Young Snot, Old Splendor

Philip Welcome to All Are Yours. We might even have like some people listening who don’t know exactly who we are. So maybe it’s good to just say our names.

Sean All right.

Philip My name is Philip.

Sean I’m Sean.

Philip There you go. Now it’s an official podcast. We said the title, we said the names.

Also, I have noticed that when Sean and I just talk to ourselves without a microphone, we take much longer pauses and contemplate for much longer. Even our tone is much more —

Sean Pensive.

Philip Pensive. Composed. And then we tried that on the first episode, and it probably didn’t work very well if somebody else is actually listening. So then all of our energy has to go up, and we have to sound like we want to be here.

Sean Non-reluctant.

Philip That’s right.

Sean That was the big takeaway, at least for me.

Philip That’s right. And so we do want to be here. But Sean and I understand each other, so we read through our normal tone — but if somebody else is listening, that tone can come across like we don’t.

Sean Well, because I think you are a little better external processor than I am. You seem to do that a little bit more than me. I hate figuring out what I think by talking. I prefer spending six months on a question before I give an answer.

And there are even Proverbs about thinking about what you — not just Thumper’s mother in Bambi, you know, think about what you’re going to say before you say it, or at least don’t say anything if you can’t say anything nice. Well, it takes me a while to have a good answer.

Philip To come up with something nice.

Sean Right. And I do come by that honestly.

Have I ever told you the story of my dad when he was a kid? My dad claims, when he was in high school, that he would try to count how many words he could say in a day, to, like, not be very many. And he claims that one day — I think he was like a junior in high school — he got up, went to the farm that he worked at and milked cows in the morning, went to school, went to baseball practice after school, then went back and milked cows again after baseball practice, then went home. He claims that one day he got away with only saying nine words all day long.

Philip Yeah.

Sean So I come by being quiet, preferring even quiet, genetically, I guess.

Philip And you’re a preacher.

Sean There’s irony.

Philip And a teacher at the school, and —

Sean Still irony, that my job is largely one where I need to open my mouth.

Philip There you go.

Sean Yeah.

Philip And I guess, in some sense, that’s maybe why, outside of those areas, you’d prefer to take a break from having your mouth open.

Sean There’s something about — because I’ve always been a big pauser, and I’ve been reading some things recently even about how a good pause is really valuable.

Philip Yeah, it’s a dramatic effect.

Sean Yeah. I think that it doesn’t work on a recording.

Philip Right.

Sean It totally works when you’re talking individually. Not too long — I mean, my wife and I joke that she’s taking up hobbies waiting for me to answer questions, at times, in the past. But while preaching, or while teaching in class, something like that, an appropriate pause is probably awesome.

But yeah, I hate listening to my own pauses, let alone other people’s pauses, while I’m doing something else.

When I was in seminary, I actually did co-host a campus radio station. It was like a — did I talk about this before?

Philip To me, I think.

Sean Yeah. The name of our radio show was called Tohu va Bohu, which I then took as the name of my blog later on, which means “without form and void.”

And so my friend and I, we co-hosted this radio show. And one of the things he taught me — because he was actually a communications professor — he said, silence is the enemy on the radio.

Philip Right.

Sean Too much quiet and silence, and people are switching the station. So, same with the podcast. And I feel the same way when I’m listening, when I’m consuming it.

Philip Right.

Sean I don’t want big pauses. The podcast app that I use has a setting that you can turn on or off that will edit out pauses, smartly, however it figures that out.

So, yeah, when I was younger in preaching, and I had to do all of my own audio editing, I would totally meticulously go through and I would edit out — if I saw a pause that was five seconds, I’d edit it down to one. It would take me longer to edit the audio file than to actually preach the whole thing, probably.

Philip Yeah.

Sean Because I get it. I’m trying.

Philip Yeah, so we do our best to not have pauses. But in case we still do — whatever app, what app are you using?

Sean I use Overcast.

Philip So use that, and then skip our pauses, and you’ll enjoy All Are Yours that much better.

Sean Boom.

Philip There you go.

So what we did want to talk about is how to be a snot. How to be a sanctified snot. But more specifically, how that connects to the younger generation working with the older generation. How sons and fathers could work together; how boomers and millennials, or Gen Xers and whatever other generation there is, how all that plays together.

And so: how to be a sanctified snot.

Sean Why “snot”? Why that particular word? Other than that it’s fun to say.

Philip Yeah. It was a time when you couldn’t come up with anything nice to say fast enough, so you just said what was on your mind.

Sean Yeah, it continues to haunt me. This is why I need more time to think about what I’m going to say.

Philip That’s right.

No, so there was some — I don’t know if it was provocative, or just annoying, pushback that I was giving, even following some of the 2020 stuff.

Sean Yeah. Because, if I remember right — and hopefully I will never make this mistake again — but we did Zoom life-to-life for a couple months. And for as much as possible we tried to talk about other things, but it was inescapable to end up talking about the fact that we couldn’t leave our houses other than to go buy pot, if any of us were going to go buy pot. But we’re not pot buyers; that’s just a joke.

But then occasionally we would address the global elephant in the room. And everybody was frustrated. I think that, business-wise included, you were particularly frustrated on that part of it.

Philip Yeah, one of our shops we had to close down for like a month.

Sean Yeah.

Philip So that was — we did our best not to do any of that, but all the construction job sites closed down, which were our customers.

Sean Yeah.

Philip And so we had literally no work to deliver to them. So we had to lay everybody off for an entire month. Which —

Sean — is pretty frustrating.

Philip Right.

Sean And even then, in our church small group discussions: how much were we going to fight? How could we fight the restrictions, the regulations? What was appropriate in terms of our online attitude? How are we supposed to address what seemed — and as it went on, obviously, even just in the first few weeks, it became clearer that the data and science were not matching what they were telling us; that “fifteen days to slow the spread,” or whatever, was more propaganda than it was actually for our benefit.

But anyway, so we’re talking, and I think it had happened a few times where there was a crackle over the interwebs.

Philip That’s right.

Sean Due to, again, the group’s frustration.

And then later that fall — or at the end of the summer, when we had our small group leaders retreat. We did actually get together. Were we still — we weren’t actually supposed to get together in person still?

Philip Yeah, that was the summer of twenty twenty.

Sean Okay, so I guess we’re incriminating ourselves.

Philip Well, yes. Hopefully the FBI’s not listening, but —

Sean Yeah. FBI anon.

Philip That’s right.

Sean But so we were having some conversation at our leaders retreat, which we had to hold at somebody’s private property. Because if we were going to stay at a hotel, we weren’t able to use the group room, because they wouldn’t let us all be in a room together, wearing masks.

Philip Right. We’d have to be Zooming from the separate rooms.

Sean Yeah.

Philip We didn’t want to do that.

Sean We went to somebody else’s barn, which was great and worked out fine. But then we’re having a discussion, and somehow it came up again.

Philip Yeah.

Sean I don’t remember exactly how it came up.

Philip Yeah, I asked the question.

Sean Do you remember what it was?

Philip Yeah. Because we were doing the surveys, right? So we do the surveys about — I think one of the questions was, how do you rate, or think, we did in response to all the COVID closures, something like that. And I wasn’t as happy as I wanted to be. So, yeah, I mean, that —

Sean Could be my Twitter bio.

Philip That’s right. “I’m not as happy as I want to be.”

And so that’s when I asked the question. Because we did church on Zoom for, I think, seven weeks.

Sean Yep.

Philip And then we met at the farm in person, but at the farm instead of our building, for five weeks after that.

Sean Yeah.

Philip So, yeah, in response to that question — and because even that would have been August, so from March to August we didn’t have as much time to, at least in person, talk about it — and so, whatever my motives were, I did just ask: why did we close down?

And so that triggered a whole conversation.

Sean It was just that. “Why did we close down at all?”

Philip Yeah.

Sean Okay.

Philip Right. And, yeah, there was definitely built-up frustration on my part. I felt like there were unanswered questions. Or at least not answers that I was willing to accept, maybe.

Sean From the church standpoint. Not just that there were unanswered questions from Dr. Fauci.

Philip Right. I don’t expect any answered questions from him.

Sean Right.

Philip But, yeah, so I felt frustrated, I think. And so that —

Sean And, like, frustrated with the elders.

Philip Yeah, probably, yeah.

And — because, I guess, and I think I said this at that time; this is funny that we’re hashing all this back up, I’ve boxed this up and I’ve put it away —

Sean Suppress the truth.

Philip That’s right, yeah.

But I think I even said something like, I do not believe that our elders demonstrated any cowardice, something like that. Like, I did not believe that our elders were cowards, or unfaithful, or did not love the flock, in any of that.

And so that, to me, was not an answer that I was able to give myself — like, oh, we did this because, you know.

So, and there were, and still are, other churches who I would put in those categories. Like, the reason they followed all that is a sense of cowardice, a sense of trying to protect your own skin at the expense of the flock, not taking care of your people. And so I did not believe that our elders were those kind of men.

Sean And yet still hadn’t gone far enough.

Philip Right.

Sean Hadn’t done enough.

Philip Right. And that’s what I felt. And so that’s kind of where some of those questions were.

And also, throughout that time — I mean, we did have, like you said, the Zoom life groups. Or even our leader meetings that we had monthly on Saturdays were also Zoom. And so during those times, especially on the leader meetings, I remember I would try to push the line, ask more questions, even about when are we going to come back, what are we doing.

I even remember when you guys decided that we’re going to do the farm thing. That was good, but not good enough. And, yeah, a lot of it was my youthful, immature zeal, maybe.

Sean Yeah, maybe. Well, so then we’re at that review discussion time —

Philip Right.

Sean — and, yeah, somehow I then said — I can’t remember, and I usually do remember a lot of these things, but I can’t remember — but I ended up calling you a snot.

Philip Right. Yeah. So I remember it got pretty quiet for, I don’t know, maybe the conversation was like an hour, where it was me and you and maybe one or two other elders who would respond. But everybody else — I think we had like thirty people in the room, maybe — so everyone else was quiet.

My wife wasn’t there; she was feeding and putting to sleep our newborn baby. Because our daughter was born actually on the day that we came back to church, June 14th. So that was — I just remember that was the day we came back to church, because that’s her birthday.

But afterwards, when some of the people were telling her about it, she’s like, I’m so happy I wasn’t there. I probably would have been crying. But that’s her. She’s not as much of a snot as I am.

But yeah, so it was some back and forth conversation for a while, that maybe other people — I think they even told you later that they were, I don’t know if they were uncomfortable by it, or thought there was —

Sean “Uncomfortable” is probably the nicest word.

Philip Okay.

Sean Yeah.

Philip Okay. Which, I was not bothered by that conversation one bit. Like, I even remember, because there were like three different people giving me responses, so I’d be taking notes so I could remember what to respond back to.

And so my demeanor was — I don’t remember feeling angry. I do remember feeling focused, and so I wasn’t laughing. And that’s — I think that was something that you brought up as well, that I’m not laughing. And that’s kind of how the whole snot thing —

Sean Well, so at least two pretty significant things have happened since then.

One is that you got your own nameplate that says SNOT.

Philip That’s right.

Sean So you brought it to the next leaders retreat and set it up in front of your spot.

Philip Right. So I owned that label. It’s a badge of honor for me, that the infamous Sean Higgins called me a snot.

Sean Wow. Infamous, yeah.

Philip Well, because you are — at least from the stories that I’ve heard — your own sort of snot.

Sean Sure.

Philip At least have been. Maybe still are; I don’t know to what extent.

Sean Yeah, I’m definitely probably not everybody’s favorite person that they’ve talked to.

Philip And so if I was able to out-snot Sean, in that moment at least, that was a badge of honor. So I made myself a name tag that says SNOT, aka Philip Kulishov.

Sean Yeah.

Philip That then I brought to the next year’s leaders retreat and put it in my spot.

Sean So that’s big. But even that is in light of — so here we’re setting up the discussion, because now you are, four years later, finishing up a year of testing, or whatever we call it, testing, training, for being an elder at our church.

So, from being a snot to some of the elders as a young man, to being still a young man, a few years older, but to actually being recognized by many people in the congregation as, you know, we recommend Philip for consideration to be an elder. And likewise among the elders — we had been talking about you for at least a couple years in that way.

And here you are participating in it. So somehow we went from — again, I’m just describing it like this for the sake of fun — but we went from conflict to now co-laboring. And potentially even with still there to be some sharp conversations, some pointed questions, quote unquote snotty concerns, that enough is not happening, or it needs to happen in a different direction, or those kinds of things.

Philip And we’re doing a podcast together.

Sean We’re doing a podcast together, even about the opportunities.

Yeah, because lots of fathers don’t want to hear crap from their sons. And lots of leaders take any kind of criticism as negative, and potentially even as a sign of disloyalty.

That’s probably what I am most familiar with seeing: when anybody, including when younger people, ask questions, or when they point out problems, that’s taken as a sign of disloyalty. Or as a sign that the younger person or people are not being thankful for what they’ve been given. “Hey, you’re standing on my shoulders, why aren’t you thankful for that?” kind of thing.

And, again, where any criticism is automatically seen as negative. Like, there couldn’t possibly be constructive criticism.

Philip Right.

Sean Or where any pointing out of “hey, but we could go in this direction” is taken as, well, you don’t appreciate what we have already done — as opposed to some sort of help.

So fathers can struggle with that as their sons get older.

Philip Right. I think it was — so, this whole last week situation with Mark Driscoll and John Lindell.

Sean Okay.

Philip I just learned that name, John Lindell. But one of John Lindell’s responses was, you should not criticize the Lord’s anointed, he said, something like that. So, like, you should not be calling out your pastors.

Sean Yeah. Which is vocabulary — I mean, that’s a description that people take from Moses. Which seems to me to have a lot of problems with it.

But yeah, I’ve definitely heard that used against me in the past. Of, well, how dare you criticize the Lord’s anointed. You actually have no place to make those kinds of comments. Like, this said to me: you have no business making those kinds of comments to that older pastor, because he’s the Lord’s anointed, and if there’s a problem, the Lord will fix it.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean The Lord doesn’t need you and your bad attitude fixing it.

I don’t think anybody explicitly called me a snot, but I definitely have been provocative, if not snotty, in the past. Whether or not — I mean, for sure my attitude has not always been the right attitude.

And also, at the same time, now that I am moving more toward getting on the older side —

Philip You have grandkids now.

Sean I do have grandkids. Yeah. My son is eighteen and three inches taller than me. So what am I going to do with that? You are almost twenty years younger than me. So what am I going to do with that?

Do I know all the things? Have I stood in all the right places, or can I actually still learn?

And, you know, Paul definitely talked to Timothy about taking on the responsibilities, sort of baton passing. But even, what does that look like? And how can younger men be genuinely helpful to their elders — like, lowercase-e elders, not just pastor-elders? How can younger men be helpful, and how can older men pay attention to maybe something that they can’t see as well as some of the young people?

My wife used an illustration a number of years ago that I think is super helpful, related to the standing on shoulders of people. Because we are definitely standing on the shoulders of some people that we really appreciate — whether that’s family, or spiritual things, like in the church.

But one thing that standing on somebody else’s shoulders enables you to do is see a little bit farther. And, like, if you’re standing at a wall, and the goal is to get over the wall, and you get up on your dad’s shoulders, and then you can actually, let’s say, see over the wall. And you see that if your dad moved down to the left fifteen steps, that actually on the other side — which you can’t see from the side you’re on — but if you move down just like fifteen steps to the left, then everybody’s going to be able to get over a lot easier.

And so the son yells down to his dad: “Dad, this is great. You just need to move fifteen steps down.” And if the dad says, “I can’t believe how unthankful you are for where I’m standing. I am — you are standing on my shoulders. How dare you complain about how I am propping you up.”

Well, Dad, I’m not complaining about that. I’m saying thank you, and because of you I can see that there’s some more things that could be done.

And, yeah, it’s easy to not appreciate the sights, or the angles, or perspectives that other people have.

Philip So why do you think that, specifically from the perspective of fathers and older men — why do those who react that way, why do they react that way?

Sean Yeah. I mean, pride, obviously, is an easy one to say. But it’s like a pride that doesn’t want to have to do more work to keep growing.

Philip Like a lazy pride.

Sean A lazy pride, sure.

And in 1 Timothy 4:15, where Paul is talking to Timothy about how Timothy builds his platform, where then no one would despise his youth — it talks about taking pains with these things, be absorbed in them, so that your progress may be evident to all. And that making progress, especially for a young person, is part of what validates to other people that they are worth listening to.

And then the next verse says, pay close attention to yourself and to the teaching; persist in this, for in doing so you’ll save both yourself and your hearers.

And it’s not obvious why that should ever stop. So Timothy, as a young man, letting his progress be evident to all is important. But why wouldn’t everybody still be making progress toward more maturity, toward greater Christlikeness?

And it’s as if a variety especially of older people think that they arrive, and they don’t want to be pushed any further. And they don’t talk about it like that, though. They talk about it like, well, you are not appreciating what I have already done — when perhaps the other person is saying, but I see how you also could keep making progress.

So, like, don’t want to have to keep pushing the ceiling higher. You want to get comfy. “I’ve done enough, and now you just listen to me.” As opposed to, okay, well, thank you, Lord, for enabling us to get this far, but let’s keep going.

Philip Right. Yeah, and I think maybe there’s also an age distinction. Like, who are you to try to teach me something, or try to tell me something? I had this all figured out when you were still in diapers. Or whatever.

So, that sense of — I guess, maybe, when an older man interacts with a boy, that’s different than an older man interacting with a younger man. And maybe not being aware of, or ignoring, that distinction.

Sean I don’t think I’ve talked about this on the podcast before, but I think especially in churches where there is a strong love of doctrine and theology and exegesis and verse-by-verse Bible teaching — where, like, we go to the book, and we need the truth — I think there’s a slight distinction in aim, or even identity, that pastors can easily take on, where it changes from being a disciple maker to being a teacher.

And obviously there’s teaching involved in discipleship, and Jesus was a teacher to the disciples. So, pastor and teacher in Ephesians 4:12 — so I’m not saying that teaching is not a part of it.

But it seems like when somebody’s role is distinguished as teacher specifically, they tend to — this is my observation, and I wonder if it’s a deeper principle — if a person takes on the identity of a teacher, they end up needing to be more needed. Their identity as a teacher means that they always need students. They always need people listening to them. They always need to be the one with the answer.

Whereas a different identity, as a disciple maker, is one where you want your disciples to then make their own disciples. So it’s a little bit more — not saying that every teacher in every classroom and every place is following this other extreme. But if we think about our job as reproducing ourselves, then we also think about our jobs as being needed less and less, not needed more and more.

So, a pastor who is thinking about raising up people — that are, ideally, genuinely — because parents talk about wanting a better life for their kids than they had. And that’s great. I don’t know how often they really think about what that means or what that looks like; it sounds nice. So pastors obviously could do the same thing.

But a disciple maker who wants his disciples to actually go further than him, potentially, setting them up for that, means that he is not always going to have the answers for them, and he’s not going to think that he does. He’s not going to set himself up as, you will always need me. So maybe they do value him as a resource — I’m not saying that we take away his keys, or we put him out to pasture, or we force him to retire early, or those kinds of things.

But from that pastor’s, or disciple maker’s, perspective, he should be valuing the energy and the growth. And some of that happens through pushback.

So I am also — and it’s hard for me to remember at times — but I’m a person who has learned a lot of things through arguing against it. And maybe that’s taken me months, kind of going back to the beginning, where I’m arguing against it for six months while it’s ruminating in my mind, until then I eventually come out one day and I’m like, okay, yeah, I agree.

Philip Right.

Sean So it takes me a while to change my mind. I shouldn’t expect that everybody else is just going to listen to what I say and be like, oh yeah, no, you’re right. Like, in five minutes.

Philip Right.

Sean That’s not how weightlifting works. You keep building up, you keep doing the exercising, you keep facing the resistance, and you get stronger.

So an older man who wants somebody to go past him probably should be providing a measure of resistance for the benefit of the other person — not just to maintain his position of control, his know-it-all-ness, but some resistance for the sake of the strength of the disciple, or the younger person, so that then they take on that ability more and more as they have opportunity, or as they get older.

So I don’t actually think we have a lot of fathers, in families or fathers in the church, in that respect. So, I think it’s 1 Corinthians 10:15, maybe, that Paul says, you don’t actually have many fathers, you’ve got a lot of instructors. And, because, again, what makes a person a father is that they’ve reproduced.

Philip Right.

Sean And that’s why they should be thinking about then their own sons —

Philip Right.

Sean — reproducing. Not just their own sons now being their — not that any dad really thinks of their sons as a slave like that — but like as a, well, you will always need and listen to me.

Philip Right. Well, I think there’s a sort of maybe anxious insecurity that a man can have. And that, when he himself is younger and growing, that is being masked by the attention he’s receiving, or the followers that he is accumulating, the ears that he has facing him. So people are listening and responding, and so he feels good about himself.

But then when he starts seeing that situation, like what you’re describing, where he is needed less, or people are not coming to him for all the answers — or maybe even trying to correct his answers, or to tell him, hey, if you move this way toward the wall, we could all get over better — and so that insecurity, that anxiety, boils up and over. And it would look petty and stupid if it is presented as that, and so it’s presented as something else.

Sean “Hey, look, I’m insecure. Can you stop asking questions?”

Philip Right, exactly.

And so, even — I think that sense of, when that man was younger, instead of finding his security in Christ, and in God the Father saying “well done,” he was looking for that from other people, and for other people to say “well done.” And so when that started to dry up, he starts getting more anxious, starts getting more defensive. And what ends up happening is he ends up pushing even more people away from that.

But I think a distinction, or maybe an identification, of a father is that a father gives; he doesn’t take.

And so, I mean, there’s a way to instruct and discipline little kids where you are taking from them. So you are trying to mold them in a certain way because of what it does for you — it makes your life easier, it makes your life more convenient, it makes you look better in front of other people. So you are taking from your kids in the discipline. Or there’s a way to give to your kids in the discipline, because you are giving them wisdom, you are giving them life, you’re giving them discernment through making good decisions.

And so I think also, in a spiritual sense, that father who is trying to take from his followers — so, to take affirmation, to take recognition, to take glory — as opposed to give, to give wisdom, instruction, and give even in a sense of giving himself completely up, expecting then that next generation to surpass and go ahead; and where even he sees that as a win. He would see it as a failure if they don’t surpass him and go ahead.

And so that distinction of give versus take, I think, maybe could be subtle on the outside, but a completely different trajectory.

Sean Yeah, I agree. I think that’s a great distinction, great description of how some external things could look similar but be motivated differently.

One is — to go along with the insecurity idea — is very fragile. And that actually sets up the body to be fragile. So that is what the sons are also learning, whether or not you’re saying that as the lesson. The sons are also waiting until they get to be in the position where they’re the boss, that they can grab — as opposed to preparing them to be in the position where they give of themselves and give more things.

So we set up people to be fragile in a church setting. Then everybody learns that they need to be seen as right. So if the pastor’s whole shtick is, “you need me” — well, eventually that is what other people also learn. That’s how they’re identified and appreciated: “you need me.” Whether that’s, you need me to do my gift, or you need me to do my Bible teaching, Bible study kind of thing. As opposed to, we’re giving of ourselves.

That sets up a very fragile system. Because we — we’re not saying that people shouldn’t be thankful for what they’re getting, or show genuine appreciation to their fathers, respect to their fathers, or the requirement in 1 Peter 5 that the younger are supposed to honor and submit to the elders. So it’s not denying it from that angle. But if, like you’re saying, the people who are leading, if the elders are insecure and fragile, that is going to make it so that eventually we’re all fighting with each other.

Philip Right.

Sean We all need the top spot if we’re really going to be appreciated. As opposed to the giving, like you said.

Philip Right. Well, then you have ministries that are built around a personality that die when that person dies. And so that’s all that he allowed, to do. And a lot of times — I mean, it was built around the personality because there was some kind of substance or competence or skill, or whatever it was, so that that man was able to attract a lot of attention and maybe even do a lot of good things. But then he wasn’t able to reproduce himself, and so it dies with himself.

Sean Is it in Good to Great? Have you read that?

Philip Yeah.

Sean Doesn’t he talk, even on a business level, like, the most important decision for a CEO is who’s going to replace them?

Philip Yeah, maybe. He does talk about humility as kind of one of the main things, in the sense that it’s not about him, but it’s about the vision, or the mission, or whatever it is.

Sean Yeah.

Philip And so, even having that sense of, the thing we’re trying to build, the thing we’re trying to do, is much bigger than me. It’s not all about just my decision or my vision.

But then, maybe switching directions a little bit, on the other side — because there are a lot of young bucks who are trying to grow and prove themselves, and who are full of energy and ambition. And which, that in and of itself is a good thing.

Sean Yeah. You want young men of marriageable material who are taking risks.

Philip Right. And who are not waiting to be told what to do. So, again, that is all a good thing.

You don’t want a bunch of young guys who are smart but passive. You want them to take initiative, even if they’re making mistakes as they go. Even if they’re stumbling through and taking risks that lead to a dead end, that they’re able to learn from and move on from.

And so that is the kind of culture, the kind of environment, atmosphere, as the young bucks grow up. You want them testing their strength and seeing if they could run with horses.

That’s in Jeremiah, right, where God tells Jeremiah something like, if you ran with men and your strength fails, how will you run with horses?

Sean Yeah, I think it’s in Proverbs too, maybe.

Philip Oh, okay.

Right. So you want that going on; you want to encourage that more.

But there is a way — and this happens a lot, and the Bible does have a lot to say about this as well — where those young guys are actually sinning. They are dishonoring their fathers. They are dishonoring their elders. They are not showing gratitude. They are showing their own pride and false competence.

And so, yeah, I’ve said this before to people, but I think that this was a few years before — so this would have been like 2017, so a few years before 2020 — that was kind of mine and yours, our first run-in.

Sean So now we’re capturing this for posterity.

Philip That’s right. Well, I think I mentioned this on one of the sermons I was —

Sean Right, yeah.

Philip So it’s already somewhere out there. But yeah, every time we have a run-in, then we end up going a few steps. So —

Sean Live, dudes.

Philip That’s right. So we’re probably going to have a run-in somewhere down the future again.

But, yeah, 2017, I think it was, when you were going through your Kuyperian dispensationalist series. And that was when I was trying to figure out a lot of — or, I thought I had things figured out, but —

Sean Fair to say also that at that point you were pretty committed to, whatever it was going to be, you were not going to be a dispensationalist.

Philip That’s right. Yes. So my mind was already set.

And so my whole approach there, I think, was wrong. And you hit me across the face with: your level of confidence doesn’t match your level of competence.

And so, that sense of a young man’s confidence is naive, and he doesn’t understand what he doesn’t actually understand. And so, yeah, that at least grew my humility. I don’t know if it grew my competence, but it was — I don’t know, it was humiliating.

And so, yeah, there is that kind of youthful — I don’t know if it’s boasting, or bravado — where the young man is confident but there’s no substance behind that. He is maybe strong, but it is not real strength. It is just loud noises.

And so, yes, there is that whole approach of young guys coming up and telling older men, hey, it’s time for you to go out to pasture, it’s time for you to hand in the car keys. And a complete, maybe, disrespect, dishonoring. But that would be wrong.

Sean Yeah. Like, actual not-honoring-your-mother-and-father sort of wrong.

Which — I’ve always thought it was interesting, in the Ten Commandments. Which I don’t think that the Ten Commandments apply the same way as they did to Israel and the Mosaic covenant, but whatever; they’re still worthwhile to know in terms of God’s priorities for his people in that respect.

So, “honor your father and mother.” The very next one is “don’t murder,” and then “don’t commit adultery” — which come after the commands of having no other gods before you. So the “honor your father and mother” could be to five-year-olds, in the middle of ones about not committing murder and adultery; or it could be to everyone, but including those who are already at some point mature.

So the “honor your father and mother” probably has as much to do with even younger-but-still-more-adult kids thinking about their parents. So, like, it’s a command that never stops applying.

And at least being able to find things that we appreciate, and speaking to them in a way that is honorable.

And, actually, again, Paul gives that instruction to Timothy not to rebuke an older man, but to approach him as a father. Which, again, assumes that something is wrong, and that the younger person at least thinks that he can see something that the older person needs to change. Because that’s why you would rebuke them, as if they’re doing something wrong.

It’s not “ignore that.” It’s, well, how do you approach the person? You don’t do it from a position where you come in acting as if you’re the authority. But you do come in with respect, and try to point out that potentially there’s a problem.

Philip Right. Yeah. So, even though it’s used wrong most of the time, there is a way to know your place. You should know your place, where you stand. And so that is kind of even what Paul is telling Timothy: know your place. You’re not an older man coming to a young guy; you’re a young guy coming to an older man. That is a different context.

And then Paul does tell Timothy as well — he gives him the instruction to not let anybody despise your youth. And so, as if it’s in Timothy’s court to make sure that doesn’t happen. But the way for him to do that is through, like you already mentioned, demonstrating his progress and demonstrating his character, right? “Set the believers an example in speech and conduct, love, faith, purity.”

And so the way he even ought to approach the older man ought to be exemplary in speech and conduct and love and purity — all of that, that entire approach — so that then that older man doesn’t have any reason to neglect what he’s saying, or to dismiss what he’s saying.

Don’t feed that. Paul almost, like, knows that it’s already going to be difficult for that older man to — maybe not difficult, but it will require humility for the older man to accept something from a younger man. And so, don’t make it more difficult.

So, yeah, there’s some of that.

Sean Yeah. And, like I said, the younger man is going to have opportunity to show his credibility, or not. And also he is going to reap what he sows.

So I get that in the moment it can be tough to try to put this all together in one’s mind. But be thinking about: how I approach, if I’m the younger man — how I approach this older man, or even my father, is very likely how my son is going to approach me. Or, how am I being an example to the other young men in these sorts of conversations? Or, what kind of seeds am I sowing that then I am going to reap later on?

Because if everything is contrarian, if everything is “I know better,” if everything is, you know, hire a teenager while they still know everything — if that is the mindset, then, very likely, because God is attentive, and — again, I mean, funny. It is funny, if you can see it — that then God often gives us that harvest. Ha ha ha.

Philip Right. God is not mocked.

Sean Yeah.

Philip Right.

Sean We are mocked.

Philip Right.

Sean Because we thought we knew better, and now somebody after us thinks they know better. We just keep that line going.

Philip Right. Yeah. And that kind of — you sow seeds of contention, your entire life ends up being contentious. So you find no peace because you gave no peace.

Sean Yeah.

Philip Yeah, so there’s an approach from both sides, and it seems like both sides require a sense of respect. And maybe, again, the context and the positioning is different, but I think the approach is still mutual image bearers. And specifically men, right? So the way we speak with men, the way we interact with men, ought to be undergirded with respect, and building on top of that.

And so, whatever the older man has to do to build on that respect toward a younger guy, and then vice versa as well — that approach might look different. But a lot of the time it is dismissive from either perspective. The older guy dismisses the younger guy; the younger guy dismisses the older guy — “you’re just a boomer,” or whatever it is. “You don’t understand the current needs, you’re living still in twenty years ago,” or whatever. And so it is dismissive, which is not respectful.

And so, coming to the arena — entering into the arena of, okay, I’m going to challenge something — that arena still ought to be an arena of respect, an arena of maybe mutual submission. The Bible does use that term. And that’s going to look different, and it’s what’s going to keep moving us forward.

But, so, even looking at the Declaration of Independence — right, was written, Thomas Jefferson I think was like thirty-three, something like that, maybe even a little bit younger. So, of the five guys, the oldest guy was Ben Franklin; I think he was like sixty-one. You have —

Sean But most of them were twenties, thirties.

Philip Right. I think the youngest was twenty-nine. Most of them were in their early to mid thirties. And they were able to work together and produce something that we’re all still not just reaping from, but building on. And it was —

Sean Or squandering, but —

Philip Squandering, right. Hoping to build on. Yeah, hoping to at least get back on.

But it was younger and older guys working together. And so, even looking at the Reformation, a lot of that was younger guys in that way as well.

But I think where you see the young guys fail is when they’re not involved with older men. When they’re just trying to do it on their own, they crash and burn, and crash and burn, and end up sowing a lot of that contention.

So, Proverbs 20:29, right? “The glory of young men is their strength; the glory of old men is their gray hair.”

And so it seems like what both bring to the equation is: the young brings strength, energy, ambition — whether or not that is substantive, right? So he’s going to have strength and zeal and ambition even without any substance. That’s just what he brings, because he’s energetic, he wants to achieve something.

Sean Not as substantial as it will be. He’s putting rocks in his truck.

Philip Sure, right, exactly right. But what I mean is, the zeal was there first. The energy was there before even anything was — you know, his truck was going fast already.

Sean Yeah.

Philip And so it seems like the young man starts with that. He starts with energy; he wants to pursue and hunt. And I believe that is by design. God gave that man a desire to pursue strength, energy.

But then, as he’s pursuing that through, he’s going to be stumbling. He’s going to be hitting dead ends, or speed bumps, either from his own mistakes or just from things on the road. And so what he’s gaining is experience.

Whether that experience turns into wisdom is a different question. But he is getting experience. And so I take “gray hair” there to mean experience — that it is a life lived.

The old man, his glory, his splendor, what he has to offer, is experience. He has seen where the wrong turns lead to. He has seen where the right turns lead to. And he’s seen that because he was once a young man with that strength and ambition and zeal. And now he has to offer experience.

And so it seems like those two things need to come together. You need both strength, energy, zeal, ambition of a young man, and then the experience and hopefully wisdom of the older man. And when you only have one and not the other, you have an incomplete package, an incomplete setup.

You know, again, you have either just zeal and ambition that is going to crash and burn, and you’re sowing the wind to reap the whirlwind. Or you have a bunch of experience that is complacent and tired, and maybe unwilling to do anything because you’ve already tried and it’s failed and it hasn’t worked, or you’ve already come and you don’t want to go any further. And so you need somebody with energy and ambition to then come in with that.

So it seems like, if older men don’t have the young man there to offer his strength, that’s not good. And if the young man doesn’t have the older men to offer his experience, that’s also not good.

Sean Yeah. The older man should be able to see when the younger man’s truck, his back wheels, are just spinning.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean So the RPMs are at five thousand, but he’s not going anywhere, because he’s not getting any traction. Because there’s not enough weight. And that shouldn’t freak out the older man. It should be like, oh, well, I know what your problem is: you need some responsibility.

Philip Right.

Sean To go with your zeal and your ambition. You need some weight.

And, yeah, being tired is a real thing. And being insecure is a real thing. Fragile. Wanting to be esteemed rather than wanting to do work — like, “I have done my work, now just esteem me.”

Philip Right.

Sean That’s a different angle on the pride. Those are all real things that miss the point of what we’re saying, and miss the point of what a father should really want for his young person. A father should not need to be needed, but a father should also not stop working.

And, pastorally speaking, elders in the church — a church is going to die with those elders if they can’t see and encourage and direct, guide, the younger men to keep taking on more of those responsibilities.

So there’s got to be, like you’re saying, that relationship between the two. Both are all are yours. Old and young.

Philip That’s right.

Sean All are yours.

Philip That’s right.

Sean The gray hair and the biceps.

Philip Right. That’s right.

Sean Maybe not in one person, but in between the two people.

Philip That’s right.

Yeah, and I guess that is — you said relationship, and that is maybe even undergirding. I think respect is where that starts, but to build trust, to build a relationship of trust between an older man and a younger man, where there is — it’s more than just giving the benefit of the doubt, but it’s understanding one another’s hearts, understanding one another’s desires, thoughts. And you’re not questioning that person, that he’s just trying to sabotage what you’re trying to do.

But even when there’s disagreement, or some kind of challenges, you already have a bedrock of trust, that you know that, okay, this person wants what’s best, I want what’s best. We’re headed in the same direction. Let’s figure this out, or work this through.

Sean Yeah. I don’t want to only be abstract. Robert Capon said men are more abstract, women are more concrete.

Philip That’s right, yeah.

Sean So, maybe someday we can talk about that book, since we did actually get recommended Bed and Board by Robert Capon from a podcast listener.

Philip That’s right.

Sean And I was telling somebody the other day, even before getting to that part in the book, that I know, and have always been, more abstract probably than concrete.

So, not trying to not give practical tips on how to be a sanctified snot, or how to be an older man who can appreciate a sanctified snot. So, like, I would put myself in the category — at least between you and me, I’m the older one.

Philip Right.

Sean I appreciate your sanctified snottiness. So, how did I get there? Why does your strength and energy and confidence-with-competence-or-not — how can I value that, or appreciate that, or not be threatened by that?

And, again, I’m not trying to just make it abstract, but for me at least, a lot of it does relate to, well, what do I want? It is really a desire question, related to a vision question.

And there’s just a different way of saying what you just said. So, if I want to be comfortable and have control — first of all, that’s silly, because you don’t actually get that. Second of all, that’s a really teeny vision, as a total self-individual me vision.

If what I want is for the sake of Marysville; if I want the strength and jealousability of the flock at TEC; if I want the blessing and fruitfulness of my own kids and my own family — then it’s not actually going to be just about me having control, or me being comfortable. It’s going to be necessary to coordinate and to work with other people who have different angles, different gifts, different levels of energy. And that includes those who are younger.

So that is not a threat; that is necessary. That’s like fuel in the tank. It’s definitely not a barricade in the road. It’s not stopping me from getting where I want to go. It’s actually part of the necessary thing to move the car down the road.

And, yeah, so, whatever — maybe not everybody needs to go through that thirty-thousand-foot question, what do I want, what is my vision. Maybe not everybody needs to have that answered. I’m a person who does need to have that answered.

Philip Right.

Sean I need to know some higher-level answers for what we’re doing. Which, to some extent, is required in that distinction I made between teachers and disciple makers. Because you need the longer vision, from the higher perspective, to see where they both end up. Because at the beginning —

Philip Well —

Sean — both are teaching.

Philip Right.

Sean It’s down the road that you find out what was different.

So you do need to have some angle on why a sanctified snot is — so, just having a snot could be sanctified. We need to work on sanctification. But having a snot who is clearly in the process of sanctification is actually a great benefit to the whole group, whether they feel it at any given moment or not. It is for our good overall.

Philip Right. And I think same thing from the younger man’s — so you mentioned earlier about the father, or the older man, providing a certain kind of resistance to that young guy for his own good, to help him grow and be stronger.

And so there’s the whole analogy of the tree who doesn’t experience wind doesn’t grow strong roots, and ends up, at the first big gust, toppling over. So it could grow tall — the tree doesn’t need wind to grow tall, but it does need wind to grow strong. And so if it grows tall and confident without any strong roots, first gust of wind, it falls over.

And so, even for that young man, for his own good, to be experiencing resistance from a loving father, from an older man with experience, with gray hair, who maybe knows what kind of resistance that man needs to experience, what kind of pushback. So it’s not just guidance, but it’s also, hey, I’m going to give you something to fight against, something to wrestle with.

And so, appreciating that even for your own good — because, again, the young man’s desire is to pursue, to achieve, to conquer. But you don’t want to catch the fire truck and then not know what to do with it. You don’t want to, again, grow tall and not substantive.

But then, as that translates into the bigger vision of the project as well: if the young man can understand that the success of the vision, in a sense, is dependent on, conditioned with, his own substance — so his presence, his substance, his person, his character is necessary for the success of the bigger vision as well — and so, in order to carry that forward, you need to become stronger. And this older man is there to help you become stronger.

Sean Yeah. Because a sanctified person who faces that resistance, or comes up against an authority who is seeming like they’re making it harder than it needs to be — zeal that is not on its way toward being substantive is going to give up.

Philip Right.

Sean It’s going to bounce off of whatever that resistance, or the hard thing that the authority is — and this is assuming that the authority knows what they’re doing.

Philip Right.

Sean The older person is genuinely, like, a father, like you said.

Philip Giving.

Sean Affectionately giving, right. I’m giving you this hard thing.

Philip Right.

Sean That requires faith on the younger person’s part to see. And definitely, if they run into that and they bounce off of it — that wasn’t the goal. And also, at the same time, that means the zeal was not as strong as they really thought.

Philip Right. It’s clarifying.

Sean But I would lament that we don’t have more of the older men who do know what they’re doing, with affection, and with substance, with gravity, with giving. We don’t have as much of that taking place.

We can change that. Maybe we can keep working toward getting more of our community to have older men who are giving, not threatened, insecure, like you said before. And genuinely prepping then their kids — for their kids’ kids. You know, Psalm 128: see your children’s children genuinely going further.

Philip Right. Yeah. Okay, well, I think we’ll end it there. So —

Sean I mean, we could tease. We actually have ideas for some future discussions.

Philip We do, yeah. And we would also — anybody who’s listening — appreciate more ideas, recommendations. What do you want to hear in this podcast?

Sean You legitimately have already gotten one actual whole response.

Philip Yes, I did. The response said: a dispy-Baptist approach to political theology, perhaps in distinction from theonomy.

And that was after our last episode about how all are yours includes the Doug — and how dispensationalists can relate not just to covenantalists in general, but specifically even the Moscow community; how dispensationalists can live by faith.

Sean Which is good, because Christian nationalism — whatever, whatever, whatever about the term; anybody can define it for the sake of their own discussion — but that’s a pretty hot topic.

Philip Right.

Sean How do us dispies connect to that, or not? So that could be —

Philip Yeah. Because it is the average — and I just mean average, the majority of the dispy — rejects all of that.

Sean Yeah.

Philip And so, even — I didn’t listen to it, but I want to — there was somebody released like a podcast, something about why dispensationalists can’t be Reformed. And it’s coming from a dispensationalist.

Sean Yeah.

Philip And so, even that: Reformed people hate that dispensationalists want to be Reformed. Dispensationalists hate that dispensationalists want to be Reformed.

And so, yeah, the Christian nationalism, our involvement in politics, in governance, in the civil sphere — dispensationalists suck at that. Not just by negligence, but on purpose.

Sean Yeah.

Philip Right. So they —

Sean As their virtue.

Philip As their virtue. Right. It is a virtue for them to stay away.

And, yeah, in my Russian upbringing, that made all the sense. Because there was no godly governance in the Soviet Union. So if you were connected to the government as a Christian, you were a traitor. There was no way for you even to thread that needle. At least not that I was told.

Sean Yeah.

Philip So — I mean, somehow Daniel did it, right, in Babylon. But he was also thrown into the lions’ den.

Sean Turns out.

Philip Right, yeah. So, if they were always persecuting Christians, and you’re always on the side of the persecutors, that seems questionable.

But in America, it’s a different context. And maybe we’re coming to that, but we’re not there yet. And so, why does it make sense for a dispensationalist to not even care about it, but see it as a virtue?

Maybe that’s a tease.

Sean A big tease.

Philip Yeah.

Sean Sometime soon.

Philip There you go.

Sean This could totally be a possible —

Philip Keep listening.

Sean Yeah.

Philip And also give us your ideas. We have a whole list of ideas, but what do you want to hear about?

Sean Even if your ideas are snotty.

Philip That’s right.

Sean If you tell us your ideas like a complete —

Philip — buggery snot jerk.

Sean We’ll still even listen to that.

Philip That’s right. We know that language. We understand it.

All right. I guess we’re out.