CONFERENCE - Children As Artillery - Pastor C.R. Wiley
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 3 minutes
Harmful content
Misogyny
10
sentences flagged
Toxicity
8
sentences flagged
Hate speech
9
sentences flagged
Summary
In this episode, Fr. Fr. Carl Sagan talks about the role of children as artillery in our world, and why we should not treat them as a means to an end, but as means to a better end.
Transcript
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In less than a year, our podcast has gone from an average of 10,000 downloads a month
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five-star review on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks. That's why I named my book
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after this conference. Anyway, it's really marvelous to be here. It's great to be with
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Joel and Jared and to be with you too. And, you know, I was actually given the title for this
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talk. That's often the way it works. I did a talk at the University of Idaho entitled Toxic
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Matriarchy, and people thought that was my idea. I actually said, we want you to do a talk, but it
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must be called Toxic Matriarchy. So I said, okay, I'll roll with it. Children as Artillery is the
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title of this talk. And, you know, honestly, when I heard the title, immediately what came to my
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mind was Circus Tense, you know, and the guy who gets in the cannon, you know, the human cannonball,
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you know, and a shot across, you know, all three rings of the circus and lands in a net.
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I also thought of what brought this, another thing that came to mind was Super Dave Osborne.
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You know, the ne'er-do-well daredevil who dies in every stunt, you know, and just somehow
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And then I thought about my time at Harvard Divinity School and the quest to expunge from
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I don't know if you were aware of this, but once upon a time in the good old days, before they got to pronouns, they were trying to get out hymns about Christian soldiers and stuff like that.
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But above all, I thought about Immanuel Kant and the Categorical Imperative.
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Now, I know that the rest of you probably also thought about Immanuel Kant and the Categorical Imperative.
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so I should probably explain why this came to mind. Now, this isn't a course in modern philosophy
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or deontological ethics, but aren't you glad? But anyway, it's good to be acquainted with what's
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gone on in modern philosophy because it has influenced our world in ways that are hard
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to appreciate. I know it's a lot of fun to make fun of ivory tower academics because it's easy
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for us to more or less write them off as irrelevant and out of touch with the real world. The problem
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with that is they're not interested in the world as it is now. They have an influence on the world
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far after they're dead, and the influence that Immanuel Kant has exercised on our world is hard
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to, I think, for many people to appreciate. Here's an easy, I think, illustration of the point.
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Karl Marx. Karl Marx has made a difference in your life. He really has. A bad one, but he has
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influenced your life. And first came Immanuel Kant, then came Marx. You could say that there is a
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thread of influence there, but I'm not going to explore that. But when it comes to the categorical
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imperative, it's been formulated in three ways. So the categorical imperative is something that
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Kant developed in order to have a framework for talking about living well and living ethically.
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And there are three formulations of the imperative, but the one that I think applies to children as
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artillery is this one. Treat humanity in every case as an end in themselves, never as a means
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only. Children as artillery seems to violate this. The idea that, you know, we're using our children
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as a means to an end would seem to be something that Immanuel Kant would have a problem with.
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But the thing to keep in mind is even Kant qualified his statement with the word only.
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And when we think about ends and means, when we talk about means, many times we're referring
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to the ordinary means of grace, preaching, sacraments, so forth, when it comes to proclaiming
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the gospel and encouraging people to grow in grace. But the end, of course, is something that
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we're aiming at. That's the target. The end is the target. It's the purpose. It's the telos. It's the
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goal. It's perfection. Now, one of the things, though, that we see in our world today is that
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when it comes to thinking about children and ends and means, there's a lot of confusion.
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and one of the things that I think we see happening with particularly with parents is that
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parents have come to see the objective of parenting as being the happiness of the child
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that's the end that's the thing that we're all supposed to be shooting for when we think about
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children and you know how it goes if you watch you know some daytime television you know you'll
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hear parents when they're talking about their children say, I just want him or her or it or
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whatever to be happy. Happy is the goal. Then if you were to ask the follow-up question, which I
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think is a good thing to do but never seems to happen, and ask those folks to define happiness,
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they have no clue. Basically, happiness, if they kind of sum it up in any way at all,
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sounds like something Oprah Winfrey would say. I just want, you know, kind of a general feeling
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of sort of self-satisfaction and pleasure to kind of characterize the life of my child. And that's
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it. Whatever makes that happen is what I want for him or her or it or whatever. Now, what these
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folks fail to appreciate is that very often people need to feel useful to be happy. Have you ever
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noticed that about yourself? If you felt useless, was that like an epiphany? Wow, I'm useless.
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I feel great. No. Often you need to be able to do something for others and even for yourself
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if you're going to have a sense that your life has purpose. And that, of course, is pretty important
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when it comes to the subject of happiness. Now, what I want to think about with you at this point
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is this theme, children as artillery, and how that's actually a good way to make your children
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feel happy, to help them see themselves and think of themselves as artillery. Now one of my favorite
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psalms, it's already been quoted, Jared mentioned it, the 127th psalm, where we're told that children
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are a heritage from the Lord, that's important, but we're also told that children are like arrows
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in the hands of a warrior. That's the fourth verse. So you quoted the third verse, that's the
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fourth verse. This is where we get, you know, the term quiverful. The quiverful movement is something
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that swept through certain, you know, sort of parts of the evangelical world a little while
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back. Now, when we think about arrows, of course, arrows are for shooting. That's what they're made
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for. Arrows have no choice in the matter. We don't ask arrows about their thoughts on the subject.
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We just shoot them. Arrows are for shooting. And I know that sounds militaristic, and it is.
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But I think at this point, bringing back Immanuel Kant, a common objection to the matter of a given
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purpose for anything, really, is that all given purposes are illegitimate. The only purposes that
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we should give ourselves to are the ones that we freely choose. And because of that, we live in a
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world today where people can't think about given purposes any other way. Given purposes are
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oppressive. Even when those given purposes are hardwired into your body, we shouldn't submit to
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those. We should exercise the power to choose, even when it means denying our own physical
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constitutions. Male, female, he made them, right? One of the things that I think animates and is
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the source of a great deal of the animus behind the transgender movement is the hostility to given
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purposes, even those purposes woven into the very fabric of creation by the creator himself.
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People look at that as oppressive. What we want is to choose our own purposes.
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But what is our given purpose? I'd like to think about that with you a little bit,
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We're told in Romans that we all fall short of the glory of God.
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And by the way, this relates to the Greek word for sin, I think, in a marvelous way.
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Hermitia, if you're not familiar with the term, literally means to miss the mark.
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So let's say you're an archer in the first century.
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and you spoke Koine Greek, and you were at a competition with other archers,
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and you fired your arrow at a target, and you missed, what would the judge say?
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That's the word that we translate into the English word sin, the Greek word harmatia.
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So we fall short of the glory of God, implying that the glory of God is his target.
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Now, the Westminster Shorter Catechism turns this into a positive principle
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or reformulates it, and we see it expressed as a positive principle there
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with the first question in the Shorter Catechism,
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The given end is to glorify God, but it doesn't stop there.
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And with that, we see ends and means reconciled in a beautiful way.
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It's not as though you have to choose between your duty and your joy.
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Your joy is your duty, and your duty is your joy.
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I know this is very difficult for us to fully appreciate,
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because we tend to think, as I noted, that these things are somehow mutually exclusive.
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but in God, they're reconciled. So we're creatures. We don't create ourselves, and because of that,
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we don't give ourselves our purposes. Those purposes are given to us by the fact that we
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are created for a purpose. And really, this is what it means to be a creature. When you're a
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creature, everything is derived. In other words, everything is given. What do you have, Paul says,
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that you were not given. Everything that we have is given, and we work with what we've received.
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Here's a little exercise I like to use to illustrate just how difficult it is to create
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something out of nothing. We, as human beings, create things in a way that, you know, depends
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upon the things that we're given. Everything that we create is, in some sense, a mixture of given
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things. We rework things and we don't create things out of nothing. We create things out of
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other things combined in novel ways. But to illustrate why that is the only choice we have,
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try to imagine a primary color that is absolutely new, totally novel, not something that you've
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received. I'm not talking about some kind of blending of primary colors like chartreuse or
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olive or something like that. I mean something as primary as yellow, red, and blue. Something
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totally new. Can you do it? Even if you could, you couldn't describe it to the rest of us because
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none of us could imagine it. You get what I'm getting at. We can't create things out of nothing,
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And yet that's what we as a society have given ourselves over to.
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We think we can create something out of nothing, but that's not something given to us to do.
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It's not something that's possible for us to do.
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We are given things, and because we're given things, we can give things.
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He's also our end. He's also the means. With all of these things in mind, one of the things that
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you need to tell your kids, one of the things that you need to demonstrate for them is what it means
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or what it looks like to love God and to love other people and to demonstrate that, you know,
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you are living your life to the glory of God and that you intend to raise your children in a way
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that glorifies God as well. Your objective, in other words, is to use your children as a means
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of glorifying God and that you have a target in mind, which is the glory of God.
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And one of the ways that we're told to do that here in the 127th Psalm is that you love your kids by shooting them.
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Not with the way I just think maybe that came to mind, but you use your kids as the artillery to shoot their lives toward the goal that I've been describing, which is the glory of God.
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Now, I'd like to reflect with you a little bit on the matter, first of all, of having a quiver full of kids.
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Now, obviously, the more arrows you have, the more you have to shoot.
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But obviously, the number you have is not entirely up to you.
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Well, as you know, there was another, and that was a problem.
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but there had to be something that God could only do in order for this to come about.
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Now, I have three, and they're all grown and have spouses of their own and children of their own.
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I've got five grandchildren, so I'm at that point in life,
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and I'm happy to report that they're all on target.
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If they weren't, I would feel very different about this talk.
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I'm happy to announce that they are. I'd like to review, you know, the situation as it stands
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currently with you so that you have some sense of the context of my life. So I have two sons and a
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daughter. Now, we began having our children back in the bad old days, the 1990s, and this was before
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there was a lot of emphasis that we see, you know, sort of all around today on the importance of
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having children and having children early in life. So we were already 30 years old when our first was
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born. So the window of opportunity for us had narrowed quite a bit by the time our first child
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was born. But our oldest son, Caleb, has two daughters of his own. He's married to a lovely
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girl from Texas, from Houston, in fact, our oldest daughter-in-law. And they live in Nashville,
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and he's involved in the music industry. He's an audio engineer and is actually on staff at
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Covenant Presbyterian Church. You probably know about that church because it was in the news not
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too long ago. He was in the building when the shooting occurred. So we got the text and the
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description long before anybody else knew what was going on. So I've got sort of an insider's
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sort of perspective on all of that. But anyways, he's fine. They're fine. And the church actually
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is doing pretty well, all things considered. So that's my oldest son. My second son,
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And by the way, my oldest son, he and his wife own their house.
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They own a house in Nashville, and he's gainfully employed and works for himself.
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My second son is a welder and a steel fabricator and a blacksmith and lives in Hartford, Connecticut.
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He's a foreman in a large steel firm, the largest steel firm in New England.
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Then my daughter just was married here not too long back
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And they live in the Hartford area in Connecticut as well.
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So the children are all doing well and flourishing.
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and I'd like to reflect a little bit on, you know, what sort of contributed to that state of affairs
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and I'll get to that in a minute. Well, when it comes to this question of how many to have,
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I think one question people have is how many can I afford? And I was in a conversation with Kevin
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DeYoung not too long ago who has, I believe, nine kids and Kevin's thought was more than you think
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you can. And I think there's a lot of truth to that. Now, in the church I serve right now,
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the median age in the church, our church is around 250 people. The median age is about,
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I'm not exaggerating, about 13 to 14. We've got that many kids. And so my elders, one has 13,
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another has 12, another has nine, and two have six. And that makes up a tiny fraction of the
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total child population in the church. Now, something to think about when it comes to this
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matter of how many you can afford. One of the things that I learned reading a book years ago
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that has been a marvelous book to reflect on over the years is a book entitled The Millionaire Next
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Door. Folks familiar with that book? The Millionaire Next Door. It's a great book.
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So it's a book about self-made millionaires, 95% of whom are men who are married and have more than
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three kids, three or more, which was an interesting thing to learn, because I think that for many of
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us, we assume, more or less, the more kids you have, the poorer you are. But the way men think,
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and this is something to keep in mind, the way men think, is that if a man doesn't have someone
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to take care of and be responsible for, what does he do with himself? He watches television.
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You know, he wastes money on cars and things that depreciate rapidly.
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He's just simply kind of looking for pleasure in the moment.
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And that's where most men would be when they don't have kids.
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It's when a man has the responsibility of caring for a wife and children that he starts
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to think about other people for a change and thinks about the long term and thinks about
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And what that does is it creates a kind of, well, necessity is the mother of invention.
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When you have that kind of necessity kind of looking at you all the time and expecting things from you,
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it has a way of getting you thinking and making sacrifices and making plans and taking risks.
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But when they do, they can work out very, very well.
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And that's why 95% of the self-made millionaires in the world are men with children to take care of.
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The other thing is that when you have a lot of kids, they don't sit around and just take.
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They are required to help as early as they can.
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So that's another valuable thing to keep in mind.
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Now, returning to the theme of war, I want to reflect on that a little bit
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before I get into some of the practical things I want to talk about.
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No matter what the Neville Chamberlains of the winsome world would like you to think,
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this is a world in which we have some adversaries.
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Right at the beginning of the Bible, we have that episode with the serpent,
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and we're told that there would be enmity between the children of the serpent
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and the woman's seed. Genesis, of course, chapter 3, verse 15. And we're told in James,
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friendship with the world is enmity toward God. In other words, if you try to make friends with
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the world, you make God your adversary. You've got to choose. You can't play Switzerland in this
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whole thing. You're on one side or the other. Remember that song by Bob Dylan, You Gotta Serve
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somebody? Some of you remember it. Some of you, like, who's Bob Dylan? But anyway, Bob Dylan,
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you know, there's this great song, you know, you got to serve somebody. That was the refrain. And
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then, you know, the black choir would come in, you know, you got to serve somebody. And he'd say,
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you know, in that way that only Bob Dylan can speak, you may serve the devil or you may serve
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the Lord, but you got to serve somebody. And that's the thing we have to keep in mind. We've
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got to serve somebody. And if you think you're only serving yourself, guess which team you're on?
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Finally, we're not the only ones with arrows. It's not as though the devil is just sitting
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over their mind in his own business and we go and pick a fight. No, there are fiery darts that he's
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firing all the time, and we're the target. That's something that we shouldn't forget.
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Ephesians, you know, chapter 6, verses 12 and 16, we're told that there are these fiery darts and
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we have a shield that is the shield of faith. We're told it's a shield that is constituted
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by faith. And I want to reflect on that with you a little bit. But unilateral disarmament
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is just simply foolish. If you just lay down your arms and say, that's it, I want to have
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peace with you, you join the other side, because as I noted before, that's what we're presented
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with. We either are with the Lord and serving him, or we are in league with his adversaries.
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Now these fiery darts, these arrows, how should we understand the nature of these arrows? One of
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the things I think that is important to keep in mind is that in scripture, the devil is referred
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to as the accuser, the accuser of the brethren. Are you familiar with that allusion? But
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we're also told that the devil is diabolical. Now, the word diabolical has an interesting
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provenance. It's a compound word in Greek, dia, meaning through, and balo, where we get the word
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ballistic, means to throw. So in other words, the objective is to throw something at you and
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through you, you know, to take you out. What is it that is being directed toward us? Well,
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accusations. Now, I know that sometimes when people note this, they more or less, as, you know,
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I think it's understandable that reformed people would do this. The way they think of this is that,
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you know, these accusations that are being directed toward us are based in some fact.
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we are sinful, and they're intended to undermine our confidence in our salvation. And I think
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that's a fair interpretation. But if we look at Scripture and think about this particular
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mode of attack, I think we can see some subtleties that perhaps we overlook. One of those is that
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in the garden, the temptation that we see described for us in that dialogue between Eve
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and the serpent, the accusations were directed toward whom? God. In other words, they were
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intended to impugn God's character and undermine the confidence of Adam and Eve in God and his
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promises. And that's why a shield of faith is something that extinguishes those things.
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If you look at Job, if you remember, you know, we have a set of accusations in the book of Job.
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You know, here we have the high court, the Lord upon the throne, the, you know, the courtiers all around.
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And the Lord says, well, what have you been up to?
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he brings up Job. Now, I wish, you know, if I were Job, I'd say, why did you bring me into this?
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Right? But, you know, he says, have you considered Job? And then the accuser accuses Job and accuses
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the Lord, right, of wrongdoing. Well, the only reason why this guy, you know, is so devoted to
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you is because you treat him with kit gloves. You're nice to him all the time. I mean, look at
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the guy. He's got it all. He's got it made. He's got big families. He's got wealth. He's got all
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this stuff going for him. If you just simply let me get at him for a little bit, he will curse you
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to your face. And that's the bet. And what's interesting about how the story ends is that
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even at the end of the story, Job has never let in on what this was all about. But he was God's
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champion in this conflict. And the accusations took the form of, eventually, other things in
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Job's case. And this is why we need a shield of faith. Now, we live in a world that believes the
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lies. We live in a world that is characterized by a kind of miasma. The atmosphere is just
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poisonous, and the prince of the power of the air is the reason for that. But because of that,
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falsehood fills the air, and people believe what they've been told. I really do believe that there
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is a direct connection, and this is scriptural, between what we believe and how we behave.
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If you want to know what a person really believes, just watch how they behave.
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That demonstrates what they really, that's what James was getting at, right?
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Now, getting back to the matter of children as artillery, what are we aiming at? As I noted,
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the glory of God. The target for our arrows is the glory of God, and our arrows are our children.
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Now, what I have to present to you at this time is a brief series of suggestions. I hesitate to
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call them instructions. They're based on Scripture, but they're also based on observation and personal
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experience. So with those things in mind, I'm going to run through a few things with you,
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and hopefully they'll be helpful. These things will be helpful. So when we think about our
00:28:42.460
children, and if we think about them as arrows that we are using to direct toward the glory of
00:28:51.420
God and aim at the glory of God, I think we need to sharpen them. We need to sharpen them.
00:28:56.880
we need to hone them and what we're looking to do is to develop them and develop their virtues
00:29:06.580
now the virtue when we think of the term virtue I think that there are a number of things that
00:29:12.800
we associate with that term that I'd like to reflect on with you a little bit about but one
00:29:17.940
of the things that I want you to know is that when the in antiquity when the term virtue was
00:29:24.400
used, it wasn't used in some of the ways that we tend to use it today. For example, in Aristotle,
00:29:32.420
we're told that the virtue of the knife is in the cutting. In other words, a dull knife is a
00:29:39.020
non-virtuous knife. A sharp knife is a virtuous knife. So in other words, there's a sense in which
00:29:47.820
virtue is associated with the effect and its ability to accomplish its intended purpose.
00:29:56.280
Another word that is used in association with virtue is arete, which is excellence. But another
00:30:03.160
thing to keep in mind is the very word virtue itself. Are you aware that it is derived from
00:30:09.300
the Latin vir for man. So virtue originally was associated with manliness, particularly
00:30:18.800
with martial sort of understandings of manliness. So kind of give you kind of the background
00:30:27.520
to help you understand how virtue has come to mean, what we mean when we use the term today.
00:30:33.280
a virtuous man would be a warrior who was effective at fighting. So if you were to list
00:30:44.760
the things that you would associate with an effective warrior, there would be a set of
00:30:51.780
characteristics that come to mind. Strength, for example. Strength would be something that we would
00:30:56.760
say helps is constitutive when it comes to effectiveness in combat. And if you just simply
00:31:04.760
play this out, you can make a list of things that you would look for if you were a recruiter
00:31:08.820
looking for men who could fight, including things that we might not associate with virtue. For
00:31:17.020
example, shrewdness. A shrewd warrior is a more effective warrior than a naive and clumsy one,
00:31:25.100
right? So therefore, shrewdness is virtuous in a warrior. Now, after a while, people realize you
00:31:35.400
can make lists for just about anything. So what do you want? We want a good potter. So what do
00:31:40.060
you want in a potter? You want somebody who's good with his hands. You want somebody who has a good
00:31:42.980
eye. You want somebody who has a good taste. And you can make a list of things that you say
00:31:46.540
characterize a good potter. Housewife, what do you look for in a housewife? What are the things
1.00
00:32:14.120
And Socrates is the one who's attributed with that move.
00:32:19.880
these are the things that we universally apply to everyone and those are moral virtues and those
00:32:27.720
are tremendously important and so we want to develop moral virtue in our children but
00:32:34.920
that kind of thing does not exhaust what we're up to when we're looking to sharpen or hone
00:32:43.600
our children for this task of glorifying God. There are other lists or other categories.
00:32:51.860
For example, practical virtue. If you've ever met somebody who was just really honest,
00:32:57.020
really nice, really good-hearted, and an absolute dolt when it came to social graces,
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00:33:04.360
I can think of a lot of them. Well, you don't want that. In other words, you've got a well-developed
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00:33:12.800
moral sense and zero practical sense. Moral virtue without practical virtue. We don't want that.
00:33:20.400
We want both. Intellectual virtue. That's another category that was examined and
00:33:28.860
thought deeply about in antiquity. That's just the kid who aces all the tests, who is able to
00:33:38.460
memorize things quickly and well, who can diagram a sentence like nobody's business,
00:33:45.040
you know, that kind of thing. Intellectual virtues are important. And martial virtue
00:33:50.740
is important as well. The ability to stand up for yourself and stand up for others and stand up for
00:33:58.300
the truth. These things tend to go together. A person who is cowardly in one sphere might be
00:34:05.240
able to demonstrate some virtue, martial virtue in another, but often these things can be found
00:34:11.660
together in the same person. Now, I want to address something that I think we all
00:34:18.340
more or less know, and that is when it comes to the virtues, mothers tend to focus on the moral
00:34:25.540
and intellectual virtues. This is why they make great, you know, homeschool teachers.
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00:34:31.420
They're concerned with, you know, children being honest, doing what they're told.
00:34:37.940
They're concerned with the performance of their children on tests and so forth.
00:34:44.740
You know, the tiger mom phenomenon was something that had been observed by people who were not from, you know, the Orient,
00:34:51.160
but were looking on the sort of the achievements of children who are from China or even India.
00:34:59.420
and there's just sort of this astonishment that we all have because we're outsiders looking in.
00:35:04.300
Why do these kids, you know, finish at the top of their class?
00:35:10.820
And by the way, my wife teaches piano and she's taught hundreds of students over the years
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00:35:15.260
and many of them are from the East, China, Korea, India.
00:35:21.200
And let me tell you something, those kids really do perform at a pretty high level.
00:35:26.260
It's because not only is Tiger Mom, but Lion Dad.
00:35:29.420
is on them all the time. I remember this one particular episode with my wife. She was teaching
00:35:35.940
a girl from Kerala, which is a province in India. And the father would just stand there the entire
00:35:43.100
time while the lesson was being conducted. And you knew that he was listening very closely to
00:35:50.240
every instruction my wife gave to that child. And you knew that that guy was remembering everything
00:35:55.700
she said, and that that would be repeated every day while she practiced over the course of the
00:36:01.260
week. He knew what she was supposed to do, and he was going to make sure that she did it.
00:36:06.600
And that's one of the big reasons why Indian kids and Chinese kids and Korean kids do so well,
00:36:12.520
is they have high expectations for the kids, and tiger mom and lion dad are on the job.
00:36:23.240
But there are important things that are left out when we think about these things.
00:36:29.160
And I often think that fathers are the appropriate schoolmasters in households when it comes to these matters.
00:36:36.400
Practical and martial virtues, I think, are the areas where fathers should step in.
00:36:42.040
One of the things that's been really fascinating to see demonstrated through the application of social science on Christian life and home life in particular is the causal relationship that's been identified between the faith of the father and the faith of the children.
00:37:03.180
This is one of those things that I don't think gets out as well as it should get out.
00:37:10.500
There's a very strong correlation between the faith of a father and the faith of his children.
00:37:15.160
A far greater impact than the mother has on the faith of children.
00:37:20.520
I don't want to discourage moms in this regard.
00:37:23.120
What I'm trying to do is put the pressure on you, Dad.
00:37:26.020
I mean, the numbers are skewed in such a way as to almost seem unbelievable.
00:37:35.740
And this is what happens when you're trying to operate from, you know, sort of off the top of your head, trying to remember things.
00:37:42.080
But there's a marvelous article in Touchstone magazine on this particular subject.
00:37:45.660
And I encourage you to look it up because it gets into the numbers.
00:37:48.960
There was a study done in Switzerland, of all places, in the early 1990s.
00:37:53.620
And what it was able to ascertain is that when a mother, a believing mother, takes a child to church consistently over the early years of a child's life, the likelihood of that child becoming a believing member of that church is like less than 20%.
00:38:14.140
But if the father does it, even without the presence of the mother, it goes up to like 80%.
00:38:24.600
And I think it's because, dads, our children look at us
00:38:29.180
when it comes to how to conduct yourself in the world at large.
00:38:36.120
Mom may run the daily affairs of the house and be loved for that and respected for that,
00:38:43.280
but children generally don't look to their mothers to know how to behave at work
00:38:48.500
or how to conduct yourself when you are negotiating with a used car salesman,
00:38:56.920
They tend to look at us whether we feel up to the task or not.
00:39:02.980
They associate adulthood and life in the world with us.
00:39:08.080
And that's why we have to take the time and invest the energy,
00:39:17.480
This is how you do this. This is how you do that. Have you seen that YouTube channel with that guy
00:39:23.280
who didn't grow up with a father who decided he was going to teach other people everything that
00:39:27.220
he wasn't taught? He's got like millions of people who watch him every episode. He's like the most
00:39:34.100
honest, he's like Mr. Rogers of dadness. You know, just about as just bland and just as everyday as
00:39:41.380
you could possibly be. Today we're going to learn how to change oil. Oh boy. We're going to learn
00:39:47.300
how to get into the car and get ourselves completely covered with greasy stuff. Great.
00:39:53.440
And then he shows you how to do it. That's what our kids need from us. They need us to take them
00:39:59.180
along with us when we're doing stuff. Not necessarily just to kind of get the lesson.
00:40:03.900
Let me tell you what I just did, Junior, but to actually watch us in action. That kind of
00:40:08.800
practical instruction is really important, not just for sons, but daughters as well.
00:40:14.640
So let me give you a list of things that I think are virtues that a father should work on
00:40:21.500
that are practical and martial in character. One of those is tolerance of pain.
00:40:31.440
Tolerance of pain. It's hard to get anything done in this world without a lot of frustration and
00:40:37.080
pain. And that doesn't mean that you're unfeeling. It doesn't mean that you're a jerk. It doesn't
00:40:43.200
mean that you inflict pain in other people unnecessarily. It doesn't mean any of that
00:40:46.280
stuff. It just means that you can put up with a lot. You need to be able to demonstrate it,
00:40:51.700
that you can put up with a lot, and that you don't get squeamish, and you're not afraid,
00:40:59.120
that this is something that should characterize any capable, competent person, an ability to
00:41:05.060
endure pain because we live in a world full of thorns and thistles. There's a lot of stuff out
00:41:10.860
there that hurts, and you need to be able to deal with it. This is not, you know, stoic. This is
00:41:17.040
just simply real. You got to be able to deal with pain, and we need to be able to help our kids with
00:41:23.140
that, which means that we don't coddle them. Like when I was a kid and I fell down and hurt myself,
00:41:32.500
The question I was asked is, how's the floor doing?
00:41:36.720
It was like no interest in whether, I mean, I remember being mad.
00:41:53.040
Connected to this, but different in important ways, is good judgment.
00:41:58.300
we need to help children exercise good judgment in the course of our lives there's no getting
00:42:06.240
away from judgment this idea that we can live a non-judgmental life is just foolishness
00:42:11.100
every day I make judgments about what I should eat how long I should sleep how much I should drink
00:42:17.280
who I should spend time with how fast I should drive on the highway I make judgments every
00:42:21.960
single day of my life. When it comes to judgment, there is no way, I'll put it this way. I remember
00:42:28.460
Richard John, who asked the editor at First Things, he said it this way. He said, a life without
00:42:33.680
judgment is a life without meaning. When you judge, you are saying, this is better than that.
00:42:43.920
Now, when it comes to the matter of, you know, Jesus saying, judge not so that you won't be
00:42:50.160
judged, well, there's something to note that I think is obvious there. If you're a judgmental
00:42:57.960
person, you will be judged harshly yourself. So the thing to keep in mind is that mercy
00:43:05.680
is also a form of judgment. So there are times when you're merciful because that is the best
00:43:14.840
thing to do at that particular moment. You're exercising judgment as you are demonstrating
00:43:20.860
mercy. Mercy is not like, you know, okay, judgment is off. We're in the judgment-free zone.
00:43:27.820
You know, right? You know, you see that. You've seen those commercials for gyms, you know,
00:43:33.520
judgment-free zone. Like, right, yeah. Why are you going to the gym in the first place? Because
00:43:37.220
you made the judgment, you're out of shape. That's why you went, you know, you don't like
00:43:40.960
push weights and run on treadmills because you like that sort of thing, which brings me back to
00:43:46.700
my earlier point about enduring pain. But anyway, so and related to this is risk assessment. We live
00:43:53.640
in a world right now that is risk averse, but there is no such thing as a risk-free life. In fact,
00:44:01.220
the riskiest way to live is to avoid all risk. It's stupid. You're going to fail for sure.
1.00
00:44:10.960
If you don't make calculated risks in the course of your life, just because you don't do something doesn't mean you've done nothing.
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00:44:21.040
You've done something which is nothing, and that is a foolish thing to do.
00:44:29.620
You need to assess risks, exercise judgment, and as best you can, make good judgments.
00:44:37.160
so helping your kids assess things and courses of action and exercise good judgment is part of what
00:44:46.060
i think we need to focus on as fathers mastery mastery we should simply be good at certain
00:44:53.820
things and we should strive for excellence uh in certain now you can't be good at everything
00:44:58.960
and basically i think the the best way to approach things is you put things into three categories
00:45:04.920
There are the sort of, you know, whatever stuff.
00:45:08.960
You know, I don't think I'll ever learn how to hand-churn ice cream.
00:45:13.420
I think people who hand-churn ice cream are awesome, but I'm just not going to do that.
00:45:19.100
Then there are things that you're passably good at, passably good at.
00:45:24.000
I can wire a room, but don't ask me to wire a breaker box, right?
00:45:31.200
but you know there are things that I can do passively and then there are a few things that I
00:45:37.400
strive to be a master of and those are the things that people pay me the bucks for you get my drift
00:45:46.600
those are the things that people turn to me for help with those things the passable stuff those
00:45:51.720
are the things that I can do for myself when I'm not in a position to pay somebody else to do them
00:45:55.900
And really, that's probably more often the case than I think we tend to think.
00:46:01.580
And then there are things that we can just say, whatever, I'm glad for somebody else
00:46:06.720
But we should at least get our kids to think about, what do you want to master?
00:46:13.200
What do you want to focus on being really good at?
00:46:19.100
I remember my oldest son, who's a really accomplished musician, he was also an athlete.
00:46:27.200
He was an athlete and a musician at the same time.
00:46:30.400
And he decided that he probably wasn't going to be a major league baseball player.
00:46:36.540
So it would be probably better to actually be able to play some music because at least there would be some places where he could do that.
00:46:46.340
But I remember early on, it was during the days of Guitar Hero.
00:46:52.220
It's where you could pretend that you were a great guitarist.
00:46:55.960
Basically, you were playing air guitar, but you sounded like you were in Aerosmith or something.
00:47:03.860
Well, he told me one day, he said, I don't know why all my friends are into that thing.
00:47:19.460
Courage is another thing that I think we need to work with our kids on.
00:47:27.040
What we're not looking at, we're not looking for people who are reckless
00:47:34.780
What we want to develop is good judgment so that our children can know
00:47:41.880
when it's appropriate to exercise some courage and take that risk,
00:47:46.820
that think doing something that's courageous in character. So we're not looking for, as I noted,
00:47:54.240
recklessness. With boys, and I think any father here understands what I'm getting at when I say
00:48:02.180
this. With boys, we want to develop manliness. It's just kind of a thing, you know, when you
00:48:09.660
come across another man as a man, you kind of assess, is this a guy that I can respect? And
00:48:16.820
then there are some things that you can do that are nonverbal in nature to demonstrate that you
00:48:21.740
are trustworthy as a man. And those are things that we want to help our sons with. You know,
00:48:27.380
there are subtle nonverbal clues. There are other things, being able to look people in the eye,
00:48:32.380
firm handshake, that kind of stuff. Forthrightness, being able to just say things the way they should
00:48:39.880
be said, when they should be said, being able to be direct without being caustic or offensive,
00:48:48.120
but just simply direct, that kind of forthrightness I think we want to develop. Magnanimity,
00:48:53.740
great souledness, this sense of plentitude that we as men should be able to, in some sense,
00:49:04.480
exemplify, where we have it within ourselves not to be petty, not to be vindictive, not to be
00:49:12.040
small-minded and vengeful, magnanimity. Protectiveness. I think that a man should be
00:49:21.200
protective of the people who are around him that are not in a position to protect themselves.
00:49:26.820
There's nothing shameful about finding yourself in a position where you're not able to protect
00:49:30.800
yourself. But if you're in a position to protect somebody else because you have the resources to
00:49:37.420
do so, you have a moral obligation to do it if other people nearby are threatened. It's something
00:49:45.420
that we should develop in our sons, but our daughters as well. And then wisdom. Wisdom
00:49:53.060
and intelligence aren't necessarily found in the same person. I don't know if you've noticed this.
00:49:58.580
Basically, what you have with the story of Forrest Gump is a guy who wasn't very intelligent,
00:50:03.760
but who was very wise. Wisdom and intelligence, different things, but we ought to be able to
00:50:11.940
develop and grow in wisdom. Have you ever thought about, you know, when you think about the Lord of
00:50:18.320
the Rings, who's the hero? Who's the hero? I think our minds immediately go to Frodo, you know,
00:50:25.240
or to Gandalf or to Aragorn. But I propose to you that Sam is the hero, the Lord of the Rings.
00:50:33.620
A man who was wise but simple. In fact, his simplicity was the source of wisdom for him.
00:50:40.740
It was like a reality check. Remember when he had the ring briefly and he had this fantasy of
00:50:46.100
becoming Sam the Great, the Sam the Great warrior? And then he corrects himself, says, Sam, what are
00:50:51.420
you doing? You're just Sam the Gardener. But in that moment, he was great. He demonstrated
00:50:58.740
great wisdom, more wisdom than many others who were far more powerful than he was,
00:51:04.480
who didn't possess that wisdom. Now, so that's the first thing. I think we should sharpen our
00:51:12.340
children and prepare them to be launched. But I think a couple of other things to note as I wrap
00:51:19.720
up. One is that you need to know your weapons, which means you have to think about what is this
00:51:26.200
child made for? What is this child made for? Yeah, I mean, we have this very large target called the
00:51:33.720
glory of God. But this particular child is going to glorify God in a particular way, and you need
00:51:41.360
to be able to work with that child and help that child understand his or her purpose and how that's
00:51:48.440
going to be accomplished. Now, in order for this to happen, you need to have a small measure of
00:51:54.800
knowledge about a wide range of things so that you have some sense of what may be in store for
00:52:03.080
your son or daughter. And at the same time, you'll need to study your own child in depth.
00:52:09.600
Make your child an object of study, not just somebody to like boss around and tolerate.
00:52:19.420
What is this child made for? What are the talents this child possesses? How might those talents be
00:52:27.260
encouraged and developed. I remember my second son, who's very bright, but is not academically
00:52:33.460
sort of, I guess, oriented. We're all into orientation these days. I'm not academically
00:52:43.440
oriented. But anyway, he wasn't. But when he was small, so he looked like the spitting image of
00:52:54.540
his older brother. In fact, if they had been born at the same time, you would have thought
00:53:00.000
they were identical twins when they were small. But my older son, he became the tall, thin one
00:53:04.360
and excelled in baseball and basketball and things like that. My second son, he had zero interest in
00:53:11.340
sports, none. He liked knocking things over. He liked building things. And I noticed early on that
00:53:19.860
even though he didn't have macro-coordination, he had micro-coordination. He was able to make
00:53:25.880
things that were really astonishing at an early age. And I saved some of them to his embarrassment.
00:53:34.020
But I would give him tasks. And one of the things I saw is that when I would give him a task, he
00:53:39.540
would step back and he would look at the job. I'm talking about physical work. Figure out the
00:53:44.800
quickest way and most efficient use of his time and energy to get it done. And then he'd get
00:53:49.820
it done in no time at all, right? I was not like that. I was a framer, a deck builder, and my boss
00:53:56.940
would always complain about how inefficient my movements were because I was a ditherer. You know,
00:54:02.420
I'd work on something, I'd stand back and think about it for a little bit, then I'd correct myself
00:54:06.580
in the middle of it and I'd start over again. You know, I was definitely a, you know, a money sink.
00:54:13.540
one of my one of my bosses he said I wish I had like a gauge on your forehead that I could see
00:54:20.080
how much money I'm losing on you every minute you know that was that was me when I saw my son in
00:54:25.380
action I said this kid is made for the trades this kid is made for the trades and when he got
00:54:31.400
out of high school we went out to we would go out to you know breakfast like once a month eat too
00:54:36.960
many pancakes that kind of thing and he said dad you know what do you think I should do I said well
00:54:41.360
you need to go to trade school. I said, why don't you take a gap year, go to trade school,
00:54:46.960
learn something, and then go to college to see how that goes. He says, what do you think I
00:54:51.440
should study? I said, welding. Something dangerous. Because if you study something that's not
00:54:57.480
dangerous, other people think they can do it, and then if they ever bring you into the job,
00:55:02.600
it's like you're kind of fixing a mess. But if they're afraid to try it themselves,
00:55:06.520
then they just call you. So you want to learn something dangerous. And so he said, okay. So
00:55:11.860
that's what he did. So now he's very good at his work. As I noted before, he's a foreman.
00:55:18.880
But so you study your children. Now it's nice when your children have the same interests as you.
00:55:24.520
It's great. And I'm happy to say that in each case, there's an interest that I share with my
00:55:30.960
children. But not all of the things that they're interested in, I have a great deal of interest in.
00:55:37.580
But I try to be informed. I try to be supportive. I try to, you know, encourage their development in
00:55:44.600
those areas. At this point, you know, they're adults and they don't need that from me anymore.
00:55:48.220
Basically, I need them. I'm the one who's calling them up for advice now. It's a nice place to be
00:55:52.860
in life where your children are giving you advice. And that's where I'm at. But if they do choose the
00:55:59.800
same occupation as you. Pray that they surpass you. I can't tell you the number of guys I've
00:56:08.140
met over the years who are threatened by their boys. Threatened that their boys will be better
00:56:14.040
than them. You know what? If you are that small, you should be ashamed of yourself.
00:56:21.020
Get over yourself. Delight in the achievements of your children and pray that they will go
00:56:28.640
further than you. That's a legacy. Something that we should all hope for. Which brings me to my
00:56:39.800
final point, prayer. Once the arrow is launched, it's launched, baby. It's not like going, running
00:56:46.900
after it like Bugs Bunny and blowing on it and trying to redirect it at that point. It's gone.
00:56:51.480
the child is launched. At that point, though, you can continue to have an influence in their lives,
00:56:59.020
but that influence is largely spiritual in character, and prayer is what should have
00:57:05.800
characterized your entire work as a father or a mother all the way along. But ultimately,
00:57:11.760
you're not in charge. You're a middleman. Embrace the middleman concept. You are a middleman.
00:57:18.780
There is upper management, and then there's you.
00:57:23.060
Upper management is up, and it's managing stuff.
00:57:28.740
And your job as the middleman is to represent upper management to the people on the line,
00:57:36.200
the kids, the wife, whatever, and to intercede for them seeking favor,
00:57:43.180
seeking favor from upper management in the interest of your subjects in the interest of
00:57:49.800
your kids this is what we saw job doing right he knew his kids and that's why he thought maybe they
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sinned i don't know i wasn't at the party they never invite me but knowing those kids
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I think some sacrifices ought to be made right now.
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And that's something that we should do on an ongoing basis.
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And obviously, we should seek, you know, things in their proper order, salvation, growth and grace.
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These are things that we should be praying for for our kids.
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We should be asking God to make the callings of our children clear.
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We believe that every vocation, that's what vocation means, calling, is a calling.
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You know, so my son is serving the Lord as a foreman at United Steel.
00:58:47.600
What's fun is that his brother-in-law now works for him, reports to him every day.
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But anyway, then we should be praying that they establish households of their own.
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This is something that we need to relearn in the West.
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In other parts of the world, the formation of households is primarily a father's responsibility.
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The father is involved with making sure his sons and daughters form new households.
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Now, I'm not saying we need to bring back arranged marriage or anything like that,
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Let me give you a couple of stories as I conclude.
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My daughter, very bright, scored in the top 1% in the SAT on both the math and the language.
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Her aspiration was to be, you know, a mom and to have a family of her own.
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There's nobody in your Sunday school class that makes a good match.
00:59:51.720
Where do you think you're going to find this super smart guy that you're going to be able to respect?
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So I sent her to college not because I wanted her to be a career woman and be a success.
1.00
01:00:07.460
Because I sent her to college because I wanted her to get married and be a success.
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01:00:11.640
And I knew that's where the pool of bright young men was likely to be found.
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You'll be the only girl in the entire program.
0.99
01:00:25.600
I did. This is my advice for her. And it'd be surrounded by a lot of socially inept men
01:00:30.960
who will love you and are going to make a lot of money. That was my suggestion to her.
01:00:40.420
So my daughter looked back at me and said, no, I don't want to do that. I said, well,
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what do you want to do? I said, I want to study Jane Austen. I said, well, of course.
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you and every smart girl in America want to study Jane Austen and you know the guys who
01:00:56.360
were in the Jane Austen program are not guys that I'm going to approve of
01:00:59.360
so I actually had to turn one of them away I said no baby that's that's not going to work
01:01:05.580
sweetie that guy goes home back to go starting over but anyway she did find the right guy
01:01:11.660
And after she found the right guy, she was in her senior year,
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I think I'm going to have to settle for being an academic.
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So I just started praying and praying and praying,
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My daughter asked me, Dad, were you praying for me?
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So I pray for my kids all the time, and they know it, and they want it.
01:01:51.760
You know, you don't want to be that parent who says, I'm praying for you,
01:01:59.900
You know, that's the kind of thing you get if it's all about correction, right?
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Sometimes when kids hear, I'm praying for you, that's what they're hearing.
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This is kind of a, this is like a, what's that term?
01:02:16.320
It's a passive-aggressive way for moms to control their kids.
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01:02:26.440
Pray for them and pray in such a way as they want you to be praying for them.
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praying for their vocations, praying for their future spouse,
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pray for those things, and then check in with them every once in a while.
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I need to know what's going on so I have a better sense of how they should be praying.
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That's, I think, the most important thing of all.
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If we invest ourselves and our kids in these ways,
01:02:59.080
then I think the prospects of hitting the target improve immensely.