https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=4hJSk4MBCZ0
Nicolaus says, in the Old Testament, lots of people married their cousins, including some very notable figures like Abraham and Sarah. We don’t do that in modern society. Most of the fear of babies being born with serious health problems. Why did Abraham and others rather marry cousins than mix with foreigners? And so the way to understand that is really about how far should a stranger be in order to get married. If you listen to Mathieu’s discussion with Jordan, he talks about that a lot. Who is the stranger that loves me? That’s what you need to find. And so the problem is that if you go too far, you won’t find a stranger that loves you. And so if you stay too close, then you have this weird circular causality. And so you have to find the right distance. What’s the right distance? You see that in Scripture. You go to Laban. You go to someone who’s part of your family, but kind of a little further out from your family. But there are some who succeed in marrying strangers. Moses is one of them, in a way that even married the extreme stranger. And that’s what’s going on in the story of Christ, often. The story of the Canaanite woman, for example. The story of the Samaritan woman. The story of the Samaritan woman has to do with that because the Samaritan is like a lost Jew. So she’s like a stranger, but not that far. And so Christ can marry her. He says, I came to find the lost sheep of Israel. But then there are stories in Scripture, there are moments where Christ goes even further. And it’s like, you know, because you have to think, it’s hard for people to put themselves back in that situation. It’s like, you know, what? The Jewish Messiah is going to save the whole world? Like really? What? And so it’s like Christ encounters the Canaanite woman, and he’s like, no, I’m here for the Jews. And the Canaanite woman’s like, yeah, well, I’m a dog, you know, and I’ll take the crumbs that fall off your table. And Christ is like, whoa, this woman, you know, he says, I haven’t found this, you know, this faith in Israel. And so he keeps getting, it keeps stretching. And so even after the resurrection of Christ, it stretches. So there’s another story in the story of Christ where it’s the Roman centurion. So it’s like, here’s a foreigner that loves the Jews. He’s a Roman, he’s a centurion, but he also, he loves the God of Abraham. So it’s like, you know, what’s that distance? And then ultimately, you know, the Ethiopian eunuch kind of shatters a lot of that. Then he goes even further because it’s like impure. He’s a eunuch, he’s an Ethiopian, but still he’s coming to the temple. So he’s still, he’s still like someone that, and then finally, you know, St. Paul just shatters the whole thing. And it’s like, no, man, if you understand the spirit of Pentecost, you understand that, you know, to the ends of the world, that’s what Christ said. He said until the ends of the earth now. So it’s like, it’s just this growing, growing thing that happens in the story of Christ. So I’m a little far from your question, but that’s the question that’s being asked in these stories. How far should you marry in order to not lose your seed and lose your strength, but then also not be so close that you run out of potential and you create this, this, this wheel. And that’s what happens. That’s why the genetic problem has to do with running out of potential. It’s like, it’s like, you know, remixing the same things over and over. At some point, it’s like a copy of a copy of a copy. So that’s why it’s also kind of genetically dangerous to do that. But it’s also an increase in characteristics.