NXR Podcast - THE LIVESTREAM - Are Christian Women “Birthing Machines”?
Aired: 2024-05-08
Duration: 01:00:24


=== Lost Doctrine of Teleology (02:34) ===

[00:00:00]  In his lectures on Calvinism, Abraham Kuyper remarks that the central cry of the Reformation was not merely that God is sovereign over salvation, but that he is sovereign over all things.
[00:00:11]  Notice, though, that this is not the same as saying that God is sovereign over everything, though both of those statements are true.
[00:00:19]  In our time, we are convinced that God is indeed the ruler of the aggregate of all things, but we are not sure about the parts.
[00:00:29]  We are like a boy standing in a messy room that needs to be cleaned up.
[00:00:34]  The boy's mother has told him to get to work, but in the clutter, the boy cannot imagine how all the mess could be dealt with.
[00:00:41]  In response, the mother grabs one toy and puts it away.
[00:00:45]  The lesson is clear.
[00:00:47]  Understand that the whole is made of parts.
[00:00:50]  Most of us are familiar with the phrase, do not lose the forest for the trees.
[00:00:56]  But in the current evangelical landscape, it might be more true that we have lost the trees for the forest.
[00:01:10]  All right, gentlemen, good to be back with you again and looking forward to today talking about something that admittedly is going to be a little bit more heady initially, but we're hoping to find some really great application and really hoping to provide a tool that people can use to think, process, and determine between what is good and bad, right, wrong, moral, immoral.
[00:01:35]  And in order to kind of let you know where we're going, we're going to start a little bit with what prompted me to.
[00:01:41]  Think about this article.
[00:01:43]  And so we're going to talk about two tweets by Owen Strawn, and we're going to mention them here at the beginning.
[00:01:50]  And then after we talk about kind of the teleology argument and the tool that we want to provide, we'll come back and talk about Strawn's content and kind of analyze it.
[00:01:59]  But here's what prompted my thinking it was the Politico argument or article about the extreme right wingers who are having lots of kids.
[00:02:10]  In particular, to affect cultural change.
[00:02:14]  That was the thing.
[00:02:15]  And then Strawn, who he doesn't mention the article directly, but it was right when this article came out.
[00:02:20]  So the first tweet says this, Christian women are not birthing machines and children born to Christians are not widgets on a beat Islam or secularism assembly line.
[00:02:33]  Yes, that's his first one.

=== Aligning Life With Purpose (14:43) ===

[00:02:34]  And, you know, Christian women are not birthing machines.
[00:02:36]  I think we can all agree with that.
[00:02:39]  For believers, here's the second one.
[00:02:40]  For believers, having children is not ultimately about beating the Muslims in a childbearing arms race.
[00:02:46]  Children are not given us by God as pawns in a civilizational battle.
[00:02:52]  All right.
[00:02:54]  So we'll come back to that.
[00:02:57]  I know you're champing at the bit.
[00:02:58]  You want to say some things about it now.
[00:03:00]  We'll come back to that eventually.
[00:03:02]  What I want to talk about a little bit today is the lost doctrine of teleology.
[00:03:06]  All right.
[00:03:07]  Now, teleology is a fancy word for the study of purpose, the study of the ends that things are designed for.
[00:03:15]  And traditionally, it's found in apologetics.
[00:03:18]  It's a famous argument that is used to advance the idea that if a thing has an ultimate purpose, it must have a designer.
[00:03:28]  And so that's where we're most used to seeing the idea of teleology.
[00:03:33]  Teleology comes from the Greek word telos, which means end or purpose.
[00:03:37]  So what is the purpose of a thing?
[00:03:39]  What is the purpose of a thing?
[00:03:40]  And this really largely was the project of a lot of classical thought.
[00:03:46]  What is the purpose of a thing?
[00:03:48]  What is a thing's function?
[00:03:49]  What is its design?
[00:03:50]  But not just the design.
[00:03:51]  We want to know what it's for.
[00:03:54]  So as I've been thinking about the church in the world and where we find ourselves now, Christians in the world, one of the conclusions personally that I've come to, I don't know if you guys share it, is that one of the reasons we have a hard time calling something good or bad or virtuous or what's the opposite of virtue?
[00:04:14]  Vice, wicked, is that we don't understand what things are for.
[00:04:18]  We don't understand anymore why God made things.
[00:04:23]  And as far as we usually go as a Christian, we are very comfortable citing the Westminster Confession of Faith, which the first question of the shorter catechism says, What is the chief end of man?
[00:04:36]  We all know the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.
[00:04:39]  And so we think, Aha, so now I know what life's all about.
[00:04:42]  And that is true, right?
[00:04:44]  That is true.
[00:04:45]  But just because something is true does not necessarily mean that it's sufficient, right?
[00:04:49]  And so what I've discovered as I read is that.
[00:04:54]  there is a lot of thought in Christian history where when you read a book by the Puritans, why would they write a 600 page book on marriage?
[00:05:04]  Right.
[00:05:04]  Like, why would they, why would they, and why would they investigate all of these diverse?
[00:05:10]  Why do they write about every area of life?
[00:05:12]  Why is it that coming out of the Reformation, Calvin's contribution was an understanding of work, an understanding of vocation, an understanding of education?
[00:05:22]  It's because the view that God is sovereign over all things meant that they should go and investigate what his purpose had been in making all things.
[00:05:32]  Yeah, that's good.
[00:05:33]  And so if we lose, First of all, the belief, I thought it was so interesting.
[00:05:38]  One of the dictionaries, I quoted in the article, defined teleology as the belief that there is a purpose in all things, not just the study of all things.
[00:05:47]  It is a confessional statement to say that there's a purpose behind all things, a purpose for which all things were created.
[00:05:56]  That is a statement of faith that is not present in all worldviews.
[00:06:00]  And so just to get the discussion going, I.
[00:06:06]  I wanted to ask you guys if you have any thoughts or comments on the lost doctrine of theology, because it seems like when we get into debates, the only thing we can fall back on is, well, that's bad because God said it was bad.
[00:06:22]  And that's not, I don't want to dismiss that.
[00:06:24]  The Christian who says God's word says it, that's enough for me.
[00:06:28]  Fantastic.
[00:06:30]  But why?
[00:06:31]  Why is something good or bad?
[00:06:32]  Well, it's because it aligns with the purpose for which God created it.
[00:06:36]  Right.
[00:06:37]  Right.
[00:06:37]  Insofar as it actually aligns with its purpose.
[00:06:39]  Correct.
[00:06:40]  And go ahead.
[00:06:41]  What do you think, Leslie Ton?
[00:06:42]  I got an interesting thought.
[00:06:44]  So I've been listening to Jordan Peterson for a while.
[00:06:47]  We actually went and saw him live.
[00:06:48]  He had a good discussion.
[00:06:50]  And a point that he's brought up a lot is he says that every action, every thought will always be oriented towards a final, a terminal, and an ultimate belief.
[00:07:00]  So when we, we promised we were going to get heady in this episode, when we see an object such as a door handle, there's no actual perception of that object that does not also include action.
[00:07:09]  With it.
[00:07:09]  So, individuals that have had some type of brain damage, what will happen is they don't have any inhibition to then carry out that action and they'll see something like the hammer or see something like a doorknob and be inclined to just pick it up because all of our perception to the world is geared around action, is geared around purpose and use and utility.
[00:07:27]  And so, we think about how are we going to orient the world, what are these objects, what are these institutions for?
[00:07:34]  You will populate it with something.
[00:07:36]  Jordan Peterson's point in a lot of his lectures has been there will be something you orient yourself to.
[00:07:41]  He supplies God as the highest being.
[00:07:43]  The highest thing that one could aspire to.
[00:07:44]  He doesn't have the biblical God in view.
[00:07:46]  But ultimately, every person will have a God, lowercase g, or will be aligned and oriented to the highest true good, which is the God of scripture.
[00:07:55]  But every person will fill in somewhere along that line what it is they aspire to.
[00:08:00]  And then they'll take and they'll orient the world around them to now, here's what I do in service of that highest good.
[00:08:06]  So my highest good is, as you mentioned, glorify God and enjoy Him forever.
[00:08:10]  But then also, I'm a man.
[00:08:11]  So aspiring to courage, the virtue that was present in the life of Christ.
[00:08:15]  As that fills out a man, now a husband, now a father, now an employee, a churchman, a this side or the other, as you come down that tree, those objects that you see around you will begin to orient you towards that's what I do with that.
[00:08:28]  That's what the institution of marriage is for.
[00:08:30]  This is why my children are given to me to serve this purpose, to serve that purpose, orienting them towards that which is highest and good.
[00:08:37]  So don't ever think that, well, you can worship God or you can just walk aimlessly through life.
[00:08:42]  Now, walking aimlessly through life shows that you have a God and you have a higher purpose.
[00:08:46]  It's just a very low, Base level one, with no aspiration, no imagination, no virtue to actually supply your life with that which is good.
[00:08:55]  So that's what I came from what you said earlier.
[00:08:57]  That's good.
[00:08:58]  Yeah, I think as it pertains to marriage, you know, part of it is because one of the highest virtues of our day, very hedonistic, self centered, is personal happiness, personal fulfillment.
[00:09:11]  Which, let me give a pause because this is not coincidental.
[00:09:16]  Maslow's hierarchy of needs is what has framed and structured psychology and the understanding of what the purpose of humanity is for.
[00:09:26]  And at the pinnacle of his hierarchy is self actualization.
[00:09:30]  And so that is, like Wes said, that's a religious claim.
[00:09:33]  That's a purpose statement, the purpose driven life.
[00:09:36]  Well, for Maslow, the purpose of life is to actualize yourself.
[00:09:40]  And that's why, so I'll toss it back to you, but that's when we say to be happy, personal fulfillment in marriage, that aligns perfectly.
[00:09:47]  We as Christians look at that and say, no, it's not.
[00:09:49]  But that aligns perfectly with the purpose that they've been told marriage is for.
[00:09:52]  Within secularism, for sure.
[00:09:54]  Yeah.
[00:09:54]  So if self fulfillment is the highest aim and the meaning of life, then the Westminster Shorter Catechism is turned on its head.
[00:10:03]  The first question becomes, You know, what is the chief end of man to glorify self and enjoy me forever?
[00:10:09]  And then that filters down to all the various different aspects of life.
[00:10:13]  And so, marriage being one of them in a large portion of life, it becomes about personal happiness.
[00:10:19]  And so, with that, the last thing you want to do is threaten or squelch or diminish happiness.
[00:10:28]  So, that's, you know, in comes no fault divorce.
[00:10:30]  You have to be able to get out of a marriage that's not fulfilling anymore.
[00:10:33]  What's not fulfilling me?
[00:10:35]  You know, we're not happy.
[00:10:37]  You know, and so this person's not making me happy.
[00:10:40]  And then, you know, and then you don't want to do anything in that marriage that would take away other things, you know, where the marriage, you know, is meant to make you happy.
[00:10:48]  But then you don't want the marriage and its aim to make the self happy to squelch, you know, or threaten another avenue for self fulfillment and happiness, like career or, or, or your own physical attractiveness, you know, like I can't be getting pregnant, you know, like it's gonna, we're gonna, you know, be all, all, you know, out of shape and have lines and, you know, blah, blah.
[00:11:11]  So, So, yeah, I think, you know, a big part of it is what do we think the highest aim is?
[00:11:16]  That filters into other things.
[00:11:17]  And then I was also just thinking, again, in line with marriage, you know, it's God, not Adam, who first takes notice of, you know, Adam being alone, says it's not good for the man to be alone.
[00:11:28]  And we often, I think this is a fairly modern understanding, but even as evangelicals and Christians, we quickly read in there that one of the chief purposes of marriage is for companionship.
[00:11:41]  And so we'll say, see, it's not good for Adam to be alone.
[00:11:44]  And we read, When we hear God say that it's not good for the man to be alone, we immediately assume loneliness, relational loneliness.
[00:11:53]  And so God is taking note that Adam was relationally lacking and needed friendship, companionship.
[00:12:00]  So he made the woman first and foremost as a companion.
[00:12:04]  Whereas all of that's isogeted into the text.
[00:12:07]  I do think that that is one of the purposes of marriage.
[00:12:09]  But to assert that as the first or chiefest purpose of marriage, I don't think you can argue that.
[00:12:15]  Straight from the scriptural text.
[00:12:16]  You would have to read that in because it's entirely plausible and I think more likely that God is saying it's not good for the man to be alone because on his own he cannot fulfill the work that I've assigned to him, his mission.
[00:12:29]  He has a task.
[00:12:30]  So it's not just about, well, Adam won't have sweet relational intimate time.
[00:12:37]  No, it's no, Adam has a job to do and it's a two man job.
[00:12:41]  Yeah.
[00:12:42]  So, anyways.
[00:12:43]  Okay, good.
[00:12:44]  So the big, I guess, if, if, if, Viewers and listeners can get one thing, at least from this opening section.
[00:12:53]  It is the idea that how is God glorified, right?
[00:12:58]  The chief amendment of man is to glorify God.
[00:13:00]  That's the question.
[00:13:01]  How is God glorified?
[00:13:02]  And that's why I want to read a quote from Bob Inc.
[00:13:05]  This is from his podcasting, right?
[00:13:09]  Maybe.
[00:13:09]  What's the purpose of podcasting?
[00:13:12]  Bob Inc.
[00:13:13]  Oh, I misplaced it now.
[00:13:14]  BOB INC.
[00:13:15]  Says this, The existence of a thing and the specificity of a thing, the multiplicity of life and being the infinite diversity among creatures in KIND.
[00:13:26]  Gender longevity rank, social position wealth, etc.
[00:13:29]  Are all attributable to, attributable to god's good pleasure and god's good pleasure alone.
[00:13:35]  And when we say this word pleasure, we need to understand that this is god's good purpose, right?
[00:13:40]  Um, that's a little bit of an older word um, it's.
[00:13:43]  It doesn't mean like he, you know the way you have pleasure and you eat a chocolate sundae, right?
[00:13:47]  His good purpose, his good will.
[00:13:49]  So, the specific diverse, the reasons, the reason why there are a thousand, probably more than that, species of birds Right, or a lot more, um, YEAH.
[00:14:00]  Um, all the diversity of life that we see on the planet is because all of those serve a purpose in God's good will and pleasure.
[00:14:10]  Yeah, for the record, you need to be bovink maxing.
[00:14:12]  If you are not out there filling your bookshelf with a very expensive copy of the Reform Dogmatics, you're missing out.
[00:14:19]  Uh, bovink is one of the probably the greatest minds, the 20th century, 21st century.
[00:14:24]  We haven't had a lot.
[00:14:25]  Uh, bovink is a bright spot there at the turn.
[00:14:29]  Just even going back a little bit to marriage and everything, a lot of people will think, so they'll have these roles assigned and they'll be, well, I have this career and I have this.
[00:14:36]  They oftentimes think they don't have to choose.
[00:14:39]  I was reading a New Yorker article and it was this woman that she said, I decided to take this radical act of self fulfillment, self authenticity.
[00:14:47]  I'm going to have children, but I'm going to stick to my career and I'm just going to bring them with me.
[00:14:50]  And I can't believe she cited it, that she actually said it out loud.
[00:14:54]  But at the end of her article, she talks about how her daughter, teenage daughter, recently yelled at her, You love science.
[00:14:59]  More than me.
[00:15:00]  So she hauled her kids all through their growing up into Africa to go find out different species of fungi, thinking, I can do both.
[00:15:08]  I can have this end as a career woman and advancing science and publishing and everything like that.
[00:15:12]  And I can be a mom and I can do this too.
[00:15:15]  And what she found out, what she told on herself, whether she admits it or not, she couldn't.
[00:15:20]  And what she actually ended up probably doing is neither one of them well.
[00:15:23]  You are limited.
[00:15:24]  God has given you these specific things and you can't do all of them.
[00:15:27]  So you can choose.
[00:15:29]  Or it can be chosen for you.
[00:15:30]  And it's not pretty to be 40 years old thinking that you could do this, that, and the other, and realizing I actually couldn't do all of them and I didn't even do any of them well.
[00:15:39]  Yep.
[00:15:39]  That's a good limitation we have.
[00:15:41]  So that's actually important because Bob Inc. goes on to say that it's not just physical things, it's not just birds and types of rock.
[00:15:49]  It's even that God's sovereign will in creating a purpose and end for all things includes immaterial, intangible things like economics or mercy.
[00:16:04]  or the covenant that brought about redemption.
[00:16:09]  All of those things have an intended end, an intended purpose.
[00:16:14]  And Bob Inc's point is that all of those serve, are supposed to serve the end to which God appointed them.
[00:16:22]  So the answer to the question of how do we know what glorifies God, it's when any particular thing, idea, or system runs along the tracks of the purpose for which God created it.
[00:16:35]  And so if you want to look at your life and you say, I don't know how to glorify God, that's a huge thing.
[00:16:40]  Back to the initial analogy of the messy bedroom.
[00:16:44]  Pick an area, study, discern, read.
[00:16:48]  What is God's purpose for this?
[00:16:49]  What is this God's purpose for me as a man?
[00:16:52]  Why am I a man and not a woman?
[00:16:54]  What does that mean about my purpose?
[00:16:55]  Okay, I'm going to run in the direction that God intended manhood to fulfill.
[00:17:01]  What does it mean to be a father?
[00:17:03]  Okay, I'm going to study what is the purpose of fatherhood?
[00:17:06]  What does it mean to be a businessman, to be in the marketplace?
[00:17:09]  Okay, now I've got to understand several purposes.
[00:17:11]  I've got to understand what production is for.
[00:17:15]  Why do we produce things?

=== The Missing Answer to How (05:05) ===

[00:17:17]  Why isn't it just given to us?
[00:17:19]  Why does God call us to work?
[00:17:21]  But there are purposes behind all of these things.
[00:17:24]  And my claim in this whole episode is that the evangelical church has boiled everything down to this simplistic glorify God in all things.
[00:17:35]  But we've forgotten the purposes for many, many of the things that we actually live and breathe and interact with and talk with.
[00:17:42]  And so unwittingly, we end up not glorifying God because we're not fulfilling the purpose of a majority or many of the things that we interact with or do.
[00:17:51]  In her daily life.
[00:17:52]  Right.
[00:17:52]  The evangelical church has lost the ability to answer the question, how.
[00:17:57]  She can still answer the question, what is the chief end of man?
[00:18:01]  To glorify God and enjoy him forever.
[00:18:03]  But the follow up question, how, the evangelical church has lost the answer to that because we don't understand, like you said, the purpose of things.
[00:18:12]  And also, I think another way that we've lost the ability to answer the how part of that question is because of our giant amoeba, all encompassing androgyny.
[00:18:26]  Yeah.
[00:18:26]  So, because the way that you answer that, how is specific to different kinds of people.
[00:18:37]  How to glorify God will be dependent on if you are a man or a woman, if you are a child or a parent, if you are a slave or a master, if you are a Greek or a Jew.
[00:18:55]  There are obligations, moral obligations from the scripture.
[00:18:59]  That comes with all these different stations of life that are incumbent upon us and that are God ordained, be it nationality, be it sex, be it age, you know, single or married, all these things.
[00:19:17]  What comes with these stations of life, various stations of life, are various duties and responsibilities and ways of glorifying God and enjoying Him forever.
[00:19:27]  But if we just take this bodiless, androgynous soul, That's how evangelicals are.
[00:19:34]  The reason they don't think there's a particular how to the follow up question, to the question of, you know, what is the chief end of man?
[00:19:41]  Well, it's just to glorify God.
[00:19:43]  And the reason they don't, not, it's not even that they wouldn't even be aware that they don't have an answer to the follow up question of how because they don't even know that there is a follow up question.
[00:19:53]  They don't even see why that follow up question of, well, how do you glorify God?
[00:19:57]  They don't even see the relevancy of that because they see man as, for the most part, mankind as, as, Spiritual, with basically no importance on the physical, as androgynous, with no importance placed on sex, as eternal, with no importance placed on the temporal or the tangible.
[00:20:22]  Like at every single level, they have evangelicals have, in large part, wholesale, while resisting the transgender movement and ideology, in a spiritual sense, they've adopted it wholesale, like hook, line, and sinker.
[00:20:40]  There's just people.
[00:20:42]  There's just people.
[00:20:43]  And people are called to glorify God.
[00:20:46]  And there's just one general mass of humanity.
[00:20:50]  And so, however, you do that, there's only one way to do that.
[00:20:54]  But that's Paul talks about remaining when the Lord calls you.
[00:20:59]  He talks about this in relation to marriage, to an unbeliever, but it also has application to other things as well.
[00:21:04]  But 1 Corinthians 7, remain in whatever station you were in when the Lord called you.
[00:21:12]  And what he's saying there is not only being content, but then he's also saying, and now that you are a Christian, there will be specific, tangible outflows of what Christian faith looks like.
[00:21:23]  In that scenario, it reminds me also of the centurions, you know, the Roman soldiers who came and approached Jesus.
[00:21:31]  And essentially, what they're asking is, now that we're Christians, do we need to quit our job?
[00:21:36]  Right.
[00:21:36]  And Jesus doesn't say, yes.
[00:21:38]  He doesn't say, oh, yep, a Christian can't be in the military.
[00:21:41]  Right.
[00:21:42]  Even a military for Rome, which is not a particularly great country.
[00:21:46]  Yep.
[00:21:47]  But that's not Jesus' answer.
[00:21:48]  He instead says, well, be content with your wages, which implies you can keep your wages, which implies you can keep your job.
[00:21:55]  Be content with your wages.
[00:21:56]  Do not take from others what doesn't belong to you.
[00:22:00]  And I'm sure that if they pressed him, he'd have more to say as well.
[00:22:04]  But the point is this that essentially Jesus is saying, he doesn't respond to the Roman soldiers and say, that's a dumb question.
[00:22:13]  You know, because they say, what must we do to follow you?
[00:22:16]  He doesn't say, well, that's a dumb question because you must do what everyone should do.
[00:22:20]  It's the same thing for everyone, it's one size fits all.

=== Fruitfulness Requires a Helpmate (16:10) ===

[00:22:23]  Glorify God and enjoy him forever in a very abstract, ethereal way.
[00:22:26]  That's not like he totally understood their question.
[00:22:29]  He didn't demean them or chastise them for asking it.
[00:22:32]  He knew what they were getting at is they were assuming, baked into the question, was Jesus, we know that for us to be your disciple will look different than for others based off of our station of life.
[00:22:45]  And so, what are the particulars for our purpose in light of glorifying God?
[00:22:51]  And Jesus essentially is saying, Good question.
[00:22:54]  Glad you asked.
[00:22:55]  Yeah.
[00:22:56]  So, all right.
[00:22:57]  Well, let's go ahead and cut to a commercial break, and we'll be right back.
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[00:23:48]  Again, that's squirrelyjoes.com forward slash right response to claim your first free bag of coffee today.
[00:23:57]  All right.
[00:23:57]  Well, welcome back.
[00:23:58]  We were talking about spirit and we're talking about body.
[00:24:00]  And there's a very important distinction.
[00:24:01]  Christians can even get it wrong, almost thinking in a dualistic sense of their spirit and their body.
[00:24:07]  No, they are very closely integrated.
[00:24:09]  Jesus, we do not say he was God housed in a body or just dwelling in a body.
[00:24:15]  He was fully God and fully man in one being, in a union of those two.
[00:24:21]  There's one passage, too, it's in 2 Corinthians 3, chapter 5.
[00:24:25]  Paul describes being naked.
[00:24:26]  I take that to be the time when we are dead and our spirit goes to be with the Lord.
[00:24:31]  But he says we long to put the dwelling back on.
[00:24:33]  Spirit makes use of the way God has created our spirits, they make use of the body.
[00:24:38]  That is where they are at home.
[00:24:40]  And so it's in the body here that we glorify God for a time because of death, because of sin.
[00:24:45]  We will be absent from the body, to be present to the Lord.
[00:24:47]  But then actually going back into another body.
[00:24:50]  We will, at the resurrection, put this body back on, glorified, mortal.
[00:24:54]  It will be immortal now.
[00:24:55]  The mortality will be swallowed up.
[00:24:57]  Death will be no more.
[00:24:59]  And so we should never be thinking in dualistic terms.
[00:25:01]  I've got the spirit here, and that's what's of real value, the imperishable beauty.
[00:25:05]  And then the body is just kind of housing it and going along.
[00:25:08]  Right.
[00:25:08]  Paul doesn't describe the death of a believer as being free.
[00:25:13]  Freed.
[00:25:14]  He describes it as being naked.
[00:25:15]  And then he says that it's.
[00:25:18]  That the desire will be not a rejoicing of, oh, I'm free from the shackles and the prison of the flesh, but the desire will be to be further clothed.
[00:25:28]  The doctrine of glorification is not just re clothed, but it's a further clothing that the soul will be more appropriately and thoroughly clothed in this eternal flesh that is more suitable and even more conducive for our eternal state.
[00:25:50]  That glorification in the physical.
[00:25:52]  Will better match the sanctification in the spiritual.
[00:25:55]  But it's, yeah, that's good to be human.
[00:26:00]  Yeah, it's good to be human.
[00:26:01]  Speaking of Dutch reform, Voss, he would say in his book on the Pauline eschatology, there's a very intimate connection between this life and the next, that there will be a continuity.
[00:26:09]  The same categories, probably appearance, things that we make use of here and now, these will be restored and glorified, but it'll be recognizable.
[00:26:18]  It'll not be this abstract, distant origin.
[00:26:21]  Used to think we would be spheres because that's the perfect shape.
[00:26:25]  Not where we're going to be.
[00:26:26]  We might look a lot like this, but freed from sin, free from pain, free from death.
[00:26:30]  Good.
[00:26:31]  Okay.
[00:26:31]  So I'm making the claim that it is true that we are to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.
[00:26:36]  But the way that we do that is by knowing the purpose for the different dimensions of our life, vocations, stations, whatever you want to call it, and also the purpose of the things with which we interact.
[00:26:50]  And that's a lot of stuff.
[00:26:53]  And how are we supposed to know the purpose of all of those things?
[00:26:56]  Well, I want to go to Genesis 2 for a moment and show that God expects us to understand the purpose of the material world, at least in order to exercise dominion over it.
[00:27:08]  And when we look at Genesis 2, it's such an interesting connection.
[00:27:11]  And this is going to get back to the marriage thing in the Strawn post.
[00:27:15]  But God creates man in his own image, male and female, and he gives him dominion over the earth and he gives him the mandate be fruitful and multiply.
[00:27:26]  Dominion and being fruitful and multiply are linked.
[00:27:29]  How is Adam?
[00:27:31]  Going to exercise dominion over the entire earth.
[00:27:36]  He's finite.
[00:27:37]  He's not going to do it.
[00:27:38]  He's going to do it by being fruitful and multiplying.
[00:27:41]  And so that his seed spreads across the earth.
[00:27:45]  So God has set this up, right?
[00:27:49]  It was intentional.
[00:27:51]  Adam's looking around.
[00:27:52]  He's like, okay, great, be fruitful, multiply.
[00:27:54]  And he's like, okay, I see two dogs over there.
[00:27:56]  I can see how they could be fruitful, multiply as a male and a female.
[00:27:59]  And there's two cows there and they're going to be fruitful, multiply.
[00:28:02]  And what am I going to do, God?
[00:28:04]  I see a dog over there.
[00:28:05]  I hear a dog over there.
[00:28:07]  Fair enough.
[00:28:10]  And so God brings the animals to him to name.
[00:28:14]  And commentators, Calvin, Gil, others, have noticed the link between when God creates Eve, he tells Adam to name Eve.
[00:28:25]  The name that he gave her was not just a designation, like the Borg would designate, you know, 4432 or whatever.
[00:28:31]  Right.
[00:28:32]  It's not just some random set of symbols to encapsulate something so I can, like, not have to call you, hey, you thing over there every time.
[00:28:39]  The name embodies the Purpose.
[00:28:40]  The name did.
[00:28:41]  And when he named Eve, it embodied her purpose.
[00:28:45]  You are a woman.
[00:28:46]  Eve means, and we all know the Hebrew translation of Eve is boss babe, career woman.
[00:28:53]  That's kind of implied in some of the older Greek commentaries, maybe.
[00:28:58]  But the mother of all living.
[00:28:59]  The mother of all living.
[00:29:00]  The mother is contained.
[00:29:00]  Yes.
[00:29:02]  And Adam, when God gives him the responsibility of naming all the creatures, including his wife, that's designating to Adam authority.
[00:29:11]  Yes.
[00:29:12]  That's where I'm going.
[00:29:12]  And so the very first act of dominion and the very first act of science, it is taxonomy.
[00:29:20]  But I'm arguing it was teleology.
[00:29:23]  He was looking at those animals and he was understanding their purpose and he was naming them appropriately.
[00:29:30]  It was not just organizing them, which is biology, but it was also, and Gil's got a great quote on this.
[00:29:37]  He said it was a task appointed by God to test the wisdom of Adam, to prove the wisdom of Adam, so that he would give not just a name, but also the function of the thing.
[00:29:46]  Wow.
[00:29:47]  So Adam, it's all connected.
[00:29:50]  He's been told to be fruitful and multiply, he's been given dominion.
[00:29:53]  And God seems to be saying, you can't, first of all, be fruitful and multiply and exercise dominion without a proper helpmate.
[00:30:01]  But you also can't exercise dominion without a proper understanding of the purpose of these things that you're going to be ruling over.
[00:30:08]  And so right from the beginning, mankind is charged with understanding the purpose that God created something to achieve.
[00:30:16]  That's cool.
[00:30:17]  And that is, I don't know, I'm 42.
[00:30:22]  I've not thought much about this, right?
[00:30:24]  So I'm not coming at this as an expert.
[00:30:25]  But I just think, what is the voice that the church ought to have to the world?
[00:30:29]  This is your purpose.
[00:30:30]  Like you mentioned the transgender debate, Joel.
[00:30:32]  I'm not coming at this as an expert, but I did sleep in a holiday even last night.
[00:30:37]  Go ahead.
[00:30:40]  We're not just arguing about, you know, should a guy wear a dress or not?
[00:30:43]  We're arguing about the purpose of gender, of sex.
[00:30:47]  Right.
[00:30:48]  Right?
[00:30:48]  The purpose of marriage.
[00:30:51]  It's not that we don't want it to be two dudes because it's icky to us.
[00:30:56]  We're talking, it is.
[00:30:58]  Oh, you know how you could say it?
[00:30:59]  It just popped in my head.
[00:31:00]  It's really simple.
[00:31:01]  It's not that profound, but we've replaced purpose with pleasure.
[00:31:04]  Great.
[00:31:05]  Purpose with pleasure.
[00:31:06]  So, like when we think of sex, the reason why we think that it's transferable and you can switch teams and change jerseys and whatever is because we don't define sex anymore by purpose.
[00:31:20]  Correct.
[00:31:21]  And so, sex doesn't have to be fruitful.
[00:31:23]  That's why it's perfectly fine for, you know, To have just a carved out hole or a piece of your arm sewed to your abdomen, because it's like, well, but it's dead.
[00:31:37]  You're a shell of a fruitful human being.
[00:31:40]  You've just eradicated fruitfulness, but fruitfulness is no longer, the purpose has become pleasure.
[00:31:48]  The purpose has become pleasure.
[00:31:49]  And so, yeah, so if it's not about purpose, then all those things are.
[00:31:55]  But the last thing I was going to say real quick is that is very much been embraced by Christians.
[00:32:01]  Very much.
[00:32:02]  I mean, I can't tell you like in premarital counseling and just in my own life, like the Lord had to get a hold of me and my wife and help us to see these things clearly.
[00:32:11]  But Christians have very much bought into the idea of detaching sex from procreation.
[00:32:19]  We would think that procreation is maybe one of the purposes, you know, one of.
[00:32:24]  And I would say the Bible does state more than just one purpose, but that's a pretty modern way of thinking where procreation is.
[00:32:34]  Um, on you know, just one on the list and lower down, lower down, if on the list at all, if even on the list at all, yeah, exactly.
[00:32:41]  So, yeah, sex is the biggest one that we've done a terrible job with.
[00:32:46]  The Catholic Church did a good job for a long time.
[00:32:49]  I was about to say, there was a good theology of the body, and it was the Catholic Church.
[00:32:52]  Because, too, if pleasure is the ultimate goal, the ultimate telos of the sex act, then pleasure needs to be put above everything.
[00:33:00]  So, you'd have to elevate anything that would contribute to that as a highest purpose.
[00:33:04]  So, if it's more pleasurable, it's better.
[00:33:06]  Exactly.
[00:33:06]  More pleasurable, it's better.
[00:33:09]  Same way, if it was for bonding, well, then if bonding is the most important thing, then research should go into how best couples should bond.
[00:33:15]  Again, whatever it makes them.
[00:33:16]  Binds two people together, or you could just, well, if it's just for bonding, if it's just for pleasure, it could be anyone.
[00:33:22]  It could be, it could actually be a man and a man speaking hypothetically, as Paul would say.
[00:33:27]  I speak in a human way.
[00:33:28]  But seriously, I have heard like new evangelical type, you know, progressive, you know, they're not Christians, but who still carry the Christian name.
[00:33:36]  And this is exactly the argument that they would make.
[00:33:38]  They would say, well, if homosexuality wasn't something that God planned for and allows for that's permissible, then why did God give men a prostrate?
[00:33:49]  I'm sorry, prostate.
[00:33:52]  And I know it's crude, but it's their argument.
[00:33:55]  It's worth mentioning.
[00:33:56]  But basically, they're saying that if pleasure can be had, then that proves the pleasure, proves the purpose because everything is pleasure first.
[00:34:09]  So the top of the pyramid for purpose is pleasure.
[00:34:14]  It's this hedonistic man was designed for his own pleasure, not God's own glory, but his own pleasure.
[00:34:20]  And so if somebody likes something, And find something pleasurable, then it doesn't matter if it's not fruitful or if it doesn't work or if it's not good for society or if it doesn't align with scripture or tradition.
[00:34:33]  It doesn't matter to the human beings in it.
[00:34:35]  Right, exactly.
[00:34:35]  It doesn't matter if it would end the human race, if it was followed through by everyone.
[00:34:38]  HIV.
[00:34:39]  It doesn't matter.
[00:34:40]  Exactly.
[00:34:40]  Yeah, it does not matter.
[00:34:44]  I find pleasure and therefore this is the purpose.
[00:34:48]  This must be the purpose.
[00:34:49]  And for the record, the view for probably close to 1800 years has been that to.
[00:34:55]  Pause or to inhibit the telos of the sex act is a sin.
[00:34:59]  Right.
[00:35:00]  And for the record, as birth control came on the scene, we lost the Catholic Protestant majority in this country as Christians stopped having that many kids.
[00:35:08]  Right.
[00:35:08]  I'm not adding my interpretation or my view on that.
[00:35:10]  I think I'm still working through it.
[00:35:11]  But just as a brute matter of historical fact, the church has always said that to interrupt this, to stop it from reaching its telos, is a sin.
[00:35:19]  And we see as that became disconnected, became more about pleasure, became more about this, became more about that, that we actually lost the cultural Christian hegemony.
[00:35:29]  Here, that we had in the United States.
[00:35:30]  You can draw a direct line to as the fertility rate dropped, and it's terrible now.
[00:35:34]  It's 1.6 children per woman, which won't even replace society.
[00:35:38]  As we lost that purpose for it, a lot else was lost with it.
[00:35:42]  So maybe we should just take the thing and use it for what it was intended to be used for.
[00:35:47]  It's a wild thought, I know.
[00:35:48]  Wes, you sent me a screenshot from Keller's book, The Meaning of Marriage.
[00:35:52]  And it seems like in that book, he's arguing, or he was arguing, that procreation is actually not.
[00:36:00]  One of the meanings of marriage, the purpose of marriage.
[00:36:04]  I can't remember.
[00:36:05]  I read the book twice.
[00:36:06]  I can't remember anything in it because there's a chapter on sex, anything that was about procreation, at least in orienting and saying that the primary purpose that God has given us for, he says, is it Hosea or one of the other minor prophets for a holy seed?
[00:36:19]  He doesn't talk anything about that, as that being the orientation.
[00:36:23]  It's exactly that.
[00:36:23]  It's bonding, it's a special thing that couples share.
[00:36:27]  I remember he would have said companionship.
[00:36:31]  That was the purpose of marriage.
[00:36:32]  It was friendship and companionship.
[00:36:34]  And then sex, it was.
[00:36:36]  And, you know, there are verses in Ecclesiastes that talk about your wife is your reward for the days of toil.
[00:36:43]  And, you know, there is a sense, right?
[00:36:47]  We're not throwing out having a good relationship with your wife by any means.
[00:36:52]  But the purpose of something, what did God give it to us for?
[00:36:56]  What did He intend it for?
[00:36:58]  That has to be kept in the forefront, not put in the back or removed from the list altogether.
[00:37:05]  And I'll even just say, Like you look at it, and women who have children earlier, so commit and submit to that being the orientation, their labors are generally less painful.
[00:37:15]  They have less complications.
[00:37:16]  So, the earlier in a life, in her life, that a woman gets married, this is tough, I know, for those that maybe would be unmarried or made unwise choices early, but it is borne out.
[00:37:25]  I've heard from midwives yeah, the women that had children in their early 20s, they have much easier labors, shorter labors, less painful.
[00:37:32]  So, when we submit to what God designed the thing to do, the other things that surround it, from reduced pain in childbearing to pleasure to bonding, All those things, they actually go better.
[00:37:44]  Doing it God's way means all these other things around that we don't understand how they work better, the exact mechanism whereby if a woman has a child in her early 20s, that there's less pain, less this, that, or the other later on.
[00:37:55]  We don't understand why, but you can actually just say, well, it looks like the Lord designed this for this.
[00:38:00]  And so, in submission to that, I'm going to trust that He intends that for my good and for my benefit.
[00:38:04]  Good.
[00:38:05]  So, I have a theory that a lot of the bad takes from evangelicals and from the church in our time.
[00:38:13]  Can be directly traced back or at least related to the fact that we've forgotten the telos, the meaning of many, many things.
[00:38:21]  Take, for instance, the Christians who call for open borders, the compassion of allowing illegal immigration at a completely unchecked rate.

=== Forgotten Meaning in Nations (03:42) ===

[00:38:33]  They have forgotten or never knew the purpose of something like a nation.
[00:38:38]  God has a purpose for the intangible things as well, like a nation.
[00:38:43]  The purpose of a nation, it leaves someone open to be able to come up with any sort of quasi Christian sounding statement about an issue.
[00:38:54]  And then, because no one else knows the purpose of a nation, that quasi Christian sounding statement has to be taken seriously.
[00:39:02]  Whereas before we would say, What are you talking about?
[00:39:04]  That's not what nations are for at all.
[00:39:06]  Like, no, stop it.
[00:39:08]  Like, go play somewhere else or get off the internet for a while.
[00:39:12]  But even Christian leaders, and I'm not going to exempt myself, I have not thought as deeply about Telos as I should.
[00:39:18]  We don't know what things are for.
[00:39:20]  And so when someone says something that kind of sounds, maybe our gut instinct says, seems off, but I'm not sure why.
[00:39:27]  Right.
[00:39:27]  And I'm not going to say every bad take, but a lot of them I think are related to our lack of teleology.
[00:39:33]  That's good.
[00:39:34]  I think you're right.
[00:39:37]  Well, let's go to one last commercial break and then let's get, let's address those tweets from Owen.
[00:39:42]  Great.
[00:39:42]  Okay.
[00:39:43]  The danger of centralized power is often represented by the word king.
[00:39:48]  As Americans, we hate the word king.
[00:39:51]  Civilian ownership of body armor is about helping people to have increased power to resist tyrants and criminals.
[00:40:00]  And so Armored Republic is about helping you to preserve your God-given rights to the honor of the Lord Jesus Christ because he is the King of Kings and he governs kings and he will judge them.
[00:40:12]  This is Armored Republic and in a republic there is no king but Christ.
[00:40:18]  We are free craftsmen and we are honored to be your armor spread choice.
[00:40:35]  All right, so welcome back.
[00:40:38]  In this final segment, there is a verse.
[00:40:41]  My goodness, if I heard this verse once, I've heard it a thousand times.
[00:40:44]  Galatians 3 28.
[00:40:46]  And praise God for scripture.
[00:40:48]  This is not to be like, I'm tired of this verse, tired of the book of Galatians.
[00:40:51]  Tired of being perverted.
[00:40:51]  Tired of it.
[00:40:52]  Yes, tired of that, not tired of the verse, because it's a glorious truth.
[00:40:56]  So, Paul in Galatians, he's defending justification by faith alone.
[00:41:00]  And he's insisting that in a type of ethnic heritage or inheritance or circumcision of the flesh, that it does not avail one to grace.
[00:41:08]  And so, Building on that argument all the way up to the pinnacle, Galatians 3 28, he says, There's neither Jew nor Greek, neither is there slave nor free, there's neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
[00:41:20]  The way that verse is typically used is to say, There's no more race.
[00:41:24]  And even then, some egalitarians or some soft complementarians now, like Sam Storms, well, there's no longer man and woman either.
[00:41:31]  So in Christ now, there's this new category where these natural categories, these natural distinctions, these natural ways of being, they no longer exist.
[00:41:39]  They've all been abolished, and nature is completely abrogated.
[00:41:43]  That would be the position is that grace destroys nature.
[00:41:46]  Grace, I think of Stephen Wolfe's book, Grace Destroys T Levels.
[00:41:50]  It takes everything that's natural and proper to man and it blurs it.
[00:41:54]  It makes it androgynous and indistinct.
[00:41:56]  And that is not the Reformed position.
[00:41:58]  That's not been the Roman Catholic position going back before the Reformation.
[00:42:02]  Grace does not abolish nature, but perfect it.
[00:42:06]  So, grace, certainly in relation to salvation, Greek or Jew is not on higher footing.
[00:42:10]  Man or woman, just by virtue of being man or woman, is not on higher footing.
[00:42:14]  But those categories most certainly still exist.

=== Faith Without Works Is Dead (10:03) ===

[00:42:16]  Of course.
[00:42:16]  And what grace does.
[00:42:18]  Is it perfects those?
[00:42:19]  So then, if I am a Greek and a man and a slave, I'm able to be a good, virtuous, godly man, a godly worker, a godly employee, godly in my ethnicity, not to the destruction of those, but to the perfection of them.
[00:42:32]  So please do not use that tweet or do not use that verse in a tweet or try to argue that Christian distinctions of nation or man and woman are invalidated.
[00:42:41]  That is a dumb argument.
[00:42:43]  It's ahistorical and you should stop it.
[00:42:45]  Yep.
[00:42:46]  Good.
[00:42:46]  All right.
[00:42:47]  All right.
[00:42:47]  So, what we started with, some of the I guess the, I don't know.
[00:42:53]  I don't want to, I don't want to assign too much of motivation or anything to own Strawn.
[00:42:59]  But to me, to us, it certainly seems like he's making a couple of errors about the purpose of things in his two tweets.
[00:43:07]  So again, the context, at least in my mind, is that this political article came out and it was somewhat, it was somewhat, you know, unbiased.
[00:43:18]  It wasn't, it wasn't totally raging against the right.
[00:43:22]  It was, I think it tried to present at least a fair analysis of what was going on at the natal conference.
[00:43:27]  Say more about that conference, by the way, if you read the article.
[00:43:30]  Yeah.
[00:43:30]  So the political article was talking about a conference that happened called the Natal Conference.
[00:43:37]  I think it was here in Texas.
[00:43:38]  I tried to get you to go.
[00:43:39]  Oh, I remember that.
[00:43:40]  But my daughter was just clicked for me now.
[00:43:42]  Literally that day.
[00:43:43]  That's the one that you were talking about.
[00:43:44]  So I couldn't go to the pro birth conference because we were having my baby.
[00:43:48]  It's a good reason to miss it.
[00:43:49]  And it was not necessarily a Christian conference.
[00:43:51]  The speakers were simply speakers who, for a variety of reasons, were.
[00:43:56]  Arguing that people, and particularly it seems like conservatives, need to have more kids.
[00:44:03]  And there were economic arguments.
[00:44:05]  There were arguments of the fact that Western values are being destroyed.
[00:44:12]  And so conservatives and Christians ought to have more kids.
[00:44:15]  There were lots of arguments.
[00:44:17]  But the article kind of picked up, of course, it's going to, this idea that, well, we just want more whites.
[00:44:22]  We just want more Christians.
[00:44:24]  And we want less of everything else, right?
[00:44:27]  And it seems like Strawn is reacting to this view from the Natal Conference that some people say we need to have kids so that there are more of us than more Muslims in our country.
[00:44:42]  There's more of us than more Libs in our country.
[00:44:45]  So that there are more of us than the wicked.
[00:44:51]  Sounds like a pretty good strategy to me.
[00:44:52]  Right.
[00:44:53]  And so seeing your children as a means to overtake, overwhelm, influence.
[00:45:00]  The society that you live in, so that the ideas that you and your family would be like weapons?
[00:45:05]  No, Absolutely not.
[00:45:07]  Arrows?
[00:45:08]  No.
[00:45:08]  Some type of projectile that could do damage if levelled at the enemy?
[00:45:11]  They would stand with you in the gates?
[00:45:13]  Right.
[00:45:14]  No, that's ridiculous.
[00:45:15]  Military force against your inward.
[00:45:17]  Well, okay, so that goes to his first, second tweet.
[00:45:22]  I'll read the second one again.
[00:45:24]  He said, For believers, having children is not ultimately about beating the Muslims in a childbearing arms race.
[00:45:30]  Children are not given to us by God as pawns in a civilizational battle.
[00:45:35]  And I replied, he won't see my tweet.
[00:45:37]  I'm a small, you know, whatever.
[00:45:39]  But I said, Aren't pawns a piece in a game of war?
[00:45:44]  By his own admission, like he's saying, our children are not to be involved in the war that God is conducting.
[00:45:52]  Well, the verse that you just quoted, Joel.
[00:45:55]  Psalm 127.
[00:45:56]  Yeah, Psalm 127.
[00:45:58]  Right.
[00:45:58]  And then his second quote, or his first one that I quoted earlier to remind us, was Christian women are not birthing machines.
[00:46:04]  And children born to Christians are not widgets on a quote, beat Islam or secularism, unquote, assembly line.
[00:46:13]  For the record, too, that's in logical fallacies.
[00:46:15]  That would be what's called the poisoning the well fallacy.
[00:46:18]  So when you take someone's position and you put it in nasty terms like that, like just a birthing machine.
[00:46:23]  So if we were to say, like, women are mothers that do the wonderful work of bearing and raising children for a purpose, same thing as he's saying, but I just said it in less crude terms.
[00:46:33]  90% of people would agree with it.
[00:46:34]  He's just casting it.
[00:46:36]  In this negative, nasty light, and Paul relates it.
[00:46:39]  The Bible says she will be saved through childbearing, it intimately connects her faith.
[00:46:44]  The woman is not literally saved by physically giving birth to children, but her faith is born out if she is married in the having of children, in the raising them, and the fear and admission of the Lord.
[00:46:54]  Paul, without qualification, without a thousand nuances, she will be saved through childbearing.
[00:47:00]  She perseveres in faith and good works.
[00:47:02]  He connects the faithfulness, right?
[00:47:04]  You're talking about the end of woman of salvation to the process of having children.
[00:47:10]  Right, so that's 1 Timothy 2 15.
[00:47:12]  And with that, you know, so some guys would interpret that just to play the devil's advocate because I'm 100% with you, but just for the listener, so you'll hear if you look that up, if you look up commentaries, well, you know, if you look up dead guys, then you'll be fine.
[00:47:24]  But if you look up commentaries, you know, modern commentaries written, you know, in the last few decades, they're going to say of 1 Timothy 2 15 that, and she will be saved, the woman will be saved through childbearing.
[00:47:36]  They're going to translate, interpret that phrase, saved through childbearing is not saved by childbearing.
[00:47:44]  But rather saved through the treacherous, dangerous process of childbearing.
[00:47:48]  They've been delivered from danger.
[00:47:50]  So, in the same way that a ship would be delivered through a storm, it doesn't mean that the hurricane over the water saved the ship.
[00:47:58]  The ship being saved through the storm means that it was protected going through this dangerous.
[00:48:07]  So, today, guys would translate that and say, well, in ancient times and for most of human history until very modern, recent times, Childbearing was a very dangerous affair.
[00:48:18]  Wait, you mean just gotten back?
[00:48:19]  Absolutely true.
[00:48:20]  It has.
[00:48:21]  A very dangerous affair where many children died in childbearing, many mothers died in childbearing, and so mothers were eager to have children because of the blessing that children are and desirous to be mothers, and yet they would enter into the labor process with much anxiety and worry, and likely having people, loved ones, and friends that they knew that had died in childbearing.
[00:48:45]  But if a woman continues with faith and propriety and good works, if she fears the Lord, then she doesn't need to fear childbearing because the Lord will.
[00:48:55]  Preserve her through the storm of childbearing.
[00:48:59]  I don't think that's right.
[00:49:01]  Is that generally true?
[00:49:02]  Yes.
[00:49:02]  Is that what the text is saying?
[00:49:04]  No.
[00:49:05]  I think that very clearly, you look at pretty much any commentary before the 1960s, very clearly, what is being said there is the same principle, the very same concept is what James is saying that faith without works is dead.
[00:49:19]  So it's not, they'll be saved through the dangerous process of childbearing, saved meaning physically sustained.
[00:49:26]  And it's also not, they'll be eternally saved through the work of childbearing apart from grace and faith in Christ.
[00:49:35]  So it's neither of those.
[00:49:36]  Instead, it's what James says faith without works is dead.
[00:49:42]  You show me your works without faith, but I will show you my faith by my works.
[00:49:49]  So according to James, it's not that we're saved by faith and works, we're saved by faith alone.
[00:49:57]  But true saving faith will always be.
[00:50:00]  Evidenced by good works.
[00:50:03]  And I think what Paul is doing, it gets back to full circle in our conversation, right?
[00:50:07]  The chief end of man, in a general sense, mankind, is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.
[00:50:11]  But then we ask the question, how?
[00:50:13]  And one of the ways that we answer that, you spell this out, Michael, there's two avenues to answering how.
[00:50:18]  It's all the stuff around us as we engage all these things, but then also ourselves.
[00:50:22]  Who am I?
[00:50:24]  I'm mankind.
[00:50:25]  I'm a human being created in the image of God.
[00:50:26]  Yes.
[00:50:27]  Okay.
[00:50:27]  But am I male or female?
[00:50:28]  Am I child or parent?
[00:50:30]  Am I slave?
[00:50:30]  Am I free?
[00:50:31]  Am I Greek?
[00:50:31]  Am I Jew?
[00:50:32]  Am I, you know, these kinds of things.
[00:50:34]  And when you begin to answer those questions, I think all Paul is doing in 1 Timothy 2 is he's just putting more specificity on what James is saying.
[00:50:43]  So James is saying, we're saved by faith alone, but true saving faith is never alone.
[00:50:48]  It will always be evidenced and accompanied by good works.
[00:50:51]  And then Paul is just applying that to a specific, not just man in general, mankind, but to a woman.
[00:50:58]  And he's saying, oh, and if you're a woman, all Paul is doing in my assessment in 1 Timothy 2 15 is he's literally.
[00:51:06]  Almost verbatim, just repeating James and saying, The woman will be saved by faith and works because faith without works is dead.
[00:51:16]  And what is the chief work for a woman?
[00:51:19]  Childbearing.
[00:51:20]  And so he's saying, You got to have kids to be eternally saved?
[00:51:22]  No.
[00:51:23]  Or you'll be physically and temporally saved through this treacherous process of childbearing?
[00:51:28]  No.
[00:51:29]  He's saying, You will be saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.
[00:51:32]  But anyone who actually has saving faith, it will be evidenced by good works.
[00:51:37]  And for a woman, The chief of these good works in this life as a godly woman will be motherhood.
[00:51:43]  It comes right after, too.
[00:51:44]  I do not permit a woman to teach.
[00:51:45]  For Adam was not deceived.
[00:51:47]  So you became a transgressor.
[00:51:48]  Yep.
[00:51:49]  Don't teach.
[00:51:49]  Yep.
[00:51:50]  You became a transgressor.
[00:51:51]  Persevere, he says, in faith, love, and holiness with self control by bearing children.
[00:51:56]  Exactly.
[00:51:56]  So he's saying your salvation, which comes by faith alone, but the good works which accompany your faith that brings about salvation will not be in the public facing forward role of authority.
[00:52:11]  It won't be in public facing authoritative roles.
[00:52:15]  Instead, it will be in nurturing maternal roles.

=== Sliding Scale of Faithfulness (08:05) ===

[00:52:19]  Yeah.
[00:52:19]  And when we go back to Psalm 127, we see that the children are the arrow and the task of the man is to fire that arrow.
[00:52:28]  Yep.
[00:52:29]  And as that arrow is flying through the air, hitting its target bullseye, the woman is saying, I birthed that arrow.
[00:52:35]  Yeah.
[00:52:35]  That's my arrow.
[00:52:36]  Right.
[00:52:37]  Right.
[00:52:37]  That pride wells up in her.
[00:52:39]  Yeah.
[00:52:40]  What does this virgin say?
[00:52:41]  The hand that rocks the cradle holds the world.
[00:52:43]  That it's a powerful thing.
[00:52:44]  This isn't, this is not lowering the standard for women who are thinking less of them.
[00:52:48]  This is actually a beautiful thing that we're saying that like it's a Powerful.
[00:52:52]  It's not just Adam.
[00:52:53]  It's not just Adam manufacturing children in a birthing machine lab.
[00:52:56]  Man and woman together, and the man leading it, sending those children out, birthed to him by his wife, the wife of his youth, the fruitful vine.
[00:53:04]  And this goes back to the purpose of mankind, which is to glorify God.
[00:53:07]  But how?
[00:53:07]  By taking dominion, by destroying the enemies of Christ, by beating back the curse, which is the topic we're going to get to in a couple weeks.
[00:53:15]  You know what?
[00:53:16]  Maybe we can end with this.
[00:53:17]  This is a little bit random, but I just, I don't know about you guys, but, um, You know, fairly often because of just friendships that we have and circles, you know, that we're in, I, you know, have conversations with other Christians all the time, regularly, almost daily, where, you know, something comes up and they hold a position that is even more to the right, more conservative than me.
[00:53:46]  I don't know about you guys, but for me, I don't, when that happens, which again is almost daily, regularly, very frequent, My initial thought, not only is it not my initial thought, I don't ever have this thought.
[00:53:59]  I don't think he must be wrong because there's no such thing as more conservative than me.
[00:54:10]  If you're wanting to understand how Big Eva and how Mid Eva think, look no further.
[00:54:16]  It really is this simple.
[00:54:19]  Big Eva, not so much in this regard, but Mid Eva, 100%.
[00:54:22]  Their thought is that there is a sliding scale.
[00:54:28]  Of, you know, orthodoxy, what is permissible, right?
[00:54:31]  Some positions are more faithful and some are less, but under this banner of orthodoxy, Mid Eva prides itself and 100% believes that on this scale of orthodoxy, they are at the very furthest right edge.
[00:54:46]  So they are the epitome, the standard of conservative, faithful biblical expression.
[00:54:54]  And then everybody else is to their left within the banner of orthodoxy, and then the banner of orthodoxy ends, and anything further left.
[00:55:02]  And that is even more to their left and heretical.
[00:55:05]  And then, but then to their right, they believe that anything to their right is outside of the banner.
[00:55:13]  So, if there's an umbrella, they don't view themselves as in the middle.
[00:55:18]  They view themselves as on the furthest right conservative edge.
[00:55:22]  Anything beyond their position.
[00:55:24]  And you just need to know that because it'll help you in life.
[00:55:29]  Because apart from that, you'll be like I have been in years past, just.
[00:55:33]  Regularly confused.
[00:55:34]  I don't understand.
[00:55:35]  I thought we were on the same team.
[00:55:36]  Why am I being counter signaled publicly?
[00:55:38]  You know, why are you disagreeing with me?
[00:55:40]  You literally just wrote the book and I literally just retweeted basically the title of your book and just a different, slightly different language.
[00:55:48]  And you're disagreeing with me in the comment section.
[00:55:50]  Like, what's and you'll spend a lot of time being confused by Mid Eva and unless you can just get this simple concept.
[00:55:56]  They believe that they are the pinnacle of conservative biblical faithfulness and that anything to their right is not, there's no chance.
[00:56:06]  That anyone standing even an inch to their right could actually be more faithful because they're at the peak of faithfulness.
[00:56:12]  So anything to their right is not greater faithfulness, but extremism.
[00:56:18]  Extremism.
[00:56:19]  In this conversation, nothing we've said.
[00:56:21]  We would be by the categories of the early church.
[00:56:24]  Dabney, the purity.
[00:56:25]  We're to their left.
[00:56:26]  I'm a lib.
[00:56:26]  We're the libs.
[00:56:27]  This conversation.
[00:56:28]  I'm trying to repent of that.
[00:56:30]  I'm trying to become more conservative every single day.
[00:56:33]  But I'm just saying, that's not how I operate.
[00:56:36]  It feels foreign.
[00:56:37]  And so I had to really learn to think like medieval.
[00:56:40]  Because for me, I have conversations with people all the time.
[00:56:43]  For the past three years, I remember five years ago in 2018, reading Doug Wilson.
[00:56:53]  And he was to my right.
[00:56:56]  Oh, yeah.
[00:56:57]  But my thought was not, he's extreme.
[00:57:01]  My thought was, you know what?
[00:57:03]  I think he may be right and I'm compromised.
[00:57:08]  And to the point where I embraced the things that it became increasingly clear by God's revelation as he was showing me in the scripture and using Doug Wilson and some of his commentaries and books to help me see, I started pivoting my church at great cost.
[00:57:24]  We lost almost a third of the church.
[00:57:26]  Almost a third of the church in California, in large part because of moving towards certain positions that Doug Wilson held, like biblical patriarchy, would be one of those examples.
[00:57:40]  And then, you know, in the last three years, like, you know, every time, like, I'll make, you know, friends with, you know, somebody, you know, and they'll have a different position than me.
[00:57:51]  And I just, but I'm genuinely interested because I want to know truth.
[00:57:56]  I actually have a vested interest in the truth, not just being right.
[00:58:01]  But in knowing truth.
[00:58:02]  And so, like, I've had conversations with Andrew Iska, you know, we're just, you know, we're sitting down, you know, having dinner, and he says something.
[00:58:10]  I'm like, dang, that's, you know, that's something.
[00:58:14]  That's something, you know.
[00:58:15]  And, but then I just ask more questions.
[00:58:18]  But my point is, my first initial thought is not, you're extreme.
[00:58:25]  My initial thought is, I'm probably a normie, I'm probably a lib.
[00:58:32]  I'm probably like my first thought.
[00:58:34]  I remember like reading Doug Wilson.
[00:58:36]  My thought was not, he's a chauvinist.
[00:58:38]  My thought was, I'm probably a feminist.
[00:58:41]  You know, like that.
[00:58:42]  My first, if anything, my default setting was to err on, I might be missing something.
[00:58:51]  You know, that's just that, that's the setting.
[00:58:53]  That is not Medieval setting.
[00:58:55]  Medieval does not think in those terms.
[00:58:57]  And that doesn't mean you have to, like when I mentioned earlier, for 1800 years, the church believed this about contraception.
[00:59:02]  That doesn't mean, well, there's no way the church was wrong for all this time.
[00:59:05]  We can still, I mean, this was the Reformation.
[00:59:07]  We can go back to scripture, but take it, consider the witness of our spiritual forefathers heavily.
[00:59:15]  And if Calvin and Turriton and Johann Olstead and these guys all said this about nations or said this about men and women, and if they all said that for hundreds of years and they were smarter men than you, think deeply and think twice, especially before writing them off.
[00:59:31]  I'm thinking they're racist.
[00:59:33]  They're racist.
[00:59:34]  Sounds racist.
[00:59:35]  Yep, problem solved.
[00:59:36]  Let's move on.
[00:59:36]  We'll take their soteriology, all their political theology, and ideas about ethnicity.
[00:59:41]  But then, throughout, like you were talking about, the telos, the end, the purpose of man, women, government, all this.
[00:59:47]  Right.
[00:59:48]  Yeah, humility will go a long way.
[00:59:50]  But this was really good, Michael.
[00:59:51]  Any final thoughts from you on theology?
[00:59:53]  Just want to encourage some of you who are maybe encountering this for the first time.
[00:59:59]  And it's a little bit overwhelming to think wait, I have to understand the purpose of finances, I have to understand the purpose of these things.
[01:00:07]  Our generation, and maybe the next generation, we are not going to have as comprehensive of a view of our role and purpose in the world as we ought to.
[01:00:15]  So pick up one toy, put it back on the shelf.
[01:00:18]  Yep.
[01:00:19]  Amen.
[01:00:19]  That's good.
[01:00:19]  Yeah.
[01:00:20]  Full circle back to Jordan Peterson.
[01:00:21]  Clean your room.
[01:00:22]  That's right.
[01:00:23]  All right.
[01:00:23]  Thanks for tuning in, guys.