The NXR Podcast - THE LIVESTREAM - Arranged Marriages & Appropriate Ages

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00:00:26.800 All right, today we are going to be discussing arranged marriages, something that sends a shiver up the spine of modern libtards in our culture today.

00:00:37.800 They can't possibly imagine that parents, loving parents who care for their sons, care for their daughters might be involved in a intentional way to ensure that their children have a godly, righteous, suitable spouse for the future.

00:00:53.880 we've made all that sound as though it's evil and sinister but this is the way that marriage for the

00:01:01.460 most part functioned in many different societies christian societies might we remind you throughout

00:01:07.600 the course of human history until relatively recently i remember once hearing an old saying

00:01:14.800 somebody said once that in the east love begins with marriage in the west love ends in marriage

00:01:24.480 and i remember pondering that as a young man and agreeing with the basic sentiment that there

00:01:31.620 really is something behind that now the reality is that's not always the way things were it's not

00:01:37.100 as though for the last 2 000 years in the west that marriage has always been the death of romance

00:01:44.320 affection and love that has not been the case but i think that this saying is true when it comes to

00:01:51.720 the modern west that still in many places in the east today even at present time love romance is

00:01:59.800 something that is cultivated and starts with marriage and blossoms further over the course

00:02:05.240 of many years whereas in the west again not historically but recently presently romance

00:02:12.940 love adoration affection is something that often cultivates in a dating relationship

00:02:20.140 and ends in marriage and then begins to wither and die it doesn't have to be this way there is hope

00:02:26.780 and we want to look at the western tradition looking to our fathers our ancestors those who

00:02:34.180 were christian who feared god and whose soul arranged marriages in their in their circumstances

00:02:40.920 and environments as something that was necessary but beyond the necessity that was you know

00:02:47.620 directly correlated to their time their present challenges they also saw it as something that was

00:02:53.360 just generally beneficial and wise and i think many of those principles and wisdom

00:02:59.060 are still applicable for us today tune in now

00:03:11.700 All right, we're back.

00:03:13.340 Categorically, I don't think there is a question that we get more often than the question of parents relating to how do I essentially set my children up to have good options for marriage?

00:03:23.020 Right.

00:03:23.140 And we've got to be honest, parents have a huge impact, not necessarily on who their child will choose directly, although they'll certainly impact that, of course, with their marriage and their home, but by property, for example, of where they live.

00:03:35.660 Right.

00:03:35.840 That is going to massively, in an incredible way,

00:03:39.240 it's going to influence who your children have

00:03:41.260 as the context, as their peers available for marriage.

00:03:44.700 Yeah, where you live, what church you go to,

00:03:46.680 what school, that's a huge one.

00:03:48.920 In terms of higher education,

00:03:50.400 what college are you going to send your children to or not?

00:03:53.920 What college are you going to pay for at the very least?

00:03:55.660 I'm going to go here.

00:03:56.820 Well, we're not going to pay for you to go 50 states away

00:03:59.600 and go over there.

00:04:00.180 You have a say.

00:04:00.760 Exactly.

00:04:02.000 My parents, for example, knew the parents of my wife

00:04:04.700 because they chose to live there. They're in a Christian context. They knew one another. I met

00:04:09.740 my wife in that context, and we came to meet. And so parents, you have a huge, I would say

00:04:15.160 responsibility would be the good term, of at least giving your children the opportunity to be married

00:04:20.160 young. All else being equal, being married earlier in life, again, assuming maturity, assuming

00:04:25.880 everything else, being married early in life is a massive blessing. It affords more children,

00:04:30.460 for example. It affords greater companionship. The Proverbs speak of the good of companionship

00:04:35.920 that's going to help men mature better. It's going to help them build a home. They're more

00:04:40.380 motivated. Men who are married make more money. The Proverbs also speak of rejoice. Well, I'm not

00:04:46.980 trying to be crude. I'm just quoting scripture, but rejoice in the breast of your wife always.

00:04:52.660 And then other translations and then also other verses talk about rejoicing in the wife of your

00:04:59.240 youth um there is something biblical about um i've been with this woman since my youth and and so

00:05:08.360 yes so for in terms of procreation and child rearing um you can have more children psalm 127

00:05:14.200 says blessed is the man whose quiver is full children women that give birth earlier in life

00:05:20.000 have subsequent healthier pregnancies they live longer and um there's less complications really

00:05:26.220 physically so if you're a man and you're you've been married for a couple years your wife is 30

00:05:29.900 31 32 and you're continuing to delay that first child that will come back and she will have more

00:05:35.620 difficult pregnancies the greater risk of complications having children earlier for a

00:05:40.300 woman is literally physically more beneficial it's loving and assuming she's married it's

00:05:44.840 loving your bride it's protecting her life um protecting the longevity of her life and the

00:05:49.660 health the quality of her life but also the health of your children a child born to a woman in her

00:05:55.680 early 40s has a much lower chance, a much lower likelihood of not having certain disabilities

00:06:02.560 or certain health problems. Whereas a child who's born to that same woman when she's 23 years old,

00:06:08.320 25 years old, has a higher percent, a higher likelihood of being born healthy. So it's the

00:06:13.480 health of your wife, the length of her lifespan, also the health and length of lifespan of your

00:06:19.380 children. But then that's just one reason, child bearing and child rearing. But another reason

00:06:25.320 is when it comes to being protected against temptation and sexual lust.

00:06:33.160 My, you know, my story and past failures with this have been publicized by many people who

00:06:40.100 hate me and would like to see this ministry crumble. But it's still, you know, it stands

00:06:45.620 to reason that if I had, in the grace of God, married at a younger age, I would have less

00:06:52.620 sin that I had accumulated over the course of being a single man and not being married. And so

00:07:01.300 if I had been married at 22, 23, you know, my early 20s, and that's, you know, looking at myself

00:07:07.920 as an example, but I think that principle is generally true for pretty much every man. Every

00:07:13.500 man who has failed in the area of sexual purity, much of that failure tends to be, yes, adultery

00:07:21.300 is real um but you know but but for the most part most men when it comes to their sexual sin

00:07:26.820 is pre-marriage it's it's not necessarily adultery in marriage although that happens sadly

00:07:32.460 but it's usually uh fornication pre-marriage and so for men who prolong singleness prolong

00:07:39.580 adolescence um being a bachelor you know for uh 20 years you know from the the time that they hit

00:07:46.520 puberty to the time that they finally get married you're talking about two decades of of ultimately

00:07:53.100 placing yourself in the situation of having to resist temptation it's it's playing with fire

00:07:59.480 i mean just statistically speaking in a world that is completely immersed in sex i mean you

00:08:06.320 you have pornography accessibility in your pocket because of smartphones and there's billboards on

00:08:12.060 every street corner and all this garbage and degeneracy that we're surrounded with and to not

00:08:16.880 have a single biblical righteous outlet for sexual fulfillment because you're not married

00:08:24.960 and to stay in that state for a prolonged period of time 10 years 20 years 30 years post puberty

00:08:32.980 is basically i mean it's it's virtually just um pleading with the devil to come and trip you up

00:08:42.040 Yeah. So all of those factors have led a number of parents, and they've asked the questions,

00:08:46.880 how biblical is an arranged marriage? So I have a daughter that's of marital age, 20, 21, 22,

00:08:53.340 maybe she's in her mid to late 20s. And I know other families, and probably not necessarily

00:08:58.440 we're friends with them, and I'm talking about two people that have already connected,

00:09:02.160 but I know of another person, and I could go and spend time with them. But practically speaking,

00:09:07.080 the relationship wouldn't develop like a normal dating relationship would. They know each other

00:09:11.060 mutually, maybe at church or school. Then the man, ideally, he asks her out, they begin to date and

00:09:16.760 then get married. But more intentionally, we're going to evaluate this man. Say you're the father

00:09:21.980 of a daughter. I've heard of a young man who has his home in order. He's a godly man, a good man,

00:09:27.580 he's mature. And what's going to happen is not that I'm going to send you to go on a road trip

00:09:32.100 for 15 hours and go meet him with no chaperone, no supervision to make up your mind if you like him,

00:09:37.320 but I'm going to take the initiative. I'm going to go, I'm going to interview this man. I'm going

00:09:41.380 to sit down with him. I'm going to ask him about his life, about his vocation, about his goals,

00:09:45.580 about his walk with Christ, that type of arranged marriage. That's what people are beginning to

00:09:49.940 think. That actually doesn't sound so terrible. There's all these good things about marriage.

00:09:53.900 As you mentioned, it's a guard, it's a blessing, children. There's all these good things,

00:09:59.020 but we're in a difficult time. It's tough, especially to find someone if you are like us,

00:10:03.260 You're, hey, I'm Christian. I'm reformed. I'm post-millennial. These are the things that I'm

00:10:07.560 active in and I care about. Guys, we got to be honest. There are not a lot of young men and

00:10:11.980 women out there. There are, of course, thousands, but they're spread all across the United States.

00:10:16.080 If you're here in the United States, and this is your context. So it has many questioning.

00:10:20.180 Arranged marriage, that really doesn't sound so bad. I'm going to go back to a little bit

00:10:24.040 of context here as far as marriage and the church and how the church has thought about this

00:10:28.700 historically. This is from an article, Marriage and Family in Protestant and Evangelical

00:10:32.660 understanding. And it says this, this is a good quote. Western perceptions of marriage have largely

00:10:37.440 been shaped by Christianity to the extent that in order to understand what constitutes marriage,

00:10:42.420 one must consider Christian views of marriage as they develop over time. Christian ideas of

00:10:46.840 marriage stem from the Old Testament, in particular the book of Genesis. But the Christian understanding

00:10:51.180 of marriage developed within the social and historical context of the Roman Empire. The

00:10:55.780 period when the canon of the New Testament was under construction was further clarified during

00:10:59.760 the period of the Middle Ages when it fell under the direct jurisdiction of the church. Now going

00:11:05.120 on, this is in the same article, the author says this, although a sacrament and a sound way of

00:11:10.080 Christian living, marriage in the Roman Catholic Church was not considered to be particularly

00:11:14.940 spiritually edifying. Marriage was a remedy for sin, not a recipe for righteousness. Marital life

00:11:20.760 was considered less commendable than celibate life. Propagation, less virtuous than contemplation,

00:11:25.800 So having children was less virtuous than being a monk.

00:11:28.980 Clerics, monastics, and other servants of the church were thus to forego marriage as

00:11:32.840 a condition for ecclesiastical service.

00:11:35.300 Those who could not do so were not worthy of the church's holy orders and offices.

00:11:39.760 Celibacy was something of a litmus test of spiritual discipline and social superiority.

00:11:44.800 Again, that's from an article, Marriage and Family in Protestant and Evangelical Understanding.

00:11:50.080 And then this final quote, this is from a book, Pursuing Hope in the Premodern World,

00:11:54.000 and it's going to give a little bit of context and I'll get into it on ages, arrangements and

00:11:58.700 what it was typically for. We have to understand that nothing happens in a vacuum. There's a reason

00:12:02.400 people did the things that they did in times past. Pursuing hope in the pre-modern world it says this

00:12:07.840 so this dynamic that I'm about to show is evident in Byzantian society where the fear of losing

00:12:13.540 children at an early age prompted parents to baptize them as soon after birth so they would

00:12:18.100 not be deprived of final salvation. As the Byzantians lived surrounded by the prospect of death

00:12:23.220 at any time an increased concern for the future of children was manifested in parents's decisions

00:12:28.460 to seek for profitable matrimonial alliances for their offspring once they passed the risky period

00:12:34.100 of infancy this practice was especially characteristic for upper middle class families

00:12:38.100 we'll get back to this kind of theme in a little bit for upper middle class families in the middle

00:12:42.060 byzantian period when both imperial legislation and church canons permitted betrothal from the

00:12:47.280 age of seven so this would be hey in the future when they come of age you're betrothed not married

00:12:52.640 yet not married at seven but betrothed when you come of age this would be who you marry

00:12:57.680 if it was marriage at seven then then you know we'd be talking about islam i was about to say

00:13:02.020 then we'd be muslims yeah classic muhammad move right there all right go ahead so uh church

00:13:06.800 canon laws permitted betrothal from the age of seven and marriage from the age of 12 for girls

00:13:10.720 and 14 for boys in practice such early marriage arrangements betrothal seven right and then

00:13:15.660 actual marriage 12 for girls 14 for boys go ahead which would roughly correspond to puberty

00:13:20.480 Those would be about the times that boys and girls would go through puberty.

00:13:23.740 And practice such early marriage arrangements made by the parents function as an instance for the child's future.

00:13:29.340 Since many fathers were aware by the time their daughters reached marriageable age, they might not be alive.

00:13:36.340 In a world of war, in a world that you had the Muslims actually coming up.

00:13:41.280 This was in the east, so Constantinople, the Byzantian Empire.

00:13:45.200 Eventually the Turks, it's 1500, it fully falls.

00:13:47.960 But by the 7th century, Islam is expanding.

00:13:50.480 you're under constant threat and so you had fathers that had daughters and they were saying

00:13:54.120 uh look uh i understand that you're seven uh but it's a cold cruel world out there and i might not

00:14:00.080 be alive next year and so to secure your future i'm going to go ahead and betroth you to the son

00:14:06.280 of this family who's of a similar age maybe he's a little bit older and in this way look out for

00:14:12.020 your future now i give that as a case study it would be impossible here in the time we have to

00:14:16.460 go through all the different time periods and all the different arrangements. But what I can say is

00:14:20.640 this. This is 500s. So this is not time of the Reformation. This is not even the 12th to the

00:14:26.800 13th century. This is the 5th, 6th, 7th century where the church at this time period in this

00:14:32.800 empire, you can see very much so the practice was, hey, the context is requiring that we early on

00:14:38.880 seek out for our children a spouse for them to have. Another big reason, so in this case it's

00:14:44.380 death, it's the threat of war. Another big reason for arranged marriages was to secure land. So this

00:14:49.780 was typically in the nobles. The nobles would be about 10% of a given society, right? Your Pareto

00:14:54.300 principal, your 80-20. Most societies, your nobles, your aristocrats, they're about 10 to 20% of the

00:15:00.180 society. So that upper class, they typically had land and homes and wealth, and marriage was almost

00:15:05.560 always the ways that they continued to fortify. And so they would marry their daughter off to

00:15:10.080 the son of another family whose family possessed massive amounts of land, and that would be a way

00:15:14.940 she would be given some of the land and it would be shared within the family. And so that was the

00:15:18.880 reason the wealthy did it. But then even more so, as I looked into it, not in every single case,

00:15:24.460 and there was different times where the individuals themselves could get married without parental

00:15:29.060 consent. So for the nobles, a lot of times, it's kind of what the parents said goes. With the

00:15:33.920 rural workers, the peasants, it wasn't as universally the case. But even there, I saw

00:15:38.700 estimates, about 70, 80% of the time, it would be the parents, we'd be involved. They would pair the

00:15:43.840 two people together and they would say, hey, you have a duty. We are a farming society. There's

00:15:48.860 lots of work to be done. There are armies to staff. Children make the world go around. You

00:15:54.180 and so-and-so, you're going to get married. And so I would never pretend as though that's descriptive

00:15:59.020 of all of time in Christendom up till the Enlightenment, as if that was universal and

00:16:03.640 there were never exceptions. There were. The Christian church, especially at different times

00:16:07.060 in different places has emphasized romantic love, companionship. Protestants actually did it best

00:16:13.080 between Luther and Calvin. They had a strong emphasis on it because they freed it from the

00:16:16.940 church. They said, this isn't a sacrament. This is a natural gift given to man. When we speak of

00:16:21.520 arranged marriages, just for kind of context, it's always the circumstances that are necessitating

00:16:25.920 it. Hey, we could die next year. I could die next year. I have daughters and I want them to be taken

00:16:30.740 care of. Hey, we own massive amounts of land that have been passed down to our family for five

00:16:35.840 generations. I need to secure this land. It needs to go to someone. I need to have grandkids bearing

00:16:40.480 my name that I can give this to. And so that's why I was done. Hey, we have a need for people.

00:16:46.340 We're a small village. We need hands on the farm and you're 18 years old, 19 years old.

00:16:53.080 It's time to get married and get to work. And so all that being said, very common practices. We can

00:16:58.460 get to age gaps in a second. Age gaps were very common, but there's very much so a sense that I

00:17:03.340 think we've lost hey you have a duty love matters romance matters companionship matters and those

00:17:08.420 appeared time in different places but as you can kind of see from these quotes there was also you

00:17:13.380 have a duty you have a land that you're an inheritor of hey uh you have a you have a duty

00:17:18.220 continued to continue my legacy if i die next year duty to continue the lineage duty to steward the

00:17:25.140 land and resources duty to uh simply uh replace and more than that to be fruitful and multiply

00:17:32.060 not just replacing but multiplying the population so there's a duty to country that your nation

00:17:38.380 doesn't dwindle in its population so a duty to country a duty to kin and family to steward the

00:17:44.880 land a duty that fathers had to daughters knowing that you know there's there's famine there's plague

00:17:51.540 there's disease and there's also war that that father could be called into battle next year

00:17:55.820 he could be slain on the battlefield who's going to take care of his daughters he wants to know

00:18:01.760 that they're betrothed, that they have a husband in the works, that he's going to fulfill that role

00:18:07.260 if something, you know, some tragedy should befall him. So all these things were rooted in duty. And

00:18:13.480 it doesn't mean that they didn't care about romance and love and affection and adoration or any of

00:18:19.280 these things at all, companionship. They did care about them. But those things, in many ways, it's

00:18:24.760 not that they were absent, but they took a backseat priority to duty because there was, at times were

00:18:31.360 hard things were difficult that the average person was not living to to be 80 years old and so well

00:18:37.300 we can get married at 25 and we'll still have the vast majority of our life spent together and

00:18:41.640 time to see grandkids and maybe even great grandkids uh no with with nations and contexts

00:18:48.400 where there's all these exterior threats whether it be war or famine disease etc

00:18:54.660 you're talking about average lifespans being significantly cut short many people it was

00:19:00.460 common that they would die in their 40s or maybe die in their 50s. So at that point, you're talking

00:19:06.920 about if you wait till you're 25 to be married and the average lifespan of your country, you know,

00:19:12.460 your fellow citizens at that time is 43, 44. You're talking about only, you know, getting married at

00:19:20.520 25. You're talking about only maybe 40% of your entire life being in marriage. There's no way

00:19:26.720 you're going to see your grandkids and you're only going to be able to have so many children

00:19:30.600 yourself. So all these things were rooted in necessity and necessity drove a sense of duty.

00:19:36.300 And yes, they wanted companionship and romance and love and all these kinds of things. All those

00:19:41.840 verses of the Bible were still there in their time and they were emphasized. Husbands, love

00:19:46.320 your wives as Christ loves the church. Wives, submit to your husbands as the church submits

00:19:51.100 to christ so uh this you know the dynamics of having a healthy loving marriage were there and

00:19:57.680 present and taught by their priests and in their churches to their communities um but uh the tail

00:20:05.680 was not wagging the dog so to speak it wasn't it wasn't romance first and and then maybe we'll

00:20:12.960 fulfill some duties second no it was necessity driving duty first and then trying with with the

00:20:20.880 fulfillment of the responsibility that each person had that implored them to marry well and to marry

00:20:26.940 young and to marry in productive ways then out of that that came first and then out of that let's

00:20:33.060 make this marriage as happy and loving as it can be the danger of centralized power is often

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00:22:50.060 want 15 off then add the promo code right 15 today yeah duty is not opposed to loving something

00:22:58.220 i have a duty to provide for my children right and i also love them so we can never pit the two

00:23:03.200 against each other well you can have love and you can marriage for marry for love you have duty and

00:23:08.020 drudgery we have we have a duty to love god right and yet um in his right hand are pleasures forever

00:23:14.260 more in his presence his fullness of joy um a loving relationship with god um christ being the

00:23:22.060 vine us the van uh the branches having union with christ by the spirit communion with the triune god

00:23:28.680 in heaven forever nobody would look at that and say man that's going to be really rough no it's

00:23:33.440 going to be bliss. It's going to be absolute bliss. It's going to be wonderful. And yet at

00:23:39.240 the same time, it's not just something that's wonderful and therefore made available in God's

00:23:44.880 grace and a privilege that we might choose or might not. It's also a command. God commands

00:23:49.220 everyone everywhere to believe the gospel and repent of their sins and to love him. So we are

00:23:53.440 literally, that's the first commandment. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind,

00:23:57.520 and strength. Have no other gods before me. If we're looking at the Decalogue in Exodus 20. So

00:24:01.540 the first and paramount commandment that God gives to every single person is not just you're

00:24:08.200 suggested to, or I've made it possible to. No, you are absolutely expected, duty bound to love me.

00:24:15.480 And also in loving me, you will find the most fulfillment, the most joy, the most peace,

00:24:20.720 the most happiness that you possibly could, not only in this life, but the life to come.

00:24:25.080 Yeah. Both. And as it relates to parents training up their children, I would say it starts early.

00:24:29.720 you have duties and putting that on them to say, you're not just here for a free ride. You're not

00:24:34.740 just a soul experiencing itself and going out and traveling and doing all of these things.

00:24:39.860 The earlier you can put them into a context to say, I was reading a good book. It was a series

00:24:45.220 of sermons. And one of the sermons was on the duties of Christian children. And towards the

00:24:49.780 end, he's emphasizing, if you were born to parents that came from the faith, you have a duty to them.

00:24:54.280 It's not just, well, I don't know if I feel like being Christian. Obviously that's wrong,

00:24:58.440 But it's not just wrong because it's a sin to not believe the Christian gospel.

00:25:02.560 It's also wrong because it's a sin against your parents.

00:25:04.780 Your parents raised you as a Christian.

00:25:06.300 Your parents brought you to church.

00:25:08.120 And so emphasizing to your children, it's not just about, I think, of men.

00:25:11.680 Men are delaying marriage for many reasons.

00:25:13.700 One of the big ones is they're able to have sex outside of marriage.

00:25:16.580 But insofar as you're training your son, not just at 17 when he starts to think about these things,

00:25:21.460 but early, early, early on, obviously marriage at four years old.

00:25:25.360 But early on, you have duties.

00:25:27.160 I think of how churches used to have graveyards next to them.

00:25:31.240 Marriage at four years, you said obviously not marriage.

00:25:33.920 Right, as in you're not emphasizing your marital duties at four.

00:25:36.400 You said it so quickly, it sounded like you said obviously marriage at four years old.

00:25:39.500 No.

00:25:39.620 But the word not, I must have missed it.

00:25:42.120 I just want to make sure.

00:25:42.860 Not marriage at four years old.

00:25:44.040 Correct.

00:25:44.360 But duty in chores, duty in this.

00:25:46.880 And as far as churches used to have courtyards.

00:25:48.920 So in a given day, you would walk through town and see everything going on,

00:25:51.980 but you'd see also where you'd end up.

00:25:53.500 This is the church where I worship in life.

00:25:55.540 This is also where I'd be buried.

00:25:57.000 I'm one in a long line, in a continuity.

00:26:00.600 And there's my great-grandfather where he's buried,

00:26:02.460 and there's my grandfather that he's buried,

00:26:04.120 and my parents will be buried here, and I'll be buried here,

00:26:05.960 and I'll have grandchildren that'll be buried here.

00:26:08.040 I have a duty to those behind me.

00:26:10.140 I have a duty to those in front of me.

00:26:11.800 And so once we eventually get to, hey, marriage, children, family,

00:26:16.600 all of these things, it starts by laying the foundation,

00:26:20.200 hey, son, hey, daughter, life is wonderful.

00:26:24.320 There's a lot to experience.

00:26:25.820 But also, first and foremost, you have a duty.

00:26:27.680 You have a duty as a Christian that is attending church,

00:26:30.320 that has Christian parents that have taught you the faith.

00:26:33.120 You have a duty insofar as that.

00:26:35.100 And you also have a natural duty,

00:26:36.640 a duty assuming God has given you everything you need

00:26:39.320 to have children, to be fruitful, and multiply, and to marry.

00:26:42.660 And some truly are not given that.

00:26:44.300 Jesus talks about those who have been eunuchs from birth.

00:26:46.520 There are rare cases where there is the exception.

00:26:49.560 However, generally speaking, and also you're expected to marry,

00:26:53.400 to ideally marry young, to have children. And that duty, again, it's not to conflict with love

00:26:59.300 and companionship and all of those things, but very much so is still present. And if anything,

00:27:04.720 the love might come and go. How many people, we talked to David Edgington this week,

00:27:09.080 how many times the wife, well, I don't feel loved, so I'm going to initiate a divorce.

00:27:13.740 I don't feel the passion. I don't feel the spark anymore in this. So I'm going to leave my marriage

00:27:17.880 that has three, four, five children.

00:27:20.320 People do that every single day

00:27:22.240 as if the foundation of it is how I feel.

00:27:25.500 Do I feel love?

00:27:26.240 Do I feel the spark?

00:27:27.140 Do I feel the emotion?

00:27:28.120 Do I feel the desire?

00:27:29.480 Well, actually, no, the foundation is duty.

00:27:31.960 And specifically in the case of marriage,

00:27:33.900 covenantal duty.

00:27:34.880 I'm in a covenant.

00:27:35.920 I can't break it.

00:27:36.780 I have this duty and built on top of it,

00:27:39.600 maturing it like a fine wine is the romantic love.

00:27:42.680 But insofar as you can teach your children

00:27:45.280 that as a foundation then to build to,

00:27:47.880 some other other of the other things that we're going to be talking about that is going to serve

00:27:52.020 them very well certainly in marriage but also just generally in life right what if god's purpose for

00:27:57.640 marriage has more to do with your holiness rather than your happiness is essentially what we're

00:28:03.560 saying and we're trying to tie the two together because i think that's by experience the way that

00:28:09.300 it works and also that's um i think uh clearly demonstrated in the scripture as well that

00:28:15.040 holiness and happiness are not at odds with one another. So I think God's chief purpose

00:28:19.380 in marriage is more about our holiness than it is our happiness. But in a life of holiness,

00:28:25.540 happiness is found. True freedom is found within the bounds. True joy and peace and fulfillment

00:28:32.800 and happiness is going to be found within the bounds. So teaching our children from a young

00:28:37.000 age that you have a duty and that one cornerstone of that duty, a large portion of it is to marry,

00:28:44.360 to marry young if you can to marry well certainly as a prerequisite to say that this is a large part

00:28:51.200 of your duty becoming a husband becoming a father becoming a wife becoming a mother

00:28:55.860 and doing that to the glory of God and the ways that he is prescribed at a young age that you

00:29:02.040 might be fruitful and multiply and productive and all these different things we want to teach

00:29:07.020 our children from a young age that that is their duty but we also want to assure our children

00:29:11.620 from the scripture and from life experiences, both positive and negative examples to the contrary,

00:29:18.480 that not only will this cultivate their holiness, but in so doing, it also will ensure

00:29:24.280 their greatest happiness. The person who just prolongs their adolescence and singleness

00:29:29.660 into their thirties and then into their forties. I mean, we see videos about this every single day

00:29:36.040 on TikTok for, you know, somebody talking about how they're, you know, they're by their own

00:29:41.440 volition, right? They're intentionally single, you know, as they're currently, you know, halfway

00:29:48.040 through their life. And we can watch these videos. You can see a deep seated sadness in the person's

00:29:54.380 eyes. You can see that the person is incredibly unfulfilled. These are not happy people. And so

00:30:00.440 we are loving our children by directing them towards what God prescribes as normative for

00:30:07.180 most people and also what lends towards, generally speaking, a more fulfilled and happy life.

00:30:14.640 So it's worth noting too that when it comes to marriage, just in general, not talking about

00:30:18.700 a range, just in general too, we have to recognize that generally speaking, men will be older than

00:30:24.040 the woman that they marry sometimes. They'll be close in age. It doesn't often work as well if

00:30:28.140 a woman is older, for example, we have to recognize that down through history, most certainly in

00:30:33.180 Christendom, men are generally going to be older. And it's a fact that kind of makes some people

00:30:37.620 squirm. Like, man, that's 22 to 27. Like that's five years. Why not the other way around? Or

00:30:43.620 doesn't this seem interchangeable? Well, it doesn't matter if she's older or he's older.

00:30:47.760 It should just be you love one another. But generally speaking, we've talked about this

00:30:51.920 before, what men bring to the table when it comes to marriage is strength and provision. They lead,

00:30:57.540 they provide for the home they care for they protect it they lay down their lives and then

00:31:02.860 generally what women bring to the table as far as marriage goes certainly companionship but fertility

00:31:07.840 and youth is another one we've said with for men strength well for women beauty it's not even

00:31:13.140 exactly it's not even that they bring youth they bring fertility and beauty and then also

00:31:20.020 um respect men it's uh you know it's love would maybe be the uh the primary banner and underneath

00:31:28.060 that love love in what way uh protection and provision and so if it's you know providing

00:31:33.620 something you you typically need as a general rule more time to accumulate provision right if

00:31:40.500 it's protection well you need more time to mature so that you have the strength now in order to

00:31:46.340 protect. And that's, there's a physical aspect to that, right? Like a 14 year old boy is not

00:31:51.700 physically able to protect someone as much as a 24 year old young man. He physically doesn't have

00:31:58.640 the same degree of stature and strength. But also when you think of protection, not just in the

00:32:03.580 physical realm, but protection from being deceived, protection from being, you know, there's all kinds

00:32:09.660 of things besides just physical threats. But that too requires time and maturity, right? So in order

00:32:15.380 to be a good spiritual protector from heresy and deception and all these kinds of things. Well,

00:32:20.500 what does that require? Wisdom. Okay. What does the Bible say about wisdom? Wisdom is often linked

00:32:25.240 with humility, but wisdom is also often linked with age in the scriptures, right? That the glory

00:32:32.440 of an older man is his gray hair, that it serves as a crown of wisdom, right? Can you be an older

00:32:39.660 man and be a fool? Yes. Can you be relatively young and yet still wise? Well, I think of the

00:32:45.860 apostle Paul who writes of his son in the faith, Timothy, and says, let no one despise you for your

00:32:50.340 youth. Because Timothy was a young man, but he was an exceptional young man. He was wise beyond

00:32:55.400 his years. So we have examples throughout the scripture and throughout just human history

00:32:59.900 of young men who are exceptionally wise. And we have old men who are sadly exceptionally foolish,

00:33:07.980 but in general in general we would expect that wisdom comes through time therefore age strength

00:33:14.300 also comes through time now there's a certain point where all of a sudden the strength kind

00:33:18.340 of climaxes and then begins to decline but the point still remains that for men if if the big

00:33:23.920 thing the big headline is love and the two primary you know avenues of expressing that love is

00:33:30.520 provision which takes time to accumulate and protection which takes time to mature both in

00:33:37.260 strength and in wisdom, if that's what men are providing, if that's what they're bringing to the

00:33:41.600 table, love through protection and provision, that takes time. If what women are providing is beauty

00:33:48.580 as well as procreation, right? So giving to her husband children that will bear his name.

00:33:57.140 And then also you could, you could also argue submission from the scripture. I think of

00:34:01.440 Ephesians chapter five, wives submit to your husbands in everything as the church submits

00:34:05.900 to Christ. Well, when you think of that for a wife, time is actually not on her side. Fertility

00:34:13.420 declines with age. Beauty, right? The Proverbs also say beauty, charm is deceitful and beauty

00:34:21.100 is fleeting. But a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. So beauty has a shorter shelf life,

00:34:28.260 we could say, right? In terms of physical beauty. Exactly. Now for a godly woman, that physical

00:34:34.100 beauty gives way to deeper and deeper degrees of spiritual beauty. A woman who fears the Lord,

00:34:41.700 that inner person, the inner beauty of the heart, which is characteristically described as a gentle

00:34:48.840 and quiet spirit, which is precious in the sight of God. That's 1 Peter chapter 3. So we're not

00:34:54.160 saying that a woman ceases to be beautiful in every way. A godly woman who fears the Lord becomes

00:34:59.120 more beautiful with every day as she develops inner beauty more and more. But that physical,

00:35:06.240 literal fertility and physical, literal beauty are two primary things. And then we could add

00:35:12.280 submission to it as a third thing, fertility, physical beauty, and submission that she brings

00:35:18.600 to the table. And the reality is that if a woman is getting married at the age of 30,

00:35:22.900 she is objectively less fertile she is becoming less physically attractive she is she may not

00:35:30.660 want to admit it but a 35 year old woman has less youthfulness and vigor and natural beauty

00:35:37.040 than a 25 year old woman so the beauty is fading that's what the scripture says beauty fades

00:35:43.460 the physical beauty the fertility is is decreasing and also because we live in a secular society

00:35:51.660 um the longer that she is uh living the more years she racks up without uh coming under the

00:35:59.820 headship of a husband but having already left uh the headship of her father she is building up

00:36:07.820 a longer and longer tenure of of a headless life right um where she's no longer really submitted

00:36:18.580 in any practical meaningful way to her father but has not yet begun to be submitted and practice

00:36:26.700 submission to a husband and so that 30 year old woman in real terms you're looking at a decline

00:36:33.660 in physical beauty a decline in physical fertility and if she leaves her home at 18 as many young

00:36:40.440 women do in our culture today you're looking at 12 years of her practicing being her own head

00:36:47.140 instead of being under male headship to her father which would more naturally translate

00:36:54.600 transfer to being under the headship of a husband so she is literally um she is declining in beauty

00:37:01.320 declining infertility and only really increasing in one thing which would be insubordination

00:37:06.400 so my point is uh the older a woman gets the less desirable as a commodity in real terms she becomes

00:37:16.280 um, for, uh, being a, a suitable spouse. Whereas the older a man gets, he actually his value as

00:37:26.760 a spouse, not saying indefinitely, not saying at, at 96 years old, man, he's the most eligible

00:37:32.120 bachelor, right? Like there's a cutoff for men too. But I think we need to admit if men, if it's

00:37:37.360 bringing wisdom, protection, uh, uh, provision, these kinds of things, um, a man, he becomes

00:37:44.980 more and more eligible and probably peaks with lifespans being what they are today. Let's,

00:37:51.000 let's call it like around 80 years old, 80 to 85 years old, 75 to 85 in the West. Um, and, uh,

00:37:58.240 looking at provision and our economic systems and, and, uh, what it takes to build wealth and

00:38:03.880 those kinds of things on average, um, you know, a man, what he's able to produce and the income

00:38:09.680 he's able to achieve at various points along his life as it corresponds to age. And all these ways

00:38:15.820 and the way that wisdom is accumulated over time throughout the years. For a man, you could argue

00:38:21.540 that a man, his eligibility as a bachelor probably peaks in his 40s.

00:38:30.120 I knew when you started this, you're about to say the age that you're generally at.

00:38:33.520 Whereas a woman, no, I'm not in my 40s. I'm in my 30s, barely.

00:38:38.640 so you're you're about to hit your prime you're like you guys have just gotten but i've been

00:38:42.300 married for 10 years i'm off the market um but my point is generally speaking a man probably peaks

00:38:48.840 in his 40s uh whereas a woman probably peaks in her 20s that's that's the formula that we didn't

00:38:57.860 write the formula right we're not even saying like yeah we love this but we're just saying that um

00:39:03.240 in physical terms, practical terms, economic terms, uh, uh, social terms, um, economic at every

00:39:10.960 level. Um, that's just the way that it is. And so ideally, like, cause the Bible does still talk

00:39:18.800 about a man, um, celebrating the wife of his youth. Ideally, we do want to see young men get

00:39:26.080 married young, uh, while they're still in their youth and not have, you know, this 20 year gap

00:39:31.820 from puberty to marriage where they're just racking up bad habits, selfish living, and

00:39:39.000 sexual promiscuity. So we're saying even in the case of a man, there is, I think, clearly a biblical

00:39:45.600 incentive for marrying earlier rather than later. But it still exists, the fact that a man can get

00:39:57.520 married in his 40s and be a catch in a way that a woman who gets married in her 40s will be far

00:40:06.620 less, exponentially less of a catch. And that's why we've seen throughout Christendom, not that

00:40:13.040 it has to be the rule, an ironclad universal rule for all marriages and all places and all times,

00:40:19.500 but if we're just looking and trying to detect a pattern, you have found very clearly in Christian

00:40:27.140 societies for thousands of years now, the general pattern of men marrying a younger woman, not

00:40:35.920 women marrying a younger man. And that's not arbitrary. It's not capricious on the part of

00:40:42.220 God and his design. It is quite logical. There are clear reasons for that.

00:40:49.600 And bringing it now, we'll talk practically about arranged marriages. What that means is,

00:40:53.840 And I think, I don't know what you would say about this.

00:40:56.880 I think the man should be the one that's initiating, not actually the man's father.

00:41:01.920 So this is not father to father necessarily.

00:41:05.000 The fathers are asking about the boy.

00:41:06.800 The fathers are asking about the girl initiated by the man.

00:41:09.840 But if you are a man and you're looking to be married and you're actually going to take

00:41:13.340 the route of, I'm going to address fathers that might have eligible daughters.

00:41:16.560 I'm going to reach out to these churches.

00:41:18.640 Generally speaking, practically, they should be at your age or younger.

00:41:22.960 that's not to say it could never work if she's a year older than you that's not a not a hard and

00:41:26.600 fast rule but as a pattern if you're a 25 year old man um generally speaking down one to five years

00:41:33.620 is a perfect age range to look we are not giving a universal rule 20 to 30 we're giving a general

00:41:38.880 rule but the thing that is helpful about generalities is that generalities are generally

00:41:43.600 true okay so like people always object to well um you know you said that the average woman is

00:41:49.680 five foot six, but I know a woman who's five foot eight. Okay. The average, we're talking about

00:41:55.800 generalities. Okay. And in general, you're absolutely right. In general, a young man

00:42:02.860 should be looking for a potential suitor who is his age or younger. And then for the father of

00:42:11.080 a daughter, generally speaking, a man says, Hey, I was referred to you. You go to my church. I'd

00:42:16.820 be interested potentially in courting your daughter he's looking for someone that is at

00:42:20.620 that stage of life which is probably going to be at her age or a little bit older so if his daughter

00:42:25.220 is 20 his daughter is 25 he's looking for someone that's 25 30 35 40 and the point that we're saying

00:42:32.080 is just because a man calls and he's 35 years old doesn't in and of itself mean oh well she's 12

00:42:37.280 years younger that could never work you know that arrangement has typically been what it's been

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00:45:59.700 timeless treasure. I liked what you said about headship because that I think is the ideal

00:46:05.240 arrangement. I don't think we're going to sit here and say, and arranged marriages are the

00:46:08.380 best route to go bar none. I do think people finding one another organically pursuing. I do

00:46:13.920 think that is probably the ideal. I don't know what you would say. I don't know if I'd say ideal,

00:46:18.200 but I think it's certainly permissible, but although it is permissible that two individuals,

00:46:23.100 man and a woman could find each other organically, I would still prescribe, um, you know, the,

00:46:29.040 the wisdom of bringing, uh, the father of the woman into the equation. So a man can meet a woman at,

00:46:36.180 you know, a church conference or whatever it might be. Um, and the initial, you know,

00:46:41.160 connection could be him and her, um, that could be the initial connection. Um, but I would then,

00:46:47.900 you know wanting to honor her father and honor the lord bring the father into it um and so i don't

00:46:54.540 know if i would say that's ideal i would say that because of the way our society is structured today

00:46:59.200 it's become normative um i don't think that the fact that it's normative makes it the ideal but

00:47:04.500 um but it is normative i'll certainly see that point but even with that being normative um you

00:47:11.240 know future husband meeting future wife as the initial meeting um that still doesn't um that

00:47:17.320 still doesn't uh necessitate that the father of that woman isn't brought in you know um quickly

00:47:23.680 promptly after that initial meeting yep and so when we're talking about you could say arranged

00:47:28.960 marriages all the way you have courtship which would be kind of in the middle that's typically

00:47:32.320 the family is very involved the dating just very broadly speaking we're kind of actually talking

00:47:36.920 about, and more so in the realm of the daughters, of the father of a daughter, we're talking about

00:47:41.300 the level of parental involvement. Are we talking about the dad driving, you know, to another state,

00:47:46.320 dad flying across the country, dad making a phone call? Hey, dad, I'm 21 years old. I'm mature. I'm

00:47:52.740 godly. I want to marry a godly man and have children. Man's picking up the phone. Hey, we

00:47:56.860 have a church in this state that we know full of great people. It's bigger than ours. It has other

00:48:01.580 families. Picking up the phone and doing that, that would be the level of involvement that may

00:48:05.220 be arranged. But even so, to your point in dating, dads should still be evolved, especially with

00:48:10.260 their daughters. And if a son is so young, 18, 19, that dad's coming along because he has his

00:48:15.520 license, maybe he's a little bit young. But the point is, especially for daughters, dads are doing

00:48:20.760 the work of discerning. We've got to be perfectly honest, 18 to 19 year old girls, they're not

00:48:26.240 really equipped to discern the qualities in a man that will make good marriage material. We just

00:48:32.860 But to be perfectly honest, even into 20s, 21, 22, 23, it is paramount, I would say, for any Christian woman.

00:48:41.360 If your father is a Christian, if he is a good man, if he knows the things to look for, to say,

00:48:46.420 Dad, I recognize that I'm out of the house, all else being equal, I wouldn't even do it again this way.

00:48:50.980 But it is what it is.

00:48:51.940 But I started seeing this man, and I want you to ask him.

00:48:54.700 I want you to ask him about his walk with Christ.

00:48:56.940 I want you to ask him about sexual purity.

00:48:59.120 I want you to ask him about his goals, because it's one thing to tell a woman that you like it.

00:49:03.880 I like him.

00:49:04.860 Oh, that sounds great.

00:49:06.460 But I want him to sit down with a man who's older, and I want you to take it.

00:49:09.500 I want you to discern, and I want you to help me.

00:49:11.820 And so arranged marriages, courting, dating, this whole combination, in a Christian paradigm,

00:49:17.260 at least especially in the woman's side of things, the father is involved, I think we would say.

00:49:21.660 With arranged, you have all the way to the point where the father is actively, I would say, soliciting interest,

00:49:26.860 reaching out and saying i have a daughter who's 21 is there a good man a man who's a hard worker

00:49:31.440 a man who loves jesus a man with a good track record a virtuous character uh could i talk to

00:49:36.540 him would he be interested that's kind of your range at all the way at this end of the spectrum

00:49:40.500 versus dating still ideally a father is involved he's meeting he's assessing he's giving feedback

00:49:46.400 to his adult daughter yeah well said i agree so all that being said um i don't know i don't see

00:49:53.900 necessarily a wholesale return to arranged marriages, but I do think in a time like ours,

00:49:58.600 noticed all the way back in different empires, in the Middle Ages, in Christendom, there was a reason

00:50:03.600 for arranged marriages. There was a reason that parents had to do it, fathers to take care of

00:50:08.040 their daughter. There was a reason of land. We need to keep this land in the family. There was a reason

00:50:12.880 to do it. So when it comes to arranged marriages, I think the biggest impetus, hey, I think I want

00:50:17.440 to go down this road. I think it's necessary. There are, you know, five other families in our church.

00:50:22.100 There's just not a lot of options.

00:50:23.900 I want to take the impetus and I want to do it.

00:50:26.840 I think the biggest thing is a justification, a context.

00:50:29.980 I'm doing this because my daughter's 24 and 25 and wants to be married and have children.

00:50:35.420 I'm doing this because we live in a rural area.

00:50:38.260 I don't think there's necessarily the need.

00:50:40.360 You can tell me what you think.

00:50:41.660 18, 19, earlier 17.

00:50:44.340 I need to get out there and I need to make sure she's married by 20.

00:50:47.500 I think you can give a little bit of time when younger.

00:50:50.440 it's as you get older and same thing for a man a man's maybe 25 he's working hard he's buying land

00:50:56.780 uh okay you know pursuing women calling their father talking to them not a biggest deal at 25

00:51:02.460 you're 30 35 it's it's time to settle down so same thing on the other side for daughters being a

00:51:08.520 little younger for the reasons as we mentioned how old is your daughter what type of context do

00:51:12.640 you live in how many eligible people are there around what how would you be best how would you

00:51:17.960 best help them to find a spouse and so those are all the considerations that i think of what's the

00:51:22.740 reason what's the context why uh what does she want what is she kind of saying she you can tell

00:51:28.040 that i'd like to be married all my friends have been married my siblings have been married

00:51:32.140 i would very much so like to uh and taking the initiative and saying you know what that sounds

00:51:37.040 like a good thing and i'm going to actively put myself out there and say how can i help you in

00:51:40.920 this way yep i think that's great so fathers be involved especially fathers of daughters

00:51:45.040 um and then in addition to that just like what wesley's saying uh some of the practical things

00:51:51.220 that you could be thinking now even if your children are young uh one of the the chief

00:51:56.820 decisions you can make today that radically increase the likelihood of your children having

00:52:04.100 godly spouses tomorrow is where you live honestly um that's that's one of the big things that i've

00:52:12.360 talked to several different couples, um, and you know, and, uh, who have young children and they're

00:52:18.620 thinking about the future and thinking about these things, um, telling them like, do you want your

00:52:23.680 family to be split up and, and physically geographically separated over the whole face

00:52:31.100 of the country? Um, no, great. Neither do I, I would like for our family to stay together. I'd

00:52:36.840 like to be able to see my grandchildren one day, more than twice a year. Um, all those kinds of

00:52:41.000 things. I'd like to have, you know, an ongoing relationship with my children when they are

00:52:45.500 adults. Okay. Well, one thing to help ensure that you can't guarantee it, God might call one of your

00:52:52.120 children to be a missionary or something like that. But again, as a general rule, ordinarily,

00:52:57.720 if you want to have an active, continual, consistent relationship with your children

00:53:02.640 when they're older and therefore with their children, your grandchildren, one of the things

00:53:07.720 that you can do that's very practical is while they're young, move to a place, if you don't

00:53:14.420 live there already, where your children, when they're adults, will have a future. And what

00:53:19.740 that means is a place where there is, as an absolute necessity, at least one godly local

00:53:28.440 church that your family can belong to in covenant membership. Ideally though, I'm going to throw this

00:53:34.080 out there ideally um you want better odds for your children and spouses and those kinds of things

00:53:39.380 um a find an area where there are multiple orthodox biblical faithful local churches that are

00:53:46.940 have a conservative you know theological view of the scripture that are going to be like-minded

00:53:51.880 in all the things that you view as being uh virtuous and and important so going to a place

00:53:58.840 that is highly churched. That is a positive. It's a net positive for your children's

00:54:06.800 prospects for future spouses. Also a place that is economically affordable where they can afford

00:54:15.080 to live, where there's land that they could purchase or that you can help them purchase,

00:54:20.000 where there's also job opportunities because you can move off into the boom docks where there's

00:54:24.340 plenty of land uh but there is absolutely nowhere for them to work right so that has to be considered

00:54:30.020 so where can i go where there are churches aka meaning christians other christian families as

00:54:36.500 many as possible that think like us that have the convictions we have where there's um affordable

00:54:43.300 um cost of living or at least more affordable comparatively to other places in the country

00:54:49.440 where there's land, where there are jobs, decent paying jobs. You might also be considering,

00:54:57.500 you might be convicted with homeschooling. I get that. That's becoming increasingly day by day,

00:55:04.160 my own personal conviction. But if you're someone who is considering schooling options,

00:55:09.820 you should not be considering a public school. But so then looking, this place doesn't have

00:55:14.960 churches also does it have christian schools right so uh churches uh christian schools

00:55:21.360 affordable living land that can be purchased and job opportunities um and then looking at a place

00:55:27.700 that has those things and even if the whole ship is going down right if america is like the titanic

00:55:33.380 uh well what do you do if you're on the titanic and you're a father and you have you know little

00:55:37.880 children um do you just you know stay in your room and and just go down with the ship or do you give

00:55:45.660 them even though you think it may be hopeless do you still buy your children as much time as you

00:55:50.880 possibly can do you take your children in your arms and run them to the top side of the ship

00:55:55.740 that's going to go down last giving them every fighting chance that maybe they could get on a

00:56:00.340 lifeboat maybe they can live a little bit longer maybe they can survive right that's that's what

00:56:05.420 you do so maybe the whole country is going to hell in a handbasket it sure looks that way it feels

00:56:09.920 that way um but even if that's the case okay well if the whole country is going to hell in a hand

00:56:15.220 basket do i raise my kids in uh manhattan with the muslim socialist mayor um one of the most

00:56:22.760 liberal cities in the country uh that's that's going to be go to hell in a handbasket first

00:56:28.780 or do i pick somewhere else where you know even if the whole country goes to hell in a handbasket

00:56:33.800 it goes there last, right? Like those are the kinds of things that we're talking about. It's

00:56:38.400 very practical things. So as a father, especially of daughters, am I going to be involved in helping

00:56:44.980 them find a husband? I think the answer should be yes. And then both in the case of sons and

00:56:50.280 daughters, am I building a life for myself and my wife and my children where my children will have

00:56:58.720 a fighting chance to build a life there too? Or have I selected to live somewhere where I can

00:57:04.220 afford to live, but I know that there's a 98% chance that my children won't be able to? And

00:57:10.580 so right here at the end, the last kind of example that I'll give is to brag on my father-in-law,

00:57:16.260 because I think he did this very, very well. My father-in-law worked hard and was successful.

00:57:23.360 And because of his hard work and success and giftings and all those kinds of things,

00:57:28.540 And of course, the grace and providence of God, he got to a place where he was able to make not just survive, but make a good living well above his needs.

00:57:38.360 He was living below his means, well below his means, saving money, stewarding money, investing money, all those kinds of things.

00:57:45.680 And he was able to do that in the larger San Diego area of California.

00:57:51.260 When his children were older and married husbands and began to have children of their own,

00:57:57.840 he was able to quickly detect my sons-in-law, he had daughters.

00:58:03.660 So the men who married my daughters, it's not just because they're being lazy or because

00:58:10.240 of some moral deficiency, but my sons-in-law are not going to be able to provide for my

00:58:17.760 daughters in the way that I was, not even close.

00:58:21.260 And so even though he was financially fine, he could have lived and retired and died in sunny Southern California by the beach with, you know, great weather every single day.

00:58:33.260 He could have done that.

00:58:34.620 He could afford to do that.

00:58:37.020 But he knew that his daughters and grandchildren would not be able to.

00:58:41.520 And instead of just sitting there and waving goodbye as they move to fly over country, many such cases, many people, you know, leaving California, leaving New York, leaving these places to go to the middle of the country where maybe it's a little bit less desirable in terms of the weather, you know, or the view.

00:59:01.840 You don't necessarily get to live on the coast, but it's affordable.

00:59:06.820 And instead of just sitting in California and waving goodbye to his daughters and to

00:59:11.760 his grandchildren, he actually initiated.

00:59:14.520 He saw the writing on the wall, saw that it was going to be virtually impossible for his

00:59:20.000 children and grandchildren to have the life that he did.

00:59:22.980 And so he was the one who initiated and said, hey, guys, why don't we all just pack up and

00:59:29.080 move together?

00:59:29.580 and he moved the whole family to texas and helped them to settle and to be able to get houses that

00:59:38.160 they could afford and jobs that would cover the bills and that was i think an incredibly godly

00:59:45.840 righteous thing to do and it was a very practical thing he didn't arrange marriages for his

00:59:51.560 daughters and he's not currently working to arrange marriage marriages for his grandchildren

00:59:55.860 but he did one key thing he just geographically economically practically positioned his children

01:00:05.140 and grandchildren in a place that would buy them time yeah it made all the difference in the world

01:00:11.600 an incredibly loving and godly decision that that all of his children and sons-in-law me being one

01:00:20.060 of them and the grandchildren for decades will be able to remember, recognize, and as the Proverbs

01:00:26.220 say, rise up and call him blessed. And he deserves it. And so even something like that is like, well,

01:00:34.020 we've got our one local church that hasn't bowed the knee to the spirit of the age. Okay, great.

01:00:39.800 How many people are in that church? Well, there are, it's 50 people strong, including kids,

01:00:43.600 right? And what are the other churches that have the caliber of conviction and resolve like your

01:00:49.460 church does? Well, there are none within a hundred mile radius. Okay. And then what's the cost of

01:00:54.620 living, you know, in your California town where there's only one faithful local church within a

01:00:59.400 hundred mile. Okay, great. All right. And then what's the, you know, what's the school options?

01:01:03.460 Okay, great. What's the job options? Okay, great. The cost of living is this. Okay. So by you

01:01:08.500 remaining there, you have virtually decided that your children will either be compromised

01:01:17.260 or leave. They will either have to compromise to stay near you so that you actually have

01:01:23.860 an active relationship in your grandchildren's lives one day. They'll have to stay and compromise

01:01:30.240 and raise your grandchildren to be heathens. Or they'll have to not compromise and leave

01:01:37.640 and you'll have to go get on a plane twice a year and barely see your kids and grandkids.

01:01:42.860 or here's an idea you could just get over the weather like i understand the weather is nice

01:01:50.800 but you're talking about the souls of your own posterity your own future generations i mean guys

01:01:57.680 like when are we just going to call it what it is um you have a choice between low humidity

01:02:03.060 or the salvation of your grandchildren and we have christians older christians

01:02:11.840 continually making excuses when if they were honest they would just come out and say it

01:02:17.300 we care more about the weather than the souls of our grandchildren because that's what it is

01:02:23.060 we should probably stop doing that stop doing that so anyways i think that's just one right

01:02:29.800 there at the end practical way to live your kids love your kids is to determine with wisdom where

01:02:36.160 you're going to live and what future prospects that makes available for them economically,

01:02:41.640 academically, and certainly in the realm of who they will marry.

01:02:47.220 And on that note of location, I think my ideal, as I think about my children,

01:02:51.840 ideally they would marry families we've known for a while. One of the best ways I'm going to

01:02:55.340 be able to assess, for example, a potential suitor for my daughter is I know what his dad

01:03:00.500 is like. I know what his family's like because I've gone to church with them for 20 years. I have

01:03:05.520 that assurance. I know the family. But if you raised your children somewhere like you're

01:03:10.040 describing, you don't have that, and you're 18, you're like, you know what? I see it now.

01:03:14.320 I see it clearly. You're right. We should do that. The ship has sailed. You don't get those

01:03:19.000 years back. That huge avenue, like that is one of the, honestly, probably the biggest way,

01:03:23.380 at least in the time past, that people met their spouse was they were childhood friends. They knew

01:03:28.060 each other's family. They lived on the same street. They went to the same church. Growing up,

01:03:32.040 they have this familiarity that quickly blossoms to romantic love as they got older that is a huge

01:03:37.380 way that people meet one another online dating sucks online dating i have this full of terrible

01:03:42.980 people i have a daughter i'm looking toward her future husband do i know his dad oh my goodness

01:03:50.480 wait i do that's crusader pepe he's been christ posting and owning the lives for 20 years are you

01:03:58.340 kidding me yep that's oh there you go arranged marriage maybe not quite but um but the point is

01:04:04.000 you don't get those years back and you will by choosing to live somewhere like you described

01:04:08.820 not around a lot of christian community not around people that your children can marry

01:04:12.580 and they turn 18 you have lost that avenue right there is not getting it back we can and should

01:04:18.440 repent and you can repent of where god i'm sorry that i prioritize the weather that i prioritize

01:04:24.140 this job that it didn't make the christian church the community of saints a big deal right but you

01:04:29.660 don't get those years back and your children and now having to find a spouse some other way even

01:04:34.920 if you're still involved it is going to be a lot harder yep that is a fact that is just the reality

01:04:39.760 of nature statistics are and you can't get over it they're going to marry um a worse spouse it or

01:04:46.140 the very least is going to be harder it's going to take longer they're going to know less about

01:04:49.800 them there's going to be more surprises in marriage i mean women all the time on dating

01:04:53.720 apps they marry a terrible guy because their dad's not involved right they didn't grow up with them

01:04:58.280 oh turns out uh he beats women but i found that out after i married him right and that's terrible

01:05:04.140 but boy how could this have been avoided let me think let me think oh uh she could have been

01:05:09.080 surrounded by christian men that were eligible for marriage in a church for the last 20 years

01:05:13.260 instead of nobody right right right right okay um so it is now uh wednesday and we have thanksgiving

01:05:22.600 tomorrow, which we're very excited about. I hope that you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving,

01:05:27.660 honoring the Lord and celebrating with you and yours. And then Friday, the day after Thanksgiving,

01:05:33.640 because we broadcast on three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, because it's the

01:05:38.500 Friday right after Thanksgiving, we're going to go ahead and take that off for ourselves to spend

01:05:44.140 time with our families and for you as well, to not just be glued to a screen, but spend time with

01:05:49.160 your spouse with your kids in-laws and outlaws so we will see you guys lord willing on monday

01:05:55.240 which i believe will be december 1st is that right the next time that we uh that we broadcast

01:06:00.460 will be on monday uh december 1st at 3 p.m central time right here at the end do us a favor make sure

01:06:06.600 to subscribe on youtube right response ministries on youtube subscribe and click the bell and then

01:06:11.800 also follow us on x the handle is at right response m as in ministries at right response m

01:06:17.680 make sure to follow us on x and also click the bell there as well and as i said have a wonderful

01:06:23.680 thanksgiving and we will see you lord willing on monday at 3 p.m central time god bless and god

01:06:28.980 speed

01:06:47.680 You

The NXR Podcast - November 26, 2025

THE LIVESTREAM - Arranged Marriages & Appropriate Ages

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