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00:00:31.000Today, we'll be discussing an important topic, and that is the Bears.
00:00:36.900And if we're feeling particularly bold, we might even switch gears and talk about doubles.
00:00:42.920We're going to be talking about sports, and we're going to be talking about the role that
00:00:46.940sports, professional sports, play in our culture and in our country today.
00:00:52.800Now, it's worth noting that things have changed quite a bit.
00:00:55.960It's a little bit different today than it might have been if you're in your 30s and you have memories that are fond of when you were five and six years old sitting down on the couch watching a professional football game with your dad.
00:01:10.520Some of the things that have changed is, yes, wokeness and, yes, you know, these social justice lines that are going to be in the infield and the gay rainbow on the men's helmets, all those kinds of things.
00:01:21.780But another thing that has changed, there's a lot of things, but another thing is also I think of sports gambling.
00:01:27.960And I also think about our culture and just how transient we are.
00:01:31.240Very few people live in the same place that they grew up in.
00:01:35.220Even fewer live in the same place that their dad and their grandfather grew up in.
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00:24:38.200only all right guys patreon exclusive daniel woodward had a great comment patreon exclusive
00:24:45.760it's a stream where joel is a commentator for sports ball and just has disdain for the whole
00:24:49.480thing it would be it would be funny if i had disdain the whole time but also if uh if i was
00:24:54.720just insufferable and it was like it wasn't just me but it was me and you guys and it was me uh
00:24:59.980asking questions the whole time like what are they doing why is he throwing the ball
00:25:04.040how come he's running backwards what does it flag mean it's just the entire time it's a pass
00:25:09.860i don't know it's a run oh okay he gave another comment what did he say nate the african-american
00:25:14.640gentleman has now caught the ball and has been tackled by a heritage american on the other team
00:25:21.040well first that would never happen uh secondly he's daniel woodward this was another one of
00:25:26.140his comments he was saying joel would you know he'd be commenting the african-american has got
00:25:30.060the ball the heritage american has tackled him uh no it would be the other way around it would be
00:25:35.260uh there's one heritage american on the field and he has gotten slaughtered he's done we're so over
00:25:41.580yeah it would be funny um i think we could maybe get a few signups but uh i think that would be
00:25:46.600like a one episode wonder and then uh everyone and then it's way too played out everyone would
00:25:51.280be saying never again yeah never again is now james lindsey would say never again okay what
00:25:57.340else you guys want to talk about yeah so one thing i i think we could talk about uh so we've
00:26:02.100already sort of a first off talked about the story itself and i think we've started to allude to
00:26:06.660some of the uh principle uh you know principled values in sports virtue formation so on and so
00:26:13.700forth one other thing that i i think we should talk about is is the way that sports actually
00:26:19.280becomes and the arena if you will the competitive arena becomes a a place for uh common cultural
00:26:26.600worship and an expression of cultural customs so historically if we look at the olympic games
00:26:33.240the olympic games weren't just about competition they weren't just about um a place where someone
00:26:38.900can say hey i can throw this thing further and that means that i would be a better soldier
00:26:42.440theoretically these also also were places where it worship was being done there were dedications
00:26:48.320to the gods there were sacrifices being made so so on and so forth yeah and i think um you could
00:26:54.960also say that football and sports generally but football let's say baseball maybe has also been
00:27:00.840in in the american ethos a place where that expression has been had so you think about you
00:27:06.740know as singing you know singing the national anthem you think about the f-16s flying overhead
00:27:11.660an expression of sort of patriotism you think about um hymns being sung at the beginning of
00:27:18.120prayers being made at the beginning of games which has happened historically pretty regularly
00:27:22.080and you and it starts to become clear that okay there's there's something more going on
00:27:26.220than simply um an expression of sort of like masculine strength like clearly we're all coming
00:27:31.860to the table and we're using this as a as a medium as a forum for us to show that we we're all like
00:27:38.140each other that we love one another we love what we uh who we are so um and that historically has
00:27:44.380been um where uh the the sort of role that competition has served as well and i think uh
00:27:50.340But to Oren's point about the Byzantine Empire and them having political controversies centered around sports is a great indication that that's true.
00:28:01.520That we're coming and saying, no, this team represents this ethos.0.99
00:28:05.280That team, that chariot racing team represents that ethos.
00:28:08.000And this is some sort of like simulated battle where we're going to see what wins, what wins out.
00:28:15.320But now it seems like it's not whether but which.
00:28:17.920so that's still happening these these sacraments or you know rituals to the gods except now instead
00:28:24.580of you know an american flag or the star-spangled banner it's you know in the end zone um uh racism
00:28:32.440needs to end or whatever right right so now it's the social justice gods you know or blm or
00:28:37.900whatever but that's a that's a really good point it is like the virtue of masculine strength like
00:28:43.360there is there is some good um with professional sports but uh but you're right there always was
00:28:49.600it was always that's part of it and that matters but there was always something more it really was
00:28:54.400in some ways religious it wasn't just a pastime and i i would since since you brought that up i
00:29:00.820think it's a good segue to at least one more point that wes you already alluded to but it should be
00:29:05.380said um clearly and explicitly um if it's if it's not meant to be religious then why did why did you
00:29:13.640put it on america's religious day right like the fact that it's um that it's sunday right it could
00:29:20.140have been any other day of the week especially you know it's like well other days or work days
00:29:24.180okay saturday it could have been on saturday and you know i understand uh from those who do watch
00:29:30.060sports i've been reliably informed that it was um originally all the way back in like 1920 i think
00:29:35.640is when they started making the switch to you know football being on sunday and it was at least the
00:29:39.540national football league the national football league and it was to differentiate you know to
00:29:44.600um so that it wouldn't completely overshadow and eclipse college sports and that was part of the
00:29:49.880reasoning um but i will say um i you know i'm a pragmatist in many ways um but my pragmatism
00:29:58.120is always going to be ultimately subservient to my principles.
00:30:03.560I'm a Christian, first and foremost, and I believe in the law of God,
00:30:09.220and I believe that the fourth commandment, the Sabbath,
00:30:12.460that it is an immutable and eternal binding commandment,
00:30:18.180and I do think that football is a breach of it.
00:30:22.200And so the idea that on the Lord's Day,
00:30:24.280that, you know, grown men would be, you know, tailgating in a parking lot to watch a football
00:30:31.340game or sitting on the couch. I don't believe that that is a permissible way to honor the
00:30:37.380Sabbath. You look at the Westminster Confession, you look at the 1689 Confession, it's not just
00:30:43.040ceasing from work, but it's also ceasing. They use the word recreation. And that doesn't mean,
00:30:49.400you know, like you can go, you know, obviously there are varying degrees of how far you take
00:30:53.740that like um can my family you know we went to church in the morning we're going to go back to
00:30:59.040church in the evening and uh can we have a picnic in the park and what happens if you know my three
00:31:04.760year old son um you know throws a ball to me and asked me to catch you know like i i think that's
00:31:10.360a little bit different but when it's like grown men professional paid athletes um and it's and
00:31:17.000it's an industry and like it is a business and you're patroning that business and it's not like
00:31:23.280you're just interacting with your family you know and uh in you know in community and relationship
00:31:29.120but you're actually just in many cases ignoring your family sitting on the couch tuning in um
00:31:35.160i you know i think yeah i don't i don't think that that's uh sabbatarian and and i do think
00:31:41.440that america was a better place when it honored the sabbath and it's been especially hard i've
00:31:45.840loved nfl football in the past but rarely i've ever watched anymore and one of the hardest things
00:31:49.820to get around and are and puts the pin on it is actually the consumer culture so it's not just on
00:31:54.200the lord's day watching people break the sabbath to work but you're also by virtue of the commercials
00:31:58.680and the advertisements that be that are being shown you're just consuming and bringing in instead
00:32:02.820of thinking on the lord upon thinking on the scriptures upon worship you're bringing in and
00:32:07.000the best word for it is slop sloppy food sloppy products just things that add no value to your
00:32:12.980life it's got music it's got colors it's got lewd dancing it's got all of these things to try to get
00:32:17.940you to buy it to try to get you to gamble and like you're going to sit down on the lord's day and for
00:32:21.700three hours just let more and more and more of that come in when you're already watching people
00:32:26.340break the sabbath at least personally for me in my conscience if you can't do it because of well
00:32:30.380they're busy or that well they're working on the sabbath okay but can you at least recognize that
00:32:34.960what you're bringing in the seventh day is a sabbath to the lord your god like recognizing
00:32:39.960that what i take in on this day matters i've been given six days to work right six days you shall
00:32:44.680labor. Believe it or not, right? The five-day work week, the Bible says six. Maybe that's five days
00:32:49.460for your nine-to-five. That's one more for the side hustle, working around the home. But you've
00:32:53.140given six days to labor, six days to watch college football on a Saturday. But the Sabbath, the one0.95
00:32:58.600day, is a Sabbath to the Lord. So even if you can get over, well, they're working, but I'm not on
00:33:03.180the couch. Can you at least, by virtue of what's coming into your brain, say, I just really do not
00:33:08.380want that in my brain. And most especially, if your TV's in the center of your room, your living
00:33:13.160room i don't want that my kid's brain on the sabbath no we just got back from church where
00:33:17.420we worship the lord i'm not now coming in shoving that out of the way and like here's taco bell
00:33:22.200commercials and here's t-mobile commercials and here's just consumeristic junk fill your brain
00:33:27.580with that on sunday no i can't do that yeah yeah and it's gotten worse too i was just thinking
00:33:33.140about for sure uh you know as i've like watched you know game here and there in the past how much
00:33:39.340how they've just found all sorts of creative ways to like throw in advertisements so now it's not
00:33:43.720just commercial breaks um every now and then now they have scheduled commercial breaks and it's not
00:33:48.680just in the commercial breaks that where you'll see commercials but you'll see commercials in the
00:33:52.540live you know the the play as well so team goes back to the huddle hey here's an advertisement
00:33:57.200for this cam by verizon exactly it's terrible it really is everywhere it's just totally saturated
00:34:02.580um and so it's it's just almost impossible to not just be completely inundated and
00:34:08.020honestly won't i wouldn't expect it's long before you have you know on the jerseys and on the
00:34:14.080helmets and those sorts of things advertisements as well so are there are there um because i'm
00:34:19.280ignorant to this but are there nfl games on saturday there are they've started to do it a
00:34:24.780little bit more now especially towards the ends of the season thanksgiving we'll have games christmas
00:34:29.260they have monday christmas eve we'll have games yeah mondays and thursdays yeah i knew that like
00:34:34.960monday and thursday but what about saturday i'm specifically asking some on saturdays towards the
00:34:39.080end of the season i think it's especially as like college football wraps up because they're
00:34:42.800competing with college football which ends in like anything to make an extra dime for the nfl
00:34:46.500yeah well i'm wondering i'm wondering like you know like the stated reason is not wanting to
00:34:52.380overlap with college football but i'm also wondering like how many owners of you know
00:34:59.040the nfl league um maybe like maybe maybe it's not you know it's not weather but which so maybe like
00:35:05.980there still is a holy day there still is a sabbath but for those who are personally involved you know
00:35:12.320in in terms of ownership in the you know the national football league for them their holy
00:35:17.480day isn't sunday maybe their holy day is saturday their seventh day adventist yeah yeah it's the
00:35:21.980seventh day adventist that's what it is uh 10 to 32 nfl team owners are jewish do you think about
00:35:29.280they're about two to three percent of the population that's what i'm about 30 40 of the
00:35:32.840owners of nfl teams yeah it doesn't help it's one of those things it's like you can you shoot in the
00:35:37.100dark you know but um there's some targets that are just so large that you can shoot in the dark
00:35:43.380and hit 10 out of 32 times you know like it's like how did he know how did how did he guess
00:35:49.740200 in a row you know the laws of average are are ever on your side let's transition to for sons so
00:35:56.220we've talked about the commercial aspect the big the league the national locally aren't encouragement
00:36:01.560i think it's a good one you should do sports but locally uh i think of anthony eslin's book
00:36:07.160defending boyhood it's a great book on boyhood and one of the things he points out in sports is that
00:36:11.560your sons if you put your son on a sports team where there's reasonable competitions we're not
00:36:15.700talking t-ball at four or soccer at three we're talking like he plays tackle football he plays
00:36:20.440hockey he plays some other sport well what's going to happen is uh and men do this really well men
00:36:25.600recognize a hierarchy so your son is going to go in there and it's not just going to be his siblings
00:36:29.500who he's older than or younger than it's not going to be his parents but he's going to go on a team
00:36:33.120and he's going to realize hey uh there are three kids that are faster than me hey and this person
00:36:38.020is more inspiring and this person is better at this and uh and he's going to gain the skill and
00:36:42.540It's a very valuable skill for men to recognize I'm not the fastest and I'm not the best,
00:36:47.460but I'm going to follow the guy that is.
00:36:49.700And maybe he is the fastest and the best.
00:36:51.220Then for him to recognize and say, hey, I actually have a skill and talent that God
00:36:54.940has given me and I'm better in this domain than other people.
00:36:57.720Now, what service I give to them then is to humbly do my best to lead, to inspire.
00:37:03.000Nathan said earlier over lunch, it teaches you how to miss, how to fail and to get back
01:14:44.880And that's an important ethical distinction.
01:14:48.040If the mother's life is being threatened by the pregnancy, it's because she needs to deliver the baby, not because she needs to kill the baby.
01:14:57.280So that's right there already a massive ethical distinction.
01:15:02.380and so I'm not a doctor. I can't give you medical advice but as a Christian, as a pastor, I can give
01:15:09.020moral counsel and I would say that if at all possible, you know, trying to carry the baby
01:15:18.100as close to full term as possible and then looking at delivering the baby prematurely
01:15:25.540through a c-section or whatever needs to be done but carrying the baby as long as your wife can
01:15:33.900without her life being jeopardized because I don't know the particular situation in your case
01:15:43.680but I think it's probably a fairly safe assumption that the threat to the mother's life
01:15:50.660will that threat will probably be most threatening um as you get later in pregnancy and not right
01:15:58.100away and so uh if that's the case and it probably is then i would be looking at just taking it a day1.00
01:16:04.900at a time and going as long as she possibly can uh trying to get as close to full term as she can0.92
01:16:11.920and then if slash when it reaches the point where you have a a consensus from multiple sources
01:16:20.140not friends but uh doctors saying uh if she goes longer you know it's like this is like it's you
01:16:27.420know the child is going to kill her then at that point um then delivering the baby not killing the
01:16:34.540baby but you know emergency c-section delivering the baby um the baby being in the icu nicu for
01:16:42.420it may be that the baby has to be there for two months you know the baby's born um early but there
01:16:47.760are stories after story after story of, um, with advances and, um, in medical care, there are
01:16:55.820testimonies of babies being born at like 23 weeks now, 22 weeks, uh, basically, uh, just barely
01:17:02.460over half, um, of, of a full term and the baby surviving and living. And so, um, that's, yeah,
01:17:11.160that's the way that I would be thinking about it is, um, you're doing everything that you can
01:17:16.000to protect and preserve the life of the mother,
01:17:21.480but also giving your child the highest chances
01:17:26.520that they can possibly have at survival.
01:17:30.100And then looking at it in the province of God,
01:17:32.700it's like, okay, we've got every single doctor
01:17:35.780is now telling us we have to deliver the baby now.
01:17:42.340Okay, so we're going to deliver the baby,