The NXR Podcast - THE LIVESTREAM - Are Christian Women “Birthing Machines”？

00:00:00.000 In his lectures on Calvinism, Abraham Kuyper remarks that the central cry of the Reformation

00:00:04.700 was not merely that God is sovereign over salvation, but that he is sovereign over all

00:00:10.240 things. Notice, though, that this is not the same as saying that God is sovereign over everything,

00:00:16.720 though both of those statements are true. In our time, we are convinced that God is indeed the

00:00:22.420 ruler of the aggregate of all things, but we are not sure about the parts. We are like a boy

00:00:30.820 standing in a messy room that needs to be cleaned up. The boy's mother has told him to get to work,

00:00:36.280 but in the clutter, the boy cannot imagine how all the mess could be dealt with. In response,

00:00:42.720 the mother grabs one toy and puts it away. The lesson is clear. Understand that the whole

00:00:48.580 is made of parts. Most of us are familiar with the phrase, do not lose the forest for the trees.

00:00:55.760 But in the current evangelical landscape, it might be more true that we have lost the trees

00:01:01.760 for the forest.

00:01:10.560 All right, gentlemen, good to be back with you again. I'm looking forward to today

00:01:14.160 talking about something that admittedly is going to be a little bit more heady initially,

00:01:20.140 but we're hoping to find some really great application and really hoping to provide a tool

00:01:25.440 that people can use to think, process, and determine between what is good and bad, right,

00:01:33.100 wrong, moral, immoral. And in order to kind of let you know where we're going, we're going to

00:01:38.460 start a little bit with what prompted me to think about this article. And so we're going to talk

00:01:45.840 about two tweets by Owen Strawn, and we're going to mention them here at the beginning. And then

00:01:50.540 after we talk about kind of the teleology argument and the tool that we want to provide, we'll come

00:01:55.900 back and talk about Strawn's content and kind of analyze it. But here's what prompted my thinking.

00:02:02.260 It was the Politico article about the extreme right-wingers who were having lots of kids, in particular, to affect cultural change.

00:02:14.080 That was the thing.

00:02:15.280 And then Strawn, he doesn't mention the article directly, but it was right when this article came out. 0.94

00:02:20.780 So the first tweet says this, Christian women are not birthing machines, and children born

00:02:27.840 to Christians are not widgets on a beat Islam or secularism assembly line.

00:02:33.820 Yes, that's his first one. 1.00

00:02:34.880 And, you know, Christian women are not birthing machines.

00:02:36.900 I think we can all agree with that.

00:02:38.900 For believers, here's the second one.

00:02:40.240 For believers, having children is not ultimately about beating the Muslims in a childbearing

00:02:45.160 arms race.

00:02:46.680 Children are not given us by God as pawns

00:02:51.000 in a civilizational battle, all right?

00:02:54.620 So we'll come back to that.

00:02:57.220 I know you're champing at the bit.

00:02:58.600 You wanna say some things about it now.

00:03:00.220 We'll come back to that eventually.

00:03:01.900 What I wanna talk about a little bit today

00:03:03.860 is the lost doctrine of teleology, all right?

00:03:07.660 Now, teleology is a fancy word for the study of purpose,

00:03:12.300 the study of the ends that things are designed for.

00:03:15.020 And traditionally, it's found in apologetics. It's a famous argument that is used to advance

00:03:22.280 the idea that if a thing has an ultimate purpose, it must have a designer, right? And so that's

00:03:29.920 where we're most used to seeing the idea of teleology. Teleology comes from the Greek word

00:03:34.600 telos, which means end or purpose. So what is the purpose of a thing? What is the purpose of a thing?

00:03:40.120 And this really largely was the project of a lot of classical thought.

00:03:46.700 What is the purpose of a thing?

00:03:48.220 What is a thing's function?

00:03:49.520 What is its design?

00:03:50.680 But not just the design.

00:03:51.840 We want to know what it's for.

00:03:54.020 So as I've been thinking about the church in the world and where we find ourselves now,

00:03:59.360 Christians in the world, one of the conclusions personally that I've come to, I don't know

00:04:03.480 if you guys share it, is that one of the reasons we have a hard time calling something good

00:04:07.980 or bad or virtuous or what's the opposite of virtue?

00:04:14.520 Vice, wicked, is that we don't understand

00:04:17.240 what things are for.

00:04:18.440 We don't understand anymore why God made things.

00:04:23.600 And as far as we usually go as a Christian

00:04:26.840 is we are very comfortable citing

00:04:28.880 the Westminster Confession of Faith,

00:04:30.780 which the first question of the shorter catechism says,

00:04:33.840 what is the chief end of man?

00:04:35.620 We all know the chief end of man

00:04:37.740 is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

00:04:39.720 And so we think, aha, so now I know what life's all about.

00:04:42.220 And that is true, right?

00:04:44.300 That is true.

00:04:44.960 But just because something is true

00:04:46.560 does not necessarily mean that it's sufficient, right?

00:04:49.520 And so what I've discovered as I read

00:04:52.980 is that there is a lot of thought in Christian history

00:04:57.580 where when you read a book by the Puritans,

00:05:00.000 why would they write a 600-page book on marriage, right?

00:05:04.980 Like, why would they, and why would they,

00:05:07.740 they investigate all of these diverse why do they write about every area of life why is it that

00:05:13.040 coming out of the reformation calvin's contribution was an understanding of work

00:05:17.380 an understanding of vocation an understanding of education it's because the view that god is

00:05:24.820 sovereign over all things meant that they should go and investigate what his purpose had been

00:05:30.260 in making all things yeah that's good and so if we lose first of all the belief i thought it was

00:05:37.720 so interesting one of the dictionaries i quote it in the article defined teleology as the belief

00:05:42.560 that there is a purpose in all things not just the study of all things it is it is a confessional

00:05:48.860 statement to say that there's a purpose behind all things a purpose with wit for which all things

00:05:55.280 were created that is a statement of faith that is not present in all world views right um and so

00:06:01.320 just to get the, to get the discussion going, I, I thought, I, I wanted to ask you guys if you have

00:06:08.380 any thoughts or comments on the lost doctrine of theology, because it seems like when we get into

00:06:14.860 debates, the only thing we can fall back on is, well, that's bad because God said it was bad.

00:06:22.260 That's not, I don't want to dismiss that. The, the Christian who says God's word says it,

00:06:26.740 that's enough for me fantastic but why why is something good or bad well it's it's because it

00:06:33.720 aligns with the purpose for which god created it right right insofar as it actually aligns with

00:06:39.160 its purpose correct and go ahead what do you think let's see tom i got an interesting thought um

00:06:43.840 so i've listened been listening to jordan peterson for a while we actually went and saw him live he

00:06:48.740 had a good discussion and a point that he's brought up a lot is he says that every action

00:06:53.940 every thought will always be oriented towards a final, a terminal, and an ultimate belief.

00:07:00.340 So when we, we promised we were going to get heady in this episode, we see an object such

00:07:04.060 as a door handle. There's no actual perception of that object that does not also include action

00:07:08.940 with it. So individuals that have had some type of brain damage, what will happen is they don't

00:07:12.940 have any inhibition to then carry out that action. And they'll see something like the hammer,

00:07:17.000 or see something like a doorknob, and be inclined to just pick it up. Because all of our perception

00:07:21.660 to the world is geared around action, is geared around purpose and use and utility. And so we

00:07:27.780 think about how we want to orient the world, what are these objects, what are these institutions

00:07:32.700 for? You will populate it with something. Jordan Peterson's point in a lot of his lectures has been

00:07:38.280 there will be something you orient yourself to. He supplies God as the highest thing that

00:07:43.700 one could aspire to. He doesn't have the biblical God in view. But ultimately, every person will 0.97

00:07:47.520 have a God, lowercase g, or will be aligned and oriented to the highest true good, which is the

00:07:53.940 God of Scripture. But every person will fill in somewhere along that line what it is they aspire

00:07:59.700 to, and then they'll take and they'll orient the world around them to, now here's what I do in

00:08:04.360 service of that highest good. So my highest good is, as you mentioned, glorify God and enjoy Him

00:08:09.360 forever. But then also, I'm a man, so aspiring to courage, the virtue that was present in the life

00:08:14.860 of Christ, as that fills out a man, now a husband, now a father, now an employee, a churchman,

00:08:20.480 a this, that, or the other, as you come down that tree, those objects that you see around you will

00:08:25.100 begin to orient you towards, that's what I do with that. That's what the institution of marriage is

00:08:30.040 for. This is why my children are given to me, to serve this purpose, to serve that purpose,

00:08:35.040 orienting them towards that which is highest and good. So don't ever think that, well, you can

00:08:39.540 worship God or you can just walk aimlessly through life. Now, walking aimlessly through life shows

00:08:43.820 is that you have a God and you have a higher purpose

00:08:46.260 is just a very low base level one with no aspiration,

00:08:50.200 no imagination, no virtue to actually supply your life

00:08:54.220 with that which is good.

00:08:55.620 So that's what it came from, from what you said earlier.

00:08:57.760 That's good.

00:08:58.680 Yeah, I think as it pertains to marriage,

00:09:00.120 you know, part of it is because one of the highest virtues

00:09:04.140 of our day, very hedonistic, self-centered

00:09:07.820 is personal happiness, personal fulfillment and-

00:09:11.580 which let me give a pause because this is not coincidental.

00:09:16.760 Maslow's hierarchy of needs is what has framed

00:09:21.120 and structured psychology and the understanding

00:09:24.420 of what the purpose of humanity is for.

00:09:26.320 And at the pinnacle of his hierarchy is self-actualization.

00:09:30.700 And so that is like Wes said, that's a religious claim.

00:09:33.820 That's a purpose statement, the purpose driven life.

00:09:36.300 Well, for Maslow, the purpose of life

00:09:38.820 is to actualize yourself.

00:09:40.440 And that's why, so I'll toss it back to you,

00:09:42.120 but that's when we say to be happy,

00:09:44.720 personal fulfillment in marriage,

00:09:46.220 that aligns perfectly.

00:09:47.340 We as Christians look at that and say, no, it's not.

00:09:49.320 But that aligns perfectly with the purpose

00:09:50.960 that they've been told marriage is for.

00:09:52.780 Within secularism, for sure.

00:09:54.540 Yeah, so if self-fulfillment is the highest aim

00:09:58.800 in the meaning of life,

00:10:00.160 then the Westminster Shorter Catechism

00:10:02.640 is turn on its head.

00:10:03.580 The first question becomes,

00:10:05.180 what is the chief end of man to glorify self

00:10:07.360 and enjoy me forever?

00:10:09.140 And then that filters down

00:10:11.720 to all the various different aspects of life.

00:10:13.600 And so marriage being one of them

00:10:14.860 in a large portion of life,

00:10:17.560 it becomes about personal happiness.

00:10:19.420 And so with that, the last thing you wanna do

00:10:23.120 is threaten or squelch or diminish happiness.

00:10:26.760 So that's, in comes no-fault divorce.

00:10:30.780 You have to be able to get out of a marriage

00:10:32.320 that's not fulfilling anymore.

00:10:33.540 Well, it's not fulfilling me, we're not happy.

00:10:36.820 Um, you know, and so, um, this person is not making me happy and then, you know, and then

00:10:41.660 you don't want to do anything in that marriage that, um, that would take away other things,

00:10:46.040 you know, where the, where the marriage, you know, is meant to make you happy, but then

00:10:48.920 you don't want the marriage and it's aimed to make, uh, the self happy to squelch, you

00:10:54.560 know, um, or threaten another avenue for self-fulfillment and happiness like career or, or, um, or

00:11:01.100 your own, uh, physical attractiveness, you know, like I can't be getting pregnant, you

00:11:05.020 know, like it's gonna, we're gonna, you know, be all, all, you know, out of shape and have lines

00:11:10.480 and, you know, blah, blah, blah. So, so yeah, I think, you know, a big part of it is what do we

00:11:14.840 think the highest aim is that that filters into other things. And then I was also just thinking

00:11:18.680 again, in line of marriage, you know, it's, it's God, not Adam, who first takes notice of,

00:11:24.780 you know, Adam being alone, says it's not good for the man to be alone. And we often, I think

00:11:29.740 this is a fairly modern um understanding but even as evangelicals and christians we we quickly read

00:11:37.040 in there that one of the chief purposes of marriage is for companionship and so we'll say

00:11:41.660 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

00:11:47.300 good for the man to be alone we immediately assume loneliness relational loneliness and uh so god is

00:11:54.200 taking note that adam was relationally lacking and needed friendship companionship so he made

00:12:01.060 the woman first and foremost as a companion whereas that's all of that's icg did into the

00:12:06.400 text i do think that that is one of the purposes of marriage but to assert that as the first or

00:12:11.480 chiefest purpose of marriage i i don't think you can argue that straight from the scriptural text

00:12:16.400 you would have to read that in because it's entirely plausible and i think more likely

00:12:20.480 that God is saying, it's not good for the man to be alone because on his own, he cannot fulfill

00:12:26.580 the work that I've assigned to him, his mission. He has a task. So it's not just about, well, Adam

00:12:32.620 won't have sweet, relational, intimate time. No, it's no, Adam has a job to do and it's a two-man

00:12:40.800 job. So anyways. Okay, good. So the big, I guess if viewers and listeners can get one

00:12:50.460 thing, at least from this opening section, it is the idea that how is God glorified, right? The

00:12:58.360 chief of men of man is to glorify God. How is God glorified? And that's why I want to read a quote

00:13:04.480 from Bavinck. This is from his... By podcasting, right? Maybe. What's the purpose of podcasting?

00:13:12.220 Bavinck, oh, I misplaced it now. Bavinck says this,

00:13:15.700 um the existence of a thing and the specificity of a thing the multiplicity of life and being the

00:13:23.680 infinite diversity among creatures in kind gender longevity rank social position wealth etc

00:13:28.800 are all attributable to attributable to god's good pleasure and god's good pleasure alone and

00:13:35.180 when we say this word pleasure we need to understand that this is god's good purpose

00:13:38.840 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

00:13:46.040 have pleasure when you eat a chocolate sundae right his good purpose his good will so the

00:13:50.540 specific diverse the reasons the reason why there are a thousand probably more than that species of

00:13:57.240 birds right or a lot more um yeah um all the all the diversity of life that we see on the planet

00:14:03.500 it is because all of those serve a purpose in god's good will and pleasure yeah for the record

00:14:10.940 you need to be boffin maxing if you are not out there filling your bookshelf with a very expensive

00:14:16.340 copy of the reform dogmatics you're missing out uh bombing's one of probably the greatest minds

00:14:21.420 the 20th century 21st century we haven't had a lot uh bovink is a bright spot there at the turn

00:14:28.020 um just even going back a little bit to marriage and everything a lot of people will think

00:14:33.260 so they'll have these roles assigned and they'll be well i have this career and i have this

00:14:36.640 they oftentimes think they don't have to choose i was reading a new yorker article

00:14:40.200 and it was this woman that she said i decided to take this radical act of self-fulfillment

00:14:45.700 self-authenticity i'm gonna have children but i'm gonna stick to my career and i'm just gonna bring

00:14:49.720 them with me i can't believe she cited it that she actually said it out loud but at the end of

00:14:54.500 her article she talks about how her daughter teenage daughter recently yelled at her you

00:14:58.280 love science more than me. So she had all their kids all through their growing up into Africa to

00:15:03.800 go find out different species of fungi, thinking I can do both. I can have this end as a career

00:15:09.680 woman and advancing science and publishing and everything like that. And I can be a mom and I can

00:15:14.040 do this too. And what she found out, what she told on herself, whether she admits it or not,

00:15:19.420 she couldn't. And what she actually ended up probably doing is neither one of them. Well,

00:15:23.180 you are limited. God has given you these specific things and you can't do all of them.

00:15:27.640 So you can choose, or it can be chosen for you.

00:15:30.780 And it's not pretty to be 40 years old thinking that you could do this, that, and the other,

00:15:34.900 and realizing I actually couldn't do all of them, and I didn't even do any of them well.

00:15:39.300 Yeah.

00:15:39.840 That's a good limitation we have.

00:15:41.300 So that's actually important because Bavin goes on to say that it's not just physical things.

00:15:47.260 It's not just birds and types of rock.

00:15:49.700 It's even that God's sovereign will in creating a purpose, an end for all things,

00:15:55.180 includes immaterial, intangible things like economics or mercy or the covenant that brought

00:16:07.280 about redemption. All of those things have an intended end, an intended purpose. And Bavink's

00:16:15.220 point is that all of those serve, are supposed to serve the end to which God appointed them.

00:16:22.480 So the answer to the question of how do we know

00:16:24.660 what glorifies God?

00:16:26.160 It's when any particular thing, idea, or system

00:16:29.880 runs along the tracks of the purpose

00:16:33.140 for which God created it.

00:16:34.840 And so if you wanna look at your life

00:16:36.940 and you say, I don't know how to glorify God,

00:16:38.720 that's a huge thing.

00:16:39.800 Back to the initial analogy of the messy bedroom.

00:16:44.020 Pick an area, study, discern, read,

00:16:48.020 what is God's purpose for this?

00:16:49.360 What is this God's purpose for me as a man?

00:16:51.820 Why am I a man and not a woman?

00:16:54.120 What does that mean about my purpose?

00:16:55.760 Okay, I'm gonna run in the direction

00:16:58.020 that God intended manhood to fulfill.

00:17:01.520 What does it mean to be a father?

00:17:03.420 Okay, I'm gonna study.

00:17:04.240 What is the purpose of fatherhood?

00:17:05.740 What does it mean to be a businessman, right?

00:17:08.500 To be in the marketplace?

00:17:09.440 Okay, now I've got to understand several purposes.

00:17:11.680 I've got to understand what production is for.

00:17:15.860 Why do we produce things?

00:17:16.780 Why isn't it just given to us, right?

00:17:19.780 Why does God call us to work?

00:17:21.820 But there are purposes behind all of these things.

00:17:24.020 And my claim in this whole episode

00:17:26.200 is that the evangelical church

00:17:27.800 has boiled everything down

00:17:31.140 to this simplistic glorify God in all things,

00:17:34.720 but we've forgotten the purposes

00:17:36.500 for many, many of the things

00:17:39.300 that we actually live and breathe

00:17:41.300 and interact with and talk with.

00:17:42.480 And so unwittingly, we end up not glorifying God

00:17:45.500 because we're not fulfilling the purpose

00:17:47.200 of a majority or many of the things

00:17:50.100 that we interact with or do in our daily life.

00:17:52.620 Right, the evangelical church has lost the ability

00:17:55.440 to answer the question, how? 0.92

00:17:57.300 She can still answer the question,

00:17:59.580 what is the chief end of man?

00:18:01.200 To glorify God and enjoy him forever.

00:18:03.680 But the follow-up question, how,

00:18:06.260 the evangelical church has lost the answer to that

00:18:08.860 because we don't understand, like you said,

00:18:10.980 the purpose of things.

00:18:12.220 And also, I think another way that we've lost

00:18:14.620 the ability to answer the how part of that question

00:18:18.260 is because of our giant amoeba, all-encompassing androgyny.

00:18:26.880 So because the way that you answer that how

00:18:30.420 is specific to different kinds of people.

00:18:37.120 How to glorify God will be dependent on

00:18:42.260 if you are a man or a woman,

00:18:45.020 if you are a child or a parent,

00:18:47.460 if you are a slave or a master, if you are a Greek or a Jew, there are obligations,

00:18:57.000 moral obligations from the scripture that come with all these different stations of life that

00:19:03.560 are incumbent upon us and that are God-ordained, be it nationality, be it sex, be it age,

00:19:12.380 you know uh single or married um all these things uh what come with these stations of life various

00:19:20.060 stations of life are various uh duties and responsibilities and ways of glorifying god and

00:19:26.260 enjoying him forever but if we just if we just take this bodiless androgynous soul that's how

00:19:33.100 evangelicals are the reason they don't think there's a particular how to the to the follow-up

00:19:38.500 question to the question of, you know, what is the chief end of man? Well, it's just to glorify God.

00:19:43.140 And the reason they don't, it's not even that, they wouldn't even be aware that they don't have

00:19:48.500 an answer to the follow-up question of how, because they don't even know that there is a

00:19:51.640 follow-up question. They don't even see why that follow-up question of, well, how do you glorify

00:19:57.440 God? They don't even see the relevancy of that because they see man as, for the most part,

00:20:04.500 mankind as um as spiritual uh with with basically no importance on the physical as androgynous with

00:20:14.500 no importance placed on on sex um as eternal with no importance placed on the temporal or the tangible

00:20:21.940 like at every single level they have um evangelicals have in large part wholesale

00:20:27.700 while resisting you know the transgender you know movement and ideology in a spiritual sense they've

00:20:33.060 adopted it wholesale like hook line and sinker this um this this uh you know there's just uh 0.85

00:20:40.100 there's just people you know um there's just people and uh people are called to glorify god

00:20:45.940 and there's there's you know there's just one general mass of humanity and and so

00:20:51.460 however you do that it's you know there's only one way to do that and but that's paul paul talks

00:20:56.260 about you know remaining when the lord calls you he talks about this in relation to marriage to an

00:21:01.220 non-believer, but it also has application to other things as well. But 1 Corinthians 7,

00:21:05.480 whatever station, remain in whatever station you were in when the Lord called you. And what he's

00:21:12.620 saying there is not only being content, but then he's also saying, and now that you are a Christian,

00:21:18.220 there will be specific, tangible outflows of what Christian faith looks like in that scenario.

00:21:24.400 It reminds me also of the centurions, the Roman soldiers who came and approached Jesus

00:21:30.280 and essentially what they're asking is now that we're christians do we need to quit our job

00:21:35.860 right and jesus doesn't say uh yes he doesn't say oh yeah a christian can't be in the military

00:21:41.000 right um even a military for rome which is not particularly great country no um you know but

00:21:47.160 that's not jesus answer uh he instead he says well be content with your wages which implies you can

00:21:52.980 keep your wages which implies you can keep your job uh be content with your wages do not take

00:21:57.380 from others what doesn't belong to you. And I'm sure that if they pressed him, he'd have more to

00:22:02.920 say as well. But the point is this, that essentially Jesus is saying, he doesn't respond

00:22:09.700 to the Roman soldiers and say, that's a dumb question. Because they say, what must we do to

00:22:15.800 follow you? He doesn't say, well, that's a dumb question because you must do what everyone should 0.90

00:22:20.120 do. It's the same thing for everyone. It's one size fits all. Glorify God and enjoy him forever 0.97

00:22:24.840 in a very abstract ethereal way that's not like he totally understood their question he didn't

00:22:30.080 demean them or chastise them for asking it he knew what they were getting at is um they were

00:22:35.480 assuming baked into the question was jesus we know that for us to be your disciple will look

00:22:40.600 different than for others based off of our station of life and so what are the particulars

00:22:47.600 for our purpose in light of glorifying God. And Jesus essentially is saying,

00:22:53.780 good question. Glad you asked. Yeah. So, all right. Well, let's go ahead and cut to a commercial

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00:23:56.620 all right well welcome back uh we were talking about spirit we're talking about body and there's

00:24:00.620 a very important distinction. Christians can even get it wrong, almost thinking in a dualistic sense

00:24:05.060 that their spirit and their body. No, they are very closely integrated. Jesus, we do not say he

00:24:10.880 was God housed in a body or just dwelling in a body. He was fully God and fully man in one being

00:24:18.900 in a union of those two. There's one passage too. It's in 2 Corinthians chapter 3, chapter 5.

00:24:25.420 Paul describes being naked. I take that to be the time when we are dead and our spirit goes to be

00:24:30.400 with the Lord. But he says, we long to put the dwelling back on. Spirit makes use of the way

00:24:35.460 God has created our spirits is they make use of the body. That is where they are at home. And so

00:24:40.560 it's in the body here that we glorify God for a time because of death, because of sin. We will

00:24:45.300 to be absent from the bodies, to be present to the Lord, but then actually going back into another

00:24:49.820 body. We will at the resurrection, put this body back on, glorified, mortal. It will be immortal

00:24:55.600 now. The mortality will be swallowed up. Death will be no more. And so we should never be thinking

00:24:59.980 in dualistic terms i've got this spirit here and that's what's of real value the imperishable

00:25:04.860 beauty and then the body is just kind of housing it and going along right paul doesn't describe

00:25:09.100 the death the death of a believer as um um being freed he describes it as being naked yeah and

00:25:15.900 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

00:25:22.620 shackles and the prison of the flesh uh but the desire will be to be further clothed yeah the

00:25:28.540 the doctrine of glorification is not just re-clothed,

00:25:32.480 but it's a further clothing that the soul

00:25:36.400 will be more appropriately and thoroughly clothed

00:25:41.400 in this eternal flesh that is more suitable

00:25:46.040 and even more conducive for our eternal state.

00:25:50.340 That glorification in the physical

00:25:52.540 will better match the sanctification in the spiritual.

00:25:55.740 But it's, yeah, that's, it's good to be human.

00:26:00.500 Yeah.

00:26:01.340 It's good to be human.

00:26:02.180 Speaking of Dutch reform, Voss, he would say

00:26:03.740 in his book on Napoleon eschatology,

00:26:05.640 there's a very intimate connection

00:26:06.760 between this life and the next,

00:26:08.000 that there will be a continuity.

00:26:09.900 The same categories, probably appearance,

00:26:13.120 things that we make use of here and now,

00:26:15.220 these will be restored and glorified,

00:26:17.100 but it'll be recognizable.

00:26:18.740 It'll not be this abstract, distant,

00:26:20.980 origin used to think we would be spheres

00:26:22.500 because that's the purple, the perfect shape.

00:26:24.900 not where we're going to be.

00:26:26.500 We might look a lot like this,

00:26:27.720 but free from sin, free from pain, free from death.

00:26:30.580 Good.

00:26:31.420 Okay, so I'm making the claim that it is true

00:26:34.760 that we are to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

00:26:36.860 But the way that we do that is by knowing the purpose

00:26:40.200 for the different dimensions of our life,

00:26:44.060 vocations, stations, whatever you wanna call it,

00:26:47.100 and also the purpose of the things with which we interact.

00:26:50.580 And that's a lot of stuff.

00:26:53.560 And how are we supposed to know the purpose of all of those things?

00:26:56.780 Well, I want to go to Genesis 2 for a moment and show that God expects us to understand

00:27:02.740 the purpose of the material world, at least, in order to exercise dominion over it.

00:27:07.980 And when we look at Genesis 2, it's such an interesting connection.

00:27:11.560 And this is going to get back to the marriage thing in the Strawn post.

00:27:15.460 But God creates man in his own image, male and female, and he gives him dominion over

00:27:22.160 the earth, and he gives him the mandate, be fruitful and multiply. Dominion and being fruitful

00:27:27.800 and multiply are linked. How is Adam going to exercise dominion over the entire earth? He's

00:27:36.340 finite. He's not going to do it. He's going to do it by being fruitful and multiplying, and so that

00:27:42.100 his seed spreads across the earth. So God has set this up, right? It was intentional. Adam's

00:27:52.080 looking around he's like okay great be fruitful multiply he's like okay i see two you know dogs

00:27:56.500 over there i can see how they can be fruitful multiply as a male and a female and there's

00:28:00.200 two cows there and they're going to be fruitful multiply and what am i going to do god i see a

00:28:04.660 dog over there i hear a dog over there fair enough um and so god brings the animals to him to name

00:28:13.180 right and commentators calvin gill others have noticed the link between when god when when god

00:28:21.600 creates Eve. He tells Adam to name Eve. The name that he gave her was not just a designation like

00:28:28.120 the Borg would designate, you know, four, four, three, two or whatever. Right. It's not just some

00:28:33.020 random set of symbols to encapsulate something so I can like not have to call you. Hey, you thing

00:28:38.600 over there every time. The name embodies the purpose. The name did. And when he named Eve,

00:28:43.360 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?

00:30:48.380 The purpose of marriage. 0.85

00:30:50.400 It's not, it's not, it's not two dudes.

00:30:52.820 It's not that we don't want it to be two dudes because it's icky to us.

00:30:56.840 We're talking, it is.

00:30:58.560 You know how you could say it?

00:30:59.720 It just popped in my head.

00:31:00.620 It's really simple.

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

00:35:33.640 It's terrible now. 0.57

00:35:34.480 It's 1.6 children for women, 1.00

00:35:36.700 which won't even replace society. 1.00

00:35:38.740 As we lost that purpose for it,

00:35:41.160 a lot else was lost with it.

00:35:42.840 So maybe we should just take the thing and use it

00:35:45.700 for what it was intended to be used for.

00:35:47.760 It's a wild thought, I know.

00:35:48.780 Wes, he sent me a screenshot from Keller's book,

00:35:51.200 The Meaning of Marriage.

00:35:52.320 And it seems like in that book he's arguing,

00:35:54.760 or he was arguing,

00:35:57.160 that procreation is actually not

00:36:00.720 one of the meanings of marriage, the purposes of marriage.

00:36:05.680 I read the book twice.

00:36:06.660 I can't remember anything in,

00:36:07.960 because there's a chapter on sex,

00:36:09.700 anything that was about procreation,

00:36:11.500 at least in orienting and saying that the primary purpose

00:36:13.760 that God has given us for, he says,

00:36:16.000 is it Hosea or one of the other minor prophets

00:36:18.380 for a holy seed?

00:36:20.380 Doesn't talk anything about that.

00:36:21.620 Is that being the orientation?

00:36:23.140 It's exactly that.

00:36:23.980 It's bonding.

00:36:24.820 It's a special thing that couples share.

00:36:26.740 Yeah.

00:36:27.580 I remember he would have said companionship.

00:36:31.320 That was the purpose of marriage.

00:36:32.420 So it was friendship and companionship.

00:36:34.240 And then sex it was.

00:36:36.960 And you know, there are verses in Ecclesiastes 0.88

00:36:39.440 that talk about your wife is your reward

00:36:41.960 for the days of toil.

00:36:44.000 And you know, there is a sense, right?

00:36:46.820 We're not throwing out,

00:36:48.500 having a good relationship with your wife by any means,

00:36:52.400 but the purpose of something,

00:36:54.540 what did God give it to us for?

00:36:56.640 What did he intend it for?

00:36:58.300 That has to be kept in the forefront,

00:37:00.640 not put in the back or removed from the list altogether.

00:37:05.300 And I'll even just say, like you look at it

00:37:08.160 and women who have children earlier, 0.64

00:37:10.360 so commit and submit to that being the orientation, 0.73

00:37:13.240 their labors are generally less painful.

00:37:15.280 They have less complications.

00:37:16.260 So the earlier in a life, in her life, 0.92

00:37:18.140 that a woman gets married, this is tough. 0.94

00:37:20.080 I know for those that maybe would be unmarried

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

00:37:42.540 actually go better.

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

00:38:19.280 meaning of many, many things.

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

00:38:30.520 at a completely unchecked rate, 0.79

00:38:33.800 they have forgotten or never knew the purpose

00:38:36.240 of something like a nation.

00:38:37.960 God has a purpose for the intangible things as well,

00:38:40.680 like a nation.

00:38:41.780 And so that leads,

00:38:42.620 because they don't know that the purpose of a nation,

00:38:45.460 it leaves someone open to be able to come up

00:38:49.200 with any sort of quasi-Christian sounding statement

00:38:53.100 about an issue.

00:38:54.700 And then, because no one else knows

00:38:56.360 the purpose of a nation,

00:38:57.660 that quasi-Christian sounding statement

00:39:00.280 has to be taken seriously.

00:39:02.580 Whereas before we would say,

00:39:03.800 what are you talking about?

00:39:04.320 That's not what nations are for at all.

00:39:06.660 Like, no, stop it.

00:39:08.040 Like, go play somewhere else

00:39:09.820 or get off the internet for a while. 0.96

00:39:11.220 But even Christian leaders, 0.97

00:39:13.920 and I'm not gonna exempt myself,

00:39:15.160 I have not thought as deeply about Telos as I should.

00:39:17.800 we don't know what things are for

00:39:19.920 and so when someone says something that kind of sounds

00:39:22.480 maybe our gut instinct says

00:39:24.000 seems off but I'm not sure why

00:39:26.700 and I'm not going to say every bad take

00:39:28.940 but a lot of them I think

00:39:30.220 are related to our lack of teleology

00:39:32.740 that's good

00:39:33.740 I think you're right

00:39:35.060 well let's go to one last commercial break

00:39:38.980 and then let's get

00:39:39.740 let's address those tweets from Owen

00:39:42.320 the danger of centralized power

00:39:45.280 is often represented by the word king

00:39:48.160 As Americans, we hate the word king.

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,

00:43:18.840 it wasn't totally raging against the right.

00:43:21.860 It was, I think it tried to present

00:43:24.320 at least a fair analysis of what was going on

00:43:26.300 at the natal conference.

00:43:28.020 Say more about that conference for the,

00:43:29.300 by the way, if you read the article.

00:43:30.500 So the political article was talking about

00:43:34.400 a conference that happened called the natal conference.

00:43:37.480 I think it was here in Texas.

00:43:38.660 And I tried to get you to go.

00:43:39.860 Oh, I remember that.

00:43:40.820 But my daughter was due literally that day.

00:43:43.020 That's the one that you were talking about.

00:43:44.220 So I couldn't go to the pro birth conference

00:43:46.200 because we were having my baby.

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

00:44:16.780 But the article kind of picked up,

00:44:19.240 of course it's going to,

00:44:20.520 this idea that, well, we just want more whites,

00:44:22.820 we just want more Christians, 0.96

00:44:24.760 and we want less of everything else, right?

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

00:44:39.600 than more Muslims in our country. 0.99

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.

00:44:51.060 Sounds like a pretty good strategy to me.

00:44:52.780 Right.

00:44:52.940 And so using, seeing your children as a means to overtake, overwhelm, influence the society that you live in.

00:45:02.180 So that the ideas that you and your family.

00:45:04.840 Would be like weapons?

00:45:05.880 No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

00:45:07.040 Absolutely not.

00:45:08.160 No.

00:45:08.380 Some type of projectile that could do damage if leveled at the enemy.

00:45:11.900 They would stand with you in the gates.

00:45:13.820 Right. 0.96

00:45:14.100 No, that's ridiculous. 0.71

00:45:15.740 Military force against your enemies.

00:45:17.200 Well, okay, so that goes to his first, second tweet.

00:45:22.840 I'll read the second one again.

00:45:24.060 He said, for believers,

00:45:25.540 having children is not ultimately

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

00:45:34.360 in a civilizational battle.

00:45:35.900 And I replied, he won't see my tweet.

00:45:37.820 I'm a small, you know, whatever.

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,

00:46:21.680 like just a birthing machine.

00:46:23.440 So if we were to say, like, women are mothers that do the wonderful work 0.92

00:46:27.460 of bearing and raising children for a purpose,

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

The NXR Podcast - May 08, 2024

THE LIVESTREAM - Are Christian Women “Birthing Machines”？

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