Young Men of Marriageable Material

Philip All right, it’s episode three.

Sean It’s a trifecta — which is one of my favorite words — but a trifecta of recording ourselves.

Philip Once you get to three, it means something.

Sean There is some kind of stat about podcasting, though, isn’t there? That, like, most podcasts only get to so many episodes, and if you get over a certain amount you are probably going to make it. Isn’t there a stat like that?

Philip Well, when I was doing all the research for Business300 — kind of what the best way is to start and release and whatnot — all of the podcast pros were saying that you should release three episodes on your first day, so that all your Apple numbers spike up.

And so, I mean, it’s taken us three months to release three episodes. So we’re — I don’t know, we’re making it somewhere.

Sean At least. I mean, it’s not a surprise that it would take so long if one of the participants was so reluctant. But thankfully that participant who was previously reluctant is no longer reluctant.

Philip But the other thing that the pros would recommend is consistency and predictability in the releases. So even if you’re going to release not as frequently, as long as it’s, hey, people know that once a month something’s coming out.

Sean Right.

Philip So.

Sean Yeah. So my wife’s podcast is very intermittent, for a variety of reasons, and she also notices that when they are releasing on a somewhat more regular schedule, the numbers of listeners are higher. So I don’t know if that’s because — then it’s not just their own expectations, but maybe they have a slot in their own week when they’re going to listen to this or that kind of thing.

But as a non-really-big podcast listener myself, I don’t really ever think about that.

Philip Right.

So, the first one talked about kind of an overview. Last time we talked about goals and aspirations and visions. And we were considering different topics to talk about, and one turn of phrase that we’ve been using at our church is “young men of marriageable material.”

Sean This is specifically your phrase. Did it first come out in a prayer?

Philip Yeah, no, it was at our leaders retreat. Jim does the surveys, and one of the questions was, what is a piece of our trellis that we could work on, or we need more of? And so my answer was, young men of marriageable material.

And so after that, I’m like, hey, start praying about it. And so, yeah, in the corporate prayers I’ve said that a couple times. And people have even said, hey, thanks for praying for young men of marriageable material. That is actually a need.

Sean Yeah, I think it is fun to say. And I think it’s a sticky idea.

There’s a book, Made to Stick. And that’s one that I got on Kindle, that I read the first time, that I was like, I like this so much, I need a hard copy.

Philip And I actually just this week started listening to Made to Stick.

Sean All right.

Yeah. So, “young men of marriageable material” seems to have a telos. It has a goal; like, marriage is an important thing — that’s built in. It has the men in particular as who needs to be ready for that, or being made ready for marriage. Not that ladies don’t, but at least among us, in our current context, we have a greater dearth, a lack, of young men. More than — we have more young ladies who are probably more marriageable material than we have young men. Not that we don’t have any; it’s just that in general our percentages at the moment are more on the ladies’ side.

Philip Right. And we’re not polygamists.

Sean Yeah, no. But we do have that need, and how to go about helping our younger men or younger boys grow up into that. Or then even be attractive enough to draw some other guys who are right on the edge, let’s say, or who aren’t getting that sort of emphasis maybe where they’re at.

Philip Right. Or who have energy and strength, but it is like a riverbed overflowing, as opposed to directed.

Sean I just tweeted this morning, because I was kind of thinking about this topic, and I’ve been asked — because I was a youth pastor for probably fifteen-ish years, all put together.

In fact, when I first started having the desire to be a pastor, I was still in high school. And even at that time, I loved my youth pastor, and I would consider him one of two spiritual fathers that I have had in my life. And he was the first one. He was my first discipler, he was my first spiritual father. And in a lot of ways he was completely mistreated and underappreciated at the church that I was growing up at.

And so, as soon as I started realizing I had the desire to be a pastor, I never wanted to be a youth pastor. I wanted to be — at the time I didn’t have the plurality of elders category, so you had a senior pastor, an associate pastor, and a youth pastor, and maybe a worship pastor. So I wanted to be the senior pastor, because I figured that that would give me the best opportunity to actually support and encourage the youth pastor and the work that the young people were doing, from the lead spot. So, talk about that in big church, so to speak, and then be providing the resources for the young people, because I had a burden for them, but I just saw him continually being not utilized very well.

All that to say — I did go into youth-specific work, for a variety of reasons, and then was a vocational youth pastor for, oh, well over a decade. And so I have been thinking about young men and helping young men grow up to be mature men very specifically for a long time. And even my own vision of what that could look like has radically expanded.

And then also I had a son in the middle of there.

Philip Right.

Sean And I only had one son — the son whom I love. But he changed, or gave me opportunity to start changing and expanding, and making sure that I was aiming at something as well.

Philip Right.

Sean So, I mean, it’s an important topic. I don’t know — the last decade has seen a lot more resources come out about it than maybe were there even when I was a kid.

Philip Well, and I think that men as the problem is both in the secular environment, with toxic masculinity, that that is the message that is constantly said. But also in a church environment, in a certain way, problems revolving around men come out in different ways.

And I think there is a type of approach to training men that is not fatherly. I haven’t seen the show — I’ve seen Michael Foster post links to some war show; forgot what it was called. Band of Brothers, I think.

Sean Okay, yeah.

Philip And so he just had a good example there of, like, a higher-up officer who would step down on the men, in a way to present it as helping them grow up, but it really was just to make himself look better.

And so I think there’s a way to discourage men, discourage young men, that is unhelpful. But then the other side of that is, also there’s a way where young men are smothered, or shielded from any kind of criticism, that is also unhelpful.

So, kind of taking those two — if you’re going to try to help men, those are two maybe sides of the spectrum that are unhelpful. Okay, then how can we go about actually doing that?

Sean Yeah. Even the military example — because partly it’s not Trinitarian. It’s not Father loving Son. And obviously then, even within the Trinity, where there is a complete equality of divinity, even with the shared familial, fatherly love of the Father to the Son, and love of the Son for the Father. So, however that actually works.

Philip Right. Within —

Sean — one God and three persons.

Philip We’re not going to be heretics here.

Sean Yeah.

That is different than what so much of the — I mean, military is much more of an Islamic power hierarchy. It’s not a problem with hierarchy; it’s a problem with what the hierarchy is for. And Islam is a pure power hierarchy, where there’s one God, one person at the top. And you either defeat that one God, one person, and take his place, or you are perpetually underneath him.

And I’m not actually trying to change how generals, or boot camp, or whatever, happens. So I get that lots of the young guys who don’t have any sort of self-control — do they actually need toughness? All that’s fine.

But if that’s the only — I guess maybe that’s the better way to say it — if that’s the only view that a young man has, then his whole goal is to just get to be in the position of criticizing and bossing other people around.

Philip Right.

Sean When I finally grow up, I get to be the boss.

Philip Right.

Sean When I grow up, I finally get to tell everybody else what to do, and they have to serve me.

Philip Right.

Sean And that’s not sufficient, and not really, even again, the paradigm in a church.

Philip Right.

Sean That’s not a paradigm for a family.

Philip For a school.

Sean Yeah.

Philip And that was something that Nela and I both noticed right away at ECS, even when we were just checking out the school: is that kind of intergenerational connection, relationships within the kids, and even specifically within the boys. Where the older boys at the school, overall, are attentive and bringing the younger boys with them, as opposed to besmirching them or putting them down. I think that is helpful to kind of help them grow up into respectability in a way.

Sean Yeah. This — I do think it’s related, though it’s not technically talking about young men of marriageable material — but I do think there’s an overlap there with even the understanding of what the process of discipleship is about, and what the goal of a disciple is. If I’m a discipler and I have a disciple, what should my goal with that disciple be?

And part of that goal is reproduction, and part of that is then even replacement. So if I am a really good discipler, then I need to be needed less and less.

Philip Right.

Sean The person that I am working with, they need me less and less, they see more and more for themselves, and then they’re also then reproducing and bringing that about in other people.

And I think especially in churches that love the Bible — which we should — in churches that love theology, doctrine, teaching, what oftentimes happens is the teacher gets elevated to a point. And if the teacher himself is any measure of insecure, then the teacher is sort of lauding his knowledge above everybody else’s, in a way that they continue to keep on needing him and keep on putting him in that highest position in the hierarchy.

And then he’s threatened when other people are growing. He’s threatened by their increasing maturity and ability to reproduce, and then he can’t control them.

Philip Right.

Sean Whereas a discipler really is trying to — he sees at the end that he’s got his hands on the wheel not at all. And fathers who are leading their houses like that, who want control — that’s different than wanting the blessing of seeing their sons learn to take on more and more.

Philip Right.

Sean And so the overlap with discipling, and seeing them become something that stands on their own — as opposed to, in the military you might get to become the general, but, again, that’s more “you get to become the boss,” not necessarily “you get to become the one who is helping the young men take on more and more responsibilities.”

Philip Right. Well, I mean, there’s the truth that the Lord said about the student is never greater than his teacher, in that way. So there’s that.

And there’s also an image that I like to think about, fathers to sons. You know, we’re trying to climb this wall, let’s say, to make progress or whatever it is. And the father’s role is for the boy to stand on his shoulders, or to give him a prop up with his hands, and he climbs the wall and the father gets left behind.

And so he uses his height, he uses his reach, in order to then move his son forward. And he does that at his own expense, in that way, where it’s not about, well, if I can’t go, then you’re not going either. “I will use my maturity, my strength, my power in order to have you go beyond me.”

I think that is a helpful image, I guess, even for fathers to sons to think about, as opposed to trying to hold them back or hold them down.

Sean Well, and my wife and I talk about that illustration. And sometimes the son, or the next generation, is up on the shoulders looking over the wall, and says back down to Dad in this situation — or says back down to pastor, to the spiritual father kind of person — hey, if we moved three steps to the left, we can all get over a lot easier.

And then the dad, the person who’s holding up the person that can see — if that person says, oh, you don’t appreciate what I’m doing for you. Well, no. It’s not that I don’t — I couldn’t see what I’m seeing without you. Thank you. And I’m telling you, you’re not doing anything wrong. You can’t see. I’m telling you, we just need to tweak it a little bit.

Philip Right.

Sean And I think most of the stories that I hear are of the person doing the holding being irritated that they’re being told they’re doing it wrong — when, in fact, again, it’s not wrong, but there’s some little changes that even they could make that would make things better.

Philip Right.

Sean And it’s tough to sometimes listen. And that’s part of the reason why, if a discipler is really aiming at the maximum blessing of his disciple, and if the discipler is really genuinely wanting to keep growing himself, then he should actually be open to that kind of feedback and mutual encouragement from his disciple that he’s been helping.

Philip Yeah. And I can see how that would have to have a certain kind of perspective — I guess, even kind of what you mentioned before, a Trinitarian perspective. That my son, or my disciple, is also my equal, my brother. And having that kind of mutual respect. Okay, this is not a little boy anymore. This is my equal in this battle, or in this building project.

Sean Yep. So, my son is not a threat to my power, or to my authority, or to my control. And because of that, my son is not my enemy.

And I don’t think I ever would have said that in one sentence when my son was born, but I definitely treated him like an enemy. And was mad at him even as a kid, as a baby — which is ridiculous, to be mad at a two-year-old, or eighteen-month-old, or whatever. They’re not thinking through — they didn’t wake up that morning and write in their journal how they’re going to try to tick off Dad that day.

Philip Still depraved, though.

Sean Yeah. But I acted more like my son was an enemy, rather than on my team, that maybe needed some training.

Philip Right.

Sean And treating a disciple, or treating a son, treating a young man, like an enemy, it inevitably makes the position look like it’s no fun either. So I’m making it look like we’re in this constant fight, we’re in this battle, and I’m not enjoying it. So not only am I making their life more miserable, I am demonstrating that I’m living a miserable life. And why would they want that?

So my own — I’m not just in the moment messing it up. I’m crafting a wrong picture, by my example, of: why would they want to get married? Why would they want to take my position as dad?

Philip Right.

Sean It looks awful.

Philip Right.

Sean I’m making it look that way by how I am living it out.

Philip Well, and so I have two sons. And —

Sean We happen to have sons with the same name.

Philip That’s right. Yes.

But so, the first one’s Zion, and then Calvin. But they are, in a lot of ways, polar opposites, kind of in their approach and in their thinking. And the younger one, I can see myself in him in almost every situation — the way he’s wired, the way he responds, the kind of things he does. The older one, I have a much more difficult time understanding and relating to.

And so, yeah, that approach of butting heads and crashing into one another — and a lot of it is even, like, we’re wired differently. And so there’s a way to think that, you know, this is the son that God gave me; he knew that I needed this kind of son.

But then a different thought that I had was, well, he also gave me to him. And so, to be able to equip him with the things he needs for his own maturity, his own growth, his own godliness, I’m able to give him because I’m wired differently.

And so, to see myself in that position of coach, in that position of discipler, where, okay, what am I uniquely able to equip him with, that he needs equipping with, that he can’t get elsewhere? And so, even using that contrast between the people as a unique approach to then help that disciple grow up.

Sean Yeah. It’s a huge assumption, though, that there is a goal for your son that you, even being different, are helping him get to. And I don’t know how many parents — what their goal is for their kid, son or daughter, what sort of end goal they even have in mind. Because, again, “you are helpful to him because you’re wired different” assumes that there’s a thing you’re helping him to get to.

Philip Right.

Sean And that’s not just not burning the house down and graduating and moving out.

Philip Right. And also not just being a Christian. So, yeah, like, him being saved.

Sean Though even that is debatable in a lot of our circles. Of, should I even expect that my kid is going to be a Christian?

Philip Yeah. Him being a Christian is not a goal of mine. That is a starting point.

Where — yeah, I definitely do live — it’s not presumption, I hope not, but it is a faith-based assumption. So, if I am to be obedient to God, and not provoke my kid to anger, but raise them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord — so if I were to live that out, what would that encompass and look like?

And, yes, God is sovereign over all salvation, and he’s also sovereign over the means. And so God decided to put this boy into a Christian family, and commanded that father to raise him up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. And so my faith is in God’s word and his means.

So I am totally assuming that my kids — so both my boys are baptized and a part of the church — but from the beginning my assumption was that, yeah, they’re going to be Christian. And then, how do we build on that? My goal for them is not just their salvation. That’s a starting assumption.

Sean Yeah. So, in our circles, that is already provocative.

Philip Right. Near heresy.

Sean Right.

And then taking the next step after that. So, what does their Christian life on earth look like? What should that — if they are embodied Christians. Which even that phrase is actually loaded.

Philip Another provocative phrase.

Sean Yeah.

Why “marriageable material”? Young men of stalwart character; young men of no compromise for the gospel; young men of always caring about the cross of Christ. Like, I’m not poking at those phrases.

Philip Right.

Sean But, like, even in church history, it’s hard to say that most of the stories — at least in seminary, the stories about great Christians — are stories about people who even gave up their families to go witness for Christ.

Philip Right.

Sean And the men who were great men of the faith weren’t regularly described that way because they were great fathers, because they were great husbands, because they were men of marriageable material, or became that.

So: why the marriageable part in the phrase?

Philip Yeah. This episode’s going to have a lot of M’s. So: men, marriage, marriageable material, masculinity, manhood.

Sean Magnificent.

Philip Right, yes.

So there are different angles to come at this. I could come at some of the angles a little bit differently. But, so, first — what we’re hoping for is not just a spark that shines and goes out, but a fireplace that we could keep putting logs on and keep burning. And what that requires is multigenerational thinking.

So what we’re after is not just one man to do something great in his lifetime, but for him to build a family, and sons and daughters that follow him and that continue on that work.

I’ve been reading through Livy’s History of Rome.

Sean As one does, for fun.

Philip That’s right.

Sean My daughter reads through Herodotus for fun. You know, reading through Livy.

Philip I actually really enjoy it. I got through the early history of Rome; now I’m kind of in the middle of the war with Hannibal.

Sean Because Livy was like a ten-volume thing that we only have a few volumes of these days.

Philip I think it was like thirty to forty volumes, and we only have like half of them.

But yeah, he starts with the Trojans coming — so he has Aeneas there, and that whole story — and then how we had the first seven or eight kings of Rome, and then how that formed into a republic, and all their class warfares.

And then he goes into a lot of detail. I like detailed history, where it kind of presents the context of the time and what it was like. But there were a few names that stood out to me — I don’t have them in front of me — of men who did great things in their time for the Roman Republic.

And what was interesting about these guys, apart from their differentiation — and they continued to demonstrate that kind of differentiation — was that they also then had sons who would do that as well. And so it wasn’t just a one-lifetime success story, but these men built families who advanced that kind of culture, advanced that kind of legacy.

And so, like I said, it wasn’t just a spark that shined bright and died, but they were building a fireplace and putting logs on it.

And so, when thinking about marriageable material, you are thinking about fruitful living. And so that fruitful living is in different aspects, but marriageable is a fundamental way for the man to cultivate and to bear fruit beyond his own lifetime.

Sean Yeah, I mean, it’s the only way.

Philip Right.

Sean Well — I can’t — it was Nietzsche. I’m not claiming that this is the person that we go to for wisdom, but I think he was the one that said aut liberi aut libri. Which is, if a man wanted to have a legacy, it was either in books or children. So you either spent your time writing or raising kids.

But I have actually found that I have more to say — not like I’m — I like writing, however successful it is. But I have more to say because of my family, because of marriage and because of kids.

Philip But then, I mean, in that marriageable material, how you define that — I would throw in a lot of those other adjectives into that definition: stalwart, responsible, whatever that is. But the point is that there, like you said, is an end to those attributes. So all of those attributes, those characteristics, are pointed at a certain direction, a certain aim: to bear that fruit. So it’s not just for myself.

Sean So, one of the things that we are trying to do with this podcast in particular is not just hear ourselves talk.

Philip Right.

Sean Because we’re both annoyed by that.

Philip Yes.

Sean Or hear ourselves pause. Or hear myself pause. We’re trying to do better than that.

But specifically — our kind of people are not in the capital C Covenantal group of eschatology. So we are not postmillennialists. And we love postmillennialists, so this is not bashing on anybody at the moment, just saying what we love and what drives us.

Philip We like you guys.

Sean Right.

We are not postmil, we’re not amil — so we are dispensational premillennialists. Which makes a lot of the people that we care about crazy.

Philip I did not know how hated of a group we are.

Sean Yeah. And I think, even as you and I have been talking over the last few years, we are probably more excited about it than ever — even though we don’t need to just slap that sticker on everything.

Philip Sure.

Sean So I’m not trying to get a tattoo of “disp forever,” or “dispy till the rapture,” on my forehead kind of thing, to just be obnoxious about it. But in the process, we would identify as being in that sort of group of thinking that that is what the Bible is talking about. That’s the best way of reading and interpreting God’s promises, and actually God’s covenants.

But that group of people have been horrific parents, except by accident. Like, they don’t have rooted reasons.

And the easy way to pick at that, or how to start at that, would be: okay, well, if you really think that the rapture might happen at any point, at any moment — why would you think generationally? If you really think that Christ’s return is imminent?

Which, actually, lots of theological camps are supposed to think his return is imminent.

Philip Yeah. More than just dispies.

Sean Right. But we’ll be the tip of the spear on the imminent return part. Fine, good.

If Christ’s return is imminent, then shouldn’t we, like, forget marriage and family, and really double down on the evangelization of the world, of the nations, of our neighbors at least? And, like, maybe some people have to have a job because they’ve got to pay for the missionaries, but most everybody, even at their job, should almost do shoddy work for the sake of all of the time that they need to be telling other people to repent or believe, because Christ is coming.

So our group has great responsibility for the sort of removal of faith from marriage. Again, I’m not saying that there are no faithful families or Christians among dispensationalists, but in general they don’t really have good reasons for that.

Philip Right.

Sean I have said in a variety of places that, when I was growing up, marriage and family seemed like — the way that that related to being a Christian was, well, that was the only way you got to have sex and it not be sinful, was you had to get married. And then probably, like, because of biology, that meant you’re going to have some amount of kids. And then —

Philip — that your wife could take care of.

Sean Yeah. So, again, marriage was better than burning in your lust.

Philip Right.

Sean And probably kids were going to come about from that. And there were some verses about how to not make them pagans. You just spank them — so you read Proverbs, and so you’re supposed to spank your kids. But —

Philip — when they frustrate you.

Sean Yeah.

I never thought of it strategically. There was no — you use the word generational — there was no aim in my mind of grandkids, or even “seeing my children’s children,” which is a line from a psalm that we sing.

So, “young men of marriageable material” assumed that marriage and family is good. And why do we — I mean, I’m not just trying to make you answer the question, but it’s a burden that I think we have, which is a big part of the reason even for trying this format of talking about it.

Why the heck do we care, when we think Christ could come back at any moment? So, why don’t you take the first swing at that?

Philip Specifically as dispensational premillennialists. So, how does that connect to the generational thing?

Sean Because I recently had a conversation with somebody who was like, yeah, I don’t know why you’re inconsistent.

Philip Right.

Sean “I see you caring about these things, and they’re good things to care about, but I don’t understand how it fits with what you claim is your eschatology, ecclesiology, your worldview. How’s that supposed to fit together?”

Philip Yeah. And, again, I can answer this question just being faithful to the Bible. But specifically with —

Sean Which seems like a good start.

Philip Right. But specifically with dispensationalism.

The reason why — and this is things I’ve recently gotten more excited about. And then when I got excited about it, I realized, hey, there’s actually a lot of people who are really not excited about this.

Sean We’re not only the most potentially hated group within evangelical eschatology circles —

Philip Right.

Sean — but we are also, in some ways, the most committedly dumb group.

Philip Right.

Sean Which maybe merits the hate.

Philip Right.

But, big picture: the reason why a dispensationalist should be thinking about his fruit generationally is because the dispensationalist is the only — I think I can say the only — hermeneutical category, eschatological category, that holds to a consistent covenant-keeping God. God made a covenant with a named person, with a bloodline, with a specific DNA group.

Sean Somebody’s mad at you right now.

Philip Right, yes. They already turned it off. On the podcast stats I can see what percentage of people logged off at what point in the minute. So, right there. We lost some earlier. Yeah, right there’s another one.

And so, I get that the covenant-keeping God is the language that covenantalists use. I mean, that is in the name — it’s Covenantalism.

But — so, I really, really tried to be a covenantalist. I actually had a lot of prayer about figuring that out. But what was more important to me than being a covenantalist was reading the Bible with integrity. And my prayers to God were, help me to see what you’re trying to have me see, as opposed to coming to it with some kind of assumptions that I’m bringing in.

And so, in covenantalism, the way God keeps covenant with Israel is by — hmm, I don’t want to be too provocative — but by —

Sean Oh, you do.

Philip By making Israel be the church. By expanding Israel into the church.

A lot of covenantalists would say replacement, or fulfillment, or whatnot — but to expand it to include the church. So the way God keeps covenant with Israel is by giving those promises to the church. But that’s not really keeping covenant to the bloodline, to the DNA that he gave it to.

And that’s one of the reasons — could be a different episode — why I also think that dispensationalism is the best foundation for proper earthly living. Because dispensationalism confesses that God cares about the material world.

Sean Which — I mean, this is dispensationalism cares about the material, physical, earthly, historical world, as represented first at least by his covenants to Israel, you’re saying. Which means that then, when we’re reading all the other things where he’s talking about land, or people, or families, we don’t have to spiritualize those.

Philip Right.

Sean We don’t have to make them into figurative language that then — we’re not really even exactly sure where the figurative nature of it ends. Some kind of mist out somewhere else.

And then, if that is the accurate reading, then that should make — this is just part of the answer, as you’re saying, one of the angles on it — then that should make the time that we’re living here now give us the same kind of interests and cares and concerns that God has. As opposed to just trying to get out of here.

Philip Right. But — for the world, but then even specifically for families and marriage and thinking generationally.

If we believe that God, when he’s talking to Abraham, is thinking generationally in Abraham’s line, in Israel’s line, then when we are imitating God as a father, we should also be thinking about it generationally in our own bloodline.

So, yes, we should be making disciples outside of our bloodline, right? So, through evangelism or other kinds of church discipleship. But for our own bloodline: if I’m going to imitate God the Father in his care for actual DNA, then I need to care about my DNA and my bloodline, and how I’m passing on the faith in that way.

You know, even “to a thousand generations,” right? That’s — through paedobaptism or whatnot, I mean, to be able to apply that, you have to take it out of the material world, because the thousand generations is a promise to ethnic Israel. You have to take it out into a spiritual world, and then apply it to your own bloodline — you have to bring it back into the material world.

So, on what basis are you pulling it out of the material and then bringing it back into your material? I don’t need to do that. I could say, God is caring about the material and the bloodline, the DNA; I should be caring about my bloodline and DNA and thinking about it generationally. I’m gone — and where are my grandkids and great-grandkids, and what have I done in that way? How have I imitated the covenant-keeping Father, as me being a father with my covenant household?

So that’s how I would connect specifically dispensationalism with thinking generationally. At least one of the ways.

Sean Yeah. I love all that. I know in my own journey —

Philip It’s the journey that matters.

Sean In my own process, yeah.

As one committed to reading the Bible and trying to take what the Bible says — then I think a lot of my dispy, Baptist-y friends, we get stuck reading the epistles. And the epistles are good; I like the epistles a lot.

Philip And you’re not saying — see, when you’re saying it, I’m hearing a T.

Sean Epistles.

Philip But you’re not saying the T? That’s just because that’s the way I read it.

Sean We could have a whole episode of, like, some key words.

Philip You teaching me how to pronounce words correctly. Yeah.

Sean Wow. I don’t think that’s a good idea. But —

It was even when I was a youth pastor, I was in a context where pretty much all of the teaching was from the New Testament. And pretty much even most of that was from the epistles. I mean, some gospels, but mostly epistles.

And that all was awesome, but I thought, well, in my own opportunities, maybe I could supplement, for our youth staff and for the young people themselves — I could supplement that by teaching some Old Testament things.

So, I’ve always liked Proverbs. In fact, my youth pastor when I was in high school, he’s the one who first told me about reading a proverb a day — a chapter of Proverbs for whatever day of the month it is. So I was doing that from a long time ago.

But then I started with Ecclesiastes, because I thought that that was the most like an epistle out of the Old Testament, and seemed to have a lot of wisdom for young people. And that was great. But Solomon kept talking about life under the sun, like there was possibility of having joy here, not just getting out of here. And that really started to knock on my head.

While at the same time — I mean, around Ecclesiastes is probably when we had our first kid or two. So that changes your perspective a little bit, and started thinking about education a little bit more specifically, and what was available there.

But as I finished Ecclesiastes, and I still wanted to stay in the Old Testament, so I went to Genesis. And I started teaching through Genesis 1.

And I get that that’s before sin, but there are things in Genesis 1 that don’t change, that haven’t been changed because of the presence of sin, but that are fundamental principles of what life means, what being a human being means.

That even as a dispensationalist who says, I should care about what these verses are in their context, I should pay attention and let the author’s intent speak — and what Moses in Genesis, obviously by God, then is saying is that this is good, and this is good, and this is good, and this is good. God made this and said it’s good. Including, right from the very first chapter, male and female to be one as image bearers.

So their existence means reflecting God, being made in his likeness. And that means relationship. Because immediately then, when God is talking about making man in his image, he makes male and female, and then he immediately blesses them. So, Genesis 1:28, “and God blessed them,” and then he gives them a commission.

So, if we are wondering — this is part of my answer to the question of, even as a dispensationalist, why do I think marriage is awesome? Well, because the God who I care about — I care about his words and what he cares about. This is what he cares about.

So he made human beings to be fruitful, multiply, take dominion, and subdue the earth. So, before there was a Great Commission — which, I think that the Great Commission is not separated from that; that’s a very specific way that we go and tell others how to be reconciled to God through his Son’s death and resurrection.

So, yes, the gospel — but what is our salvation for? If we want God’s blessing, what does it look like when we are blessed? And back in Genesis 1, “and God blessed them,” and put them together in a family to have fellowship unto fruitfulness.

So our salvation is for fellowship that’s fruitful. And ultimately that is, in a man and a woman, their intimacy in reproductive work, bringing about kids, and then as that goes on for generations.

So it’s the same — use the word hermeneutic — it’s the same way of reading the Bible —

Philip Right.

Sean — that we have in the epistles, which is awesome, that then sees what God says is good in the Old Testament. And sometimes that’s explicitly narrowed in on Israel; so in Genesis 1, obviously, that’s for humankind.

And, like, our salvation in the gospel of Christ, and aiming and desiring, looking for his appearing — what are we supposed to be doing as saved people while we’re waiting for his appearance? Because he’s the one who also chose to leave us here.

I mean, I have heard — and there’s one guy in particular who kind of made it famous — that said the only reason that God leaves us here on earth after we get saved is for evangelism. And I’m not denying that there is a witnessing element, but it’s not just in telling other people verses from Romans. It’s an embodied kind of witness as well, which includes the fellowship that’s fruitful, as saved image bearers who are being made more and more again into the image of Christ.

And that looks like, in the majority of cases, that looks like joyful — so, blessed. God blesses us, and that includes the blessing of relationship, and then responsibility.

And young men in particular are in our culture that is God-denying, whether explicitly or just in practice. Our culture is acting like — it’s very individualistic.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean And, again, it’s all the individuals doing the same thing, so that’s ironic. That’s funny.

But, your man cave, or your video games, or you’re doing whatever is fun — as opposed to what is a sign of blessing, and what joy is, which is being connected to other people and giving your life for them.

Philip Right.

Sean And for our sons to not just see that, but to learn and get into their bones that their life has meaning when there is a load in their truck.

Philip Right.

Sean I mean, that’s one of the few things that I really appreciated that Mark Driscoll ever said.

Philip Right.

Sean Was that guys are like trucks, and they drive better with a load in the back.

So a young man of marriageable material is like a truck that is more and more equipped to have a load in the back. And to some extent they even drive better once they get some amount of load. But, obviously, too much load right at the beginning can break the struts and shocks, or whatever.

Philip You keep talking, and I’m just getting like more — like, man, we could go off on that, and that, and it’ll be just different episodes of things to talk about. Even approaching this topic. There’s a lot more to say about it.

Sean We might make it to four episodes.

Philip Yeah, right.

But I’ll try to stick to what the topic is. So, yeah, what you’re saying regarding, it’s not just responsibility in isolation, it’s responsibility in relationship. And so the objective —

Sean Which is Trinitarian. So that goes all the way back to why Islam is no good in the military.

Philip Yeah, that’s right.

And so, same thing as young men in the world with their video games or whatever other kinds of isolation activities. You have a lot of young men in the church, or professing Christians, who are living in isolation — whether that is with their theology books. Sure, I guess —

Sean Pornography.

Philip Sure, well, yeah, so, sin, yes, for sure. Actual sin is a problem. But then, I mean, even things that they think are virtues are those things that are keeping them from relationship.

And, yeah, you could get sentimental in an unhelpful way. But, yeah, like, a lot of the Twitter — is it “anon”? How do you pronounce — give me a pronunciation list. Anon? Anon?

Sean Like anonymous. Anonymous.

Philip Okay, right. Anonymous.

A lot of those accounts — I mean, yeah, they’re cool and great. And then also, because they are in some sense removed or isolated, their approach, even there, is not relationship building. Not all of them; there are a lot of good ones, for sure. But a lot of the ones that I come across, it’s not relationship building, it is more distancing and keeping myself in isolation, to show that I’m right in some way.

And so you have young men who grow up and go into isolation, go into distance. And sin is definitely involved — pornography, or other kinds of sin that then drive isolation and hiding and lying.

But then there’s also, I think, a sense of: relationship is a responsibility that is difficult, because it requires a certain kind of mutual submission. And so even in a marriage with the wife — yes, the man is the head, but to live with the woman in an understanding way requires a certain kind of laying down of your own — I don’t know if “preferences” is the right word — but your own, what I want to have happen right now, right?

And so, I need to help my wife grow. I need to nurture her. I need to cherish her. I need to care for her. That requires a different kind of responsibility in that way.

So I think that sense of relationship in the responsibility, not just isolated responsibility.

But the other thing is, a lot of times we talk about masculinity versus femininity, and so men as masculine — and I think all of that is very helpful, and there’s a big way to talk about that. But masculinity and femininity are, like, role distinctions, right? And so you could have a woman be in a masculine role, in the sense of, like, a mom toward a boy, for example, or a teacher toward a student. So, in that way, where masculinity is defined as the one taking the initiative, and the femininity is the one who is responding.

And so, even like in the military, you have the masculine role, the feminine role, but they’re both men, right? So, roles there.

But before getting to that, I do think it’s also helpful to think about and talk about gender identities, apart from just the role distinctions. And so, gender identities: no matter what role you play, masculine or feminine in this relationship, your gender identity stays the same. And so, manhood versus womanhood, as opposed to just masculine versus feminine.

And so the thought of manhood: what unique identity did God create a man for, that is apart from his relationship in that masculine-feminine way, but just as a man, as opposed to then what he didn’t give to the woman?

And it seems like — I mean, you could say maybe I’m wrong — but it seems like God created Adam in the wilderness. And then he put him in the garden. And then in the garden he created Eve. And overall, kind of the commission that he gives to Adam is to go subdue the earth.

So the way I like to think about it is, the gender identity of a man is to go tame the wild. So you go, and something is out of order, out of control, that you need to then bring order into. You go and you need to tame it. So whether you’re building something, or you’re protecting something, whatever it is, but you’re bringing order into a disordered environment. You are taming the wild.

And then the identity of the woman then is to glorify that which is tamed. And so what the man tames, the woman then makes lovely and glorifies.

And so, even in the relationship — so, for example, in the masculine-feminine distinction of mother and son, when the boy is little and young, the mother is in a masculine role and the boy’s in a feminine role. But the mother is still in a masculine role as a woman, and the boy is in a feminine role as a future man. And so holding those distinctions, I think, is helpful even in those relationships.

Or, like, a house mistress, manager of the house, hires a landscaper to do things. And so she is telling him what she would like to have done with the yard or the landscaping. Again, it’s that masculine and feminine role distinction. But what she’s doing, her aim is to glorify her home, where his aim is to go tame the wild and bring income back to his family. So even in that dynamic of masculine-feminine, she is still, as a woman, following her aim, and he as a landscaper is a man following his aim, and their objectives are different.

So that sense of bringing order to the untamed.

And so, putting all that together, I think that’s why the thing that young men are told over and over and over again in Scripture, Old Testament, New Testament — what they’re provoked toward, or prodded toward, is self-control. Is order of yourself, to be able to tame yourself, tame your mind, your passions, your lusts. And so, before you can go and successfully bring order to the disordered world, you have to have self-control.

And so, even in — is it in Timothy, where Paul gives exhortations to older men, older women, younger women, and younger men? The only thing he tells younger men is to have self-control.

Sean Titus 2:6.

I actually was starting to talk about that earlier, when I said I had tweeted something earlier today while I was thinking about this meeting, and that is what it is. Like, the one thing I do enjoy pointing out, that the young men can only handle one thing.

Philip Right.

Sean Everybody else gets multiple categories of things to be working on. But if the dudes could just get this one thing, that’s going to affect everything else.

Yeah, so the Greek word there, sōphronein, is especially probably connected to the thinking, to the mind. So “self-controlled” is one reasonable translation, but I think it’s the King James, maybe, that says “sober minded.” The New American Standard translates it as “sensible.”

So, even while — it’s all agreeing with what you’re saying. So, self-control is even a mind control. Like, if you can take it even internally, up to where they are ordering their thoughts, so that then they are ordering their behavior, so that they are then ordering the chaos, or the project, or the challenges that are around them.

And, yeah, I think even as you’re talking about the male-female gender identities — and you talked about even picking up your weightlifting work — because men, not just in a masculine role, but men as male are, again, in general — obviously somebody could be born paralyzed, so it’s not that there aren’t obvious exceptions — but in general, men are given a different kind of strength.

And that strength is to be used, like I agree, to tame the wild, tame the chaos. And I even think we could say that men are given a kind of strength that is expendable. Meaning that they keep spending their life; they’re given strength to spend on behalf of other people in a different way. Whereas females, even biologically, are not expendable in the same way. They are given to — I like “glorify” — what they’re being given.

And in particular, like a woman’s cycle. And I get that that got sped up and is more painful now because of sin. But even before sin, however long the cycle was going to be, and however glorious it was without pain, it was still limited, and therefore more precious than the man’s procreation strength. Hers was much more precious, and therefore then given to the nurturing of life.

So, if his strength is to spend life, her strength is to nurture, to adorn, to build life in her kids. And obviously then, on behalf of the “be fruitful and multiply,” she’s got a different part in that than the guy does. You need both of them, clearly, but she is adorning that life and glorifying it.

So, yes, in decorating the house, that’s fine. Yes, but in particular in nurturing the kids in their most vulnerable states. And the dude is supposed to be providing that protection for her, where she can then do that nurturing.

Philip Right.

Sean He is supposed to be taming the stuff and getting the food and bringing it home, so to speak, so that then she can keep doing her part.

I’m not saying she can’t go shopping. I have in my mind, you know, right after Adam and Eve sinned — he was doing different things than Eve was doing, to protect her and to provide for her, in that male strength that he had.

And to acknowledge that — which is what you’re saying about the gender part — that we just, no matter how much our culture is trying to deny it, as a way to curse God.

Philip Right.

Sean “How dare you be God and make me like this? I will choose what I want to be.”

But what we’re missing, and what our young men — so if we’re trying to get young men of marriageable material, we have got to help them want to be in the place of blessing.

Philip Right.

Sean They’ve got to see that it is better. They’ve got to see that blessing is only something that God gives, and that God has said where they fit, as their piece in the puzzle — this is where they fit to get that blessing.

So obviously then the older men, the disciplers, the fathers, need to show that that is the place of blessing. They need to be pursuing that themselves, and then living that out joyfully. And then seeing, and praying, and pleading with God to give want — to give more want to the young men — for getting themselves into that place of amazing blessing, of strength spent to bring life to other people.

And even dispensationally, I do actually think that that is then part of being jealousable on a broader scale. So a father should be jealousable even to his sons. His son should be like, man, I don’t want to replace him, like defeat him — I want to have the same kind of blessings as him.

Philip Right.

Sean And more blessings generationally is not a threat to the patriarch, whoever the oldest one is in the family.

So the dad should be living a jealousable life to his own kids, and especially to his sons, so that his sons increase in their desire to have that. And as then you get a whole bunch of Christians and families living jealousably like that — in Romans 11 there is a — and this is only possible because we’re worshiping God, and we can only worship God now because of being in Christ. So we need the gospel. We need the death and resurrection of Jesus. And those things change our understanding of what our lives are for.

And then that altogether is a jealousable thing that God uses to provoke a coming generation of Israelites to be like, hey, we should be getting those blessings. Those are the kinds of things that God promised to us. We rejected the Messiah. We need to confess Jesus as Lord and be restored to this God of blessings, get grafted back in, for the sake of the fruit that comes from God’s blessing.

So there is a beginning-to-the-end-of-the-Bible story sort of thing. There is a who-we-are-as-human-beings. I think there is an explicitly eschatological place of the blessings.

And our young men — if we want more young men of marriageable material, we need to do a better job of exalting that story and embodying the joy of that blessing, of that position.

Again, and so rather than treating our kids like they’re keeping us from the blessing — they’re making too much noise, they’re making too much mess. Well, there’s a little mini chaos, a little mini wildness, to tame, which is not distracting us from our calling.

Philip Right.

Sean That is part of our calling. So, yeah, we can go outside the house and do some more of that. But our kids making noise is not a lack of blessing. That’s a place of it.

Philip Well, I mean — is it Genesis 1:28, that God blessed them and then told them to be fruitful and multiply? So we have the blessing. But before there was a “them,” God did say that it’s not good for man to be alone.

And so, even with his gender identity of taming the wild, that is not to be done in isolation, or even for himself. That is to be done in relationship, and for somebody else — and in this case, namely for a wife, and then a family, and then a community.

And, yeah, there is definitely a place — you have the typical story arc of the man going into the wilderness and learning something, but then the story arc would end with him bringing that back into community, bringing that into relationship, as opposed to doing that for himself.

And so, yeah, that sense of marriageable material is a man who is responsible for relationship. And so, what I’m seeing is that the man is created to rule, to cultivate, to protect. So he is to rule; he is to cultivate, to bring order in; and then to protect that which is his. And to be able to do that in that sense of relationship.

Sean Yeah. So we should be giving our sons, in age-appropriate ways, something to rule over, something to cultivate, and something to protect.

Philip Right.

Sean So we’re training them. They need some of their own private property, so to speak.

Philip Yeah. Right.

Sean They need their own mini brother, sibling, son callings. And then as they grow older, their field is expanding.

Philip Right.

Sean So they have more to rule and cultivate and protect.

Philip Right. But there’s a sense where, yes, for sure, parental oversight is necessary — that’s why you’re there as parents.

But taming the wild is dangerous by definition. You are going into chaos, you are going into disorder. So safety is not your goal. Your goal is to bring order, to make it safe, to then bring a woman and kids into. But a man needs to be okay with going into a dangerous environment. And that starts with boys learning to be okay with a dangerous environment.

Sean So —

Philip Go ahead.

And that parental oversight of giving the boys something to rule, to cultivate, to protect, could be a pseudo-thing, where the mom is still kind of keeping her tabs on the boy’s area. Well, if he’s ruling it, then let him rule it. And if he rules it into disorder, that is a lesson. But it’s not for you to continue nagging him and continue checking on him in that way. If he’s abdicating his responsibility to cultivate it, then deal with the results.

But the sense of hand-holding because it could be dangerous, he could get hurt — I think is unhelpful to grow him up into manhood in that way.

Sean Well, so I’ve got an idea, then, for you. Because as you’re talking about that — doesn’t that sound like a lot of Christians, I mean male and female, hiding? “It’s too dangerous out there.”

Philip Yeah.

Sean And even using their biblical understanding of the end times. It’s going to hell in a handbasket — a.k.a. it’s too dangerous. Let’s retreat. Let’s hide. Let’s isolate.

So we have raised a group of Bible-reading people to be scared, rather than to have courage or confidence, or even just expect that, well, yes, this is the job.

Philip Right.

Sean As opposed to —

Philip Danger is part of the calling.

Sean Yes.

Philip Right.

Sean Instead of — you know, the Precious Moments. Pastel ceramic colors. Like, they’re fragile. You can’t have a precious moment that’s not fragile. The physical ceramic figurine is the definition of fragile — just as much as their painted-on little smirks and smiles is dependent on things that they can’t control. So it’s a fragile system anyway.

So we have this whole group of Christians — in particular, I’m happy to blame dispensationalists for — isolating themselves. Bunker mentality. It’s too dangerous out there.

So this is my idea, this is my suggestion. Because I know that, in your journey of not thinking that we even need Kuyperian as the adjective in front of dispensationalist — what if it was dangerous dispensationalism?

Philip There you go. Yeah.

Sean Dispies who are jealously entering the fray.

Philip There you go.

Sean Provoking the Jews to jealousy.

Philip Yeah, you could even throw in somehow, like, dominion in there. But, yeah, sometime.

Sean Dangerous dispies taking dominion.

Philip That’s right. There you go.

But, yeah, so that is good. And then raising young men to that end.

I do really like — I just come back to this every now and then — Luke 2:40 and 2:52, when it talks about Jesus growing up. It says the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom, and the favor of God was upon him. And then it says, and Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.

So that kind of sense of growth, strength, wisdom, stature; favor with God, favor with man. And so, as our boys are growing up into manhood, these are attributes that we are equipping them with and praying for. Because all of that is under God’s favor, under God’s grace.

And so, as we’re sending them out, as we’re giving them their areas to rule, to cultivate, to protect — how do we equip them with growth, strength, wisdom, favor, and for them to grow into that?

Sean I’m ready to wrap it up. Am I ready? I’m just — that’s awesome.

So we need them to have strength, and wisdom, and favor — or blessing — to grasp that all are theirs.

Philip Yes, that’s right.

Sean So, part of our problem with not receiving all as ours is lack of strength. Some of that is because we can’t see that all are ours, so we need the wisdom in order to see an expanding field of what is ours, to then bring order to, or to engage with, or whatever. And then, obviously, as we’ve been talking about, the favor or the blessing to then have the strength and the wisdom, because all are ours. Which is just a much bigger vision that we want our young men to have.

Philip Yeah.

Sean That it’s not just, I’ve got to get married because I’m this old.

Philip Right.

Sean And we want them to be eager for, glad to see, responsibility as one of the things that’s theirs. That’s a gift.

Philip Right.

Sean That is a place of favor, to have that sort of responsibility. They’d be miserable without some kind of meaning like that.

Philip You get to rule, you get to cultivate, you get to protect.

Sean Yeah.

I mean, this is the last thing I need to say, but I was kind of complaining — I mean, I didn’t want to say that it was complaining — a couple weeks ago. But I was kind of talking about a task that I know needs to be done. Ironically, it’s kind of vision-summarizing, for some of the institutions and projects that I’m a part of. I know that I need to do some more work to clarify those and get those nailed down, and potentially then even the next level of some strategies to reach those goals or aims or visions.

And so, as it’s hard work, clarifying a vision for things, for people; rallying other people to a better future, but actually being able to describe that future.

And so I’m talking about, well, I can’t find time to do this, I know I need to do it. And my wife said to me, “Sean, you’d be miserable if somebody else was doing that instead of you.”

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean And I was like, yeah, that’s probably true.

Philip Yeah.

Sean So, again, the having responsibility for the things that are in front of us is hard, or dangerous — but the place of purpose and meaning. And if we’re not actually then carrying that kind of load, we’re missing out on the blessing and who God made us to be.

Philip Right.

So there you go. Young men of marriageable material, with strength, wisdom, and favor, for responsibility in relationship. So there’s your stickiness at the end.

Sean Boom!

Philip All right.