is – I actually unironically love National Treasure.

00:14:04.900 It is pretty funny.

00:14:06.060 My question, if you think of other movies, Dan, I'm intrigued by this.

00:14:11.460 Other movies that display the right kind of masculine, joyful character, can you think of anything modern?

00:14:18.120 Anything modern?

00:14:18.960 Oh, yeah, because I'm going like back in time to think of that like John Wayne.

00:14:22.760 yeah well his characters were like you know he would laugh a lot yeah uh in in his movies and

00:14:28.640 he was displayed i think as a more well-rounded interesting masculine character uh i'd have to

00:14:34.580 think about that because even like john wick like there's keanu reeves is not laughing if you're a

00:14:39.180 pagan and you've watched those movies i mean i haven't but i'm i'm just kidding but any anyway

00:14:44.580 the the point is yeah let me think on it let me think on it for a minute but it is it is just an

00:14:49.500 interesting picture because and then you think about you know real life types of fathers that

00:14:54.580 we've experienced mel gibson does this a lot i think in in like um uh what's the one about the

00:15:01.740 revolutionary war patriot the patriot yeah i think he does that there's some joy gladiator but is

00:15:07.260 yeah the character before i mean you understand why he's broken but in his initial state he was

00:15:14.440 a good man who had joy with his children and yeah we were soldiers again with mel gibson yeah

00:15:19.560 mel gibson hey i mean but i do think uh it goes back to like jr tolkien uh c.s lewis they clearly

00:15:28.920 both guys had studied pretty much everything in the english language and beyond and beyond

00:15:35.140 in terms of literature so these guys were i think drawing from a deeper more ancient well yeah that

00:15:40.540 is typically missed in today's culture you see it in in the characters in rohan and how they

00:15:46.560 are related to like nordic and northerly pagan peoples who had this this mixture of the warrior

00:15:53.440 spirit and the singing and the the mead hall i mean that's very much yeah the beowulf the type

00:16:00.220 of mead hall sort of scene captures both of those things i think yeah and the reason i i mean it

00:16:06.360 might seem like i'm overstating a little bit because well they're just movies but peoples

00:16:11.040 are shaped by these sorts of characters i mean societies there's a reason that the odyssey and

00:16:17.100 the iliad and the aeneid and like all of these great works of history these fictional works

00:16:21.840 have lasted so long is because in them what you're seeing is a storyteller giving a very compelling

00:16:28.980 picture of what the ideal man looks like yeah and so that's why i say it seems almost foreign to

00:16:35.140 have a tom bombadil right because we don't have a category for a tom bombadil yeah in answer to

00:16:41.380 your original question eric the the gravitas gladness the the marrying of the two why are

00:16:47.960 they often forgotten neglected i think one of the reasons is because uh especially when it comes to

00:16:53.960 like say our people the camp of people or maybe patriarchal or they're pursuing like a a good

00:17:01.200 Christian masculinity in the world is that a lot of the time what we're reacting to is we're coming

00:17:06.720 out of a culture that is, it uses humor in a very cheap and shallow way. And so you do see humor 0.99

00:17:14.160 often, or you can be tempted to see humor and gladness and joy and smiling as feminine traits

00:17:19.360 or as silly traits that rob you of dignity and gravitas. And so sometimes men can overcorrect

00:17:25.300 and actually end up aiming to be overly grave where they're like, I'm never going to smile.

00:17:31.440 I'm never going to laugh.

00:17:32.440 I'm never going to joke.

00:17:33.340 I'm never going to be that sort of guy.

00:17:35.760 I think there's an oversteering that can happen in our culture.

00:17:39.780 Well, I think of even like John Piper, rightly, he would talk about the problem in American

00:17:44.440 preaching with flippancy.

00:17:45.740 Right.

00:17:46.360 And so like the opposite was like just a grave seriousness at all times over everything.

00:17:54.320 Right. 0.94

00:17:54.620 You never stoop down to be the blessing man with your children, the joyful man, the joking with your children, laughing, being silly. 0.96

00:18:03.060 Like a good man needs to know how to be silly with little kids to be a good father. 0.70

00:18:08.760 It's part of the range. 0.89

00:18:10.740 Yeah, I think that's really important.

00:18:12.580 So I want to ask you guys in terms of gladness and mirth and how it can be an important part of wise fatherhood, how it can change the temperature of a home.

00:18:21.600 Do you have any examples or things you can think of in which you've seen this be the case where a joyfulness, even in kind of times when you might not expect it, could have a deep impact on the culture of the home?

00:18:35.360 yeah well i mean so i've got little uh four little barometers or whatever in my my home with the

00:18:41.700 little boys that i have and if you've had little boys you know that they love to fight uh and not

00:18:47.960 in like a hey let's have fun wrestling each other and not hurt each other and cry and like

00:18:52.660 uh they they they love to fight and i have noticed if i don't set my mind right before i walk through

00:18:59.880 the door and I'm going to have four little guys. They're running at me. Daddy's home and I, they

00:19:05.660 all want hugs and it's great. If I don't respond in a positive way towards them, if I don't, you

00:19:13.040 know, greet them with joy, I can tell that evening is going to be a hard one. Usually it's after the

00:19:19.700 fact, like what in the world happened? Dinner, like fussers, they're fighting with each other a

00:19:25.380 lot. And I think a lot of it has to do with me coming into the home just like tired and grumpy

00:19:33.220 or whatever it is versus greeting them, being warm and engaging with them. I think that's another

00:19:38.840 important part. I'm sure fathers, you guys have noticed if you sit around the table and you're

00:19:43.560 quiet and kind of reserved and introspective, which happens at times, I mean, you know, you

00:19:49.260 get weighty stuff at work or whatever, but generally the temperature of your home is cooling versus a

00:19:54.800 very active and lively, engaging and joyful dinner table, which is definitely a much better table to

00:20:01.940 be at. You know, it results typically in a raising of the temperature, warmer atmosphere. I don't

00:20:08.500 know if you guys have experienced that as well, or if that's just anecdotal.

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00:20:47.380 no I think that's definitely true I think a lot of times I've said this in past episodes

00:20:55.020 but a lot of times you you'll have a rough day and wiser pastors in the past have told me like

00:21:02.560 those are the days when you go home and you make it fun intentionally you do maybe it's family

00:21:09.260 game night but you're intentionally saying I am not going to give in to the dour complaining

00:21:14.940 introspective Dan to use your word uh type of atmosphere the other thing I think about is uh

00:21:22.240 some I think this is one reason Moscow has been effective and Doug yeah uh because uh I remember

00:21:28.440 when they were going through a lot of the church scandal stuff Doug had said publicly you know

00:21:33.140 Nancy gave him a really nice bottle of scotch and said it's going to be a difficult season

00:21:37.500 and so we're going to bring out the best you know this was sort of another thing if you read

00:21:43.600 I think it's Sabbath rest. It's a Canon press book that was put out on the Sabbath. And they

00:21:49.780 talk about how that day is supposed to be a day, especially of joy. So you bring out the best meat,

00:21:54.260 the best wine. So that's another way for fathers to think about that is you actually have to do

00:21:59.920 something to cultivate this joy, right? You make an intentional effort again, to bring out the best,

00:22:05.220 bring out whatever your children's favorites are. And it may be particularly wise to do that

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00:23:26.920 I think another question though that I want to ask you guys that's related to this is where

00:23:33.240 does joy come from, right? Sometimes it's easy. I think in our culture, we have an overload,

00:23:38.760 burnout, busyness culture, and we can over-spiritualize this. Obviously, joy comes

00:23:44.020 from the Lord. The joy of the Lord is our strength. It's a fruit of the Holy Spirit,

00:23:48.180 but also taking stock of your life and saying, I'm working 150 hours a week or whatever it is,

00:23:55.020 and I'm starting three businesses, and there's a million areas of stress in my life. It's going

00:24:00.020 to be really hard to be joyful in that sort of experience. So part of it too is practical.

00:24:05.700 I want to get you guys' take on that. Where does joy come from? What produces joy? How should you

00:24:10.340 think about that as a father in your own life so that you can be a fountain for your kids,

00:24:15.520 for your wife? Well, I think we have to start by recognizing that the term that the title that we

00:24:22.880 bear father is a reflection of God's title as father, that he's father. So we're always trying

00:24:30.700 to be imagers of God the father and his bearing and demeanor so that our children will then image

00:24:38.580 it back and outward into the world. When they go out, our children are going to image us.

00:24:43.340 If all they see is a father who worked really hard, but was cold, distant, absent, not present,

00:24:49.280 overly dour or grave, they're likely going to respond to that in some way and image it,

00:24:54.780 whether in overreaction and becoming like a class clown or by being the sad, bitter child who's

00:25:02.140 like, well, yeah, dad, thanks for the inheritance, but you didn't really love us. So I think it's

00:25:06.880 really important that we start foundationally with a theological understanding of the father's

00:25:12.900 bearing, and this is where I think it often goes wrong, is that people tend to, men and women,

00:25:19.740 tend to relate to God as if he is a sort of overly grave, unsmiling, distant, cold deity who is

00:25:32.920 at all times totally displeased with you. But if you're a Christian, then that's like 0.70

00:25:41.000 foundationally, you've got that completely wrong. I mean, Zephaniah 3, the Lord your God is in your 0.99

00:25:48.220 midst, a mighty one who will save. He will rejoice over you with gladness. He will quiet you by his

00:25:53.740 love. He will exult over you with loud singing. He's the father of lights, James says, from whom

00:26:00.140 comes down every good and perfect gift. Jesus talks in Matthew about the father who doesn't

00:26:04.940 give his son a stone when he asks for a meal. And then he's like, and God the Father, he's much

00:26:11.200 better than you. So if you wouldn't give your kid a stone, how much more will the Father give you

00:26:16.520 good things when you ask? So it's like, I think first we have to recognize as fathers that the

00:26:21.040 thing, the being, the reality that we're fundamentally aiming to image in our home is one

00:26:27.280 of joy and gladness and love because of the covenant, because of our covenantal standing

00:26:33.980 in Christ, God is well-pleased with us. And so if you feel like God is not well-pleased with you,

00:26:41.440 it's very difficult to have a deep well of joy and thankfulness to then operate out of an image.

00:26:46.880 I know there's more practical things than that too, and I'm sure you guys will bring them and

00:26:50.420 we can talk about that. But I think fundamentally, some of the error and issue in the outworking,

00:26:55.520 your theology comes at your fingertips, is that if you conceive of God as

00:27:00.960 foundationally angry with you rather than pleased in you oh and he's a father it's like you're

00:27:09.200 going to be continually angry with your kids because they're they're not going to they're

00:27:12.640 they're frustrating and annoying sometimes they don't obey all the time there's a lot of discipline

00:27:16.340 that has to happen in a good home so it's easy to slip into like well i'm going to be angry with

00:27:21.840 my children the way that god is angry with me and that's not even the correct way to discipline

00:27:26.360 no that's a really good point brian i remember uh i think it was a couple years ago you were

00:27:30.680 preaching Matthew 5 on the Lord's Prayer? Is that right? Yeah, it was in Matthew. Is it Matthew 6,

00:27:37.000 9? I'm trying to remember. Somewhere in there. But I remember you preaching through that. We

00:27:40.780 were not here yet. We're just going through a very difficult season. And I remember you saying

00:27:44.820 that, talking about prayer, because the Father, when it comes to prayer, Jesus tells us that the

00:27:50.600 Father is eager and willing to give us good gifts. And so I think being challenged with that,

00:27:56.680 i was at the time do you believe your father is a giver of good gifts yeah i think it's also

00:28:02.060 connected to something doug wilson says in father hunger you know however our earthly fathers were

00:28:06.820 and authority figures in general that's how we tend to see the world and you look at america

00:28:12.160 and you're like okay we definitely have a fathering crisis but i think also most of the

00:28:16.900 authorities in our lives think about work the authorities that you experience there think about

00:28:21.000 the american government it's basically like bureaucratic filth those people don't care about

00:28:25.580 you. And so I think when people experience that all the time, it's easy to just live in the world

00:28:31.420 where you're not overflowing in the joy of the Trinitarian Godhead, right? So it seems like we

00:28:38.640 need preaching that addresses that. We need to study the scriptures. We need to be in communion

00:28:44.140 with Christ so that we are ourselves fruitful and overflowing. Dan, thoughts on that?

00:28:50.060 Yeah. So one of the things I think it could be practical is this really became obvious to me as a shortfall personally when I was disciplining my kids, because when they would fight and bicker amongst one another, and I would say like, hey, boys, you're not practicing self-control, self-discipline.

00:29:10.820 you need to be able to say no to yourself and to love your brother as yourself. That's what you

00:29:17.200 need to do. And it's at that point I realized like, Oh, wait a minute. This is a, this is a

00:29:22.720 problem. This is why often I don't feel joyful is because I had said introspective before, like

00:29:29.840 you're at the dinner table, you're being introspective. You're like chewing, uh, like

00:29:34.020 bitter, you know, like bitter food and your thoughts and like why you're upset or whatever

00:29:39.200 the reason is personalities aside, some people are just more disposed to being chipper than

00:29:45.860 others.

00:29:46.160 But, but really, I think the core of being joyful is that it has to be an outflow instead

00:29:52.600 of an inflow, you know, just like internal thoughts.

00:29:56.080 You have to be able to say no to yourself through self-control and self-discipline and

00:30:01.960 instead think to others and think to their good.

00:30:05.320 And so, and I know this is true because of Hebrews 12, where we get this picture of Christ, and it says, in view of the joy set before him, he endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of God.

00:30:23.640 And so Christ, in the moment, he's carrying the cross.

00:30:28.540 He has a picture of joy that's set before him.

00:30:32.040 It's not—it is for his own glory, ultimately, and that's—you can have joy as a father

00:30:36.660 because you can look to your kids and go, hey, if, you know, if I'm faithful to God

00:30:42.160 and his word and to, you know, managing my responsibilities well, blessings await.

00:30:48.020 Like, there's promises all through the scriptures for that.

00:30:50.520 And that is for your own glory, and that's great.

00:30:52.620 But ultimately, you also have this view, like Christ did, not that we're saviors.

00:30:58.920 Are we saviors?

00:31:00.220 Anyway.

00:31:00.540 We are called to imitate one.

00:31:02.300 We are.

00:31:02.800 Yeah.

00:31:03.040 Yeah.

00:31:03.280 But Christ, so I mean, like the worst act ever committed against a person in human history, apparently Christ had joy that was set before him.

00:31:14.440 And part of that had to be because of the love he had for us, that he endured all of this.

00:31:21.360 And so I think that one of the keys to being a joyful man, a joyful father is to get out of yourself, to say no to yourself and instead to love others as an overflow, because obviously Christ loves us.

00:31:38.780 We have the joy of the Lord.

00:31:39.820 It's our strength.

00:31:40.580 Like all of those things are true.

00:31:41.800 But I think, you know, in the practical moment at the dinner table, when you're like, man, I just, I just don't want to be here right now or whatever it is.

00:31:51.880 Instead, you have to say, no, no, I exist not for my own pleasure, but for the, for, for the responsibility of those that God has given me and to pour yourself out for them.

00:32:03.520 And I think that's really a good picture as to what practically joy is supposed to look like is it's, it's fundamental.

00:32:11.800 functionally loving your neighbor as yourself. Yeah. One other thing I would say, and this comes

00:32:16.080 up a lot in counseling, you know, throughout the years, you'll talk to people and, you know,

00:32:20.420 we, we end up talking a lot about, you know, the temperature of homes and are you a joyful person,

00:32:25.320 et cetera. You know, do you have the fruit of the Holy spirit? And a lot of times what comes

00:32:29.920 out in those conversations, like, no, I don't have joy. I'm really struggling with joy or

00:32:33.500 being gentle with my husband or patient with my wife, whatever it is. You're like, okay.

00:32:39.060 And sometimes we can overcomplicate things, right?

00:32:42.380 And then you go back to John 15 and Jesus said, if my word abides in you, you will bear much fruit.

00:32:50.000 And if you abide in me, you will bear much fruit.

00:32:53.160 Apart from me, you can do nothing.

00:32:55.000 So then I, as a pastor, I would say to them, okay, very simple question.

00:32:58.960 What's your Bible intake like?

00:33:00.720 I don't really read my Bible.

00:33:02.460 Oh, you know, what's your prayer life like?

00:33:05.100 well, you know, for 30 seconds before I fall asleep, I roll a few prayers through the old

00:33:09.800 mental chamber and then I fall asleep. Okay. Do you lead in family worship? No, no. You,

00:33:15.380 you, you start getting down this path and you said like, well, the only way to have joy is

00:33:20.100 to participate, as I said, in the triune relationship with the triune God. So if you're

00:33:25.700 not doing that, it would be like, well, of course you're emaciated. You don't eat food. Your mind is

00:33:31.460 not being transformed by the spirit yeah and if you want it to be you have to be in the word so

00:33:35.980 i would just encourage people on that front too you'd be shocked how many times guys are like

00:33:39.940 i've read every single one of joel beakey's systematic theologies i've you know all this

00:33:44.760 high theology i've bavink all of it what's your daily bible reading like well you know it's kind

00:33:49.440 of been you know it's interesting there's almost a theme so what i said was like self-discipline

00:33:53.460 you're also saying discipline spiritual disciplines yeah and so it seems like maybe

00:33:58.180 there's a thread there through joy being an act of discipline. Do you think that's right?

00:34:04.540 Well, yeah, because if you want the fruit, you have to go to the tree that it grows on.

00:34:09.840 And it's clear in script. I mean, it's utterly theologically clear that the root that grows

00:34:14.400 things like joy is the fruit of the spirit. The spirit of God is where love, joy, peace,

00:34:19.880 patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control comes from. So

00:34:24.020 So it really is so simple, and often we want to psychologize it.

00:34:29.720 We want to therapeuticize it.

00:34:31.780 We want to go into our own navals and find joy and like, why am I not joyful?

00:34:36.560 Or maybe you could just take a pill for that.

00:34:38.960 If I could just figure me out more, maybe I'd be more joyful.

00:34:42.080 I'd be like, that's not where the joy is.

00:34:43.620 It's not in you.

00:34:44.560 The joy is in the spirit.

00:34:46.260 So participate in the covenant, the God of the covenant, the blessings of the covenant,

00:34:49.620 The disciplines of the covenant participate in the means of grace within the covenant.

00:34:55.840 And God says, oh, and I'll give you this thing.

00:34:59.020 It's joy.

00:35:00.220 And then what we often want to do is like, yeah, I understand all of that.

00:35:05.700 Is there like a different way to get it?

00:35:06.840 Yeah.

00:35:07.240 But then, yeah, you may understand it, but are you practicing it?

00:35:10.340 There's a difference between knowledge and maturity.

00:35:13.320 We talk about that all the time.

00:35:15.760 So it really is, I think, way simpler than we want to make it.

00:35:19.880 We want to make it about your whatever.

00:35:22.240 What's the ENTJ?

00:35:24.160 Myers-Briggs.

00:35:24.960 You want to make it about your personality type.

00:35:27.240 And it's like, okay, fine, whatever.

00:35:29.500 But have you read your Bible, prayed, confessed your sin, participated in worship, sang a psalm, intentionally said to your body and your soul, no, submit to Christ and bless your people, love them, be merciful and kind and gentle.

00:35:45.380 And I think what can tend to happen – again, we're talking mainly to people who are in our camp here, right?

00:35:49.840 What can tend to happen a lot of the time is that we can overemphasize certain traits that we think of as archetypally masculine, like combat, pugilism, and forget that pugilism and those things exist for the sake of the kind, joy, merciful, soft, gentle, loving fatherliness that you have at home.

00:36:13.340 It's supposed to protect that.

00:36:15.500 If you don't have that at home, what are you fighting for anyway, right?

00:36:18.920 I think you're right, and I think this is why, to Dan's point earlier too, our culture tends to have myopic views of masculinity when, in point of fact, biblical masculinity is very dynamic.

00:36:30.300 It has a full range.

00:36:31.860 So I was thinking about this the other day.

00:36:33.140 You have Jesus in John 11 and 12.

00:36:36.680 In one hand, he is like just mercilessly flaying the Pharisees. 0.92

00:36:42.600 absolutely without i mean he's like your father is the devil hey by the way your dad is satan 0.98

00:36:48.240 they're like and you know how i know that because he's a liar and so are you you think his language 0.97

00:36:52.800 you think abraham is your dad oh actually it's satan himself it's like you can't get any more 0.91

00:36:58.980 you can't get any more serrated edge than than that so on the one hand you have jesus doing that

00:37:03.880 and being the pugilist and then like two seconds later he turns around lazarus has died mary and

00:37:09.640 martha come to him and you can imagine this scene they say to him my lord if you had been here my

00:37:15.400 brother would not be dead and he doesn't refute them and he spends time with them and the jews

00:37:20.460 are so moved but because jesus is weeping and they say see how much he loved this man yeah so

00:37:26.080 he's very different with the sheep yeah and i think again that's just a microcosm a small picture

00:37:30.960 but masculinity is supposed to be like that right and patriarchy is supposed to be like that where

00:37:35.320 you can be tender with the sheep but not with the wolves you do something different with the pigs

00:37:39.200 yep and you do something different with the dogs i want to ask you a follow-up to that brian what

00:37:45.620 do you think we've seen this with joel webbin uh with a lot of people attacking him for what they

00:37:51.040 think patriarchy means right patriarchy means always having a level 10 voice where you're

00:37:55.300 always yelling at your kids and you're yelling at your wife often while joel responds in the most

00:37:59.900 irenic and calm way possible it's hilarious i mean it's absolutely hilarious but go on so i think

00:38:04.760 this is a form of a straw man yeah and yet i think there can be examples of a joyless patriarchy so

00:38:11.400 my question to you would be what would be the net result of say like a movement of joyless father

00:38:17.780 rule what would it produce what would that culture look like one of the things that it will produce

00:38:23.760 is it will die yeah it will not reproduce itself because beauty is its own apologetic joy is its

00:38:30.820 own apologetic. Humor and laughter and mirth is its own apologetic. Because again, those things

00:38:36.960 incarnate something that is deeply true about God's essence in nature. God, because he is holy

00:38:43.100 and unstained by sin, is utterly joyful. God is always joyful. He is eternally joyful. That is

00:38:50.180 in his essence because he's not stained by sin. He has no regrets, no shame. There's nothing

00:38:55.140 hanging over him. He can do whatever he wants and everything he wants is good. So if your movement

00:38:59.540 doesn't embody that, if your culture doesn't embody that, it's not attractive. It will often

00:39:06.340 have the air of like a room that's been closed up for too long and not get any sunlight.

00:39:11.640 And people sense it and it's just anemic. So I think of, again, when you look at

00:39:17.160 something like Christchurch, Moscow, the CREC, it is at its best when it combines that full range

00:39:24.940 of masculine mirth and strength and gentleness and kindness and love of women and like that's

00:39:32.000 the things that make people leave churches that hate Doug and go to the CREC. I am convinced

00:39:38.980 that one of the most important things is the mirth. It's that those people, if you go, if

00:39:45.420 you're in their midst, they are exuding joy. I mean, they're sinners. Like, of course, we're all

00:39:50.660 sinners, but they exude joy, which tells me that they're keeping short accounts of sin,

00:39:55.120 that they're connected with the vitality of the root of Christ. He's the vine, they're the

00:40:00.000 branches. You can't bear fruit apart from him. If you're bearing the fruit of joy,

00:40:03.640 genuine, authentic joy, you're probably connected to the vine. So when you have a cold patriarchy

00:40:08.720 or a cold fatherhood, cold home, all the way up to a cold movement, it just won't last. It doesn't

00:40:14.960 have staying power because you have to have the heart. Proverbs, you have to have the heart of

00:40:20.240 people if you want them to imitate you and and follow you i think that that's such a good point

00:40:26.480 beauty and glory and joy are their own apologetic it was such a good point um i formulated a tweet

00:40:31.180 did you tweet it i'm about to uh dang it but you're right like those things are inherently

00:40:36.100 attractive to people um this is one thing i think in in some of the fundamentalist camps like actual

00:40:42.260 fundamentalists actual tend toward legalism that will have some form of this is kind of the gothard

00:40:48.340 thing with some form of patriarchy yeah but it's a lot of times joyless and i think what happens 0.98

00:40:53.440 is you have a lot of apostate children because the kids are like it was not a fun place to be

00:40:58.900 right it was not cage yeah that's right it was oppressive tyrannical rule because you have a

00:41:03.580 father who's assumed the authority but then does not exercise it benevolently you know to his for

00:41:10.220 the good of his people so it's it's tyrannical if i could just speak a word in praise of conferences

00:41:15.680 for a second you know because conferences have gotten kind of a bad rap recently on twitter

00:41:19.780 people are complaining about how much they cost and whatnot some of them and he's looking at super

00:41:22.920 expensive about them well here's the thing none of us actually are big conference goers like

00:41:27.600 i've i've never to my very rarely i think we we go to grace agenda a lot i bring the whole family

00:41:32.960 but we don't do the conference circuit thing but one of the things that i think can be helpful

00:41:37.840 about a conference if it's a good like you take grace agenda in moscow and i won't use us as an

00:41:42.760 example. But you go up to Grace Agenda, and what happens is sometimes a lot of Spurgy guys that

00:41:48.820 really love the theology but don't have the heart or the imitation, they get to go be in the presence

00:41:54.560 of the people. And if they don't get that, sometimes the enculturation fails. And so they

00:42:01.380 get like, they hear us maybe talk about modesty. And then they go and they turn on all the women 0.99

00:42:06.700 in their lives, and they're just jerks. They're like constantly being the skirt police or the 1.00

00:42:12.500 whatever it is. And they're just like rude and angry and bitter. And they don't know,

00:42:16.560 they don't have social grace. But like, if you came to our church and you lived with us for some

00:42:22.620 time, you would see that we are not continually railing and harping on like feminine modesty or

00:42:28.660 anything. And yet over time, the culture of our church is very modest, feminine, and beautiful

00:42:34.660 in the women. But it's not because anytime a new lady shows up and, you know, gets involved in the

00:42:40.180 fellowship, she gets whacked over the head by 17 grannies and five pastors who are sitting her 0.94

00:42:44.600 down and like yelling at her and like giving her a measuring tape and like a handbook on how to 0.98

00:42:50.900 dress if you're not going to get kicked out of this thing. It's because there's a culture. 1.00

00:42:55.280 So it can help sometimes to not just hear the words of the teaching, but to go see the bearing

00:43:01.500 of the people and the teachers. Yeah. And I think it goes back to the Psalm 19, like with the sun

00:43:07.160 and glory glory is attractive people will be drawn to it there's so many young people in our church 0.92

00:43:12.420 who've come in the last couple years and uh you know you'll notice like wives start wearing more

00:43:17.480 pretty dresses and and you'll ask them like oh what made you want to do that and they're like

00:43:21.500 well i just saw the women and it was glorious and i'll even ask him i'll say did anybody ever

00:43:26.520 say anything to you about modest dress and they're like no no not one time yeah i mean it's what they

00:43:32.540 didn't say eric no and the point isn't like and we don't even have standards i mean yeah the point

00:43:38.880 isn't never teach on these things or never confront sin or obviously there there are examples where

00:43:43.580 we would absolutely say like hey young lady you need a dad like let's let's we gently kindly help

00:43:49.260 her and say you're you're not honoring yourself because we love you let's help you but the point

00:43:54.220 is that the thing that is attractive to people and what leads people most often in my experience

00:43:59.920 to repentance is kindness. It's kindness, it's joy, it's mirth. It's seeing the fruit of joy

00:44:05.740 in a practice that is flowing vitally out of the doctrine. And that's why they come to love the

00:44:11.040 doctrine most strongly is because they've experienced it. They came to the doctrine

00:44:16.400 through the fruit. And what gets backward a lot in circles, you know, in especially

00:44:22.980 high theological circles is that there's not as much interplay between those two things.

00:44:29.920 Because the doctrine sometimes is not getting enfleshed in joy and mirth and gladness. And so the people are only coming to the doorway of the doctrine, but they don't know how to put it into joyful practice. And so the key ingredient of mirth and gladness is missing. And that's not attractive. I don't think it's compelling. I don't think it replicates. It doesn't have staying power.

00:44:51.200 Yeah, I think that's really good.

00:44:52.220 I think you could say the same sort of about the theonomistic reconstruction era of the 80s to 90s.

00:44:59.180 Sort of the fruit of that movement was highly schismatic.

00:45:02.620 So even a lot of the doctrines would say, oh, this is actually reading some Rush Duny, very helpful.

00:45:07.260 The fruit of the movement, not very good.

00:45:09.900 So I think that goes to something that Brian had said too, like with reconciliation, being churches and people and movements that practice peacemaking, that we're able to resolve sin.

00:45:20.340 And we're able to move forward with that.

00:45:23.220 I want to transition now as we talk about archetypes of mirthful fathers.

00:45:29.780 Dan, it's really helpful a lot of times.

00:45:31.240 Like when I read Tolkien and I see the way Gandalf is, it's actually an inspiration to me.

00:45:36.560 And I say, oh, man, I need to dig deep and figure out how to be a joyful father.

00:45:42.160 So let's start with Gandalf.

00:45:44.240 Sort of what ways – I know we've talked about the return of the king and Gandalf's joy and mirth.

00:45:50.340 there. But in what ways do you see him being sort of an archetype of the mirthful father?

00:45:56.280 Yeah, well, interesting. Brian keeps talking about how men have to have range. And I think

00:46:01.900 Gandalf is one of the epitomes in in literature of that man who has range. Yeah, absolutely. I

00:46:10.120 mean, because you see him before Denethor. And I mean, they're very well matched. And it is

00:46:16.120 incredible the way that yeah that uh gandalf interacts with denethor you know in definitely

00:46:22.020 a grave and serious way sparks flying between their eyes yeah yeah and and then uh in battle

00:46:28.500 you know gandalf is very brave yeah and he's very serious he is definitely looked to as a leader

00:46:33.820 amongst men you know like they gandalf is here that's a big deal you know but then you see the

00:46:39.900 way that he interacts with the hobbits eric you had said this yesterday or a couple days ago the

00:46:44.340 way that he interacts with the hobbits is so interesting you know you have a very very powerful

00:46:49.640 man very powerful in in like his magical powers but also in his influence over the great men of

00:46:58.460 that age and then he's with these kind of silly creatures yeah childlike creatures yeah there's

00:47:04.740 the hobbits and he's just so gentle and great to them and exudes wisdom towards them and is very

00:47:11.140 patient with them, like, so

00:47:13.300 unbelievably patient. Like, in the quote

00:47:15.420 with Pippin, you know, where Pippin's 0.99

00:47:17.380 being a fool. Fool of a talk. 1.00

00:47:19.180 I mean, like, but then he loves Pippin. 0.89

00:47:21.740 Yeah. Yeah, he does.

00:47:23.780 You're the Gandalf. I mean, you're the Lord of the

00:47:25.480 Rings guy. Part of it, just to get into a little

00:47:27.400 lore here, it's actually important to how Tolkien

00:47:29.580 accomplishes this. Oh, boy. This isn't

00:47:31.500 really, it doesn't come out in the Lord of the Rings.

00:47:33.940 As much. Okay, Gandalf

00:47:35.340 is given Narya, one of the rings

00:47:37.380 of power, by

00:47:39.380 Kyrdan the shipwright

00:47:40.660 when is this?

00:47:42.640 before the whole story starts

00:47:45.420 the whole time Gandalf has one of the rings

00:47:47.120 just like Galadriel does

00:47:48.220 she has a ring Gandalf has a ring

00:47:51.220 Narya and Narya's power is to

00:47:53.140 rekindle hope in the

00:47:55.260 hearts of men in the faith to stand up to

00:47:57.300 tyranny and domination and despair

00:47:58.900 so Gandalf is given this

00:48:01.260 ring because Kyrdan the shipwright the elf

00:48:03.200 realizes that Gandalf's

00:48:05.340 task in the third age is going to require

00:48:07.320 him because they

00:48:08.820 the elves are starting to recognize they're handing off to men the rule of middle earth

00:48:13.480 and so they need men to be their best they had the the men have to become noble and good and 0.65

00:48:20.400 kind and mirthful instead of what the blood of numenor did which was turned into like the black

00:48:24.680 numenoreans where they were obsessed with evil and power and wealth and you know when when they're 0.91

00:48:29.520 talking about how they stored up treasures and cared more for the list of their dead ancestors 0.86

00:48:34.220 than their children yeah that was i was going to say one of the interesting things in the return

00:48:37.860 of the king that they talk about is there were no children in gondor yeah and so so gandalf's his

00:48:44.140 one of the things tolkien is showing you and he does this so masterfully because he doesn't point

00:48:47.860 at it it's not something that he ever says and then because gandalf was wielding the ring naria

00:48:52.820 had his powers to inspire the hearts of men amplified he showed it to you in the way that

00:48:58.300 gandalf related to the hobbits in the way that he tried to win the heart of boromir but the ring of

00:49:03.640 the one ring, you know, overcame. He constantly inspires people around him. And so that's why I

00:49:11.600 pulled that quote for the cold open of Gandalf's deep well of mirth, because I think fundamentally

00:49:16.140 that's what Tolkien wants you to see about Gandalf, is that because he is righteous and good

00:49:22.340 and masculine and grave and inspires the hearts of men, inside of him most fundamentally is not

00:49:28.380 anger. It's not battle. It's not rage. It's joy. It's mirth. And that's what's inspires the heart

00:49:35.340 of men because they have to have something they're fighting for, not just against.

00:49:41.320 You know, that's interesting because you see a character progression with Theoden that was

00:49:46.640 towards like the dour, you know, joyless, hopeless man. And then towards the end in battle as he's

00:49:53.900 inspiring as men you know you definitely see that progression he overcame the poison of saruman 0.99

00:50:00.780 through joy and mirth and inspiration it wasn't the ring that's like you zap people like the

00:50:07.480 captain planet rings or whatever it was it did something more powerful is the point

00:50:13.380 tolkien shows that the power of the enemy is a power to crush brutalize despair um destroy

00:50:19.080 it's a it's the power of the machine of the cold steel but the real power the righteous power is

00:50:25.420 the the warm power of joy mirth gladness love that's why it's it's so deeply christian is

00:50:32.100 because this is true about the world do you think um as i've so i've been reading two books return

00:50:37.860 of the king and then reading pat buchanan uh hitler churchill unnecessary war it i can't help

00:50:46.060 but think that tolkien was all this storytelling was so shaped by what happened in world war one

00:50:51.420 like he's literally watching these things happen where mechanization and industrialization is

00:50:58.660 destroying the world and you see saruman's tower and everything he's doing yeah the things that

00:51:03.620 tolkien will say about green things but but also brian to what you're saying with the joy

00:51:08.100 anti-tyranny look at the tyrannies that were going on around the world it was horrific oh yeah

00:51:14.460 absolutely men were being ground into the the earth by the millions for no reason yeah just

00:51:20.520 this big charnel machine of war and power and industrialism so do you think he was shaped by

00:51:25.720 what was going on in his real world when you talk about all that you just did yeah i mean because

00:51:29.160 again think of the way that um so like an industrialism an unhinged sinful capitalism

00:51:35.720 that treats people as a means to an end of wealth instead of treating wealth as a means to love

00:51:42.480 people. This is the most fundamental way you can get wealth wrong is to make the people a servant

00:51:48.300 of the wealth. So he's seeing all of this. And in his story, he shows you in a way that is more

00:51:55.560 powerful than any philosophical or economical argument that the key to the joy of human

00:52:01.740 existence is love, joy, it's righteousness. It's not to wield the power of the enemy to try to

00:52:11.480 take the power of the enemy and make it serve you, that will never work. You can't just have

00:52:16.160 your whole civilization built on anti-Sauron. That's, it can't do, you can't do that. You can't

00:52:22.540 build anything on just, we hate Satan, for example. You have to build on, we are the father's sons.

00:52:29.400 We are Christ's men. We are in his covenant. It's the kingdom of heaven invading the kingdom of

00:52:35.840 earth and overthrowing and conquering and ruling and bringing the rule and peace and way of the

00:52:41.400 gospel to the world. So you have to have a positive vision that you're fighting for

00:52:45.980 that is rooted in the nature of God and his joy and righteousness, not just anti-evil.

00:52:53.740 You know, I think this is really shown in Lord of the Rings and the scouring of the Shire.

00:52:59.020 Yeah.

00:52:59.220 And so you have that influence, I think, from World War I, where you see buildings and the

00:53:03.940 great trees are cut down and everything like that. And then you have the hobbits come in

00:53:07.860 as like sons of the king you know in a way you know from aragorn and the influence from gandalf

00:53:14.600 and and they come in and they are carefree you know sam is like i'm gonna i'm gonna punch this

00:53:20.260 guy in the nose and there's a whole lot of orc talk around here yeah but then you see these this

00:53:25.640 hilarious scene to where the the jailers are being led by the hobbits yeah and there's somebody that

00:53:32.660 says like well who's leading who you know uh it's just a hilarious picture but but i think that kind

00:53:39.540 of shows that picture as well in the scouring of the shire yes when uh let me see if i can find

00:53:44.380 this quote where okay yes where he says don't forget i've arrested you yeah uh one of the

00:53:54.600 hobbits is like okay he says but as they came to the east end of the village they made a barrier

00:54:00.740 with a large board saying no road, 1.00

00:54:02.320 and behind it stood a large band of shuriffs

00:54:04.120 with staves in their hands and feathers in their caps,

00:54:06.920 looking both important and rather scared.

00:54:09.220 This is what it is, Mr. Baggins,

00:54:10.880 said the leader of the shuriffs, a two-feather hobbit. 0.98

00:54:13.080 You're arrested for gatekeeping or gatebreaking 1.00

00:54:15.680 and tearing up the rules and assaulting gatekeepers 1.00

00:54:17.920 and trespassing and sleeping in shire buildings

00:54:19.960 without leave and bribing guards with food.

00:54:22.340 I can add some more if you'd like it, said Sam,

00:54:24.640 calling your chief names, 1.00

00:54:26.220 wishing to punch his pimply face 1.00

00:54:28.080 and thinking you sure-ofs look like a lot of tomfools and then he says later they're on the 1.00

00:54:34.940 road and one of the sure-ofs says because they just keep going on their horses and they can't 0.97

00:54:39.160 keep up and and he's like all right you can go on but don't forget i've arrested you and frodo's

00:54:44.120 response is so good he says i won't said frodo never but i may forgive you and the at the end

00:54:52.100 of the point is like frodo and the hobbits have learned true jovial masterly rule and so their

00:55:00.820 goal isn't to crush their enemies it's to love their enemies they want to win and redeem the

00:55:05.920 hobbits and and so think about how this should suffuse the way that we even relate to like

00:55:12.240 other christians where you're going there's a joviality that i think you should have when

00:55:17.420 you're relating to a theological enemy that you hope is still on the team where you're like 0.99

00:55:21.500 look i'll forgive you for all of your stupid stuff that you've been saying about me on twitter all 0.97

00:55:25.560 week or whatever i i will i won't forget about it but i will forgive you and let's be friends 0.97

00:55:31.160 i think of the way 80 robles is always being on twitter he's so funny and he always embodies this

00:55:38.120 where it's like he's just so kind to the to people that hate his guts and it's so attractive like you

00:55:44.680 want to follow that because he it's the love your enemy he cares about his enemy there's just

00:55:51.340 i i don't know how to put it but there's there's like two ways that tolkien is always presenting

00:55:56.580 in the books the way of the power of darkness versus the power of light and the like it always

00:56:01.960 seems like going reaching for the the biggest insult that you have the biggest rejoinder is

00:56:06.920 the right thing to do and the hobbits show us i think that the way to win is is joy mirth love

00:56:14.120 forgiveness grace what do you think the strength too yeah yeah i totally agree but that is strength

00:56:19.260 What do you think the connection is with somebody like Tolkien and Lewis between wit, which they clearly had?

00:56:26.080 It's a lost art in our days.

00:56:27.560 Very few people have it.

00:56:29.520 What's the connection between wit and joy?

00:56:32.120 I do think that part of it is intelligence.

00:56:36.620 Like there's a sharpness that we find attractive, again, because what is it?

00:56:40.820 God is all wise, all knowing.

00:56:43.760 So you see glimmers of that in his image bearers where some people are just so smart.

00:56:48.440 and they just have a keen wit.

00:56:51.480 But then again, it can be used in the way of the enemy

00:56:53.880 or the way of Christ to where there's a keen wit

00:56:56.360 that is turned towards true mirth, true joy,

00:56:58.700 true righteousness, true love.

00:57:00.200 And it's so attractive.

00:57:01.660 Yeah, it's like a benevolent self-control.

00:57:03.640 Yes, it's so attractive.

00:57:05.040 And then there's like the sharp, acid, biting, sarcastic,

00:57:09.540 dark, malevolent sort of wit

00:57:11.400 that is that thing curdled and corrupted.

00:57:15.060 And that's absolutely, like people like it.

00:57:18.440 And it can draw a crowd, but at the end of the day, it's acid.

00:57:23.320 It only eats away.

00:57:24.060 It doesn't upbuild.

00:57:25.580 So there's definitely a relationship between the Christian who has a well of Christian joy, who then is maybe God gave them this great gift of intelligence and wit.

00:57:33.020 And they can turn it to where they can really make someone look silly, but they're really controlled in the way that it's used. 0.78

00:57:38.800 Yeah, Saruman did that.

00:57:39.980 Yes.

00:57:40.720 Yeah, he was – the way that he used wit, his wit and his intelligence.

00:57:44.420 even when uh in in two towers when gandalf is warning you know the fellowship hey hey just be

00:57:52.360 careful he has power in his words and then you can see that the way that he interacts with them

00:57:57.780 how it does discourage and it eats away it tears them down yeah it tears them down the way he look 0.76

00:58:02.500 he makes worm tongue into just a subhuman creature by the time he's done yeah is through words and

00:58:09.460 And all of this, by the way, does have to do with our thesis of fatherhood, because it

00:58:14.420 really does, because think about the way that you're on the power of your words as the blessing

00:58:20.560 man in your home.

00:58:21.400 You can be the blessing man or the biting man.

00:58:23.740 You're always tearing everybody down.

00:58:27.060 Fathers, men in general, if they're to be men of gravitas and range, must be experts

00:58:33.260 in using their words to build up that which is true, good and beautiful and not fall into

00:58:38.580 the trap of the cynic the cynic and the sarcastic rejoinder where he they they they look at people

00:58:44.700 who are nice and kind and like jovial and they're like ah you're just you know you have thomas

00:58:49.640 kincaid glasses on your face and whatever it's like well you have whatever no country for old

00:58:56.500 men glasses like you're a nihilist you have to have a positive vision in your home for how the

00:59:02.400 power of words and bearing to build up or to tear down your children your wife your home your culture

00:59:08.480 your world, your church. And I think one of the ways that we see this modeled, we see it throughout

00:59:14.220 the pastoral epistles, but Paul often, even when he's got scathing things to say about the Galatians

00:59:20.640 or the Corinthian church, you'll still find him in places like Philippians 1, where he's saying,

00:59:27.520 you know, I rejoice over you and give thanks always because I know that God who began a good

00:59:31.660 work in you is going to bring it to completion. So seeing that in your people and being joyful

00:59:35.540 about what God is going to do, is doing, that you see these things displayed. He's clearly not just

00:59:41.080 focusing on their faults, which would be easy to do. So I think one of the tools that we have to

00:59:45.700 be very, very careful of using and that there is almost no time as a father, you should be using

00:59:53.320 it with your children. And that's sarcasm. Sarcasm is a really interesting word. It's

01:00:00.200 from the Greek, and it means to tear flesh, to tear flesh.

01:00:07.460 And so I think you see that as a theme within Lord of the Rings as well,

01:00:11.520 where you have sarcasm being used to tear flesh,

01:00:15.200 and it's almost always going to hurt when used as a father

01:00:20.540 to undermine your own gravitas.

01:00:22.820 Well, I've often heard it said that sarcasm is veiled hostility.

01:00:26.120 Yeah.

01:00:27.020 It's oftentimes not very veiled.

01:00:28.200 It's passive, aggressively veiled hostility.

01:00:30.120 Well, yeah. And so, again, if you look at the picture of the good ruler in Lord of the Rings versus the tyrant, I mean, you do not have in the good ruler, in Aragorn, in Gandalf, in any of the good pictures of these kings, do you have sarcasm being used on your friends?

01:00:51.800 right and i i don't think there's space for that as a father to be used on your children

01:00:56.840 i think it's one of the greatest ways that you can provoke your kids to wrath i absolutely agree

01:01:02.500 it's actually a rule between my wife and i no sarcasm and if one of us catches the other

01:01:09.040 we try to quick like quick not in not in a way that like undermines our children but say hey

01:01:14.800 don't know sarcasm because a kids don't understand it. And, and so it just leaves them

01:01:21.800 feeling like, well, dad is clearly mad at me. Mom's clearly mad at me. It's, it's effeminate.

01:01:28.820 Well, and it's really, it does far more harm than just like having a biting word towards your kids.

01:01:34.480 Because if you think about childhood development, you know, it's probably different with older boys.

01:01:38.920 But with younger kids, they don't have this abstract way of thinking.

01:01:44.100 They haven't developed that.

01:01:45.060 They're very linear in their thinking.

01:01:46.660 It just hasn't developed yet.

01:01:48.680 And so it does leave a lot of confusion, a lot of hurt.

01:01:51.320 Yeah.

01:01:51.700 Yeah.

01:01:51.920 I would actually say with older boys, I noticed this particularly as my kids, you know, now 16, almost 14.

01:01:59.840 For the older boys, whatever you do as a dad that is like, I'll say it's like bad, like sarcasm.

01:02:07.460 If you're sarcastic 10% of the time, they will be sarcastic 40% of the time.

01:02:13.240 Like the way that kids filter is – unfortunately, you have to be aware of this as a parent.

01:02:18.360 Like they'll amplify all of your bad habits.

01:02:21.300 Yeah.

01:02:21.600 Think about like most of your life as a man isn't using your sidearm.

01:02:27.440 It's not using the sword.

01:02:28.980 It's like the butter knife at the table.

01:02:30.600 I mean that's 99% of the tools you're picking up.

01:02:34.160 Obviously in your case, definitely 99%.

01:02:37.120 The kids are always going to want to reach for the biggest, strongest gun in the arsenal, though.

01:02:41.560 Think about this, Brian.

01:02:42.280 Even our little boys, it was a joke in Sunday school because our sons would always – they were like – they would pray imprecatorily every time.

01:02:50.080 Yeah.

01:02:51.060 And we had done it like one time, one Sunday.

01:02:55.860 We don't pray imprecatory prayers like every week or – we're normally praying like, Lord, bless the people.

01:03:02.560 Here's the trials of the church.

01:03:03.680 That's what they heard, though.

01:03:04.200 Bless the preaching of the gospel in other pulpits in Utah.

01:03:06.860 even though those churches don't like us yeah even though they don't like us or you know they

01:03:10.020 have lady pastors or whatever and and then our kids hear eric like one time preach against

01:03:14.480 planned parenthood and then the next thing you know every prayer is like lord crush the teeth

01:03:19.640 of all of our enemies in their mouth dash those fence against the rocks yeah give us victory over

01:03:24.720 the radical two kingdoms guys and i'm like whoa whoa calm down hang on hang on but but i think as

01:03:30.780 a parent being aware of that and then so what i've had to do in my home uh because sarcasm has been

01:03:35.900 there and a critical spirit from me. So is to repent to the children and then say, Hey, this

01:03:41.000 is a problem. Uh, we need to change. And that means that I have to change. You have to be

01:03:46.280 witnessing that. Um, and then, and then working on, okay, if it's not sarcasm, I would point most

01:03:52.440 people to Ephesians for only speech that comes out of your mouth is that which is edifying

01:03:57.120 Ephesians 429, that which builds up your brother. So we'll just have questions in our home. Are you

01:04:02.180 building up your brother right now yeah is this is this edifying and i'll be very honest there

01:04:06.860 are times where i will scold a child especially one of the older and one of the older would be

01:04:12.860 like wow dad is that edifying are you building him up right now and you're like thank you for

01:04:18.740 pointing that out you're like don't use the deep magic on me i was there when it was formed

01:04:22.680 i will tell people i will tell people i remember toby sumter saying this uh he said i can never

01:04:30.200 remember a time when my dad lost his temper and that is an astonishing and i'm like okay for for

01:04:35.200 the rest of us mere mortals yeah um i i just want to encourage guys you will sin you may lose your

01:04:41.060 temper you may be overly critical yeah it is never too late to repent and the thing is the way that 0.90

01:04:46.100 you will lose your children if is if you act like a hypocrite yeah so my rule in the home has been

01:04:50.900 and i i feel like it's been fairly effective it repent honestly to your children yeah and i would 0.98

01:04:57.140 just say to them look i know you're being really critical with your brother and it's because i've

01:05:01.680 been really critical with your brother i've set a poor example i need to repent of this and we need

01:05:05.760 to work on this together where we are edifying and speaking in a way that's going to bring

01:05:10.340 encouragement to the home yeah if you talk about it and say okay dad i'm with you yeah i'm sorry

01:05:14.760 too let's let's move forward you cannot sit there and berate a child and then be mad when your child

01:05:21.520 does it to that same sibling or to one or the other you know because you've set the pattern

01:05:25.900 So I think honest repentance is key there.

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01:06:42.540 yeah i like another related passage to what you brought up from ephesians and colossians where

01:06:53.120 paul says let your speech always be gracious seasoned with salt so that you may know how to

01:06:57.980 how you ought to answer each one each person and it's such a good point because it there's the

01:07:03.460 full range right there be gracious seasoned with salt and and so you know how to answer

01:07:08.300 the pharisee who is the son of the devil and the little child who's in error and your friend who

01:07:14.740 needs to be corrected and the sheep and the wolf and like this is so practical what we tend to do 0.99

01:07:21.560 as people is get stuck in one mode and not have the range we've been talking about we tend to get

01:07:26.120 stuck in one the biggest gun rain thing where like the kids who always want to reach for the most

01:07:30.780 powerful weapon yeah we're always like sarcasm and dunking on people i only qt on twitter that's

01:07:38.660 my only way of tweeting i only quote tweet to i mean that's it i feel bad that i made a fat joke

01:07:42.960 about you wielding the butter knife did you really i didn't even notice i didn't even notice i'm so

01:07:49.620 did you hear that wow that's a good fat joke actually oh it's a subtle well you had said

01:07:53.680 like you know the butter knife is when you wield 99 of the time i'm like yeah it shows

01:07:58.520 emotional damage i did not even in the middle of a sarcasm yeah i am sarcastic you know what

01:08:11.380 dan it was salted butter you know what season with salt hey lord bless you that's the way i

01:08:18.120 love the circuit the best sarcasm is when someone is in a twitter fight and then they're like yeah

01:08:22.980 bless her heart the lord bless you actually my favorite it's probably genuine but i'm always

01:08:27.720 like when they call you bud hoss sport yeah it's like okay you're like i'm literally 10 years older

01:08:34.300 than you sport sport uh gentlemen i i wanted to talk about one thing i think we'll wrap this

01:08:40.140 episode after we do this and then i think next time yeah we'll talk about more of the practical

01:08:44.600 yeah we'll do we need to do a part two that's like nuts and bolts how how can a man be the

01:08:49.580 blessing man in his home yeah so we'll get into that more next episode but it would only be fitting

01:08:54.660 We kind of began with King Loon.

01:08:56.400 So I want to finish here with something that Joe Rigney was talking about in the article we cited, which ran on Desiring God.

01:09:03.600 And this, again, he's talking about this from the horse and his boy.

01:09:07.060 King Loon tells his son Kor what kingship is all about.

01:09:11.380 And he says, Brian, you mentioned this before, but this is the quote.

01:09:15.080 This is what it means to be a king, to be first in every desperate attack and last in every desperate retreat.

01:09:20.660 and when there's hunger in the land as must be now and then in bad years to wear finer clothes

01:09:26.480 and laugh louder over a scantier meal than any man in your land that's the end of the quote so

01:09:31.980 of this passage joe rigney writes first in last out laughing loudest here is competence and

01:09:38.340 confidence initiating taking risk and bearing burdens for others here is a king who cultivates

01:09:43.980 his strength for god's mission and the good of others and he does it all with courage in the

01:09:48.500 heart and manifest laughter in the soul biblical manhood bleeds and sacrifices with unconquerable

01:09:54.880 joy i love that that final quote there uh so i want to start with you dan do you agree with joe

01:10:01.040 is this a good picture of masculinity and fatherhood if so why yeah i i think that it

01:10:07.240 it definitely is one of the things that it does is more more so the way that i i've interacted with

01:10:14.360 this. It's not necessarily, okay, what are the theological reasons that I believe this is true?

01:10:20.340 You know, how does this apply? What this does is what stories, good stories are meant to do,

01:10:25.440 and it's to win your heart. It's to win your heart to an ideal. It's to win your heart towards,

01:10:31.060 I mean, who wouldn't want King Loon as their king? If that's what it means to be a king,

01:10:35.500 I want him to be my ruler. You know, and that's what it does to me. And then I love

01:10:40.500 Rigney's uh summary of it saying biblical manhood bleeds and sacrifices with unconquerable joy yeah

01:10:48.080 and it just furthers that winning winning your heart because it's such a display of what Christ

01:10:52.980 did for us yeah think about the opposite of that in terms of a character that we all know and love

01:10:58.800 from a story so crazy it should be fiction but it's actually our day-to-day life and his name

01:11:03.560 is president joseph biden um joe biden is in in embodies the antithesis of every characteristic

01:11:12.600 praised by lewis in king loon where it's their life for mine protect my wicked uh son who is

01:11:24.260 literally stealing from the people and while i unjustly pursue my enemies weaponizing the legal

01:11:32.600 system that's supposed to exalt you know promote justice every every aspect of joe biden's kingship

01:11:38.780 we could say is like anti-king loon he's last in first out is he the tisrock he's the tisrock i

01:11:47.140 will throw waves of waves of my own people until you know like the witch in charn in the magician's

01:11:54.200 nephew too yeah what he tells go witness giliath back yeah go witness giliath but he says every

01:12:00.100 great lord knows that you fight from the back yeah you're like and it's like i just when when

01:12:08.560 you put together a list of the opposite characteristics you start to realize how

01:12:13.600 central these features are of joy and mirth and self-sacrifice and humility and giving of the

01:12:20.120 self for the sake of your people is to proper rule and that's what we're talking about when

01:12:25.360 we're talking about a father patriarch means father rule it's a father ruling in his home

01:12:29.300 But not ruling like a despotic tyrant, not ruling like a Biden, but ruling like a King Loon.

01:12:35.280 Yeah, that's such a great point.

01:12:36.460 Brian, I also want to ask you, one of the things that's often associated with mirth is song.

01:12:42.500 I remember I think it was Martin Luther said something like anywhere there's a reformation, you're going to see people singing.

01:12:47.460 Yeah.

01:12:47.760 And there's going to be a lot of attention paid there.

01:12:50.280 One thing that I thought about recently because it was making headlines again was the people from Christchurch and particularly Gabe Branch getting arrested while psalm singing because they didn't have their masks and six feet of distance, whatever.

01:13:04.260 So that's making the rounds again.

01:13:06.160 But there's just something about that scene where tyranny is happening.

01:13:09.840 Doug is watching Gabe get arrested and he's like, well, OK, keep singing.

01:13:13.940 So there's something about joy and its unconquerable power as it translates into song.

01:13:19.840 So I want to ask you, why is mirth and song such an important connection?

01:13:25.440 Why is it important that we're psalm singing and doing the Cantus Christi and all those other things too?

01:13:29.660 Yeah, because when you see any culture that is truly Christian, that's embodying everything that God intended for a culture to be, you'll always find singing.

01:13:43.100 and you'll always find beautiful singing. And you'll always find beautiful singing that is the

01:13:46.600 singing of the people and not just a performative singing from a class of musical experts. And I

01:13:52.840 think the reason is because one of the ways that God encoded into our souls as image bearers and

01:13:59.180 reflections of his glory is this desire to adorn language beyond its mere utility with beauty,

01:14:06.680 because God is not just merely useful. He's also beautiful. So you see God sing in scripture.

01:14:12.400 You see him create a creation that sings, if you read Psalm 19, for example, and then he commands his people to be a singing people.

01:14:19.560 So all of that teaches us something about the target that we should be aiming for, which is one where it's normal for people to sing.

01:14:29.340 I think you see this again in Tolkien, every single race of people, of creatures, the elves have their own type of singing.

01:14:35.880 Rohan has its own type of singing.

01:14:38.040 The men of Gondor have their own type of singing.

01:14:40.060 Aragorn sings the coronation song

01:14:42.420 the Etarelo

01:14:43.900 Endorena Uthulien

01:14:45.400 How does it go?

01:14:47.620 Etarelo

01:14:48.180 Endorena Uthulien

01:14:50.040 Sinome Maruvanar

01:14:51.480 Hildenya

01:14:52.120 To neon betar

01:14:53.380 Nerd! 0.79

01:14:56.180 So he's singing actually the words of his ancestors 0.99

01:14:58.420 there in Elvish 0.94

01:14:59.900 Anyway, the hobbits have their own type of singing

01:15:02.680 You see it in the Green Dragon

01:15:03.640 Rohan has its own type of singing

01:15:05.080 that sounds like the riding of horses

01:15:06.380 All of this, it shows

01:15:08.880 expresses in a thing that's not, it doesn't have like utility isn't the most important thing about

01:15:14.580 it. So there's something, there's a glorious effulgence to it. There's like a, it's something

01:15:22.640 that you wouldn't expect like from a robot people. Well, it's interesting because if you look at

01:15:29.400 Ephesians 5, starting in verse 18, it says, and do not get drunk with wine for that is debauchery,

01:15:34.980 but be filled with the spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs,

01:15:39.360 singing and making melody to the Lord with all your heart. So Paul has just addressed the

01:15:43.960 spiritual darkness, people of spiritual darkness living in debauchery. It was actually a John 0.97

01:15:48.740 Piper sermon on this, and it stuck with me because it was so poignant. He said, you know,

01:15:53.220 the other day we were in downtown Minneapolis and we saw all these drunk people and they always

01:15:56.780 erupt in song. And so the Lord, it's like Paul was looking at drunken debauchery and the songs

01:16:01.840 that come from bars and places like that and he was saying as christians you ought to be drunk

01:16:07.200 with the holy spirit so what's overflowing is psalms yep and i thought that's such a great

01:16:11.400 picture any people i mean you win a championship you go to the streets of philadelphia they're

01:16:16.160 going to burn every car to the ground but they're going to be singing it's just inevitable it is

01:16:22.060 inevitable but as as god's conquering people like we celebrate differently with joy and obviously

01:16:28.480 not in the darkness but in the holy spirit we revel in the light what is the thing that people

01:16:32.960 when they visit our church who've never experienced like a singing church what do they what do they

01:16:37.740 talk about what do they post on twitter about it's the singing even the conference we're not even

01:16:41.900 that great at it like we're not particularly no skilled or we don't have a bunch of virtuosic

01:16:47.120 musicians in our church we're just like ordinary people all singing together in a way that you

01:16:52.920 clearly like we've practiced like we've worked at it but that's what people talk about like it's

01:16:57.740 actually insulting to me. They almost never talk about how good my sermons are. Well, I think one

01:17:02.920 of the, the hangups from people, actually the barriers from people actually implementing that

01:17:07.280 is that they assume you are a, you know, you're a big name musician. Now, like we can acknowledge

01:17:13.540 that you're a big deal. No, but you're skilled musically. And so people assume, well, I'm not

01:17:18.820 Brian Sauve, therefore I can't do this. But if they haven't experienced it before, they don't

01:17:24.220 realize Dan Burkholder can lead worship. I will be leading in a couple of weeks. I've done it

01:17:30.540 multiple times. And you know what? It's the same. It's not different at all. Nothing changes. In

01:17:36.100 fact, it's probably easier. I'm just more embarrassed. Because I sing so loud that if

01:17:39.380 I sing the tenor part, I throw everybody off and I'm facing them. So it's probably better when you

01:17:44.640 lead, to be honest. I don't think so. Anyway, I think that's one of the barriers, but it's one

01:17:52.020 of the important parts, like you said, it's the people singing. It's the people. It has to be the

01:17:55.860 people singing. They have to have songs. They have to have this. If you have, if you really have a

01:18:01.360 people, they must have songs. And you know, what's wonderful about singing the Psalms is that God

01:18:06.820 made this songbook and there are songs for the moment. There are songs of grief. There are songs,

01:18:12.160 every range of human emotion, every range of joy, of conquer, of war, you know, all of them,

01:18:19.140 you know and and so it fits the moment yep so it seems like brian like you know dan to that point

01:18:25.240 a culture if it's thriving it's full of joy it's it's only it can't help but produce things like

01:18:31.260 art song uh literature when you think about songs i was thinking recently brian about your project

01:18:37.860 with the harsh songs mainly you have one song out that's released a mighty host and um i hate that

01:18:44.680 song, mainly because every time I listen to it, it brings me to tears. But it is just

01:18:51.340 a, it feels like a part, an artifact of our culture in this time period, in this moment,

01:18:56.020 and sort of the things that we're aiming at and loving and celebrating. So I want you

01:19:01.840 just to talk about what was this project like for you doing harsh songs? Did you feel like

01:19:06.740 it was coming out of the culture of your home, of the church? What was the connection there

01:19:11.160 for you. Yeah, exactly what we're talking about in this episode. Because what I noticed about our

01:19:18.680 life, my family, is that we would listen to music. We sing a lot. We sing multiple times a day as a

01:19:25.640 family. You're basically like the Von Trapps. Yeah, we're like the Von Trapps. Actually, no one

01:19:29.940 would accuse us of that if they heard us singing, because kids haven't quite nailed the singing

01:19:33.500 part yet. But we're singing all the time. But then I realized we go on a road trip, or while

01:19:39.360 kids are playing, there's music in the background that's happening. And a lot of the music that we

01:19:44.080 were listening to is musically excellent, but it was encoding falsehoods in beauty. That's what,

01:19:51.600 one of the things music is supposed to do is demonstrate the beauty of truly beautiful

01:19:56.760 things or the glory of truly glorious things. And so I thought we don't just need to sing together

01:20:03.160 and we've got that covered. We've got the Psalms, we've got all that. What we also need are songs

01:20:08.060 that will demonstrate the beauty

01:20:10.800 and the glory of truly beautiful

01:20:12.520 and glorious things

01:20:13.140 and also the sorrow of loss

01:20:16.280 over truly beautiful things.

01:20:19.180 So one of the songs on the album

01:20:20.440 is also, it's a very sad song

01:20:23.300 and it's about things like miscarriage

01:20:24.740 and the loss of children.

01:20:26.360 And in that song, I'm trying to show

01:20:27.640 that children are a blessing

01:20:29.840 and so it's truly sorrowful

01:20:31.420 when we go through the valley

01:20:33.580 of the shadow of death.

01:20:34.600 The goal with that whole project

01:20:36.780 was to basically say, well, we're Christians, so we know what is beautiful. The Christian home,

01:20:43.680 Christian marriage, children, being around your table, being fruitful, having children, loving

01:20:48.080 them, loving a woman well. All these things are gifts from our father. So why not have songs that

01:20:56.100 aren't like praise and worship songs? Let's just write some songs about everyday life,

01:21:00.760 spurring my sons on to love and good works and courage.

01:21:05.320 I want my daughters to grow up and be like, yeah, dad, dad loved us.

01:21:08.760 He thought we were glorious.

01:21:11.020 And I know partly, hopefully because of how I act to them, but,

01:21:14.520 but also because look, dad, dad wrote this song and it's about,

01:21:18.180 it's like, I wrote a song for each of my girls.

01:21:20.020 It's on the album and it's about how beautiful and like how,

01:21:23.840 how glorious it is, how glorious they are.

01:21:26.760 They're the glory of man, these little queenlets running around.

01:21:30.760 And so I don't know, I'm hoping that the song, or a Mighty Host about my wife and our children as well, I'm just hoping to see as our culture matures as a church, and also hopefully in many other churches and places, as the culture matures and gets thicker, that we see a resurgence of things like Christians writing songs about not just worship things, but Christians writing songs, producing works of art, film, cultural artifacts. 0.99

01:21:59.820 that show the world what it is that we're fighting for what it is that we're trying to build the

01:22:08.160 glory of god the left does this so well they they own all these cultural spaces and they

01:22:15.640 try to present ugliness as beautiful yeah it reminds me why aren't we fighting back with

01:22:21.480 the same weapons you know something rye nationalists said uh was the left is celebrating

01:22:27.200 everything ugly and hideous yeah so he said if you're on the conservative right he said it's

01:22:31.160 actually really easy to win just create beautiful things you know chalk knox was talking about this

01:22:35.760 recently i saw a cut from one of their shows and he was saying like we christians we post way more

01:22:41.120 about the trannies than we do about the glory of our wives at the dinner table like we quote tweet

01:22:46.680 their stuff all the time because they're the ones out there making content and art and culture and 1.00

01:22:50.920 and trying to inco trying to win people and then we just rage quote tweet it and amplify their

01:22:56.620 message but are we producing the same cultural artifacts because we actually have truth on our

01:23:01.480 side it's interesting i want to ask you a question about this you guys can either either one you can

01:23:06.100 both answer uh part of part of the issue christopher caldwell talks about in the age of

01:23:10.640 entitlement is that philanthropy posts like 1985 so like you know before we were born the year dan

01:23:19.000 we were born great great era but philanthropy has all almost 100 of it has been directed to

01:23:25.480 leftist causes so my question to you is you need support right to create christian art so why do

01:23:33.160 you think the conservative right is so poor like they just don't fund things like this they don't

01:23:38.080 fund artistic endeavors they don't understand maybe the value of it uh we get a lot of stuff

01:23:43.540 like drink liberal tears yeah but we're always reacting even the conference thing that we were

01:23:48.960 talking about where people were like why would i pay money to come to your thing to hear you talk

01:23:52.820 to and you're like the left doesn't even ask that question they never do you're like oh right

01:23:58.040 in the streets we'll be there absolutely i'm there six hundred dollars great right like oh

01:24:04.320 you want me to wear my costumes uh 10 times a year or 15 times a year to the movie theater and spend

01:24:09.680 i don't know how much money now probably 20 bucks a person at this point i haven't been in years but

01:24:13.180 we went to a movie recently yeah it was imax i think it was 35 for two people are you kidding me

01:24:18.460 No.

01:24:18.900 And no shame about that.

01:24:20.900 They're like, yeah, of course.

01:24:21.820 I will give probably in the average year on that kind of entertainment, I bet even Christian households probably spend $500 to $1,000 a year on that kind of stuff alone.

01:24:30.080 And then you're like, well, what if we made some Christian – some music that just celebrated beauty and stuff?

01:24:37.960 Well, I will say in defense of these really massive cheapskates is that the content that has been produced has been historically terrible. 0.53

01:24:48.460 Yeah, and that's the problem is that it's a cycle.

01:24:53.120 Truly beautiful things require skill, which requires time, which requires patronage.

01:24:57.600 And then what we do instead a lot of the time is there's cheap veneers of commercialism that is truly poor.

01:25:03.100 It's a poor imitation.

01:25:04.340 It's an echo of an echo of the quality the left is producing.

01:25:09.520 And then so again, then there's less money for it, and so the quality is worse, and so there's less money for it, and the quality is worse.

01:25:15.040 And then they also weaponize guilt in order to support it.

01:25:18.180 well i'm a christian so therefore you should support it yeah exactly like there are things

01:25:22.840 that we there are businesses that um are you know christians that i wouldn't use because i don't

01:25:27.320 think they do a good job yeah i was gonna say uh all those things are true and then we also have

01:25:32.220 uh like black rifle coffee a lot of companies will portray themselves as a conservative because

01:25:38.080 they know there's a big niche of like people who are against like starbucks and then you support

01:25:43.680 them and then you know a year later you find out that you know matt bass wife is on only fans oh

01:25:49.080 yeah somebody should do something about coffee somebody should do something foreshadowing

01:25:53.100 foreshadowing gentlemen lots of things come out of great joyful culture like coffee like great

01:26:00.800 music like this conversation like this conversation eric it's been scintillating it has been

01:26:06.680 since i've been tweeting brian's comments in this eric has been apparently live tweeting

01:26:12.700 live tweeting wow because it's so good i actually put your name in there and gave credit so i almost

01:26:17.520 took it for myself but then i thought i almost said rare ericonda but that'd be that'd be unkind

01:26:21.540 uncharitable it would be funny though it would have been funny recently uh so brian i do have

01:26:28.560 a few questions as we wrap things up sure uh just stuff that we're working on as a team i know you've

01:26:33.520 got vinyl is there anything left on vinyl there's like 60 uh sets of the even dragons final left

01:26:39.220 I will also say that I've started a fund

01:26:42.320 we didn't actually set this up so I could

01:26:43.940 shill my fundraiser but

01:26:46.060 let me shill my fundraiser

01:26:47.400 I spend actually a tremendous

01:26:50.160 amount of money making music because I want

01:26:52.160 it to be on par with the quality

01:26:54.140 this is going to sound like

01:26:55.460 there's no way I can accomplish this but

01:26:58.040 my goal at least is for it to be as good as

01:27:00.140 anything Colter Wall or Tyler Childress puts out

01:27:01.900 which means I spend on average

01:27:03.860 close to $2,000 every song I make

01:27:06.080 you need to start actually chain smoking

01:27:08.140 I know. Seriously. So I have a fundraiser right now that's helping to pay for Hearth songs,

01:27:14.520 that seven song EP I'm working on of original music. And also my next album of Psalm settings,

01:27:20.380 I'm trying to raise $25,000 to cover about 70% of the cost of those albums. And then I'm rolling

01:27:27.420 other like Patreon support and things like that into the rest of the support for that.

01:27:32.200 So if you want to help out with that, my website's briansilvey.com. And under music,

01:27:37.660 there's a help tab. You can jump on support the album. And we've raised over $10,000 so far

01:27:44.720 towards it. Really appreciate everybody that has supported that work. And what that does is it

01:27:51.100 lets me do things like I don't play the fiddle. I can go and hire a Christian lady up in Canada 1.00

01:27:56.880 who happens to be a tremendous fiddle player. And I pay her. I don't ask her to work for free 1.00

01:28:01.620 because she's put years of work into this. My producer, Brandon, who's a Christian guy I've

01:28:06.420 known for more than 10 years, best musician I know. I pay him for every song we do and want to

01:28:12.220 give him what he's worth, which is, I mean, he's tremendously talented. So this is genuinely money

01:28:19.900 that goes to actually pay the bills. It's not me trying to make an extra buck on the music. I'm

01:28:25.680 genuinely just trying to continue to make it. So I really appreciate everybody who helps with it,

01:28:32.400 if you if you like it. And another thing you guys can do is just share share this kind of things

01:28:36.720 with your friends. Send them a Kings Hall episode if you thought it was helpful. Use a song of mine

01:28:41.940 in an Instagram reel, whatever it is, like, help get the message out. And let's stop like just

01:28:48.120 rage tweeting about what the left is doing. And let's actually tweet or amplify and support

01:28:53.600 the work of positive culture building. So essential that we get this.

01:28:58.280 yeah absolutely also great to celebrate a lot of the good work that's going on including moscow i

01:29:03.520 know we yeah absolutely canon plus app yeah super appreciative a lot of the people doing great work

01:29:08.400 my budget has like a canon input just like love what they're doing and uh again like hopefully

01:29:14.560 you see this in the way that we operate as even new christened press is that we're not trying to

01:29:20.340 compete with canon press or we're not trying to like put that we want i hope there's 50 moscow's

01:29:26.220 And 20 media companies that are – it's not a zero-sum game.

01:29:30.580 I hope there are tens of thousands of Christians doing good business in all of the areas of human life and domain and culture, not just art.

01:29:40.140 I mean plumbing and HVAC and building and data and white-collar, blue-collar.

01:29:47.780 So we're on the same team, and I hope that that comes through as well, that we really hope you guys are celebrating and supporting.

01:29:54.060 Good work everywhere you see it in Christian culture.

01:29:57.480 Yeah, absolutely.

01:29:58.060 A lot of ground to take over for Christendom.

01:30:00.780 Gentlemen, it's been a pleasure in this conversation.

01:30:03.360 And to our listeners, thank you for your support.

01:30:05.780 If you're not yet, you can follow us on Patreon.

01:30:08.220 Support the show there.

01:30:09.920 Ladies and gentlemen, until next time, Festin Alente.

01:30:12.240 Make haste slowly.

01:30:18.780 Well, in case you didn't know, we have another King's Hall show called The After Hours,

01:30:22.480 and it's available only to our patrons we have a great time in the after hours i play hype songs

01:30:27.700 which brian loves sometimes we even talk about brian's cut we talk about recent news on x and

01:30:32.120 answer listener questions overall it's a great time so i'd encourage you to head over to patreon.com

01:30:38.240 slash the king's hall if you'd like to support the show and get some extra content

The King's Hall - July 31, 2023

The Influence and Power of a Mirthful Father

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