https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=D2aqdOK4gS4
talk about Christian marriage and you might wonder how I’m qualified to talk about that and the answer is I went to eight years of seminary so I’m a little thing or two and believe it or not in your theology classes it’s important to learn how to minister to families and so we did actually spend quite a bit of time in the classroom and so I’m just going to have some reflections here hopefully it can help you to be a better husband a better man and yeah let’s get into it so first off what I want to start off with is there’s a lot of silliness out there about what it means to be a human and specifically what it means to have a body and to have a soul so I think you see the common ghosts in the machine that’s what they call it so it’d be like a cartoon or something you know somebody drinks a magic potion or gets knocked in the head and then their body falls to the ground and this transparent version of themselves just goes floating around and gets into all sorts of hygiene or whatever now it is possible to separate the soul from the body and that is called death it’s usually avoided so you don’t want to think of it as like you’re made up of two pieces that you’re made up of a soul and you’re made up of a body right it’s one plus one equals one right one soul plus one body equals one human being because it’s not arithmetic it’s metaphysics and their co-principles so they come together in such a way that they are not supposed to be separated and that’s why at the end of the Creed every Sunday when we recite that we say I believe in the resurrection of body because death wasn’t supposed to enter the world and so God wants to restore us to the full dignity of our humanity and that includes reuniting us with our bodies at the end of time now what that means is that well here’s another point our souls and our bodies are supposed to go together but when a soul becomes united to a particular body at conception it becomes united to that body and at that point they’re stuck together you can’t do like the whole Freaky Friday thing where somebody else’s soul goes into somebody else’s body that’s impossible and you can think of the soul as kind of being like a fluid that fits into the container that it’s poured into so you know you’ve got Zach’s shaker there the water takes the shape of its container because it’s a fluid right so in a sort of similar way our souls take the shape of the container although that’s not very good language of our bodies and so there’s no such thing as a male soul and there’s no such thing as a female soul if they’re all human souls so every single human being on earth has an identical soul there’s no difference between our souls that’s the basis of Christian doctrine of human dignity is the fact that we all have the exact same soul created in the image and likeness of God and it’s being conformed to this or that body which accounts for the differences between people so if somebody’s smarter it’s because there’s something about the brain which is what the soul basically uses to think something about their brain that can process information faster somebody’s more athletic it’s because their body is more athletic and so that comes from the body not from the soul so on one hand that gives the human race unity right we can all say that we have the same souls but there’s also distinction distinction and you know Sean’s there and I’m here we’re not in the same place right now this goes all the way down to the sexual differences sexual differences exists primarily in the body but also the soul becomes acclimated to that body and soul becomes united to that body and so in 99.99 percent of cases you can just accurately define whether somebody’s a man or somebody’s a woman right there’s a tiny tiny percentage of the population that has ambiguous genitalia but that doesn’t really affect this topic right now so everybody is either going to be a man or a woman right that’s that’s the basic doctrine that was maybe a little complicated and philosophical there if you didn’t fully get it that’s fine but that just sets us up we’ve got men we got woman and there’s not like a middle ground or a smooth spectrum or anything but the really interesting thing is that there’s different ways in which men can be men and women can be women right there’s you could say more masculine men and less masculine men so I’ve got a few examples here anybody ever heard of Jaco Willink he’s a former Navy SEAL you served 20 years in an elite commando unit he got out of the Navy and went into business was highly successful he’s near 50 and he still lifts weights and practices Brazilian jujitsu every day or not even I don’t know how often does it but he does it and then we got mr. Rogers here so mr. Rogers was not in the Navy SEALs he doesn’t do jujitsu he doesn’t lift weights the question is which of these two men would you respect more I mean if I respect him more right but as a man like you’d say both of these are respectable gentlemen wouldn’t you now and we can see that a fellow like Jaco he’s gonna be you know more what we consider archetypically masculine than mr. Rogers right but they’re still both men and they’re still both sort of people you can respect and then you can also see the same sort of variance among women so I’ve got a picture of Audrey Hepburn here and this this picture from Breakfast with Tiffany’s is basically visual shorthand for beauty grace class sophistication and so that’s one end of the spectrum and here I’ve got Ronda Rousey women’s MMA fighter and she thought that the best way to live her life was to go and beat other women up in the octagon you know and so obviously we’ve got two different women but they’re expressing their gender a little differently and you know you can say this is more archetypically feminine here than this but both women and so so in addition to having that that binary division there’s also kind of more or less masculine men but they’re all men that’s your fundamental that’s a fundamental identity it’s not something that changes because you’ve got less testosterone basically all right so now we’re going to look at Genesis chapter 2 the creation of man and woman so check verse 24 a man leaves his father and his mother and cleans to his wife and they become one flesh so this is a very common scripture Jesus talks about the indesirability of marriage by referencing this this passage from the book of Genesis but you can use that one flesh it’s almost the same thing as saying one body right now how many heads are on a body one yeah one we got we got this one right here right the same thing is true in marriage your marriage shouldn’t be a two-headed monster and so God has given authority to men to be the heads of their household and we’re gonna we’re gonna really flesh that out I’m gonna tell you exactly how that works because you know I need to tread carefully here but that’s that’s fundamental it’s scriptural it’s the and so as long as you understand it correctly it’s not going to get you into trouble trying to live that out all right and then you can see you remember that God created man first so he was the origin of the entire human race right so he even Eve was taken out of his riff and then we read here verse 18 the Lord God said it is not good for man to be alone I will make him a helper fit for him and then he creates all the animals we get to verse 20 but for the man there was not found a helper fit for him so the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man and while he slept he took one of his ribs and closed it up closed up its place with flesh and the rib which the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought this brocker to the man so God conceived of women and men as sort of being like a head to helper relationship so we’re gonna flesh that out later I don’t have enough time to give this whole presentation this week so it’s gonna be a two-parter but I really dive into Ephesians chapter 5 and show you exactly what that means all right so interesting thing interesting thing taken from the rib right taken from the rib right here was not taken from the head was not taken from the foot and so the traditional interpretation this goes back even to Thomas Aquinas is that he was taken from the rib because she’s supposed to be man’s equal right and remember we talked about that equal souls all throughout the world equal souls was not taken from his foot to signify her being a slave and she was not taken from his head to signify her being in charge of the man it’s equal dignity but you can notice and this is something I think our culture has a hard time grasping that equal dignity doesn’t have to mean equal authority if you go out you know some of the left or the right coasts you can find a lot of people who are obsessed with equality of outcome so they want everybody to reach the same level they want everybody to have the same income level the same exact health care that kind of thing you manifest itself politically rather than equality of opportunity which is what I personally hold to but you can have a system where everybody has equal dignity but not everybody has equal authority so you know who do you respect more General Eisenhower or General Patton it’s like those are both top-level generals well General Eisenhower was the supreme commander of Allied forces and General Patton was the commander of the third army you know which meant that Eisenhower had more authority than Patton but it’s not like that somehow made Patton less of a general he was still an excellent general so you don’t have to have exact same authority to have the exact same dignity so that’s that’s a very important thing to remember now here’s here’s where it really rubber hits the road the Lord we’re going back to verse 15 so I’m kind of reading this whole thing backwards the Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to till and keep it and the Lord God commanded the man saying you may freely eat of every tree of the garden but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat for in the day that you eat of it you shall die does anybody notice little little detail here he wasn’t there Eve hadn’t been created yet the order to stay away from the tree of knowledge was given to Adam alone right and so you can imagine you know at work if I tell Zack to do something but Sean overhears it let’s say I was like okay Zack I need you to get those reports ready by Monday is that something you do reports yeah okay you know just because just because Sean overheard that and we get to Monday in the report stone show I was like that why didn’t you do that it’s like yeah it’s not Sean’s fault right like that your responsibility now maybe Sean’s also supposed to help you I don’t know but if I give you the order it’s your responsibility you know if I give a committee the order it’s the committee’s responsibility but when you got that individual thing becomes your responsibility so we move on to Genesis chapter 3 serpent said to the woman did God say you shall not eat of any tree of the garden so you notice that Satan’s a liar like he probably knew exactly what God said and just distorted it and the woman said to the serpent we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden but God said you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden neither shall you touch it lest you die there was anything there touch it really good do anything with it but did God tell Adam that? No. No. God didn’t tell Adam that. No. So because Eve didn’t receive the order directly once she comes under the influence of the serpent she kind of mangles that command she makes it more harsh than God did God just said don’t eat the fruit you know I guess if they wanted to take a nap under the tree that wouldn’t have been a problem and so that’s a okay we’ll move on but the serpent said to the woman you will not die for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God knowing good good and evil so when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise she took of the fruit of its fruit and ate and she also gave some to her husband and he ate so I’m using the revised standard version of the Bible here it’s got a footnote saying that these words are followed in the Hebrew text by the phrase with her indicating that Adam was present when Eve committed a sin so I know if you read Paradise Lost by Milton which is a great work I would recommend it if you’re into long-form epic poetry he’s got Adam and Eve separated right so it’s just Eve and serpent and I think that’s influenced our imagination a lot because that was such an influential work it’s influenced a lot of art but Adam was there the whole time and that’s there in the Hebrew text and the revised standard version doesn’t get that but I checked the English standard version the new revised standard version and the Jerusalem Bible and all of them included the with her her husband who was with her they all included that and so that’s a part of the text Adam was just standing there watching this happen Adam’s original sin was being a deadbeat what’s a deadbeat not doing anything not taking responsibility basically right like if you’re deadbeat you’re not taking responsibility for those things you should be responsible for that’s what Adam’s original sin is and I think that’s kind of how that passes on generation after generation how easy it is to shirk responsibility how easy it is to let somebody else take care of it I think that’s that’s the easiest way for men to get it wrong is to not take responsibility for their actions and so that’s our task is to take responsibility for their actions and so that’s our task is to take responsibility for their actions and so that’s our task is to take responsibility for their actions and so that’s our task is to take responsibility for their actions and so that’s our task is to take responsibility for their actions and so that’s our task is to take responsibility for their actions and so that’s our task is to take responsibility for their actions and so that’s our task is to take responsibility for their actions and so that’s our task is to take responsibility for their actions and so that’s our task is to take responsibility for their actions and so that’s our task is to take responsibility for their actions and so that’s our task is to take responsibility for their actions and so that’s our responsibility and I’m just going to state this plainly and like I said we’re going to fill this out next week. God has given you the responsibility of headship. Being the head of your family. And I don’t think we want to think about that in terms of being tyranny or being domineering or being patronizing to your families. I think responsibility, think about it in terms of responsibility is the best way to think about it. I think responsibility is to, when you see something that needs to be done or something that needs to stop being done, you think of that as primarily your task. That’s your task. And it doesn’t matter if you’re Jocko Willink or Fred Rogers, that’s still your responsibility. It’s always your responsibility to act when acting needs to be done. I think that’s just one lens we can look at the original sin of Adam and a very helpful lens for men in our time because we don’t live in the world that our ancestors lived in. I think it’s really what, mechanized equipment, textiles, manufacturing textiles and labor saving devices have kind of disrupted the way we live. Our lives, right? Used to be if you were a farmer, it was like, okay, I’ve got to drive this flower, I’ve got to shoe horses, you know, and what’s helpful for that? Have a little extra muscle, right? Be able to hold the horse, whack his shoes on. And so there was just a very natural division of labor. The men were outside working because they needed to be stronger in order to do that. And the women kind of took care of the house because that was work that absolutely needed to be done. If you didn’t weed, you didn’t sew, you didn’t have clothes. Ever since the late 19th and into the 20th century with the machines we use for farming nowadays, what’s really disrupted our labor economy is the fact that our work is becoming much more intellectual now. And women are equally capable of doing intellectual work as men. So this notion of headship can get lost in all of that and the changing economy we’re living in and then also the influence that feminism has, especially over major media outlets and Hollywood and that sort of thing. It’s really easy to lose this. But I think if you think about it in terms of responsibility, of I’m responsible for all of this in my life, that can give us a clear way of thinking about it, a clear way that should improve your life, should improve your marriages, and probably improve your… I mean, would anybody’s wife here complain about you taking on more responsibility? Like I had a hard time imagining that. Responsibility doesn’t necessarily mean telling someone what to do. Right. It could just be sitting down and having a conversation. That’s exactly what responsibility could look like. I notice this is a problem, I don’t know the solution. Let’s talk about this. So that’s a part of leadership, right? Which bosses, you guys have probably had multiple bosses, which bosses did you like more, the one that just sat there and told you what to do or the one who was really a collaborator in addition to having authority? It’s like that second one, that’s the bosses that people actually have some degree of affection for, who like working for them rather than somebody who’s just barking out orders all the time. And the best leaders in the military, the best officers, same thing. They’re integrated into their units, they’re keeping lines of communication open, they’re listening to what the men are telling them and adjusting the plan along those lines. So that’s more what responsibility looks like rather than authority just kind of has like kind of a nasty ting in our ears. I don’t know, it’s not a bad word, but it just doesn’t, kind of makes people cringe. Men have authority over women. Men have responsibility for their lives, yeah, worry about that. Okay, so looking forward to next week, we’ll spend a lot of time with Ephesians chapter 5. It talks about some things that we really need to examine carefully and get right if we want to get what being a Christian man is. Otherwise, that’s all I’ve got for today, so thank you. Any questions? I was sitting here trying to remember when you used Mr. Rogers as a comparison there. He was a World War II vet, I know, and I think he was decorated as well. Really? He was a Marine. He was, he was, he was still a valid comparison he made there in terms of physical appearance, but he was, he was no, he was no wuss, I guess. Right, right. If you were to listen to the other military guy, just hearing them speak is a totally different tone of voice. And listening to Mr. Rogers, you respectfully really get with kids. You would not probably say that about the other gentleman. He’s very hard-nosed. His book is called Extreme Owner. It’s really about personal responsibility, holding up to everything. A little bit different. Yeah. Yeah. You can say the same thing about, I used to know him as a fattened. Yeah. But Fred Rogers was a Marine. Yeah, okay. He was what? He was a Marine. Really? No, I knew he was a real, he was just a very humble Marine. He was, yeah. Yeah, he just did his duty when the time, when the duty called, right? He was a very secure individual. I mean, the most decorated US soldier of all time, Audie Murphy. Audie Murphy. He was what? 5’2”, asthma, bad eyesight, flat feet. Oh yeah, he was a rack. He got like, it was finally the Army Rangers who took him because nobody else, like, the Marines, they turned him down. Went to the Army Air Force, they turned him down. Went to the Navy, they turned him down. And finally the Army Rangers were like, we’ll take him. We keep up. And then one day he held off an entire German division on the burning tank destroyer while he had malaria and the leg wound, you know. Anybody here know why you allowed me to have him first? He didn’t want any advice. Alright, that’s enough. Alright.