In this episode, the Right Response Ministries team talks about practical parenting, training, and everything in between. In this episode of the podcast, the team discusses practical parenting and how to deal with it in the real world.
00:28:05.320Like spankings are supposed to hurt.0.98
00:28:07.340If it doesn't even hurt, then there's no sense in doing it.
00:28:09.980So it is supposed to hurt, but it's not supposed to harm.
00:28:13.300That's why, you know, traditionally, like, you know, you spank a child's bottom because it's, you know, resilient and there's, you know, extra padding and all those kinds of things so that it's not going to do lasting harm or damage.
00:28:30.840You are trying to give them a momentary, right?
00:28:33.460So Hebrews 12 also tells us that no discipline is pleasant for the time, but in the moment where it's unpleasant, that moment is fleeting, it's momentary, and so too should parental discipline, it should be something that hurts, it's uncomfortable, it's not pleasant in the time, but it should be something that quickly is fleeting.
00:28:57.960Hopefully the memory and the lesson is lasting, but the pain is not.
00:29:01.980Can I wax eloquent, too, on the biological reasons that we would do that and why God instructs it?
00:29:06.720So the prefrontal cortex, you have the motor cortex, which is in the center of your brain.
00:29:10.660The prefrontal cortex in the front is what controls inhibition.
00:29:13.560So the reason we like alcohol is because when we take alcohol, one of the byproducts of it suppresses the function of your premortar cortex.
00:29:21.320You're more likely to dance or to talk to strangers and be friendly because the things you're normally inhibited from doing,
00:29:26.260I'm self-conscious, I don't want to dance in front of people, that's then inhibited chemically.
00:29:30.820it's a chemical reaction it's not mysterious or spiritual it's a chemical reaction that causes you
00:29:35.360to be less inhibited and the things that you want to do you carry out and ultimately a lot of times
00:29:39.820do things you regret but in the same way you have two and three year old boys for instance they are
00:29:44.520the most statistically they're the most violent by any age of child and now obviously their violence
00:29:50.660is not very powerful because they're little but that's because of brain development their
00:29:54.320prefrontal cortex has not yet developed and learned behaviors that it needs to inhibit so
00:29:59.700when you're spanking a child say a child loses his temper he throws things he acts out and you
00:30:04.980administer controlled pain that's short not lasting not abusive not destructive when you
00:30:11.300administer that again and again over years what you're literally doing is you're helping them
00:30:15.760form the connection that when i lose control of my emotions when i lose control and hit when i yell
00:30:22.520when i stop when i do these things it brings pain it hurts because if you don't get that skill if
00:30:29.260you're never inhibited and you're never disciplined and you never experience what that looks like
00:30:32.740you'll be an adult you'll be 25 and you'll have no inhibition and you won't be able to save money
00:30:37.500you won't be able to keep a relationship you won't be able to show up on time because you
00:30:40.800have not learned the skill of resisting the things you want to do and saying no i have to be in
00:30:46.860control of my emotions and it's a mercy two three four years old right at that stage to administer
00:30:52.900something that in the moment is painful for them to learn i have to control my emotion because if
00:30:58.300i don't it hurts and it'll hurt at adulthood if you don't learn that lesson in much more damaging
00:31:03.520ways right or you can learn it in 20 minutes right that's three years old that's the key that um
00:31:09.340all of life is filled with consequences for bad decisions and bad behavior um you never outgrow
00:31:15.320that the only thing that changes is what you just said the consequences become increasingly
00:31:20.360exponentially more severe and so what you're doing it is a mercy what you're doing is you're
00:31:26.420hoping to teach that young boy, to teach him, you know, inhibition and self-control and, you know,
00:31:34.240good behavior and those kinds of things when the stakes are much lower, rather than him learning
00:31:39.740those things later when the stakes are much higher. And so he, yes, he's experiencing pain
00:31:44.860in discipline for bad choices, for bad behavior, but the pain in discipline that he's experiencing
00:31:50.500as a young man, as a boy, that pain is low stakes pain. It's fleeting. It's minimal.
00:32:00.900The pain that he'll experience later in life, it won't be a spanking, but it'll be far more
00:32:06.120severe than that. And so it is a mercy. It is a grace to children. One thing that I was going to
00:32:11.720say just practically, because we opened the episode saying, you know, we wanted to be practical.
00:32:15.580one thing that was really helpful for my wife and I was, um, was having like two categories of,1.00
00:32:23.780of, uh, spankings. Um, and so we, you know, the language that we use, um, is we, we say,1.00
00:32:32.120you know, there's spankings and then there's swats is what we say, uh, spankings and swats.
00:32:38.120And we place those in two different categories. And what we mean by that is, you know, for
00:32:42.080the first couple of years when we were new parents, um, we, you know, we were persuaded and,
00:32:48.620and, you know, we had been taught that basically every time you do discipline,
00:32:54.740it's, uh, it's a big event, you know, it's, it requires a lot of intentionality and it's going
00:33:01.400to, at the practical level, it's just going to require a lot of time. Um, you know, and so like
00:33:06.200from a lot of the gospel centered books. So it's like, yes, you know, like a lot of those guys,
00:33:11.200you know, they would say, you know, yeah, I mean, the Bible does talk about spanking. And so we
00:33:15.460can't, you know, we can't say that's not a thing, but, you know, you need to be sure that, you know,
00:33:20.180it's not just a spanking. It's that you're going back to the room, to a bedroom. It's private.
00:33:25.640You're explaining to the child on the front end what it is that they did that was wrong.
00:33:31.040And then, you know, you're preaching the gospel to them and reminding them, you know,
00:33:34.840you're telling them what was wrong. You're getting, you know, some kind of admission of guilt. Can you,
00:39:07.480It's not just unique to me, but this seems to be a universal experience that if the bar is set too high for discipline, that it has to be a spanking, it has to be private, it has to be isolated in a room.
00:39:19.720It requires a talk on the front end, a talk on the back end, and this, that, and the other.
00:39:24.660And it requires a very specific, the child must eventually, this gets into your thing, they have to respond by saying X, Y, and Z.
00:39:32.100And if they don't respond by saying X, Y, and Z, then it must continue.
00:39:35.360Then what will happen is if you have more than one kid, and we're supposed to be fruitful multiply,
00:39:40.860then you'll be privately with one kid in the bedroom for an hour.
00:39:46.440And your other four kids, you know, are like next in line, you know, like, and well, yeah, next in line, or even, you know, God forbid worse,
00:39:55.540like there's some kind of accident and one of the kids, you know, gets hit or cuts themselves with scissors.
00:40:12.980So we know that the Bible, this gets back to the, you know, the cold open.
00:40:15.560We know that the Bible tells us, you know, what it is, the what, the curriculum, the big ideas, the principles and virtues that we're trying to instill in our children.
00:40:24.580And we know that the Bible in a general sense provides the how.
00:40:27.640We know that at least one, not that it's exhaustive, that it's exclusive, the only,
00:40:32.720but we know that it should be one of the tools in our arsenal is spanking, corporal punishment.
00:40:38.980So we know virtue, Christian virtue, needs to be instilled in our child by teaching them,
00:40:43.540and we know that when they fail, that one of the tools made available to us in Scripture
00:40:47.700that we're supposed to use is spanking.
00:46:38.280Um, and, uh, his name was Onan and Onan didn't want to fulfill, uh, his brotherly obligation
00:46:46.960and duty and furthering his now-deceased older brother's biological line, his family line,
00:46:55.900by giving to Tamar, who's now his wife, a child in his brother's name, a son in his brother's name.
00:47:03.260And so when they would be intimate together, you know, the famous story goes that he would
00:47:10.680he would spill his seed on the ground in order to not impregnate her. And it was wicked in the
00:47:17.720sight of God is what the text says. And so the Lord killed him too. And so, you know, put him0.82
00:47:23.520to death. And we don't know exactly how he died, how the Lord did that, but we know that the Lord
00:47:28.200was displeased and found it to be a sin and severe enough to be worthy of the Lord taking his life.
00:47:36.320So that's kind of where this comes from, the sin of onanism is the idea.
00:47:42.240And so there are some Christians that have gleaned from that that there should be no form of family planning whatsoever, that you have as many children as the Lord gives to you.
00:47:56.720And in that family planning, not just no to birth control, no to barrier methods, no also to any type of timing, rhythm, natural family planning.
00:48:08.500So there are some Christians who take that position that to inhibit procreation in any way is wrong.
00:48:17.960So we certainly agree, and we've talked about it before, that birth control in terms of the hormonal birth control pill, that we have big problems with that because of the ethics and that it risks aborting a child, that you actually have an egg that has been fertilized.
00:48:41.080We believe that life begins at conception.
00:48:43.360Conception is not implantation, but fertilization and the hormonal birth control pill does actually risk.
00:48:51.220It can inhibit fertilization, but it also could fail where fertilization does occur,
00:48:57.100but then the thinning of the uterine wall takes place in such a way that you now have a fertilized egg,
00:49:04.060human being conceived and made in the image of God that has no hospitable environment to go,
00:49:08.620and the woman's body ultimately aborts the child.
00:49:13.460And so, you know, from the pill to, you know, what is it, IUD?
00:49:22.840Yeah, so there's several things like that that we believe we could speak, you know, dogmatically to
00:49:30.300because of the issue of life and taking the life of a child.
00:49:34.820But in terms of condoms, which are merely preventative and they're not abortifacient, or whether it be timing of the month and those kinds of things, that's where the Bible speaks with less clarity.
00:49:52.500and so we would give some room for conscience there.
00:50:21.960And so we want to affirm the scripture. We just have to recognize that we live in a culture today that hates children and that idolizes convenience and all these different things, money, materialism, and just simply does not have the view of children that God has and that we should have.
00:50:40.600And so we need to be aware that what we might call family planning or I'm just being wise is entirely possible and very likely in many cases, especially with modern Westerns, even Christians, that what we're calling wisdom really may be fear, it may be idolatry, it may be our own comfort, our own convenience.
00:51:05.280I think that that's highly likely. We live in a society, we don't have large families. They're
00:51:11.720exceedingly rare. And when I say large families, I don't mean five kids. I have a family of seven.
00:51:17.200We have five kids. In our church, we are a medium-sized family. So when I say large family,
00:51:23.200I'm talking eight, nine, 10, 11, 12 kids. And we know plenty of families with that many kids.
00:51:30.340and it's awesome. It's a blessing. And we have to believe it's a blessing because one, we see it,
00:51:35.780we've witnessed that it really is objectively good and there's joy and there's warmth and
00:51:40.140all those things. But also because God's word objectively says it. So in terms of that, this is
00:51:46.760kind of where I've landed is what you're talking about with family planning is you're talking
00:51:52.520about if children really are a heritage from the Lord, a blessing, then you're talking about the
00:51:57.000mitigation of blessing. So, so then when I, when I pan out beyond children, I look at other
00:52:03.460blessings. Um, you know, material provision is a blessing from the Lord. The Lord is the one who
00:52:09.080gives increase. The Lord is the one ultimate, we work, but the Lord is the one who ultimately
00:52:13.860provides through our work. Um, so money, um, material provision, um, is a blessing that
00:52:21.040ultimately comes sovereignly from the Lord. And so the question would be, um, do we seek to
00:52:27.480mitigate that blessing? Like, do we get called in by, you know, um, a supervisor at work and he
00:52:34.180says, I'd like to give you a raise. And he says, I'm, you know, I'm going to give you an additional
00:52:37.740$10 an hour. And you say, you know what, let's make it five because I just don't want too much
00:52:43.120blessing. Well, kids add difficulty and like, you don't think a raise doesn't come with
00:52:47.140responsibility and difficulty that's right it comes with money blessing it also comes with
00:52:51.240responsibility all these blessings always come with a pair of resources all your great responsibility
00:52:56.040it's a double-sided coin with every additional resource that the lord gives to us um there is
00:53:02.100both uh both the privilege and also the duty the responsibility so more money uh means more
00:53:10.040responsibility will be held uh those who who are richer and have been given more uh financially
00:53:15.660will be held more accountable for that, for those resources and how they stewarded them for the
00:53:23.200glory of God. If you have a higher, you know, more influence, so it doesn't just have to be
00:53:27.800monetary, but more influence, a higher station of life, you know, with your job or this or that,
00:53:33.860like whenever we're given more by God, it is both a blessing, a greater blessing with more,
00:53:41.640more of anything, anything that the Bible says is good and not inherently evil. And money is not
00:53:47.740inherently evil. It's the love of money and greed that is the root of all kinds of evil. But money
00:53:52.940in and of itself is not inherently bad, not at all. And so it is a blessing. And whenever we
00:53:57.880receive more of something that the Bible says is good, a blessing, then we are going to be held
00:54:05.120to a higher account and there will be more obligation and responsibility for how we
00:54:10.000steward that. So that's kind of how I've thought about it is, is there any other blessing in our
00:54:16.180life that we would be thinking, you know what, I'd really like, you know, the blessing just
00:54:23.060keeps coming. And it's just, you know, it's just too much. And I'd really like to slow that down.
00:54:27.840I'd really like to make sure I have less of this blessing. And I'm asking that, you know,
00:54:33.920like, it's a little tongue in cheek, but I'm asking that, I'm not saying that that would be
00:54:38.860impossible. Like I actually do think that there could be scenarios, some scenarios where it's
00:54:42.660like, uh, you could make twice as much money, but it would take you away from the home just too
00:54:47.900much. And so you actually, you sit there, you do the calculus and you actually decide, no,
00:54:52.480I'm going to actually mitigate that, that, uh, financial blessing. I'm going to say no to that
00:54:56.660financial blessing because it's going to take me away from some other things. So there are like
00:55:00.960some legitimate reasons, um, to mitigate blessing. But what I'm trying to say is that there are very
00:55:08.320few times that even among mature, godly Christians, there are very few times that we will mitigate
00:55:14.740the blessing of financial prosperity. And yet, it is almost universal. It's so prevalent
00:55:23.420that we are mitigating children. And so, I think that that, to me, that signifies
00:55:30.380that we have almost universally as a culture
00:55:36.480adopted an unbiblical view of children
00:57:21.200blessed is the man whose quiver is full. So that is biblical. That's explicit. It's not just, you
00:57:25.480know, far-fetched or stretching the text. So children are inherently a blessing, heritage
00:57:31.560from the Lord, and many children are an even greater blessing. That's quantity. That's clear
00:57:37.300from scripture. But I think that we can assume quality. And quality, you can say, well, a lot
00:57:43.600of that quality is up to us and how we raise them. And that's absolutely true. The Bible certainly
00:57:48.900affirms that, but I think knowing, um, and this is what's hard. And honestly, I don't trust,
00:57:54.060I don't trust Western modern Christians to, to make this calculus. I think like whatever you0.99
00:57:59.920think is probably a good idea. You should probably just add like two or three kids to it. Like
00:58:04.200seriously, because I don't trust us. Like we, like, um, we, for decades, we have done everything
00:58:10.640we can to make sure that we don't have a lot of kids. Like if any, it's so clearly idolatry. It's
00:58:17.160so clearly sinful. And so that's the calculus that we're working from. But what I was going to say
00:58:21.960is, I do think that there is an allowance for Christian parents to consider their frame. The
00:58:27.640Lord considers our frame that we're made from dust. Like considering your frame and knowing like,
00:58:32.260okay, what, what can we, what amount of children can we have and steward properly? And what pace
00:58:39.380can we go at? Because there are added challenges when each of your kids, you know, is, you know,
00:58:45.380the age difference between each of them is 18 months is much more difficult when you know when
00:58:50.560the age difference is three years that makes a huge difference right having having a three-year-old
00:58:57.060one and a half year old and a newborn is much more challenging than having a six-year-old a
00:59:02.700three-year-old and a newborn much more challenging and so the pace that you go at and the number
00:59:08.780um of children like i think considering your frame like um is your wife a quadriplegic you
00:59:16.240know like okay well then yeah that should be considered uh how is her health um also your0.94
00:59:22.120emotional uh frame and your your christian edwards she had like 13 kids and right in the middle of
00:59:27.360it just straight up broke down like snapped at one point right so like do you have do you have0.97
00:59:32.660the mental and emotional framework for that. But all that, and hear me on this, all that has to be
00:59:39.820tempered with the reality. It's an inescapable reality, and we just have to admit it. We live
00:59:45.840in a time and a culture that hates kids. So as you're doing the calculus, you say, well, we're
00:59:50.880just trying to be wise, or we're just considering, I'm considering my wife's frame, or we're just,
00:59:56.160you know, we, you know, quality, you know, matters, and it does no good. You know, you yourself,
01:00:01.560Joel, you said, you know, it would do no good to have six bad children, you know, it'd be better to have three good children. All those things are true. All those things are true. And also, we live in a culture and a time that hates children. So whatever you're calling wisdom, you just need to be, you need to be like, like, painfully, acutely aware that your flesh is probably factoring into that equation, much more than you're willing to admit.
01:00:28.920i probably i don't have a position i'll defend yet i would probably go farther than you
01:00:33.740and i will say church history up till about 1930 said that all forms of birth control besides
01:00:38.860family planning were wrong both catholics and protestants up till about 100 years ago did
01:00:43.620fully say so that's that's a calculus i've taken in as i've prayed and worked through it
01:00:47.820like nobody before 100 years ago would have affirmed that these have a place for the christian
01:00:53.120yeah that and that's a serious calculus like when you are when you're the anomaly um that's
01:00:59.280standing outside of the witness of you know a millennia and a half or two millennia almost
01:01:06.100of church history and what the church has ascertained like you should you should be
01:01:10.240in a time period that built christendom like things haven't been so great since 1930 when
01:01:15.040catholics and protestants stopped having as many kids yeah yeah there's like we think of like well0.86
01:01:21.100what's the downfall, you know, to our society? And, you know, and like,0.93
01:01:24.260we think, you know, there's like, you know, there's the Jews,
01:01:26.660you know, but there's all these things that people, you know,
01:01:29.400that's the crisis King controversy. It's like,
01:01:31.500that's what people are trying to do. They're trying to account.
01:01:33.680And many times, you know, we're trying to blame, but like,
01:01:36.580but we're trying to account for like, where do we get off the rails?
01:01:38.980How do things get so bad? And the reality is there's a ton,
01:01:41.940there's a ton of answers to that question. You know, like media is,
01:01:46.420is part of that degenerate filth on the television, you know, that we're,
01:01:49.660you know, like they were submerged in, you know, from a very young age and all, you know,
01:01:55.040all these different things, um, churches, their doctrine being watered down, you know, um, uh,
01:02:01.580you know, uh, government schooling, you know, that's, that's godless and atheistic, you know,0.71
01:02:06.980public schools, um, corrupt politicians, uh, multiculturalism, bringing in, you know,
01:02:13.920false religions and false gods without a cohesion of people who are united together.0.94
01:02:19.400There's all these different things that have contributed to the decline of morale,
01:02:23.660the decline of virtue among our nation.
01:02:28.800But part of it is, it really does come down to from the get-go, from the earliest years of life.
01:02:37.040Like one thing that we don't always point to is like, well, how could people be so degenerate?
01:02:43.840It's back to what you were talking about earlier with training a young child, especially young boys, with discipline from a young age so that they develop that healthy sense of inhibition and they're able to exercise self-control.
01:03:02.440Gentle parenting is kind of what I'm building up to.
01:07:47.380Like it happens in, you know, Episcopalians, Eastern Orthodox, Lutherans.
01:07:53.960Anglicans, every single Christian tradition links either a state of grace or regeneration or salvation, something like that, with baptism, except for Presbyterians.0.83
01:08:13.460So they would say Baptists are the outlier because they're the ones who aren't practicing infant baptism.
01:08:19.440But even though we're not doing it with infants, we are actually keeping in step with, in a loose sense, with Catholics and Eastern Orthodoxy and certainly with Episcopalians and Lutherans and Anglicans in the sense that we're saying, no, baptism is linked to salvation.
01:08:39.200It directly correlates with regeneration.
01:09:36.560So he has two kids, a boy and a girl, that are biological, and then they didn't have any more children, and it wasn't until later in life that they went back and entered that stage of parenting again and adopted seven children that I believe are all boys, but maybe not.
01:10:12.600And I appreciate him giving this answer.
01:10:15.100He said, no, I love my children equally.
01:10:17.180He said, but what I will say is that the effort required to love my children equally is not the same.
01:10:25.500So, my love for my adoptive children is equal to my love for my natural-born children.
01:10:31.880But I have to work harder in my love for, like, with my natural-born children, I have nature working for me, which is a powerful thing.
01:10:42.760He said, like, but it requires intent and grace and will.
01:10:48.780I can't just rely on nature in the case of my adopted children.
01:10:52.280So with my adoptive children, it requires more of a supernatural and conscience, deliberate decision that I have to make again and again and again.
01:11:03.160Not that he wouldn't love them at all, but he loves his adoptive children.
01:11:07.480But I'm having to make this conscience, deliberate choice again and again.
01:11:42.000Legally, by name, they are his children.
01:11:45.080He loves them just as much as his natural-born children.
01:11:47.580But I appreciate his honesty and being willing to admit that although he loves them just as much as his naturally born children, the effort required to love them that much is greater, that it doesn't come naturally.
01:12:02.740It came with required more intentionality.
01:20:03.680In that moment, exactly. Like, he can show up alone, and he's not, you know, in a public,
01:20:11.760visible, external way, sinning in front of everybody who's present. But the person who
01:20:19.460thinks that they're the opposite sex, and walks, and talks, and dresses as though they're of the0.67
01:20:24.760opposite sex, that person, it's not just that they're in a lifestyle of sin, but they are0.50
01:20:31.220sinning, actively sinning in the church service. And so it applies across the board, even for0.93
01:20:38.680Christians, for members of the church. Like, everybody who goes to our church, and any church
01:20:43.280for that matter, is a sinner, including me. Everybody's a sinner. So sinners get to go to
01:20:49.260church, but you don't get to sin at church, certainly not publicly and in a witnessable,
01:20:56.600visible fashion. So we have people in our church who, everybody's a sinner, but nobody, even if
01:21:02.100you're a Christian and you're heterosexual and you're a member in good standing, you don't get
01:21:07.660to go to church and shout the F-bomb in the middle of the sermon. Nobody gets to do that.
01:21:13.960And so in the same way, you don't get to visibly, publicly sin.
01:21:20.320There's a difference in being a sinner versus sinning.
01:21:23.980Nobody gets to visibly, publicly sin at church in a way that would be distracting and jarring for everyone who's there.
01:21:37.060And so that's what makes the situation unique when it comes to not just, you know, this person, you know, occasionally steals or this person occasionally curses or this person even is, you know, is gay or this, you know, like what's so unique about this particular sin is you're talking about with this particular sin, you're not just in a state of sin, but you are 24-7 actively sinning all the time.
01:22:06.500lying about who you are and who God made you to be. That's right. You are publicly, visibly,0.65
01:22:12.240for every single person who can see you, you are actively sinning. You are portraying something
01:22:19.960that is perverse, something that is unnatural, something that is against the Word of God.
01:22:25.740You are lying. You are practicing deception. You're being manipulative. You're being confusing
01:22:31.720and deceiving. And so I think that is a fair, I will leave it there, but just a rule of thumb,
01:22:39.980pretty simple, pretty fair, but rule of thumb for parents is nobody, whether it's your family
01:22:48.680member who's a Christian or a family member who's not a Christian, whether it's this or that,
01:22:52.440it doesn't matter. As a parent, nobody, no person has the right, nobody is permitted the right to0.67
01:23:05.020sin in front of your kids. You as a parent are allowed to say, no, I'm not going to allow a
01:23:14.740bunch of people who are blackout drunk to come over to the house in front of our kids. I'm not
01:23:20.540going to allow you won't be here or i won't be there that's you're leaving or i'm going exactly
01:23:25.200and unfortunately with this particular sin that's what it's the equivalent of it's the equivalent
01:23:29.760not just of being in a state of sin but it's the equivalent of actively continually sinning
01:23:35.660and uh and there's your kids will notice my i've been in those environments um unfortunately and
01:23:43.300my my three-year-old i remember my distinctly like it's etched in my mind my three-year-old
01:23:49.120daughter looking, you know, kind of tilting her head and confused and not understanding why is
01:23:55.600there, I know that that's a man, but he's wearing makeup and yeah, you don't subject your children
01:24:02.580to that. That is, that's their problem. That's their fault. They made that choice. Uh, and,
01:24:07.900and you are not being hateful or disrespectful. Um, your obligation is not to a deluded person's
01:25:13.540Some people take it to mean that elders have to be married, you know, because if, so even if you're not divorced, but you have no wife, you're just a single man, that a single man can't be an elder because he doesn't have one wife.
01:25:25.440And then others take it to apply to, you know, a prohibition against polygamy, you know, that would, you know, would be relevant.
01:25:33.680And if you're, for instance, you're doing, you know, church planting in, you know, an Islamic nation and somebody has, you know, or for that matter, you know, back in the day in Utah, you know, with Mormons, you know, somebody happens to have, you know, three wives or whatever.
01:27:24.380And then others, what's probably the most common interpretation, at least in modern times, is that it's just the mark of a man, that he's a one-woman man.
01:27:34.640He's the type of person who models fidelity and those kinds of things, which I get.
01:27:44.660For myself personally, early on, I got married when I was 29 years old.
01:27:52.400And, uh, and early on, you know, me and my college buddies, when we moved across from
01:27:57.300Texas, you know, to California, cause we wanted a church, you know, church plant, we, we weren't
01:28:17.700You're saying could some single man be an equipped pastor?
01:28:20.420I couldn't, but could someone do it? Maybe. I think the gift of celibacy is exceedingly rare. I think it's abundantly rare, but there is a biblical category for it.
01:28:33.500um, it does exist. Um, you know, and so I, I think, you know, so I'm hesitant. My point is,
01:28:39.960I'm hesitant to, to make a, an ironclad, you know, rule that, um, that no single man,
01:28:46.640there can never be any circumstance ever in any place at any time where a single man,
01:28:50.660um, you know, could be an elder. So I'm not sure, uh, in terms of the divorce,
01:28:55.580particularly to the question that was asked, I don't know. It's, it's tough because it's like,
01:29:00.340you've had one wife, you've divorced and remarried. And I'm assuming, you know, like your wife left
01:29:05.220you. So you go to like first Corinthians, I think it would be chapter seven, you know, like if you're
01:29:10.140married to an unbeliever, you know, but they're willing to remain with you, then you should0.99
01:29:13.840remain with them. You know, but if they leave you, uh, allowing them to go in order to strive to be0.98
01:29:19.640at peace with all men. And so there's a difference in, you know, them leaving you abandonment.
01:29:24.620I see those as the two biblical clauses for divorce is, um, adultery and abandonment,
01:29:30.840adultery and abandonment. So if they've abandoned you, um, and, and you were patient, right? You
01:29:36.940didn't just turn around the next day, you know, but like, but you've been patient and you've been
01:29:40.680waiting and, um, and, you know, calling them to repentance and you've pursued and all these kinds
01:29:46.400of things, but it's been years and they, they legally divorced you. I think in the state of
01:29:50.220Texas. Uh, it can be not only no fault divorce, but one party, uh, you can divorce the other
01:29:55.200without ever having their consent. They don't have to actually agree. And so they've, they've
01:30:00.860legally divorced you. Um, you tried, you did everything you can. And, uh, and so it was,
01:30:06.360you know, adultery and abandonment. Um, it was, you know, a biblical, um, allowance for that
01:30:12.480divorce. Um, you know, are, are you free first? Are you free to remarry? Uh, I've, I did a whole
01:30:18.840sermon on divorce, and I gave my opinion on this, but short answer is yes. Calvin held, actually,
01:30:24.580John Calvin held yes as his position as well. So I would say yes, you are in those cases free to
01:30:29.420remarry. If it was not a biblical divorce without biblical cause, then no, you're not free to
01:30:33.680remarry. But in those cases where it was, then you can remarry. So then the final question is,
01:30:38.820and then can you be a pastor? And I don't know. You're now on your second wife. You've had two
01:30:45.860wives. You don't have two wives simultaneously, so you have one wife, and that first covenant0.95
01:30:52.520has been sufficiently severed and ended by your spouse, not by you, but your spouse. They cut off0.82
01:30:59.100that covenant, they ended the covenant, and then you entered into a new covenant. You don't have
01:31:04.660two open covenants simultaneously, a new covenant, one wife. I don't know. I've heard guys argue both0.97
01:31:11.280sides and um i'm not completely convinced one way or the other what do you think i mean i do hold i
01:31:18.940would say that an elder has to be married like you said well what about apostle paul paul wasn't
01:31:23.660doing local church ministry right he was an apostle he was an apostle yeah so uh i and again
01:31:28.500speaking from practical experience it's tough to imagine i've never met a man that's single and has
01:31:34.460met all those qualifications across time and you just look back and like that was a great idea five
01:31:38.660years really good job um as far as the divorced same as you it's it's tough to tell like it does
01:31:45.060violate the the one woman like at one point the man was bound to multiple and someone severed it
01:31:52.280and uh i i think situation would dictate too you know like are you getting someone from from
01:31:58.480seminary you know or i guess i should say are there a number of candidates and this is one of
01:32:03.300them or are you on the mission field and the best person in the village that's qualified in every
01:32:07.580other respects happens to be divorced for one reason or another so wisdom prudence would dictate
01:32:12.600um bible nor church history seems to clearly say one way or the other yep yep all right next we've
01:32:22.900got philip schneider he's been super active in the chat 10 pounds 10 pounds he said this is from
01:32:29.360philip thanks philip i want to know your opinions on children having electronic devices especially
01:32:33.800below and during teenage years thank you for being a role model to me in the rest of the chat thanks
01:32:38.180philip i appreciate that um there does come a point once your teens are driving that they
01:32:42.780probably do need a phone um it doesn't have to be a smartphone maps
01:32:47.920you think printers are reliable enough today
01:32:57.520to print out maps to go to my friend's house um that's a tough one yeah kids do not need
01:33:05.760unfettered access to the internet that's like 14 and below 15 and below yeah kids no kids for sure
01:33:11.420when you get into those later years i do think there's something to be said for like the last
01:33:16.920couple of years um saying okay like we're not going to officially have a curfew we're not
01:33:21.660officially going to do and you're basically allowing the child um a greater degree of freedom
01:33:27.400but while they still are within the confines of having the safety of mom and dad and suicide
01:33:32.340so that way it's it's not just like their first time of unfettered freedom is also you know synced
01:33:38.180up with a stage of life where mom and dad are are not there you know so you're actually allowing
01:33:43.900them to practice liberty and to practice you know responsibility you're taking the guardrails off
01:33:50.360before they're out from underneath your eye, you know, so while they're still there, when you can0.98
01:33:55.080still run to their defense and their protection and their help, uh, but, but removing the bumpers
01:34:00.100and allowing them to, um, to practice. And so I think, you know, there, there can be an argument
01:34:04.760for that. I've heard that applied to curfew, you know, for like the last two years, uh, that a
01:34:09.760child's under your roof or whatever. Um, in terms of applied to smartphones, um, I, yeah, I don't
01:34:18.320know i i don't know i that's kind of how we start off with the episode is like my oldest is seven
01:34:24.340right your oldest is what two three three three and a half and we we preface the episode by saying
01:34:30.080like that's you know that's kind of like what we would need michael for you know but he's out of
01:34:33.380town this week so i don't i don't want to speak you know too michael did something cool he has a
01:34:37.720son and a daughter that are about that age and they actually share a phone and just in the kind
01:34:41.440of way that there'd be nothing that they could hide he's also not you know having to go through
01:34:44.980it so there's different things like that you can say hey i've got twins or i've got two kids that
01:34:48.720are coming of age they work they drive to friends houses like they just they need to be able to take
01:34:53.560calls see where they're at but you'll share a phone and that way there's a kind of accountability
01:34:57.600built in so it depends on the kid it depends on the phone like a gab phone that has phone
01:35:03.080messages and location no internet browsing no video that that could be 12 or something like
01:35:08.900that every kid goes to a christian school to text mom and daddy pick me up there isn't a blanket
01:35:12.880age there isn't a blanket requirement it's not like you can have it at 14 and a half and you
01:35:17.160have to have covenant eyes which is a good idea that just it really depends and so there's not
01:35:21.780a hard and fast answer but the later i would say the better generally speaking more cautious with
01:35:27.040boys than with girls and um also paired probably with with other liberties and being careful with
01:35:34.260all right am i giving them a phone and curfew and they have their driver's license and they have
01:35:38.180money and a job this is all happening in one month or is there a way to leading up to it
01:35:42.540kind of give that freedom yeah yep all right let's see if we can hit one more we had a number
01:35:48.620of super chats apologies to anyone we weren't able to get to let's get to a jeff halfley question
01:35:52.500okay good old jeff jeff thanks for the super chat 999 i think another 299 one elsewhere
01:35:57.340jeff asked parents use the least amount of force in history today are we moving towards a better
01:36:02.800form of highly restrained corporal punishment as the ideal are we in sin for not using the
01:36:07.720old-time methods followed up is that our christian great-grandparents would cause total wimps for not
01:36:12.060using belts on bare skin were they wrong or are we both are correct i think as in a hundred years
01:36:21.300ago your grandparents worked on a farm you were out there milking cows at 6 a.m and moving hay
01:36:26.180bales putting up fence stacks and then you ran off or whatever and grandpa you know did what he did