THE LIVESTREAM - Are Christian Women āBirthing Machinesāļ¼
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Summary
In this episode, we talk about the lost doctrine of teleology and how it can be applied to the world and the church. We also discuss why Christian women are not birthing machines, and why Christian children are not tools on a secular assembly line.
Transcript
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In his lectures on Calvinism, Abraham Kuyper remarks that the central cry of the Reformation
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was not merely that God is sovereign over salvation, but that he is sovereign over all
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things. Notice, though, that this is not the same as saying that God is sovereign over everything,
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though both of those statements are true. In our time, we are convinced that God is indeed the
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ruler of the aggregate of all things, but we are not sure about the parts. We are like a boy
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standing in a messy room that needs to be cleaned up. The boy's mother has told him to get to work,
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but in the clutter, the boy cannot imagine how all the mess could be dealt with. In response,
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the mother grabs one toy and puts it away. The lesson is clear. Understand that the whole
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is made of parts. Most of us are familiar with the phrase, do not lose the forest for the trees.
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But in the current evangelical landscape, it might be more true that we have lost the trees
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All right, gentlemen, good to be back with you again. I'm looking forward to today
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talking about something that admittedly is going to be a little bit more heady initially,
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but we're hoping to find some really great application and really hoping to provide a tool
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that people can use to think, process, and determine between what is good and bad, right,
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wrong, moral, immoral. And in order to kind of let you know where we're going, we're going to
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start a little bit with what prompted me to think about this article. And so we're going to talk
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about two tweets by Owen Strawn, and we're going to mention them here at the beginning. And then
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after we talk about kind of the teleology argument and the tool that we want to provide, we'll come
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back and talk about Strawn's content and kind of analyze it. But here's what prompted my thinking.
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It was the Politico article about the extreme right-wingers who were having lots of kids, in particular, to affect cultural change.
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And then Strawn, he doesn't mention the article directly, but it was right when this article came out.
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So the first tweet says this, Christian women are not birthing machines, and children born
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to Christians are not widgets on a beat Islam or secularism assembly line.
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And, you know, Christian women are not birthing machines.
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For believers, having children is not ultimately about beating the Muslims in a childbearing
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Now, teleology is a fancy word for the study of purpose,
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the study of the ends that things are designed for.
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And traditionally, it's found in apologetics. It's a famous argument that is used to advance
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the idea that if a thing has an ultimate purpose, it must have a designer, right? And so that's
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where we're most used to seeing the idea of teleology. Teleology comes from the Greek word
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telos, which means end or purpose. So what is the purpose of a thing? What is the purpose of a thing?
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And this really largely was the project of a lot of classical thought.
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So as I've been thinking about the church in the world and where we find ourselves now,
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Christians in the world, one of the conclusions personally that I've come to, I don't know
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if you guys share it, is that one of the reasons we have a hard time calling something good
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or bad or virtuous or what's the opposite of virtue?
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We don't understand anymore why God made things.
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which the first question of the shorter catechism says,
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And so we think, aha, so now I know what life's all about.
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does not necessarily mean that it's sufficient, right?
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is that there is a lot of thought in Christian history
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why would they write a 600-page book on marriage, right?
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they investigate all of these diverse why do they write about every area of life why is it that
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coming out of the reformation calvin's contribution was an understanding of work
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an understanding of vocation an understanding of education it's because the view that god is
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sovereign over all things meant that they should go and investigate what his purpose had been
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in making all things yeah that's good and so if we lose first of all the belief i thought it was
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so interesting one of the dictionaries i quote it in the article defined teleology as the belief
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that there is a purpose in all things not just the study of all things it is it is a confessional
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statement to say that there's a purpose behind all things a purpose with wit for which all things
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were created that is a statement of faith that is not present in all world views right um and so
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just to get the, to get the discussion going, I, I thought, I, I wanted to ask you guys if you have
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any thoughts or comments on the lost doctrine of theology, because it seems like when we get into
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debates, the only thing we can fall back on is, well, that's bad because God said it was bad.
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That's not, I don't want to dismiss that. The, the Christian who says God's word says it,
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that's enough for me fantastic but why why is something good or bad well it's it's because it
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aligns with the purpose for which god created it right right insofar as it actually aligns with
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its purpose correct and go ahead what do you think let's see tom i got an interesting thought um
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so i've listened been listening to jordan peterson for a while we actually went and saw him live he
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had a good discussion and a point that he's brought up a lot is he says that every action
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every thought will always be oriented towards a final, a terminal, and an ultimate belief.
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So when we, we promised we were going to get heady in this episode, we see an object such
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as a door handle. There's no actual perception of that object that does not also include action
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with it. So individuals that have had some type of brain damage, what will happen is they don't
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have any inhibition to then carry out that action. And they'll see something like the hammer,
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or see something like a doorknob, and be inclined to just pick it up. Because all of our perception
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to the world is geared around action, is geared around purpose and use and utility. And so we
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think about how we want to orient the world, what are these objects, what are these institutions
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for? You will populate it with something. Jordan Peterson's point in a lot of his lectures has been
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there will be something you orient yourself to. He supplies God as the highest thing that
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one could aspire to. He doesn't have the biblical God in view. But ultimately, every person will
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have a God, lowercase g, or will be aligned and oriented to the highest true good, which is the
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God of Scripture. But every person will fill in somewhere along that line what it is they aspire
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to, and then they'll take and they'll orient the world around them to, now here's what I do in
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service of that highest good. So my highest good is, as you mentioned, glorify God and enjoy Him
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forever. But then also, I'm a man, so aspiring to courage, the virtue that was present in the life
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of Christ, as that fills out a man, now a husband, now a father, now an employee, a churchman,
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a this, that, or the other, as you come down that tree, those objects that you see around you will
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begin to orient you towards, that's what I do with that. That's what the institution of marriage is
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for. This is why my children are given to me, to serve this purpose, to serve that purpose,
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orienting them towards that which is highest and good. So don't ever think that, well, you can
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worship God or you can just walk aimlessly through life. Now, walking aimlessly through life shows
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is that you have a God and you have a higher purpose
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is just a very low base level one with no aspiration,
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no imagination, no virtue to actually supply your life
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So that's what it came from, from what you said earlier.
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you know, part of it is because one of the highest virtues
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is personal happiness, personal fulfillment and-
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which let me give a pause because this is not coincidental.
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and structured psychology and the understanding
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And at the pinnacle of his hierarchy is self-actualization.
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And so that is like Wes said, that's a religious claim.
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That's a purpose statement, the purpose driven life.
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We as Christians look at that and say, no, it's not.
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Yeah, so if self-fulfillment is the highest aim
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Um, you know, and so, um, this person is not making me happy and then, you know, and then
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you don't want to do anything in that marriage that, um, that would take away other things,
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you know, where the, where the marriage, you know, is meant to make you happy, but then
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you don't want the marriage and it's aimed to make, uh, the self happy to squelch, you
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know, um, or threaten another avenue for self-fulfillment and happiness like career or, or, um, or
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your own, uh, physical attractiveness, you know, like I can't be getting pregnant, you
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know, like it's gonna, we're gonna, you know, be all, all, you know, out of shape and have lines
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and, you know, blah, blah, blah. So, so yeah, I think, you know, a big part of it is what do we
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think the highest aim is that that filters into other things. And then I was also just thinking
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again, in line of marriage, you know, it's, it's God, not Adam, who first takes notice of,
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you know, Adam being alone, says it's not good for the man to be alone. And we often, I think
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this is a fairly modern um understanding but even as evangelicals and christians we we quickly read
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in there that one of the chief purposes of marriage is for companionship and so we'll say
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you see uh it's not good for adam to be alone and we read when we when we hear god say that it's not
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good for the man to be alone we immediately assume loneliness relational loneliness and uh so god is
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taking note that adam was relationally lacking and needed friendship companionship so he made
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the woman first and foremost as a companion whereas that's all of that's icg did into the
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text i do think that that is one of the purposes of marriage but to assert that as the first or
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chiefest purpose of marriage i i don't think you can argue that straight from the scriptural text
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you would have to read that in because it's entirely plausible and i think more likely
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that God is saying, it's not good for the man to be alone because on his own, he cannot fulfill
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the work that I've assigned to him, his mission. He has a task. So it's not just about, well, Adam
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won't have sweet, relational, intimate time. No, it's no, Adam has a job to do and it's a two-man
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job. So anyways. Okay, good. So the big, I guess if viewers and listeners can get one
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thing, at least from this opening section, it is the idea that how is God glorified, right? The
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chief of men of man is to glorify God. How is God glorified? And that's why I want to read a quote
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from Bavinck. This is from his... By podcasting, right? Maybe. What's the purpose of podcasting?
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Bavinck, oh, I misplaced it now. Bavinck says this,
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um the existence of a thing and the specificity of a thing the multiplicity of life and being the
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infinite diversity among creatures in kind gender longevity rank social position wealth etc
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are all attributable to attributable to god's good pleasure and god's good pleasure alone and
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when we say this word pleasure we need to understand that this is god's good purpose
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right um that's a little bit of an older word um it's it doesn't mean like he you know the way you
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have pleasure when you eat a chocolate sundae right his good purpose his good will so the
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specific diverse the reasons the reason why there are a thousand probably more than that species of
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birds right or a lot more um yeah um all the all the diversity of life that we see on the planet
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it is because all of those serve a purpose in god's good will and pleasure yeah for the record
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you need to be boffin maxing if you are not out there filling your bookshelf with a very expensive
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copy of the reform dogmatics you're missing out uh bombing's one of probably the greatest minds
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the 20th century 21st century we haven't had a lot uh bovink is a bright spot there at the turn
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um just even going back a little bit to marriage and everything a lot of people will think
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so they'll have these roles assigned and they'll be well i have this career and i have this
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they oftentimes think they don't have to choose i was reading a new yorker article
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and it was this woman that she said i decided to take this radical act of self-fulfillment
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self-authenticity i'm gonna have children but i'm gonna stick to my career and i'm just gonna bring
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them with me i can't believe she cited it that she actually said it out loud but at the end of
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her article she talks about how her daughter teenage daughter recently yelled at her you
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love science more than me. So she had all their kids all through their growing up into Africa to
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go find out different species of fungi, thinking I can do both. I can have this end as a career
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woman and advancing science and publishing and everything like that. And I can be a mom and I can
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do this too. And what she found out, what she told on herself, whether she admits it or not,
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she couldn't. And what she actually ended up probably doing is neither one of them. Well,
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you are limited. God has given you these specific things and you can't do all of them.
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So you can choose, or it can be chosen for you.
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And it's not pretty to be 40 years old thinking that you could do this, that, and the other,
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and realizing I actually couldn't do all of them, and I didn't even do any of them well.
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So that's actually important because Bavin goes on to say that it's not just physical things.
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It's even that God's sovereign will in creating a purpose, an end for all things,
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includes immaterial, intangible things like economics or mercy or the covenant that brought
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about redemption. All of those things have an intended end, an intended purpose. And Bavink's
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point is that all of those serve, are supposed to serve the end to which God appointed them.
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So the answer to the question of how do we know
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It's when any particular thing, idea, or system
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Back to the initial analogy of the messy bedroom.
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Okay, now I've got to understand several purposes.
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But there are purposes behind all of these things.
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And so unwittingly, we end up not glorifying God
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Right, the evangelical church has lost the ability
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the evangelical church has lost the answer to that
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the ability to answer the how part of that question
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is because of our giant amoeba, all-encompassing androgyny.
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if you are a slave or a master, if you are a Greek or a Jew, there are obligations,
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moral obligations from the scripture that come with all these different stations of life that
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are incumbent upon us and that are God-ordained, be it nationality, be it sex, be it age,
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you know uh single or married um all these things uh what come with these stations of life various
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stations of life are various uh duties and responsibilities and ways of glorifying god and
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enjoying him forever but if we just if we just take this bodiless androgynous soul that's how
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evangelicals are the reason they don't think there's a particular how to the to the follow-up
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question to the question of, you know, what is the chief end of man? Well, it's just to glorify God.
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And the reason they don't, it's not even that, they wouldn't even be aware that they don't have
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an answer to the follow-up question of how, because they don't even know that there is a
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follow-up question. They don't even see why that follow-up question of, well, how do you glorify
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God? They don't even see the relevancy of that because they see man as, for the most part,
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mankind as um as spiritual uh with with basically no importance on the physical as androgynous with
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no importance placed on on sex um as eternal with no importance placed on the temporal or the tangible
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like at every single level they have um evangelicals have in large part wholesale
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while resisting you know the transgender you know movement and ideology in a spiritual sense they've
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adopted it wholesale like hook line and sinker this um this this uh you know there's just uh
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there's just people you know um there's just people and uh people are called to glorify god
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and there's there's you know there's just one general mass of humanity and and so
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however you do that it's you know there's only one way to do that and but that's paul paul talks
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about you know remaining when the lord calls you he talks about this in relation to marriage to an
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non-believer, but it also has application to other things as well. But 1 Corinthians 7,
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whatever station, remain in whatever station you were in when the Lord called you. And what he's
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saying there is not only being content, but then he's also saying, and now that you are a Christian,
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there will be specific, tangible outflows of what Christian faith looks like in that scenario.
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It reminds me also of the centurions, the Roman soldiers who came and approached Jesus
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and essentially what they're asking is now that we're christians do we need to quit our job
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right and jesus doesn't say uh yes he doesn't say oh yeah a christian can't be in the military
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right um even a military for rome which is not particularly great country no um you know but
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that's not jesus answer uh he instead he says well be content with your wages which implies you can
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keep your wages which implies you can keep your job uh be content with your wages do not take
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from others what doesn't belong to you. And I'm sure that if they pressed him, he'd have more to
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say as well. But the point is this, that essentially Jesus is saying, he doesn't respond
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to the Roman soldiers and say, that's a dumb question. Because they say, what must we do to
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follow you? He doesn't say, well, that's a dumb question because you must do what everyone should
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do. It's the same thing for everyone. It's one size fits all. Glorify God and enjoy him forever
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in a very abstract ethereal way that's not like he totally understood their question he didn't
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demean them or chastise them for asking it he knew what they were getting at is um they were
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assuming baked into the question was jesus we know that for us to be your disciple will look
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different than for others based off of our station of life and so what are the particulars
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for our purpose in light of glorifying God. And Jesus essentially is saying,
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good question. Glad you asked. Yeah. So, all right. Well, let's go ahead and cut to a commercial
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all right well welcome back uh we were talking about spirit we're talking about body and there's
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a very important distinction. Christians can even get it wrong, almost thinking in a dualistic sense
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that their spirit and their body. No, they are very closely integrated. Jesus, we do not say he
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was God housed in a body or just dwelling in a body. He was fully God and fully man in one being
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in a union of those two. There's one passage too. It's in 2 Corinthians chapter 3, chapter 5.
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Paul describes being naked. I take that to be the time when we are dead and our spirit goes to be
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with the Lord. But he says, we long to put the dwelling back on. Spirit makes use of the way
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God has created our spirits is they make use of the body. That is where they are at home. And so
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it's in the body here that we glorify God for a time because of death, because of sin. We will
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to be absent from the bodies, to be present to the Lord, but then actually going back into another
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body. We will at the resurrection, put this body back on, glorified, mortal. It will be immortal
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now. The mortality will be swallowed up. Death will be no more. And so we should never be thinking
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in dualistic terms i've got this spirit here and that's what's of real value the imperishable
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beauty and then the body is just kind of housing it and going along right paul doesn't describe
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the death the death of a believer as um um being freed he describes it as being naked yeah and
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then he says um that it's uh that the desire will be um not not a rejoicing of oh i'm free from the
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shackles and the prison of the flesh uh but the desire will be to be further clothed yeah the
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the doctrine of glorification is not just re-clothed,
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will be more appropriately and thoroughly clothed
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will better match the sanctification in the spiritual.
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but free from sin, free from pain, free from death.
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that we are to glorify God and enjoy him forever.
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But the way that we do that is by knowing the purpose
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vocations, stations, whatever you wanna call it,
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and also the purpose of the things with which we interact.
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And how are we supposed to know the purpose of all of those things?
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Well, I want to go to Genesis 2 for a moment and show that God expects us to understand
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the purpose of the material world, at least, in order to exercise dominion over it.
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And when we look at Genesis 2, it's such an interesting connection.
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And this is going to get back to the marriage thing in the Strawn post.
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But God creates man in his own image, male and female, and he gives him dominion over
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the earth, and he gives him the mandate, be fruitful and multiply. Dominion and being fruitful
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and multiply are linked. How is Adam going to exercise dominion over the entire earth? He's
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finite. He's not going to do it. He's going to do it by being fruitful and multiplying, and so that
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his seed spreads across the earth. So God has set this up, right? It was intentional. Adam's
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looking around he's like okay great be fruitful multiply he's like okay i see two you know dogs
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over there i can see how they can be fruitful multiply as a male and a female and there's
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two cows there and they're going to be fruitful multiply and what am i going to do god i see a
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dog over there i hear a dog over there fair enough um and so god brings the animals to him to name
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right and commentators calvin gill others have noticed the link between when god when when god
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creates Eve. He tells Adam to name Eve. The name that he gave her was not just a designation like
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the Borg would designate, you know, four, four, three, two or whatever. Right. It's not just some
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random set of symbols to encapsulate something so I can like not have to call you. Hey, you thing
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over there every time. The name embodies the purpose. The name did. And when he named Eve,
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it embodied her purpose. You are a woman. Eve means, and we all know the Hebrew
00:28:48.360
translation of eve is uh boss babe career woman that's that's kind of implied in some of the in
00:28:55.060
some of the older greek commentaries maybe but the mother of all living the mother of all mother is
00:29:00.420
contained yes and and adam when god gives him the responsibility of naming all the creatures
00:29:05.360
including his wife um that's uh designating to adam uh authority that's yes that's where i'm
00:29:12.500
going and so the very first the very first act of dominion and the very first act of science it is
00:29:19.220
taxonomy but i'm arguing it was teleology he was looking at those animals and he was understanding
00:29:26.980
their purpose and he was naming them appropriately it was not just organizing them which which is
00:29:33.240
biology right but it was also and and um gill's got a great quote on this he said it was a task
00:29:38.880
appointed by God to test the wisdom of Adam, to prove the wisdom of Adam, so that he would give
00:29:43.800
not just a name, but also the function of the thing. Wow. So Adam, it's all connected. He's
00:29:50.540
been told to be fruitful and multiply. He's been given dominion. And God seems to be saying,
00:29:55.940
you can't, first of all, be fruitful and multiply and exercise dominion without a proper helpmate.
00:30:01.080
But you also can't exercise dominion without a proper understanding of the purpose of these
00:30:05.880
things that you're going to be ruling over. And so right from the beginning, mankind is charged
00:30:11.600
with understanding the purpose that God created something to achieve. That's cool. And, and,
00:30:18.000
and that is, I, I don't know, I'm, I'm 42. I've not thought much about this, right? So I'm not
00:30:24.340
coming at this as an expert, but I just think, what is the voice that the church ought to have
00:30:28.600
to the world? This is your purpose. Like you mentioned the transgender debate, Joel.
00:30:32.340
I'm not coming at this as an expert, but I did sleep in a holiday.
00:30:39.920
We're not just arguing about, you know, should a guy wear a dress or not?
00:30:43.880
We're arguing about the purpose of gender, of sex, right?
00:30:52.820
It's not that we don't want it to be two dudes because it's icky to us.
00:31:01.220
it's not that profound but we've replaced purpose with pleasure great purpose with pleasure so like
00:31:06.620
when we think of sex um the reason why we we think that it's you know transferable and you you know
00:31:11.880
and you can you can switch teams and change jerseys and whatever is um because uh we we don't
00:31:18.380
define sex anymore by purpose correct um and so sex doesn't have to be fruitful that's why it's
00:31:24.480
it's perfectly fine um for you know to have you know just a carved out hole you know or a piece
00:31:30.240
of your arms so to your abdomen you know like because it's uh it's like well that's but that's
00:31:35.240
that's it's dead that it's you know it's you're you're a shell of a of a fruitful human being
00:31:40.580
you you've just um eradicated fruitfulness but uh fruitfulness isn't um is no longer the purpose
00:31:46.840
has become pleasure the purpose has become pleasure and so yeah so if it's not if it's
00:31:52.460
not about purpose then all those things are but that i the last thing i was gonna say real quick
00:31:57.460
is that has very much been embraced by Christians, very much. I mean, I can't tell you like in
00:32:04.320
premarital counseling and just in my own life, like the Lord had to get a hold of me and my wife
00:32:08.960
and help us to see these things clearly. But Christians have very much bought into the idea
0.99
00:32:14.120
of detaching sex from procreation. We would think that procreation is maybe one of the purposes,
1.00
00:32:23.220
you know one of and i would say there the bible does state more than just one uh purpose but uh
00:32:29.160
that's a it's a pretty modern way of of thinking where procreation is um on you know just one on
00:32:37.120
the list and lower down lower down on the list at all if even on the list at all yeah exactly so
00:32:42.140
yeah sex is the the biggest one that we've done a terrible job with um the catholic church did a
00:32:48.080
good job for a long time i was about to say there was a good theology of the body and it was the
0.58
00:32:51.760
catholic church because two if pleasure is the ultimate goal the ultimate telos of the sex act
00:32:57.780
then pleasure needs to be put above everything so you'd have to elevate anything that would
00:33:02.100
contribute to that as a higher purpose highest purpose so if it's more pleasurable it's better
00:33:06.000
exactly more purpose more pleasurable it's better um same way if it was for bonding well then if
00:33:11.200
bonding is the most important thing then research should go into how best couples should should
00:33:15.140
bond again whatever it makes binds two people together or you could just well if it's just
00:33:19.680
for bonding if it's just for pleasure it could be anyone it could be it could actually be a man
00:33:24.620
and a man speaking hypothetically as paul would say i speak in a human way but seriously i have
00:33:29.180
heard like new evangelical type you know progressive you know they're not christians
00:33:34.180
but but who still carry the christian name and this is exactly the argument that they would make
00:33:38.640
they would say well um if homosexuality wasn't something uh that that god planned for and allows
00:33:44.520
for that's permissible then why did god give men a prostrate a post i'm sorry prostate um and there
00:33:52.700
and i know it's it's crude but it's it's their argument it's worth mentioning um but basically
00:33:57.420
they're saying that um if pleasure can be had right then it that um then that proves the pleasure
00:34:04.360
proves the purpose because everything is that pleasure first so the top of of the pyramid of
00:34:10.040
of um the top of the pyramid for purpose is pleasure it's this hedonistic man was designed
00:34:16.280
for his own pleasure not not god's own glory but his own pleasure and so um so if if somebody likes
00:34:22.760
something and finds something pleasurable um then it it doesn't matter if it's not fruitful or if it
00:34:29.340
doesn't work or if it's not good for society or if it doesn't align with scripture or tradition
00:34:33.540
to the human beings in it right exactly it doesn't matter if it would end the human race if it was
00:34:37.880
followed through by everyone hiv doesn't matter exactly yeah it does not matter um it's um i i
00:34:44.780
find pleasure and therefore this is the purpose this must be the purpose and for the record the
00:34:50.500
view for probably close to 1800 years has been that to pause or to inhibit the telos of the sex
00:34:57.940
act is a sin right and for the record as birth control came on the scene uh we lost the catholic
00:35:03.920
protestant majority in this country as christians stopped having that many kids right i'm not adding
00:35:08.860
my interpretation or my view on that i think i'm still working through it but just as a brute
00:35:12.480
matter of historical fact the church has always said that to interrupt this to just to stop it
00:35:17.600
from reaching its telos is a sin and we see as that became disconnected became more about pleasure
00:35:23.560
became more about this became more about that that we actually lost the cultural christian hegemony
00:35:28.700
here that we had in the united states you can draw a direct line to as the fertility rate dropped and
00:35:42.840
So maybe we should just take the thing and use it
00:35:48.780
Wes, he sent me a screenshot from Keller's book,
00:36:00.720
one of the meanings of marriage, the purposes of marriage.
00:36:11.500
at least in orienting and saying that the primary purpose
00:36:36.960
And you know, there are verses in Ecclesiastes
0.88
00:36:48.500
having a good relationship with your wife by any means,
00:37:00.640
not put in the back or removed from the list altogether.
00:37:10.360
so commit and submit to that being the orientation,
0.73
00:37:21.560
or made unwise choices early, but it is borne out.
00:37:24.940
I've heard from midwives, yeah, the women that had children in their early 20s, they
00:37:29.480
have much easier labors, shorter labors, less painful.
00:37:32.800
So when we submit to what God designed the thing to do, the other things that surround
00:37:37.760
it, from reduced pain and childbearing, to pleasure, to bonding, all those things, they
00:37:44.120
Doing it God's way means all these other things around that we don't understand how
00:37:48.040
they work better, the exact mechanism whereby if a woman has a child in her early 20s, that
00:37:52.840
there's less pain less this that or the other later on we don't understand why but you can
00:37:56.940
actually just say well it looks like the lord designed this for this and so in submission to
00:38:00.860
that i'm going to trust that he intends that for my good and for my benefit good so i have a i have
00:38:06.740
a theory that a lot of the bad takes from evangelicals and from the church in our time
00:38:12.640
can be directly traced back or at least related to the fact that we've forgotten the telos the
00:38:21.260
Take for instance, the Christians who call for open borders,
0.54
00:38:26.260
the compassion of allowing illegal immigration
0.96
00:38:37.960
God has a purpose for the intangible things as well,
00:38:42.620
because they don't know that the purpose of a nation,
00:38:49.200
with any sort of quasi-Christian sounding statement
00:39:15.160
I have not thought as deeply about Telos as I should.
00:39:19.920
and so when someone says something that kind of sounds
00:39:51.700
Civilian ownership of body armor is about helping people to have increased power to resist tyrants and criminals.
00:40:00.280
And so Armored Republic is about helping you to preserve your God-given rights to the honor of the Lord Jesus Christ
00:40:06.720
because he is the king of kings, and he governs kings, and he will judge them.
00:40:11.020
this is armored republic and in a republic there is no king but christ
00:40:17.420
we are free craftsmen and we are honored to be your armor spread choice
00:40:23.820
all right so welcome back in this final segment there is a verse
00:40:40.600
my goodness if i've heard this verse once i've heard it a thousand times galatians 3 28 and
00:40:47.040
praise god for scripture this is not to be like i'm tired of this verse tired of the book of
00:40:50.740
galatians perverted tired of it yes tired of that not tired of the verse because it's a glorious
00:40:55.340
truth uh so paul in a feet in galatians he's defending justification by faith alone and he's
00:41:00.960
insisting that in a type of ethnic heritage or inheritance or circumcision of the flesh
00:41:05.520
that it does not avail one to grace and so building on that argument all the way up to the
00:41:11.140
pinnacle galatians 3 28 he says there's neither jew nor greek neither is there slave nor free
00:41:17.160
there's neither male nor female for you are all one in christ jesus the way that verse is typically
00:41:22.020
used is to say there's no more race and even then some egalitarians or some soft complementarians
00:41:28.080
now like sam storms well there's no longer man and woman either so in christ now there's this
00:41:32.640
new category or these natural categories these natural distinctions these natural ways of being
00:41:37.920
they no longer exist they've all been abolished and we are nature is completely abrogated that
00:41:43.400
would be the position is that grace destroys nature grace uh i think of stephen wolf's book
00:41:49.120
grace destroys t levels it takes everything that's natural and proper to man and it blurs it it makes
00:41:54.220
it androgynous and indistinct and and that is not that is not the reform position that's not been
00:41:59.420
the roman catholic position going back before the reformation grace does not abolish nature
00:42:04.360
but perfect it so grace certainly in relation to salvation greek or jew is not on higher footing
00:42:10.160
man or woman just by virtue of being man or woman is not on higher footing but those categories
00:42:14.660
most certainly still exist of course what grace does is it perfects those so then if i am a greek
00:42:20.300
and a man and a slave i'm able to be a good virtuous godly man a godly worker a godly employee
00:42:27.360
godly in my ethnicity not to the destruction of those but to the perfection of them so please do
00:42:33.380
not use that tweet or do not use that verse uh in a tweet or try to argue that question distinctions
00:42:38.840
of nation or man and woman are invalidated that is a dumb argument it's ahistorical and you should
00:42:45.020
stop it yep good all right all right so uh what we started with some of the some of the i guess
00:42:52.560
the, I don't know, I don't want to, I don't want to assign too much of motivation or anything to
00:42:58.100
Owen Strong. But to me, to us, it certainly seems like he's making a couple of errors about the
00:43:04.060
purpose of things in his two tweets. So again, the context, at least in my mind, is that this
00:43:11.180
political article came out and it was somewhat, it was somewhat, you know, unbiased, like it wasn't,
00:43:34.400
a conference that happened called the natal conference.
00:43:48.200
it's a good reason to miss it and it was not necessarily a christian conference um the
00:43:52.060
speakers were simply uh speakers who for a variety of reason were arguing that people
00:43:58.660
and particularly it seems like conservatives need to have more kids and there were economic
00:44:03.960
arguments um there were um arguments of the fact that western values are being destroyed and so
00:44:12.660
conservatives and christians ought to have more kids um there were there were lots of arguments
00:44:20.520
this idea that, well, we just want more whites,
00:44:27.000
And it seems like Strawn is reacting to this view
00:44:34.000
from the natal conference that some people say,
00:44:36.240
we need to have kids so that there are more of us
00:44:42.400
There's more of us than more libs in our country.
1.00
00:44:45.740
So that there are more of us than, you know, the wicked.
00:44:52.940
And so using, seeing your children as a means to overtake, overwhelm, influence the society that you live in.
00:45:08.380
Some type of projectile that could do damage if leveled at the enemy.
00:45:17.200
Well, okay, so that goes to his first, second tweet.
00:45:27.120
about beating the Muslims in a childbearing arms race.
00:45:30.920
Children are not given to us by God as pawns
0.72
00:45:39.700
But I said, aren't pawns a piece in a game of war?
00:45:43.220
by his own admission um like like he's saying our children are not to be involved in the war
00:45:51.900
that god is conducting well the the quote that you the verse that you just quoted joel
00:45:55.560
yeah psalm 127 right and then his second quote or his first one that i quoted earlier to remind
00:46:01.220
us was christian women are not birthing machines and children born to christians are not widgets
00:46:06.520
on a, quote, beat Islam or secularism, unquote, assembly line.
00:46:12.840
For the record, too, that's in logical fallacies.
00:46:15.620
That would be what's called the poisoning the well fallacy.
00:46:18.060
So when you take someone's position and you put it in nasty terms like that,
00:46:23.440
So if we were to say, like, women are mothers that do the wonderful work
0.92
00:46:29.920
the same thing as he's saying, but I just said it in less crude terms,
00:46:33.080
right 90 of people would agree that he's just casting it in this negative nasty light and
00:46:37.980
paul relates it the bible says she will be saved through childbearing it intimately connects her
00:46:44.120
faith the woman is not literally saved by physically giving birth to children but her
00:46:48.200
faith is borne out if she is married in the having of children in the raising them and the fear and
00:46:53.200
admission of the lord paul without qualification without a thousand nuances she will be saved
00:46:58.980
through childbearing she perseveres in faith and good works he connects the faithfulness right the
00:47:04.440
you're talking about the end of woman of salvation to the process of having children
00:47:10.160
right so that's first timothy 2 15 and with that you know so some guys would interpret that just
00:47:15.020
to play the devil's advocate because i'm 100 with you but just for the listener so you'll hear if
00:47:19.840
you look that up if you look up commentaries well you know if you look up dead guys then you'll be
00:47:24.540
fine but if you look up commentaries you know modern commentaries written you know in the last
00:47:28.400
few decades they're going to say of first timothy 2 15 uh that and and she will be saved the woman
00:47:34.800
will be saved through childbearing they're going to uh translate interpret that phrase saved through
00:47:40.320
childbearing is uh not saved by childbearing but rather saved through the treacherous dangerous
00:47:47.040
process of childbearing delivered from the danger so in the same way that a ship would be delivered
00:47:53.040
through a storm it doesn't mean that the hurricane um over the water saved the ship uh the ship being
00:47:59.480
saved through the storm means that it was um it was uh protected um it uh you know going through
00:48:06.900
this dangerous so there are guys today guys would translate that and say well in you know in ancient
00:48:12.740
times and for most of human history until very modern recent times childbearing was a very uh
00:48:17.700
dangerous um affair you mean that's gotten absolutely true it has a very dangerous affair
00:48:22.700
where where many children died in childbearing many mothers died in childbearing and so mothers
00:48:27.440
were eager to have children because of the blessing that children are and desirous to be mothers
00:48:32.100
and yet they would enter into the labor process with much anxiety and worry and likely having
00:48:40.400
people you know loved ones and friends that they knew that had died in childbearing but
00:48:45.360
if a woman continues with faith and propriety and good works, if she fears the Lord, then she doesn't,
00:48:51.880
if she fears the Lord, then she doesn't need to fear childbearing because the Lord will preserve
00:48:55.660
her through the storm of childbearing. I don't think that's right. Is that generally true? Yes.
00:49:02.880
Is that what the text is saying? No. I think that very clearly, you look at pretty much any commentary
00:49:08.800
before the 1960s, very clearly what is being said there is the same principle, the very same
00:49:14.980
concept is what james is saying that faith without works is dead so it's so it's not uh they'll be
00:49:20.560
saved through the dangerous process of childbearing saved meaning um physically sustained um and it's
00:49:27.060
also not they'll be um eternally saved uh through the work of childbearing um apart from uh grace
00:49:34.020
and faith in christ so it's neither of those instead it's what what james says faith without
00:49:39.540
works is dead. You show me your works without faith, but I will show you my faith by my works.
00:49:49.120
So according to James, it's not that we're saved by faith and works. We're saved by faith alone.
00:49:57.460
But true saving faith will always be evidenced by good works. And I think what Paul is doing,
00:50:04.460
it gets back to full circle in our conversation, right? The chief end of man, in a general sense,
00:50:09.140
mankind is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. But then we ask the question, how? And one of the
00:50:13.840
ways that we answer that, you spell this out, Michael, there's two avenues to answering how.
00:50:18.700
It's all the stuff around us as we engage all these things, but then also ourselves. Who am I?
00:50:24.260
I'm mankind. I'm a human being created in the image of God. Yes. Okay. But am I male or female?
00:50:28.760
Am I child or parent? Am I slave? Am I free? Am I Greek? Am I Jew? These kinds of things.
00:50:34.880
And when you begin to answer those questions, I think all Paul is doing in 1 Timothy 2
00:50:38.400
is he's just putting more specificity on what James is saying. So James is saying we're saved
00:50:45.400
by faith alone, but true saving faith is never alone. It will always be evidence and accompanied
00:50:50.600
by good works. And then Paul is just applying that to a specific, not just man in general,
00:50:56.140
mankind, but to a woman. And he's saying, oh, and if you're a woman, all Paul is doing in my
00:51:02.240
assessment in 1 Timothy 2.15 is he's literally almost verbatim just repeating James and saying,
00:51:08.400
the woman will be saved by faith and works, because faith without works is dead. And what
00:51:16.680
is the chief work for a woman? Childbearing. And so he's saying, you've got to have kids
1.00
00:51:21.700
to be eternally saved? No. Or you'll be physically and temporally saved through this treacherous
00:51:27.680
process of childbearing? No. He's saying, you will be saved by grace alone, through faith alone,
00:51:31.720
in Christ alone. But anyone who actually has saving faith, it will be evidenced by good works.
00:51:36.920
and for a woman the chief of these good works in this life as a godly woman will be motherhood
00:51:42.800
it comes right after too i do not permit a woman to teach right for adam was not deceived
00:51:46.980
but he became a transgressor yep don't teach yep you became a transgressor persevere he says in
00:51:52.940
faith love and holiness with self-control by bearing children exactly so he's saying your
00:51:57.660
salvation which comes by faith alone but but the good works which accompany your faith that brings
00:52:04.220
about salvation will not be in the public-facing forward role of authority. It won't be in public-facing
00:52:13.140
authoritative roles. Instead, it will be in nurturing maternal roles.
00:52:19.600
Yeah. And when we go back to Psalm 127, we see that the children are the arrow,
00:52:24.460
and the task of the man is to fire that arrow. And as that arrow is flying through the air,
00:52:30.920
hitting its target bullseye the woman is saying i birthed that arrow yeah that's my arrow right
00:52:36.900
right yeah that pride wells up in her yeah the hand what does this burgeon say the hand that
00:52:41.520
rocks the cradle holds the world that it's a powerful thing this isn't this is not lowering
00:52:46.740
the standard for women are thinking less of them this is actually a beautiful thing that we're
00:52:50.400
saying that like it's a powerful it's not just adam it's not just adam manufacturing children
00:52:54.720
in a birthing machine lab man and woman together and the man leading it sending those children
00:53:00.800
now birthed to him by his wife the wife of his youth the fruitful vine and this goes back to
00:53:05.340
the purpose of mankind which is to glorify god but how by taking dominion by destroying the enemies
00:53:10.740
of christ by beating back the curse which is the top we're going to get to a couple weeks you know
00:53:15.760
what maybe we can end with this this is a little bit random but i just i don't know about you guys
00:53:21.140
but um you know fairly often because of just friendships that we have in circles you know
00:53:27.740
that we're in um i you know have conversations with other christians all the time regularly
00:53:34.240
almost daily um where you know something comes up and uh and they hold a position that is uh
00:53:41.880
even more to the right more conservative than me i don't know i don't know about you guys but for me
00:53:48.000
i don't when that happens which again is almost daily regularly very frequent um my uh initial
00:53:55.900
thought not only is it not my initial thought i don't ever have this thought i don't think
00:54:00.540
he must be wrong because um because there's no such thing as more conservative than me
00:54:10.180
if you're wanting to understand how big even how mid-eva think um look no further it really is this
00:54:16.860
simple um big even not so much in this regard but mid-eva 100 their thought is um that there is
00:54:25.440
a sliding scale of orthodoxy, what is permissible, right? Some positions are more faithful and some
00:54:34.080
are less, but under this banner of orthodoxy, Medeva prides itself and 100% believes that on
00:54:40.580
this scale of orthodoxy, they are at the very furthest right edge. So they are the epitome,
00:54:48.460
the standard of conservative faithful biblical expression and then every and then everybody else
00:54:55.460
is to their left within the banner of orthodoxy and then the banner of orthodoxy ends and anything
00:55:01.520
further left than that is even more to their left and and heretical and then but um but then to their
00:55:07.840
right they believe that anything to their right is um outside of the banner so so if there's if
00:55:14.560
there's an umbrella they don't view themselves as in the middle they view themselves as on the
00:55:19.440
furthest right conservative edge uh anything beyond their position and you just you just need
00:55:25.280
to know that because it makes it it'll help it'll just it'll help you in life if you're you know
00:55:29.260
because apart from that you'll you'll you'll be like i i have been you know in years past just
00:55:33.300
regularly confused i don't understand i thought we were on the same team why am i being counter
00:55:37.080
signaled publicly you know why are you disagreeing with me you literally just wrote the book and i
00:55:42.480
literally just retweeted basically the title of your book in just a different, slightly different
00:55:47.660
language. And you're disagreeing with me in the comment section. And you'll spend a lot of time
00:55:52.180
being confused by Medeva unless you can just get this simple concept. They believe that they are
00:55:57.680
the pinnacle of conservative biblical faithfulness and that anything to their right is not, there's
00:56:04.780
no chance that anyone standing even an inch to the right could actually be more faithful because
00:56:10.640
they're at the peak of faithfulness so anything to their right is not greater faithfulness uh but
00:56:16.500
extremism extremism yeah in this conversation nothing we've said we would be by the categories
00:56:23.180
of the early church yeah oh i'm to their left i'm a lib we're the libs yeah this conversation i'm
00:56:28.480
trying to repent of that i'm trying to become more conservative every single day right but that's but
00:56:34.000
i'm just saying that's not how i operate it's it feels foreign and so i had to like really learn
00:56:38.820
to think like maybe Eva because for me I have conversations with people all the time like
00:56:43.460
for the past three years you know I you know have you know I remember like um you know five years
00:56:50.500
ago in 2018 reading Doug Wilson you know and he was to my right oh yeah you know and uh but my
00:56:56.960
thought my my my thought was not um he's extreme my thought was uh you know what I think he may be
00:57:04.840
right and i um and i'm compromised and to the point where i embrace the things that that it
00:57:12.040
became increasingly clear by by god's uh revelation as he was showing me in the scripture and using
00:57:17.260
doug wilson some of his commentaries and books to help me see um i started pivoting uh my church at
00:57:23.420
great cost right we lost almost a third of the church almost a third of the church uh in in
00:57:28.820
california um in large part because of moving towards certain positions that doug wilson held
00:57:35.900
like like biblical patriarchy right would be one of those uh examples and then you know in the last
00:57:42.180
three years like you know every time like i'll make you know um friends with you know somebody
00:57:47.860
and you know and and they'll have a different position than me and i just but i'm i'm genuinely
00:57:53.360
interested because i want to know truth i actually have a vested interest in the truth not just being
00:58:00.260
right but in knowing truth and so like i've had conversations with andrew iska you know we're
00:58:05.740
we're just you know we're sitting down you know having dinner and um and he says something i'm
00:58:10.920
like dang that's you know that's something that's something you know and uh and but then i just ask
00:58:17.540
more questions but my but my point is my first initial thought is is not um you're extreme
00:58:23.840
my my initial thought is um i'm probably a normie i'm probably a lib i'm probably like my first
00:58:33.980
thought i remember like reading doug wilson my my thought was not he's a chauvinist right my thought
00:58:38.880
was i'm probably a feminist yep you know like that my my first if anything my default setting
00:58:45.820
was to err on um i i might be missing something you know that's just that that's the setting that
00:58:53.120
is not medieval setting medieval does not think in those terms and that doesn't mean you have to
00:58:58.860
like when i mentioned earlier for 1800 years the church believed this about contraception
00:59:02.680
that doesn't mean well there's no way the church was wrong for all this time we can still i mean
00:59:06.700
this was the reformation we can go back to scripture but take it consider the witness of
00:59:12.960
our spiritual forefathers heavily and if calvin and turreton and johan alstead and these guys
00:59:19.600
all said this about nations or said this about men and women and if they all said that for hundreds
00:59:24.620
of years and they were smarter men than you think deeply and think twice especially before writing
00:59:30.480
them off i'm thinking disagree they're racist they're racist sounds racist yeah problem solved
00:59:36.000
let's move on we'll take their soteriology all their political theology and ideas about ethnicity
00:59:40.920
but then throughout like you were talking about they're bad tell us the end the purpose of
00:59:45.220
man women government all this yeah right yeah humility will go a long way but this was really
00:59:50.860
good michael any final thoughts from you on theology just just um want to encourage some of
00:59:55.780
you who um are maybe encountering this for the first time and you know it's a little bit
01:00:00.720
overwhelming to think wait i have to i have to understand the purpose of finances i have to
01:00:05.220
understand the purpose of these things like our generation and maybe the next generation we are
01:00:09.640
not going to have as comprehensive of a view of our role and purpose in the world as we ought to
01:00:14.820
all right so pick up one toy put it back on the shelf yep that's good yeah full circle back to
01:00:21.060
jordan peterson clean your room all right thanks for tuning in guys