00:03:16.160How do we protect them the whole nine yards?
00:03:20.160You know, it's a crazy time, but it's also kind of an exciting time for Christians right now because we're getting a chance to see the fruit of the nasty stuff we've been messing around with.
00:03:35.500So that's always a kindness from God when he's like, I'm going to go ahead and show you what you've been doing.
00:03:43.940And what I mean by that is like the very structure of the family.
00:03:46.600Like it's not as if Christians were like super solid on the structure of the family and then out popped a burger fell societally.
00:03:57.140No, like we were messing around with the same ideas and we had the same problems, maybe not as bad.
00:04:04.040And now is a moment where the Lord is turning all the lights on and saying, look what you did and go ahead.
00:04:11.160And now let's get this. Let's let's rebuild.
00:04:15.660And what I'll put that in, like, legal terms, this is kind of like the first chapter of my book in the case for the Christian family.
00:04:23.780The first one is on covenant lost. That's what I call it. Covenant lost.
00:04:27.300And I'm keying in on a Supreme Court case called Pavin v. Smith that came out of Arkansas and its relationship to Obergefell v. Hodges, which preceded it.
00:04:43.120Okay, so Obergefell said that a dude can marry a dude.
00:05:15.480So some guy sends in the goods and she becomes pregnant.
00:05:22.520Well, she is, she's listed as a parent on the birth certificate, but these two lesbian women in Arkansas say we're in a, a Bergefell certified union.
00:05:37.640And so we want this partner lady who didn't carry the child to be listed as a parent.
00:09:19.480he's done violence to the union but the union is not dissolved simply by that act
00:09:26.220biblically speaking jack is whose head jill's jill is whose body jack so i asked my students
00:09:37.680recently when i was teaching this i said you know i said if i if my wife becomes pregnant whose body
00:09:43.500is the child in and they the they had already teed him up they're like their eyes pop they're
00:09:49.400like yours and i was like you're right they said now if you go tell them that i said men could get
00:09:54.940pregnant i will deny it i will deny it outright that men can get pregnant but uh it's helpful
00:10:01.820for it clicks for people because you're like that's biblical terminology my wife is my body
00:10:05.160your wife is your body the wife is the body of her husband and husband is the head it's an organic
00:10:09.360relationships, not just a matter of being a boss. The headship is not simply about being the one who
00:10:15.080is in charge. It's this organic entity that now exists because of what God has done. He has joined
00:10:21.060the two together. Let no man put us under. What do you do? What happens when a baby pops up in
00:10:28.340the body of the one new entity that is the weapons or that is the long shorts? Who's the head? Well,
00:10:36.580the wedlock we used to have that word wedlock all that to say is why arkansas made the right call
00:10:43.940in their statute even if jack is not the biological um he's not biologically related
00:10:51.240to the child that's in his wife's womb um he indeed is the head of that child right he has
00:10:58.840covenantal headship he has wedlock headship he has all of the duties and responsibilities that
00:11:04.220are incumbent upon a head providing for the welfare of this child the education of this child
00:11:10.500protection of this child that falls on him not bob in the adultery situation now bob would have
00:11:16.920to pay resources like bob has to pay but he has no right to say what what to do with it
00:11:25.100Mm hmm. Right. Jack, Jack is the head. So that wedlock idea used to be very strong in our tradition and it's very covenantal and it's lost.
00:11:40.760so we're we now the the conservatives still appreciate the biological relationship
00:11:46.600okay but they have given up on this whole idea of wedlock that it actually means something more
00:11:53.600than the um than than being the the byproduct of voluntary association right okay what is marriage
00:12:02.360well it's nothing more than the product of the will of the parties involved that's what they
00:12:06.320think. That's what modern man thinks. So, who cares? It's just that. It's not actually a divine
00:12:13.440act where two people are bound together, right? And even if this non-biological entity pops up
00:12:20.860in my wife's womb, it's mine. Why? Because God made us one, and it's in her womb. Oh,
00:13:03.060If you look at men and say, like, oh, you keep messing around, you do that kind of stuff, and another man is going to raise your seed, another man's going to, you know, your seed's going to call someone else dad.
00:13:17.780That's a protection of women, it's a protection of sexual purity and all of that for us to recover this idea of wedlock and how important it is in our society.
00:13:26.900So, back to the Patton v. Smith case, like, what's going on in the law that the woman, the second woman, who doesn't have a biological relationship, it doesn't have a wedlock, a real wedlock relationship?
00:13:45.780So, I should back up, like, Christians, we don't believe there's any real marriage there.
00:18:58.620But the rationale that went into Pavan V. Smith means that if somebody shows up at the weapons door and says, your kids don't belong to you anymore, what are you going to say?
00:19:08.960You're going to say, I'm the head of this household.
00:19:12.020I've been I've been covenantally bound to their mom and whatever comes from her.
00:19:17.660Like these the this is fruit from our from us.
00:22:53.500When the Department of Children and Families come knocking on your door and saying, your children don't belong to you anymore, I'd say, what are our instincts as Christians?
00:23:06.020I have no problem whatsoever, and I think it's a good idea for you to say, go get the paternity test.
00:23:13.080So I don't mind the natural argument, and I don't think it's in any conflict whatsoever with this covenantal wedlock thing I'm talking about.
00:23:20.680But the covenantal wedlock thing should be fronted in our minds, and we have to recover its significance.
00:23:31.980Meaning, you look at them and say, first, have you lost your mind?
00:23:41.420I tell people, when I tell this illustration, I say, the first thing you say is, my Mossberg 12-gauge shotgun over there says they're my kids.
00:26:02.140So you can see that basically running that shows the intimate, inextricable connection between marriage and children.
00:26:10.280So if you get marriage wrong, which we did with the Burgerfowl legally, then you're going to get children wrong, which we've done legally with Pavan v. Smith.
00:26:18.620And you're saying especially if you get marriage wrong first, that's the covenantal piece, but then you also get biology wrong.
00:26:23.580You get nature wrong, you know, with all the craziness of, you know, now with, you know, transgenderism and in vitro and all these different things that now you've got both halves wrong and there's not a lot of hope.
00:26:39.780The only thing that we have right at this point is the, uh, just the legal, all, all
00:26:44.380the prior legal, uh, developments from a Christian, you know, nation that used to fear the Lord.
00:26:50.520And, but once that slowly, you know, or maybe quickly unravels, hopefully not, but slowly
00:26:55.480erodes, uh, then, then all you've got is the shotgun.
00:26:59.640But as Biden has told us, you may have a shotgun, you know, but he's got nukes and he'll use
00:27:06.440apparently that seems to be the argument he made so so could you link it for us uh jared now with
00:27:13.260adoption because adoption you don't have the biology piece but i i'm pretty sure i know what
00:27:17.920you know i know what my answer would be but you still have the covenantal piece my question that
00:27:22.980would be you know you still got marriage you still got the head you still got the body um but how
00:27:28.980it's got to be significant not just in in the couple that adopts and saying that we will take
00:27:35.360this person as our own, as our child. But there also has to be a significant piece of
00:27:41.140the rejecting, the initial rejecting. For myself, I remember when I was younger, I would
00:27:47.060sometimes struggle with rejection. It's like I just kind of instinctively knew. Nobody even
00:27:52.560really had to tell me. But I knew that in one sense, there was something special that I was
00:27:58.840chosen um but i couldn't be chosen unless uh somebody else didn't want me there had to be
00:28:05.300i had to be rejected uh and cut off here in order to be chosen over there i think of like grafting
00:28:11.560you know like like branches they got to be cut off here to be grafted on onto this other tree
00:28:16.240what what are some of your thoughts on that yeah i think the um i mentioned this also in in
00:28:22.740um in the book that i i think i used the illustration i'm from florida you know we
00:28:28.480got rivers down there and swamps and stuff so i use large mouth bass as an illustration but the uh
00:28:34.220so the the natural family call it the natural family and the covenantal family
00:28:40.380were never meant to be two different families right um and so so um the natural family is like
00:28:48.380the bass swimming in the covenantal family stream they were always meant to be together
00:28:56.400now in a fallen broken world you have times when the bass jumps out of the river
00:29:01.480right river keeps flowing the covenantal family keeps flowing um but that is a that's a bass out
00:29:09.900of the river so you have to have this like uh full appreciation for both of these realities
00:29:16.820nature matters matters a whole lot right and covenant matters and i think what's happening
00:29:26.620now is we're our society is like losing its mind so it's losing nature right um but we lost
00:29:34.020covenantal thinking before that yeah we're losing our mind now so we're losing nature but we already
00:29:39.740lost our soul so we lost covenant a long time ago yeah we lost the covenant thing and i think by
00:29:47.780i think so in the adoption case i think uh beefing up this covenantal wedlock and what it means
00:29:54.740will is a very important part of adoption right right and so i mean you always cast this in the
00:30:03.480paedolite and the sacrament thing if there's a if a man adopts children then they're warranted
00:30:10.320baptism this is a covenantal this is how strong the covenant is right right this is how strong
00:30:17.720god when he says yes yes here it is same same principle with marriage something very much like
00:30:25.040it is going on in that adoption he's saying these are these kids who are they what's their last name
00:30:32.520and their last name is signifying um a a reality okay that's the thing i could signify a real
00:30:41.160thing a real entity that exists where that adopted child should say who's my who's my head
00:30:48.440right right here he is yep yeah i have his name like i remember my dad telling me when i was
00:30:54.000little he's like you know because because my parents um they weren't my mother wasn't able
00:30:58.880to my adopted parents uh mother wasn't able to conceive and then later um which this is story
00:31:04.660oldest time it seems like i hear the story all the time but uh god you know opened up my adoptive
00:31:09.920mother's womb after they adopted me and so you know i have two two brothers and a sister and uh
00:31:15.720that are you know biological to my adopted parents and i remember my dad telling me you know um you
00:31:21.800know your siblings have my blood uh but you have my name and uh and you know emphasizing you know
00:31:27.780like you are a weapon, you know, you are my son and, uh, the strength of a name, you know,
00:31:33.400and those kinds of things. And what my dad was telling me essentially was, um, and not so many
00:31:38.140words, but he was, he was talking about, uh, the weight of covenant, you know, I remember, you know,
00:31:43.500it's been said before, um, you know, uh, blood is thicker than water unless that water is the
00:31:49.960water of baptism, you know? And so like covenant is nature, nature is binding. But it seems as
00:31:58.920though covenant is even more binding to where, whether it be, you know, Ruth, you know, your
00:32:04.680people who aren't her people, you know, but they will be my people. Your God will be my God. And
00:32:10.920so we see this in the gospel. We see this in the Christian family and to see this in
00:32:16.880individual families with adoption seems to be certainly biblical, but also makes logical sense.
00:32:24.020One question, though, that I have is, you know, the individual earlier you were talking about,
00:32:28.160there's, you know, there's Jack and Jill, and then there's Bob. And let's say in this instance,
00:32:31.820you know, Jill was unfaithful to Jack, and there was an adultery and affair that took place with
00:32:37.040Bob. Well, the fruit of that wrong and sinful union is that Jack now has a child, because
00:32:46.800he's jill's covenant head so this this fruit belongs to him but you said bob would still
00:32:51.880have a responsibility and moral obligation he's going to pay so there is some you know jack has
00:32:57.220all the rights and he also has you know because rights and duties are never severed from one
00:33:02.060another rights and responsibilities come as a package deal so jack has rights and authority
00:33:06.560as head over jill and and therefore over the offspring of jill it is now his offspring so
00:33:12.860he's going to have the rights of authority he's also going to have with those rights responsibilities
00:33:16.240But Bob also has some level of responsibility also in terms of provision.
00:33:21.140But in adoption, like my biological parents, for instance, never had to pay, you know, they didn't have to pay money.
00:33:29.460When my parents made that, my adopted parents made that decision to adopt me and my birth mother made that decision to give me up for adoption.
00:33:38.760It's different than the situation that we earlier covered with Bob.