[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
Welcome in to Think Deeper podcast presented by Focus Press. Jack Wilke here, joined as always by Will Harb and Joe Wilkie. And this week we're looking at the news. We were going to talk about one thing and then we talked about what we could talk about this other thing and this other thing, and we started looking all of it. Like, there are a lot of hot news items lately. And one of the things we like to do here on Think Deeper podcast is help Christians engage the world in front of them. Engage your Facebook feed, your X feed, and engage what you're seeing on the news. Engage what the people around you are talking about from a Christian perspective, from a biblical worldview. And so from time to time, we do like doing this of compiling a few major news stories that are going on and getting into them that way. And so that's what we're going to do on this episode.
We've got a list of them here, and I'm just going to throw it to Joe to pick one. Do you guys have any further opening remarks before we pick one and get into it?
[00:01:02] Speaker B: Yeah, Joe, before you go, I was just going to say to add on to, to Joe's thought there or to Jack's thought there, Christianity touches everything. And I think that's what, obviously we've beat that drum on this podcast time and time again, but I think that's what the disconnect has been, I would say, you know, in 21st century church of Christ, Christianity is for a lot of Christians, it doesn't, it doesn't touch everything. It touches their Sunday morning. It touches maybe their Sunday night if they're faithful attendees. It might touch their Wednesday night. It might touch the youth event that they go to once a month. It might touch the fellowship meal. That's about it. Like you said, the Facebook feed, the X feed, the, you know, news, watching the news, the, you know, Tuesday night entertainment choice. Like, for a long time, I think a lot of Christians have been of the, you know, mindset that my Christianity, my faith, whatever, doesn't touch that stuff. There's no overlap there. And obviously that's something that we believe every single one of these stories we're gonna talk about and pretty much everything else. Obviously, I'm sure there's a story here and there. It's like, okay, well, there's, that has no impact and, you know, something very minor. But a lot of the stuff that you see, a lot of the stuff that, you know, kind of stirs up drama. A lot of the stuff that people are talking about.
We want to answer the question of, like, how should a Christian think about this? Not to say that we have all the answers or that we need, you know, we're going to dictate how people should think. But like, hey, from our understanding of the Bible, from our biblical perspective, this is how Christians should think about each one of these things. And so, yeah, I think also the last thing I'll say before I hand to Joe is it's a helpful exercise for your brain. It's a very helpful exercise to take a topic, a again, a news story, a controversy, and say, how should I think about this as a Christian?
Not, you know, what is this person saying? What does the news say? Like, how should I think? Because it forces you to look at the facts. It forces you to analyze God's word. It forces you to look at principles and good, better, best, a lot of things we talk about. And so it's just a really good brain exercise. Even if a lot of these stories, we're not going to remember them in 12 months.
The Coldplay thing last year, that was a huge story.
We did an episode or maybe a think fast about it that was like, hey, what should Christians think about this? So that's all I wanted to say to start is for each one of these things, that is the goal is just to answer the question of how should Christians think about, you know, what should their perspective be on each one of those things according to the Bible.
[00:03:24] Speaker C: So, well, most of the time we relegate these things to think fast because there's, you know, there's not enough for an episode.
The news has been hopping. I mean, there is a lot that has been taking place in the last last month, really? But specifically, even just in the last two weeks, if you're not on X, maybe you don't see these things quite as much. I don't know.
[00:03:43] Speaker A: I mean, that's kind of my metric is how much of this migrates to Facebook. And most of the topics on our list have. Yeah, because if it's on Facebook, then it's like the everyman is talking about. It is on their radar.
[00:03:54] Speaker C: Yeah, I very much agree with that. And you know, I was looking at our list and thinking about this. Like, I do think there is a key theme of leadership involved. We talk about that a lot as well. That's going to come through is the leaders. What should a leader do, Leaders of a nation, you know, things along those lines. Leaders of a church, leaders of a family. So I do think that leadership is going to be a big Thing, but the first one I want to get into is actually the oldest one and there's some other ones that I'm intrigued to get at, but because this one's already lost a little bit of the, I mean it was a hot topic there and that is the Tony spell fight. The, the pastor that is being harassed. Jack, I know you probably got the story. I don't know if you could pull that up, but I know you got the story and you did some, some, did you do an article on this?
You know, I know you posted about it. Yeah, I know you posted about it. And so anyway, long story short, you got a pastor of a church who is being harassed by a neighbor. There's conflicting stories as to who, you know, how often this went on, but they had a past with this neighbor and the kid was I think 21 in saying some awful, awful stuff about what he was going to do to the pastor's wife and daughter and you know, family when he left town.
That is unspeakable. I'm not going to say it on this podcast, just awful things.
He went over there across the street, the kid, the 21 year old threw a punch at him.
[00:05:13] Speaker A: Somebody will jump in. I had somebody in my comments very much saying not a kid, which I think he's exactly right about that. This is a grown man, but grown man, just gonna throw that in there. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:05:23] Speaker C: Kid from a young, but old enough obviously to know better. Old enough to, and yeah, old enough to be an adult and be tried and to be treated as an adult.
So you know, if you get the, the brakes beat off, if you get your doors blown off in a fight because you happen to be a, you know, scrawny 21, you deserved every bit of it in my opinion. But this was a big story. Should he have crossed the street? Is this an appropriate thing for a pastor to do? Is it a Christ like thing to go and engage him in a fistfight and beat the kid and beat the guy. Sorry I keep calling a kid, but just this, this 21 year old, get him on the ground. I mean he was throwing some punches. Is that appropriate? What are your guys thoughts?
[00:06:00] Speaker B: Well, and here's the, you know, the, the controversy is centered upon like, or centered around I should say. Obviously it's heightened by the fact that he's a pastor. If he was just a regular citizen, you know, random guy, he's a good Christian guy, probably would not have even been a story.
But also obviously with the self defense debate within Christianity, should Christians, you know, own A gun. Should Christians, you know, there's, there's the pacifism thing, which I don't think a lot of Christians hold to, but I do think a lot of Christians would argue, hey, you know, that, you know, they point to Jesus saying turn the other cheek for instance, which I don't believe is a great place to go for that. But they would point to places like that. They would point to him telling Peter to put his sword into the sheath on the night of his crucifixion, places like that. And so there's this debate about self defense within Christianity and this news story about Tony Spell really brought it to life, really illuminated, you know, the debate itself. And so, you know, we did a self defense episode back in 2022. I want to say year that we did it and so it's been a while, but just to kind of give a quick take on it. And Jack, I know you've got some thoughts you posted about it. And as Joe said, I don't know, you know, the, this particular pastor's background, I haven't read up on like, you know, all the extenuating of circumstances surrounding it. But what I will say is one of my main takes is I do think our society would be in a better place if people had a higher level of concern that they might get punched in the face.
I think our society would be in a lot better place if they had to run things through the filter of man, if I say this, am I gonna get absolutely decked and laid out by this guy if they had that proper fear? Now I wouldn't eliminate everything, but I think our society being a lot better place. I think there's, to Jack's point, this was not a child, this was not some dumb 15 year old. This is a 21 year old grown man saying these things that you should not be able to, you should not be able to say these things without consequences. And I think that's kind of my other take on this is you don't get to just say stuff and not expect consequences, not expect some kind of retribution, not expect some kind of, you know, something to happen. You say, oh, free speech, free speech, whatever it is, like, yeah, free speech. But if you talk about what you're going to do to my wife or my daughter, whatever it is, yeah, I'm going to lay you out. And I think once again a better understanding from people of like, I'm not, I don't get to just walk up to somebody and use this profanity, use this word, whatever.
And having that higher fear of I might have, you know, harm inflicted upon me. If I say that, I think we'd be in a better place. That's not popular. People would say that's maybe a little bit harsh. I think we'd be in a better spot, Joe.
[00:08:37] Speaker C: Well, Jack, I think you had this. Yeah. I think Jack made this point online about, you know, if you go into an airport and say Allah Akbar.
Yeah. People are going to respond and it's not going to be good and you're going to be tackled.
I can say what I want.
[00:08:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:49] Speaker C: If you want a movie theater and say fire. If you call in a threat, if you, you know, call a fire out in. In a movie theater and it's not.
There are consequences to speech. There are, you know, we're not saying that the free speech doesn't exist. We're saying there's consequences.
[00:09:02] Speaker B: Think about how many. This is a big young people have gotten caught on, like, Snapchat and stuff, saying they're going to blow up a school or they're going to bring a gun in.
[00:09:09] Speaker C: And, like, there are consequences to our words. Right.
[00:09:11] Speaker A: Which is three.
[00:09:12] Speaker C: I mean, the world.
[00:09:13] Speaker A: It makes it a realistic threat where it's not like a tweet of, you know, somebody tweeting it at the president. You know, I think you're a terrible guy. I'm gonna like. But even then, some of that stuff gets investigated. But, like, yeah, if you are right there in physical distance and there is this escalating history. And so to what Will said, like, I don't think it's helpful to break down, well, was. Is this guy a good guy or bad? I don't. He doesn't seem like a great guy. The.
The fight itself. Well, he should have stopped at this point. Should it? It's the principle we're kind of talking about here of can you physically respond to a threat against your family? And people do go to Jesus saying, turn the other cheek. Josh Pappas had a really good article about this on X. If you're on there, you can go check it out. Basically, the power dynamic of that, like, they didn't have a response. And so going the extra mile, all of that and the Roman occupation that they had.
But we also see times in the Bible where there were. There was pushback, there was defense, and somebody linked one in Nehemiah where people weren't doing what they were supposed to do.
And he said, so I contended with them and cursed them and struck some of them and pulled out their hair and made them Swear by God, you shall not give your daughters to their sons, nor take of their daughters for your sons or for yourselves. Nehemiah 13, verse 25. Like that's pretty extreme, but, but it's in the Bible and Nehemiah is a great guy. And is that something your preacher should do if you marry your kid off to a non Christian?
Not necessarily. But to Will's point, we'd be a lot better off if people actually did. And so, you know, like, that's the, the.
I'm not advocating for that. What I am saying is we like to, as I've said before, we basically use the Sermon on the Mount to cancel out the rest of the entire Bible.
Goliath was just making verbal threats, okay? I mean, like, and David killed him. And that's held up as a great thing that he did. There's a time and a place for everything, as Solomon taught us.
[00:11:07] Speaker B: I was just gonna say too. I think the other thing about this is everybody's got a line in which. Okay, well, that's too far. You know, let's say for this particular scenario, obviously, and if you watch the video, this guy, this 21 year old is very clearly trying to get a reaction. Like he is. This was not just like him walking by the house and yelling stuff. Like he's got his phone out, he's jumping up and down like making a show out of it. Well, let's say he came. Let's say this guy came across this Tony spells wife or daughter and you know, went up to him and put his hands on him or what? Like, then is it okay then is it okay for this Tony spell guy to just absolutely lay the guy out? Most people would say, okay, probably. So then at this point we're just debating on, okay, at what point, especially because what hasn't been brought up here, this is the husband and father and the defendant, who's supposed to be the protector of the family, right? We got into this and when we did, I listened to the first like half hour of our episode that we did in 2022. And a lot of the kind of context that we used for that episode was the John Piper article where he was basically like, if somebody breaks into my house and wants to rape and kill my wife, what would I do? And he's basically.
He basically was like, I don't know,
[00:12:18] Speaker A: I gotta love his soul. Yeah, like, what about your wife?
[00:12:20] Speaker B: Kind of said a whole bunch of nothing and did not say that he would defend his wife. And so that's a really important element to this is that your family as the, you know, you as the husband and father, your family needs to know Dad's got our back. Like, he's going to pretend. He's not just going to kind of roll over and say, oh, those are just words. He can say whatever he wants. Like, no, he's going to take care of things. And again, that's where I think it's really important for Christian men to understand. Yes, you are the spiritual protector.
You're also the physical protector against threats like this. So that's an important element.
[00:12:51] Speaker A: You're not a good husband and father if you let your wife and daughter live in fear of that kind of thing. You're just not. You are not doing your job. I don't think anybody can argue that they are.
[00:13:01] Speaker C: And I think that's where I would look at it is okay for the people that were being threatened. If it's a threat against you, that's one thing. I still think there are actions that can be taken. I still think that.
[00:13:09] Speaker B: I know you can say whatever you want. Me, I don't care. But bringing my family into it, that's a different story.
[00:13:15] Speaker C: But I will say, if you're, if you're doing a threat, I think that's worthy of crossing the street and going, what'd you say? You know, and kids do this on the play. They used to do this on the playground before we went, woke with everything and it was actually really healthy. Is a threat's made. Another kid goes, excuse me, Boom.
[00:13:28] Speaker B: We command things through that filter of, I might get punched if I say this, so I'm not gonna say that.
[00:13:31] Speaker A: Correct?
[00:13:32] Speaker C: Correct. We need that. And we got a bunch of keyboard warriors where I guarantee you this 20 year old, 21 year old is online on Reddit saying stuff all day. He comes into the real world and says that it's really good, he got consequences for it, in my opinion. I would back that guy a thousand percent because imagine being that guy's wife and daughter going home that night where the guy goes, I know that was really scary, guys, I'm really sorry. You know, we're just gonna, we're gonna hope that it's okay. And I'll just call the cops and hope that the cops. Cops don't do nothing. Okay? Cops show up after you've already been murdered and go, oh, boy. Wow. We don't know what happened. I'm sorry, but that, no offense to our police officers, they do good work. This ain't Minority Report where they're trying to figure it out. Ahead of time. That's not what's taking place.
So there is a level and this where people go, not vigilante justice. Like, there's a level where you recognize the severe limitations of the cops, of the police officers, and you do take matters into your own hands in a situation like this, when if my wife and my daughters are, you know, my daughter and my kids are being threatened, there will be consequences. And I, again, I think that is a. I would hope every dad that's listening to this podcast goes, absolutely. And that you would not go home that night and say, man, guys, I'm really sorry. That was really scary. And we'll just hope that he doesn't do what he just said he was going to do. I don't want my wife living in fear like that. And instead his wife gets to show up at night. Yeah, the guy got booked into jail or whatever, but she shows up that night going, that's the guy that's going to protect me again. I'll back that. Now, whether Tony is a good guy or not, Tony spell, like we said, we're not going to debate that on. On his personal moral choices. It's the principle here. And I think that's right. So will get us into our next. I'll throw it to you. You get us into where you want to go next.
[00:15:08] Speaker B: Sure.
I'm torn on kind of where I want to go. I think we'll. I kind of want to separate the two kind of political stories. So let's go ahead and tackle one of those right now. And that is the pretty consequential one of the day, and that is the birthright citizenship ruling from the Supreme Court.
They came down with the ruling that anybody born in the United States automatically a citizen.
And obviously the implications of that are that if you have illegal immigrants come over, have a child, that child is granted all the privileges of an American citizen, regardless of if their parents were here illegally or not.
All kinds of directions we could go with this. There are people who I highly respect from a political knowledge standpoint saying this is one of the most destructive decisions in the history of the United States, that we basically just signed our own death warrant, that this is. I think Trump came out.
[00:16:07] Speaker C: Trump.
[00:16:08] Speaker B: Trump obviously was opposing this, and he came out and basically said this was a horrific decision.
A lot of angles we could go on this. I've certainly got a take or two that I want to share, but I will hint. Jack, why don't you kind of get us going on what your thoughts are on this? This is a pretty big one.
This is one that I think you tweeted something about, like, for good or for bad, this will be the beginning of the end. So share your thoughts and then I'll circle back around and give a take later.
[00:16:32] Speaker A: I think it will. Because you just told China, and I think Trump remarked to this end, hey, just send as many people as you can afford to over have kids. And now you have.
[00:16:42] Speaker B: You have added the incentive.
[00:16:43] Speaker A: Yeah. You're. You're a voting bloc under yourself now. You know, you can take over Texas or some big red state by just having enough kids there. And 18 years from now, you've got their citizenship locked in, you got their votes locked in.
Like, that kind of thing can happen. But even if it's not a targeted thing like that, it's. Anybody who gets here can. Can be part of this. That means everybody. The way somebody put it, is great that everybody, 8 billion people on earth, all of them are American citizens who just haven't gotten here yet. That's absurd. It just is ridiculous. The idea that if you break into somebody's house and have your kid there, they are obligated to help raise the kid. I mean, like, this is insane. And a lot of people were quoting the original, like, the longer intent of the 14th amendment, the guy that wrote it, basically clarifying that this is not what I have in mind.
All of that aside, my point about this being the beginning of the end, either we're going to continue down this road and everyone's going to abide by it. Yeah. And those countries and people are going to come in here and that's going to further change it. And we're going to. We've got Islam coming in, We've got Hinduism coming in. We're bringing in tens of thousands of H1B workers from India and they'll have kids here. Like, that's one of the things when you get here, you rush to have a kid so that kid has citizenship, so you are harder to send home with them.
And so again, you just lose your country that way. Or if we say the Constitution insists that we have this, somebody's gonna go, well, then I guess we don't need the Constitution like that. One way or the other, we're going to.
[00:18:10] Speaker B: The Constitution does not insist that we have this. Which I'll come back to later.
[00:18:13] Speaker C: But.
[00:18:13] Speaker B: But, Joe, before I do that, any thoughts from you?
[00:18:16] Speaker C: Did you see that Seth Dillon story that he posted about the woman that got put in prison for 10 months for running the scam for China?
She Brought in tons of women under a, basically a vacation package type thing. And she told them how to cheat the system, how to hide their pregnancy from customs, how to come in. She had three separate houses in California. It was a full money laundering thing. She was getting.
Yeah, birth years are $80,000 a pop. And this woman was pocketing a ton of it just to help all of these Chinese women coming over. And her thing was like, look, they get free, they're going to get free health care, they're going to get free education, they're going to, you know, be able to vote, they're going to be able to do all these things. And so for a lot of women in China that can afford it, that was a big thing. And so she had a ton come over here and now the kids are citizens. So it's brain dead. Here's my take on this.
Who voted for it? It's five, four. Four of them are women.
Enough with women leading the nation. I'm sorry. The next time Trump appoints Isaiah 3, it is a judgment of God on a nation when a woman is having
[00:19:20] Speaker B: to lead her sin of empathy, like the compassion gene.
[00:19:23] Speaker C: It's suicidal empathy. It is. Well, boy, we have to take care of people. No, we don't. And because we have a bunch of women up there. I'm sorry, you call me misogynist. You can call me everything else. Women have zero business being in leadership. And every time Trump appoints a Pam Bondi or appoints another woman, I about pull my hair out. Enough with the women. I'm sorry. I love women. Women are great. Women are fantastic. Women are amazing. Stop putting them in positions of power because they do this every time.
Every single time. When you need them on, you know, you need somebody to step up and make the hard, hard line decision.
You have ACB come through and what does she do? She turns completely to the opposite side, chooses a brain dead take. And to me, it's one of those, like, you know, Jack and I were talking about this, you know, earlier at the gym today. Democrats never miss, Democrats never miss every time they appoint a justice. Every single time. There was never a time where Ruth Bader Ginsburg came down on a side where you go, whoa, that's a strong conservative take. I'm sharp.
[00:20:21] Speaker B: There was never an upset.
[00:20:22] Speaker C: Yeah, zero times zero. Do you think Ketanji Brown Jackson is ever going to get one right? She's too busy writing, like text basically like, you know, emojis into, into her defenses and such. It's insane.
[00:20:36] Speaker A: So she used the phrase Understood the assignment.
[00:20:38] Speaker B: Understood the.
[00:20:38] Speaker C: I saw that, yeah. Did you say. Did you see the. Wait for it. Dot, dot, dot. Wait for it. Dot, dot, dot.
Literally. Yes. In. It's unbelievable. Do you think she's ever choosing the right. No. And so to me, I can't understand why we continue to run back to the same people. Weak spine men. Which is the same. It's a woman. John Roberts is a woman. He's a feminine man.
This is where we get in. A nation between that and the foreigners ruling over us, which is what you're seeing. Look in Colorado, we got a foreigner woman who's a socialist who just beat an incumbent of 30 years. Like, Jack was like six when this woman went in.
[00:21:16] Speaker B: She the one that said, we deserve nine.
[00:21:18] Speaker C: 11.
[00:21:19] Speaker B: Is that America deserted?
[00:21:20] Speaker C: Yeah, I think that's the one, yeah. And she just won in Colorado, Mom. Donnie in New York. We're being overrun by. By people that don't belong here, so. By foreigners. This is a sign of God's judgment on the nation. And I'm sick of women leading the nation. I'm sick of them being appointed to positions of power.
[00:21:36] Speaker A: Well, just briefly, somebody's gonna say, how can you say that?
Both of those are Bible verses. That is a sign of judgment on the nation when foreigners rise up and rule over you. And it's a sign of decline in a nation when women and youth are your rulers. So exegete those Bible verses for me before you give me, before I get the pearl clutching.
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[00:23:04] Speaker B: Yeah, I was, I was gonna take us in a different direction than women, Jack. So if you, it sound like if you got something you want to share.
[00:23:09] Speaker A: No, I just wanted to like, I just wanted to like highlight your Joe's quoting bible there. Like that's, that's where those arguments are coming from, even if they seem shocking.
[00:23:16] Speaker B: And the problem with this, as we started already discussing is it's very dangerous when the rules and regulations that are the framework for your society are incentivizing behavior that is destructive to your society. I'm going to use a sports analogy for just a second, so bear with me. For all you non sports people, the NBA has been a bit of a controversy because for like the last several years, a lot of their teams that are towards the bottom of the like there's not very good. They've been basically throwing their games like sitting their best players. Tanking is the term like purpose losing on purpose. And a lot of fans have decried that saying what are, what kind of product is this? We are not interested. Their ratings have declined. Really bad thing.
The reason why is because the NBA structure was set up to incentivize teams to tank. Like it was a good thing. It was, it was in your strategic best interest to lose on purpose. You get a better draft pick, hopefully get a great player. And so what the NBA, you know, they've changed some rules this offseason, but they were late to the party to realize, hey, our current structure is set up to incentivize something that is destroying our product. That is destroying. Like people don't want to watch. It's not, it's not enjoyable basketball to watch. People basically team is basically trot out guys saying we don't care about winning, you know. You know, again, strange analogy, but what, what I'm talking about here with this birthright citizenship decision is you have just added incentive for women to come over on vacation or as Joe, you know, kind of shared with that story, or just come over here illegally and have a kid. Because the structure is in place to incentivize that. There you go, they got their citizenship.
That's not going. That's gonna destroy the product, that's gonna destroy the fabric of our nation if that is the incentive structure. So what do you have to do? You have to take away that incentive structure. Well, the Supreme Court just solidified that incentive structure to where that is going to be what people shoot for.
Like why not at this point. And so yeah, there's That, I mean, Joe, the women point is really good there as well, of them leading our country. And those are the type of decisions you get. The spineless, easy decision. You know, easy. Allegedly. The last thing I want to say on the Constitution and then hand it back to one of you guys.
What's so frustrating about this? And I don't claim to be any kind of constitutional expert, but I can also read plain English and the 14th Amendment. All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens. Are citizens of the United States and the state wherein they reside.
There's that clause of. And subject to the jurisdiction thereof matters. If that didn't need to be in there, then, you know, when this, when the 14th amendment was written in 1868 or added, it would have just said all persons born or naturalized in the United States are citizens. That's not what it says. There's an and clause that says, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof. The implication of that is if a Mexican woman goes and visits Ecuador and has a child in Ecuador, that child is a Mexican citizen because he or she is subject to the jurisdiction of wherever his or her mother is from. That's the way the jurisdiction works. And so that clause in the 14th Amendment makes it very clear. It's not talking about people coming over here illegally. Like, it excludes that. And so I haven't read up enough on the story to know how much the Supreme Court justices appeal to the 14th amendment, but I know a lot of people in the response to it are appealing to the 14th Amendment. They're just, again, you can read plain English and see it doesn't stop after, hey, if you're born here, you're good. That's all you need. There's another clause added to it. So go ahead.
[00:26:55] Speaker C: I, I got a real hot take here.
This is, this is gonna go over very well.
Constitution's about done, and it's time we figure out something else. And the reason why is when you have a rule book. Let's go back to sports.
Well, let's choose basketball. We got a rulebook for basketball. Somebody decides to come in, start mowing people over and playing football.
Excuse me. According to the rulebook, you are off, you're wrong, and that's a penalty. And they go, we don't care. We own the. We own the referees, we own the league, and we're gonna do what we want. And you go, excuse me, but the rulebook states. And you keep appealing back to a rulebook. And they go, we don't Care, we're not playing by your rules. We're gonna do whatever we want with it. And actually we'll just make up our own rulebook. That's what we're dealing with here. And so to me, it drives me nuts when people continue to go back to, well, the Constitution says these people use the Constitution for toilet paper. They couldn't care less about what the Constitution has to say. They will find every little clause and this proves it. They don't care about the Constitution. And so what good is the law when we're dealing with people that are not serious about it, that use it to blow their nose? They couldn't care less about any of the laws that it states in there. I think it's time for us to figure out a different solution. Because the Constitution is made for a just people. It's made for a Christian citizenship. And this goes back to John Adams quotes, to Benjamin Franklin quotes, everybody else. Like, it is not prepared to rule the unruly because it is no good if people are not willing to follow it. And we have a lot of people that aren't going to follow it. And we got so many corrupt judges, and as we're finding out on the Supreme Court just as much, we got so many corrupt judges in this nation that they will use the Constitution for whatever they want. And anytime they want to skirt around it, they'll find some clause. They always go back to basically three, three clauses in the Constitution that they will always try to figure their way around it. It is a joke. It is a farce at this point. And the more we continue to go, get back to the Constitution, you're not going to. We have to wake up and realize we are dealing with a half of a nation that is not Christian and that couldn't care less about the laws or the rules or anything else. Let's figure out plan B and go from there. So that's my hot take. I don't know how people, people aren't gonna like that. You can't get away from the Constitution like they already have. What now? And that's really where I'm at.
[00:29:10] Speaker A: That's kind of what I was hinting at with that post. Will brought up about like one way or another. It's. It's the beginning of the end something. It's gonna change and you can just see it running out of gas. Congress can't do anything. They don't do anything. Like it's. It's basically we let the president make executive orders and the Supreme Court decide if he's allowed to do that. And that's it. That that is literally all our government is at this point. And so that's not. Not a workable framework going forward.
I think a lot of Christians feel there's like a biblical need to defend the Constitution if it comes to go. Like it. I think it's been great. But Joe's right. Like it works for, as Adam said, it only will work for a moral people. And that's not what we have. So.
Yeah, that's an interesting hot take. It'll be interesting to see what people have to say about that. But just to finish it off on a biblical point, so many people on the immigrant thing and I don't want to redo the immigration episode we did, but they'll bring up welcome the Sojourner. But this birthright citizenship, the idea that somebody could move into Israel as an alien, as the Bible, the law of Moses titled them and that their children were born and just. Alright, you're just as much a Benjamin as everyone. That's insane. Like that's not how that works at all.
[00:30:18] Speaker C: Yeah, not Rahab en mass, right?
[00:30:20] Speaker A: Yeah. Like 10,000 of them move in and all right, you guys are a tribe of Judah now. They're not like they, they had laws on them to assimilate, but they were still expected to go home. And so we just have the system that is not sustainable, not workable, something different.
It will morph into something else. I don't think the Constitution is going to be abolished. I think it'll just morph like it has in times past.
[00:30:41] Speaker B: Yeah, we can move on. I just wish people would use their brains. Like, what is going to be the outcome of this? And I would say also look at the people celebrating it. Look at the politicians, look at the side that are celebrating it. That ought to tell you everything you need to know of like what the potential outcome of this could be. But just the common sense of like, so anybody who just happens to be in United States has a child, boom, they're good to go. Like. Yeah, it's just really. It's really frustrating.
[00:31:06] Speaker A: Yeah. All right, I will pick up a third one for us here which is celebrity divorces.
We had one just today as we're recording. This was announced was Frankie Muniz, the former child star Malcolm in the Middle and other TV and movies and stuff like that.
A couple of weeks ago it was the country singer Jelly Roll. One of my least favorite countries. Kind of loose country ish. He's kind of adopted by the country world. But I Don't. Yeah, he's.
He's terrible. Anyway, he. So he announced he was divorcing his wife and got up on stage and made this announcement about it and said, well, we're best friends. We're still best friends. We're gonna be best friends. But we just, you know, it was a phase of life and very casual and they're very.
[00:31:47] Speaker C: Having a kid together, as my understanding.
[00:31:48] Speaker A: Okay, that's on the way. And then they're just, okay. And.
And man, the top comment I saw under a video of that said, way to go. You know, Jelly Roll and whatever her name, she goes by Bunny something or another or whatever. Said, showing the world what a healthy divorce can be.
And then the Muniz post, he had this long post about, we've decided to go separate ways. We've been separated for a while, and, you know, we're going to raise our kid together. And again, still the, like, we're best friends thing.
[00:32:16] Speaker B: But the video, too. I don't know if you want to cover that. That he put posted of like, did Muniz do one? Yeah, so he. He posted. Muniz did a. Did a video of him, his, I guess ex wife and I guess their child dancing and celebrating in their house. And the caption was something like, who says you still can't be friends with your baby mama? Or something like that.
Got flamed and deleted it. And then he. He posted what you were just. Just sharing Jack about kind of treating it.
Yeah. So I don't know if you saw the video is like, man, what is this?
[00:32:48] Speaker A: But I had not seen that.
[00:32:49] Speaker B: Yeah, crazy stuff. Crazy stuff. But I think that the casual nature of it is kind of what is so interesting. And the frustrating thing, you see celebrities do this all the time.
Jelly Roll has gotten up on a word, you know, has won awards.
How he's won awards, I'm not really sure, but that just speaks to the ridiculousness of the award shows.
Has won awards and gives Christian speeches. Giving his life. Talk about giving his life to Christ and how everybody should give their life to Christ and all this stuff in the same breath. Talking about how, you know, he's. He's divorcing his wife. Like, that's the frustrating thing. I don't know as much about the Muniz thing other than he got rightly flamed for it online and then decided to. To kind of delete the video and then post that long, you know, post about how it's a healthy thing. No matter how you frame it. It is the tearing apart of A family. It is the least healthy thing in the world. The fact I didn't know that Jelly Roll had a kid on the way in the Munis post, obviously the kid is like, it's just the most tragic thing in the world. And to treat it with the casual nonchalant nature like we're just moving on to a different phase of life. It's a new chapter. The Muniz post had like life alert or Life update with like the alert emojis. Like guys, a life update is I moved and built a house or we're having a second kid. It's not I'm ending the, the closest relationship known to humankind. I'm ending my marriage. That's not a life update. That's please pray for me. We're going through a difficult time. I know these are worldly people, these are not Christians. These are, you know, people in the world. But it still does speak to the sadness of it with how casual it's being treated.
[00:34:23] Speaker A: Joe, you work with divorce, you know, obviously and just strained marriages more than anything.
How does anybody come out of this with a smile on their face like they're they're trying to do
[00:34:35] Speaker C: this? One stumps me because to me it is a.
Basically what it comes down to is they never really were all that invested. Because if you're invested this far, if you're 10 years into the marriage or whatever, which I think Jelly Roll was. And to clarify, I don't know if a kid is on the way. All I heard is I still plan to have a kid with her. And I thought I heard it says
[00:34:55] Speaker A: they are IVFing and they have a surrogate that they're going to still pursue that. So that even worse, honestly, even worse, even worse.
[00:35:03] Speaker C: And so in this situation, it's one of those while we both are splitting ways, we've tried to we're at loggerheads or we've tried to come together and make it work and figure out what's going on. And as Frankie Muniz talks about, she's got her dreams and of course he's got his dreams. And it's two separate ways. And so they're looking at it that instead of getting into it and doing all of the fighting on the dreams, let's just validate your dream and validate my dream. And this is the logical end of a marriage without God involved is it will only work as long as it makes me happy. Because there's no self sacrificial love. There is no I'll give up on my dream or any of those things, because even when somebody does give up on the dream, it comes up later in marriage. I had to give up everything for you. Like, that's the purpose of marriage is to have to give up some things for the other person. But that's in a biblical marriage. That's in a godly, a God honoring marriage that understands what love actually looks like. So, of course, in a selfish state, you are going to look at it as, this fit me for a certain time in my life and then when it stopped making me happy or when it clashed against my bigger dreams.
So it's just a devaluing a marriage across the board. Go figure that this would come in. I think it's interesting it's taken this long until we start seeing the amicable divorces.
It's very much like a breakup where it's like, I just think, you know, we're kind of going our own separate ways when we break up.
[00:36:19] Speaker A: It's not you, it's me. Yeah, right.
[00:36:21] Speaker C: Like, it's the same concept there of we're just going in different directions and when both come to it at the same time and. And both are okay with it, a lot of times in breakups, it's like, no harm, no foul. The difference is, you got a kid, you've been married for a decade. What is wrong with you that you can so easily give up on the closest relationship in your life like that?
That tells me once again, you never really share the intimacy you should have because this should be the most devastating time of your life. And instead, you guys treat it as though you're just good friends. And, you know, we just decided that
[00:36:51] Speaker B: you're taking another job. Like, it's the equivalent of I just got a new job.
[00:36:54] Speaker C: Right, exactly.
[00:36:55] Speaker B: Moving on to the next chapter.
[00:36:56] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:36:56] Speaker C: Do you guys ever see the Netflix movie Marriage Story?
[00:36:59] Speaker B: Nobody talk about it. Adam Driver and Scarlett.
[00:37:02] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:37:03] Speaker C: Holy smokes, man. That's a gut wrench. And it's the same concept of, you know, it's about them divorcing and she's got her career and he's got his career, and it's just we're moving in two separate directions. And it's the devastating nature of the divorce and how. How gut wrenching a divorce is how you still want to be friends with the person. That's kind of where it ends up. And so that's what opens the. The door for things type of things is, of course, Hollywood. But the process to getting to the point where you're okay with a divorce is Gut wrenching. And that's what it's intended to show. So, you know, they've had some bad conversations internally.
[00:37:34] Speaker B: Well, just to comment on the kid thing, I was just away from my kids for like nine days. Longest I've ever been away from them. Longest I've been away from Rachel, I think since we've been married, nine days.
[00:37:45] Speaker A: And
[00:37:47] Speaker B: the, you know, effect that that has on kids. Every night to go to bed, dad's not here. When am I gonna see dad next? Or mom or, you know, however the custody situation works out.
Joe could obviously speak to this far better than me, but just personally speaking from experience, like, I was just away from him for nine days. Like the, the lack of. Not just, you know, it. Not to mention you can't disciple them.
[00:38:11] Speaker A: You.
[00:38:11] Speaker B: You're gonna have way less opportunity to raise them into the human beings and the Christians that, you know, that you want them to be.
Just the, the connection with them, like, you just don't have it, you know, Especially again, if you're the dad who, you know, gets them on every other weekend or whatever it is. Like you see them for 36 hours and, you know, then they're gone for the next five days. Like, it's just, I think the, the impact and the effect that it has on kids is just the most. I think it's the most devastating part of it is that this 10 year old, or however, I guess he's not 10, 7 year old, however old the son is of, of Muniz, is now going to live in a world where the two people that love him the most, the two people that he has spent his whole life with, are not going to be living together anymore. And he's going to have to grapple with those, you know, emotions, the trauma. And Joe. And again, I know you could speak to it better. It's just. It's awful. It's just the worst thing in the world. And again, the casual nature of it is just alarming.
[00:39:04] Speaker A: That's the thing that ticks me off, is like, as if we don't have mountains of research on the children of divorce.
[00:39:11] Speaker C: And that's exactly what I'm looking at.
[00:39:13] Speaker A: What it creates is an every man for himself. The kid learns very on, I gotta take care of me because Dad's taking care of him, Mom's taking care of her. And the old phrase used to be stay together for the kids. And then the wisdom became, quote, unquote, wisdom became, no, don't stay together for the kids. They'll be okay. Do what you got to do, like, no, do stay together for the kids. Like that. All the research shows, even if it's an unhappy marriage for you, you signed up for duty. You did not sign up for everything going your way. And so there's that side of it, the other side of it. And I think this is a pretty interesting one for people in the church.
We've had this discussion. We had a whole episode on this. People in the church have a very worldly view of marriage in that it's a lifestyle accessory.
If that's what you want to do, if that works for you, if that fits your current trajectory, if it's one of those things you want to put in your Instagram bio, great. And if it's not, then don't worry about it. Now, a lot of Christians will back that up by saying, well, don't get divorced. But then a lot of them, well, things happen, and we just kind of make excuses because it's a lifestyle accessory. That's why people wait until their 30s and start looking in and going and having a good time. And then kids are a lifestyle accessory. And whatever suits me. And the avatar of me I want to put out there. And the image I'm cultivating of me is me. A married person is me. Somebody who likes this person, wants to be associated with this person.
I don't anymore. And so I'm gonna go this way, they're gonna go that way. And like, we. Because that's the other weird thing is like, oh, it's not a failure. We had 10 good years. And no, it is a failure. It's absolutely a failure.
[00:40:46] Speaker B: And that's. Yeah.
[00:40:47] Speaker A: One of the other things I want to comment on in this day and age, we have this viewpoint that you just can't fail no matter what happens. You didn't actually.
[00:40:54] Speaker B: Everything's a win.
[00:40:55] Speaker A: Yeah. And I mean, like, you see guys in sports saying this in their press conference. Now, there's no failing here, you know, because we learn lessons from our lot. Like, no, your goal was to win the championship. You failed your goal. You made vows to love this person till death do us part. And if you don't do that, you failed. You failed the vow. You met a goal and you didn't meet it. And, like, it's insane that we have protected anybody from ever saying, I didn't make it. I fell short. Well, this kind of goes to the Biblical.
Biblical anthropology versus humanist anthropology. Biblical is all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Humanist is. There's no such thing as failure. It's insane, right?
[00:41:34] Speaker C: I think if you went back, take them back to the altar, you know, the day of their wedding, and you, you show them, you go, 10 years from now, you guys are going to have a kid and get divorced. Failure, not a failure, you know, and in that moment in their.
[00:41:46] Speaker A: Would you sign up for that?
[00:41:47] Speaker C: Yeah. Would you sign up for that? Is this something you're still interested going through with? Because the till death do us part is a joke. I mean, do you vow? And does your vow mean anything at that point? You know, when you are, oh, well, we just decided it's better. Like, what's wrong with you? But yeah, you talked about a statistic, Jack. I pulled this up.
Children of divorce have a 40% higher likelihood of incarceration. With sample incarceration rates among affected groups triple those of children with always married parents. Teen birth rates jump up to 63% higher for children of divorce compared to rates before the family split.
For mental health, children are 16% more likely to experience behavioral issues. Of Divorce occurs between 7 and 14.
Children of separate or divorced parents are 1.5 to 2 times more likely to live in poverty.
I mean, that, that's just a few of the statistics. This is the Google AI thing that's not even digging into things. It just takes from, you know, a number of sources.
It's not good. It's devastating. There is never a time where divorce went well. Divorce is a failure. And divorce is devastating. And it affects kids in ways we can't even begin to imagine. Books have been written on this, journal articles have been written on this. It is devastating. And so for them to have a smile on their face, it's like, your kid's not. When he's gonna be in therapy for the next 20 years trying to figure it out with a therapist that, you know, tells him it's all like, tells him that's just normal. Like, it's not normal to see mom and dad split. And if you took all of the, you know, wrappings off of it, of our culture and everything that we accept in our culture and just looked at mom and dad, historically, mom and dad completely split because they're unhappy with one another.
Everybody else in history, billions of people would be looking at you going, what? It's not that divorce never existed, of course, goes back to Bible times with divorce. But this concept of like, well, I'm no longer happy there are people. And obviously Israel gets judged for that quite heavily and talks about God hating divorce. But it's like, man, there's a survival element to this, there is a taking care of your kids element. And now it's like, well, it was the cool I need the new toy on the block, or the, you know, cool kid on the block or the new toy type of thing. And. And so we just give up one of the greatest goods in our life, and we're supposed to smile about that, man, I think. And that's devastating to the kid. That's who my heart goes out to. So.
[00:44:00] Speaker A: Hey, guys, Jack Wilke here. I wanted to tell you about our seminars at Focus Press. Each of us involved in the work have a series of lessons that we have prepared to encourage churches to help you understand the word better, how to navigate this culture. We cover a wide range of topics, from things like evolution and apologetics to cultural issues to the family to the godly young men kind of content that Joe and Will do to church reset, which is, of course, my passion, to schedule one of us. Whether Dr. Brad Harab will Harab, Joe Wilkie or me, Jack Wilkey, reach out to
[email protected] if you'd like to talk to me or if you'd like to talk to one of the others, I'll pass your information along to them. We'd love to come and encourage your church and put on one of our Focus Press seminars.
[00:44:46] Speaker B: We got a couple other stories that we want to get to before we wrap up. Before we do, somebody might be listening who is divorced and, you know, they might have been divorced for a decade. It's like, well, there's not much I can do now. I want to speak to that for just a second and point out, I think the biggest problem we have with this story and why we're spending so much time talking about it is just due to the cavalier nature of the way that, again, these are celebrities. Like, these are people who made the news. Like, we know again, not Christians. We're just using that as kind of a platform to talk about it.
But yes, the nonchalant kind of cavalier nature that we have such a problem with.
But if you are divorced and listening to this and, you know, what do I do now?
Obviously, very much kind of depends on the situation. There's a lot of different circumstances. I would say if you're the one thing I'll say, and I'll pass it to Jack, if you have any thoughts, if you are divorced, you know, again, five, ten, however many years, and you do have a child, pour into your child. From a discipleship standpoint, if you're a faithful Christian, even though you know, you might not see him as much. You might not have the same impact.
You can't go. You can't undo what's already been done. You can't go back and change, you know, a decision that was made seven years ago, no matter how much you might want to. But what you can do is change the way that you interact with your child or children or multiple moving forward. And you can acknowledge, you know, I made this decision, however many years ago, and I know it affected you. I know it impacted you. Here's what I'm going to do differently moving forward. Here's how I want to pour into you from just not just obviously spiritual standpoint, for sure, but also as a person from a relationship standpoint. The relationship, as I alluded to earlier, gets wrecked.
You know, dad to child, mom to child, whatever it is, when divorces happen. And so repairing the, you know, pouring into them spiritually, but also pouring into them and repairing that physical relationship, I think is really important. Jack, any other thoughts on that for those of our listeners who might be divorced?
[00:46:42] Speaker A: Yeah. So obviously Paul talks about if the one in sin, the unbeliever, leaves you, you're not bound. Like, that's not on you. And on the other hand, if you were the person who left and you look back like, yeah, I shouldn't have done that. And maybe it's something you can't go back and repair now, at the very least, just say that. Like, say this is if it was your choice, say it was a bad choice. If it was not your choice. I did not want this to happen. And this is horrible, and I hope my kids avoid it and all that.
That's the Christian perspective. And I think most divorced Christians look at it that way of like, this was awful. This was a horrible thing to have to go through. And this is not what I want for anybody. What happens in the culture is something we do this well, normalize this, normalize that. And then, you see, with Jelly Roll and Frankie Muniz, we normalize it. Then we glamorize it, and it becomes something to be celebrated. It's not something to be celebrated. And the way you keep it from being celebrated is don't normalize it. Look at it as a tragedy, as heartbreak, as an awful thing that we want everybody to avoid. And if they can't, then we still don't. We just let it be what it is and just say, man, we hope people don't have to go through this. So that's what I would say. The other one real quick, hot Take.
I didn't do this. I would recommend everybody do it. Use the traditional marriage vows. Sickness and health, till death do us part. Oh, those kinds of things.
That there's something to it. I'm not saying don't add your own on top of it. That's fine.
[00:48:06] Speaker B: You're just saying include those lines.
[00:48:08] Speaker A: Have that in there. Yeah. Like have. Because in sickness and in health, unless I get a better career opportunity, unless our interests diverge, like, this stuff just doesn't fit. It's insane. Like, that needs to be a reminder that's in there. And I think there's a reason it was there in the first place. The traditional that it became that. So onto the next one. I think it's Will's turn again. So go for it.
[00:48:29] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure.
I still have my wedding vows on my notes app. That's hilarious. I just found those.
Yeah. And I had till death do us part and some of the other stuff. So there you go. Good take from Jack there.
[00:48:41] Speaker C: I always keep it in my sermons here.
[00:48:44] Speaker B: Not to just tee Jack up again on something, but I really wanted to get to this children's church discussion as well. This one is interesting to me.
We've talked about children's church, I think on some Q and A episodes maybe, or maybe some deep ends before.
There was a tweet, I should have pulled it up already from a.
Some guy in the evangelical community.
Man, I need to try to find Luke Simmons name. Luke Simmons.
[00:49:09] Speaker A: Got it right here. He said, you want to read it?
Visited a healthy church in another state today. While it was sweet to see some families worshiping together, I was grieved by how distracted parents were by their small children.
In my view, everyone would have been better served by utilizing the kids ministry.
[00:49:25] Speaker B: Just mind boggling. So, yeah, Jack posted something about it and that one blew up on Facebook. A lot of people just absolutely appalled at the questioning of children's church. And just being avid defenders of children's church, all three of us are about as opposed to children's church as you can possibly be. And I want to speak for these two guys, but Jack's made that very public. And Joe, we've shared these before. So my quick take on children's church, I think the church that I.
The earliest church I remember going to, we went till I was in. I want to say fifth. Yeah, about fifth grade.
They had children's church up to fifth grade. Like, I was 11 years old, was baptized and could have been in children's church.
That is an insane thing to me. I I think it is the equivalent of moms sticking an iPad in front of their kid. It is the equivalent of pawning kids off to daycare. It is the. I want things to be more convenient for me.
So here is this nice package set up where they can go eat graham crackers, sing Jesus Loves Me, color pictures while I get to worship. And it's just completely anti biblical. Like that's just the shortest way to say it. Who wants to go next? I've got other takes, but I don't want to take all the content I've
[00:50:45] Speaker A: been talking about a lot, so I want to hear yours. Go ahead, Joe.
[00:50:48] Speaker C: I mean, my, my mind always goes to the shema in Deuteronomy 6 and thinking like, okay, Moses is, you know, about to pass down the information and he's.
[00:50:58] Speaker B: Wait, wait, wait.
[00:50:59] Speaker C: Yeah, guys, we got these nice tents over here with some really nice women. You know, they got some coloring sheets for the kids. Like, what?
Not even close. You know, that would never happen because, yes, this is a generational thing. It's so important for the kids to be involved. I mean, statistics are going to prove that of kids getting to see their parents participate in things that's not just church participate in anything. They need to be able to see that when you are keeping kids around kids. It's the same concept of the public school of like kids around other kids with a, with one teacher. No, they need to be seeing you when you rise up, when you walk, by the way, when you lie down. The kids need to be around you. They absolutely need to be there in the worship service, seeing mom and dad, not just be present mom and dad, engaging mom and dad, you know, even in. I kind of like keeping the kids out of, you know, class sometimes and letting them see you participate in class, ask questions, sing out loudly like, that's really, that's the most important thing a kid can get out of that every Sunday. Even if it makes it a little more difficult on the parents and those around them. It's the most important thing they can get.
[00:52:01] Speaker B: Well, that's what I was going to say briefly before Jack goes, is we're not talking about Bible class. Or at least I'm not talking about Bible. This is worship we're talking about.
[00:52:07] Speaker C: This is worship.
[00:52:08] Speaker B: This is sending, you know, a second grader to a different room while you as a Christian parent takes, partakes of the, of the body and blood of Christ, sings, you know, hymn songs, spiritual songs, praise, obviously listens to us like, this is worship we're talking about. And to Send the kids off to again, you know, coloring sheet land and Teddy Graham's and goldfish time is just like, what are we doing? What are we doing when we're thinking about we are here to worship the almighty God. God is the one who blessed us and designed us with family. We don't have any biblical precedent and you say we don't have any biblical precedent for Bible classes. We do have biblical precedent for worship and what we don't see is the kids being taken somewhere else. We don't see them having their own separate room.
The people, you know, people are going to argue and bring up, well, what about the mom who for about 11 years straight because they have four kids can't listen to a sermon?
Obviously the, the kind of retort to that would be what about the teachers who are missing worship because they're in children's church? And so I don't want to take all the, all the content there. Jack, I know you've got some thoughts on it. I just wanted to re. Emphasize it's worship to God that we're talking about. This is not a time for us to be segregating out based on age, understanding, level, you know, whatever it may be. It's the healthiest thing in the world for a three year old to look over at his mom and dad singing, you know, songs of praise, being moved by the spirit, you know, worshiping, head bowed, prayer, all those things. It's the healthiest thing in the world. And to deprive kids of that is just the most ridiculous invention ever created.
[00:53:45] Speaker A: Yeah, I, I'm on board with you guys. I wrote an article on it, I did a live stream on it. So I've put a ton of content out there. There's pushing 300 comments I've received on Facebook, on substack, on wherever, and so there's just been a lot of interaction there. One of the things that has been notable to me is that not a single person on the other side of it has made a biblical case. They are not appealing to the scriptures.
[00:54:12] Speaker B: It's all anecdotal.
[00:54:13] Speaker A: It's anecdotal. It's for, hey, for the visitors, this would be more convenient for them. Hey, for mom and dad, it's better for them. Well, kids need to be taught the Bible and like the Bible tells us how kids are to be taught. As I've pointed out, nowhere in the Bible, particularly in the New Testament, did it give instruction for teaching children other than to parents. There's not anything in Timothy and Titus like, oh, and make sure the kids ministry says this. It doesn't say that. In fact, in his letters, Paul speaks directly to children because it's assumed they're going to be in there. Like, that's. He's not telling the preacher to like, okay, pull the children aside and you're going to teach them this.
And he speaks to the fathers as he speaks to the children. Like, that's. Those go hand in hand. Nobody is bringing. Somebody kind of brought up a verse in the Old Testament where they brought all the people who were capable of understanding. Like, that is not really the case. You think it is because that means that nobody was out volunteering and not able to be there for it while they missed out. Like happens every Sunday in children's church. But again, there's just not a case to be made of, oh yeah, kids don't need to be in here. Kids. Kids should be sent away. It's ridiculous. And so I made a lot of arguments. The livestream I did went more in depth where I feel like this reveals underlying differences in our views of the family and our views of children, our views of church and that it's not for visitors that all of those things that we're talking about with children's church are built on assumptions and foundational views we have.
And as I noted, it's notable to me that most of the strongest anti church people are people with a lot of kids. They are homeschool families. They are people who know acutely what it's like to have the difficulty of little kids in the pew, but are also committed to Bible time at home and family worship and all that. Those are. The people say we don't need this.
The people who are going to take advantage of it are the people who are going to say are the ones that many times are not going to be doing stuff at home. And so you end up with people not taking responsibility for their own kids because, hey, the church, they're doing it for us. And so I think that's pretty notable, the difference I'm seeing in those people.
And so go check out all the work I did on that. It's all on my site, Jack Wilkie Co. And on the Church Reset podcast. You can listen to the article and the live stream I did, but I'm 100% on board with you guys. This one bothers me a lot.
[00:56:39] Speaker B: This is.
[00:56:40] Speaker A: This one just blows my mind that it's an issue and that guy's tweet, you know, everybody would have been better served if this, like, yeah, that's Called consumer Christianity. You're looking at, what do we get out of it better, you know, we came to be served. Well, you know what, I serve my kids by teaching them to worship God. I serve God. The other thing, teaching my kids to worship him, like that's what I'm there for.
[00:57:00] Speaker B: The other thing, it does Jack as well. I don't know if you covered this in article or live stream or whatever.
By sending your kids to children's church, you're taking the easy route out of. I actually have to train my kids to sit still.
It's the, you know, it's the easy option. It's, man, I don't have to think about it. What's actually difficult and again, what is generally in life, the more difficult path is the one that's gonna serve you better long term.
The difficult thing is I gotta teach my 2 year old that he or she can't just, you know, run down the, you know, run down the pew or make a lot of noise or chomp on their snacks or, or you know, talk incessantly like that's the hard thing to do. But guess what, if you, if you, if you're able to pull it off. I have a two year old, she sits quietly in church every single Sunday.
But if I had, you know, if I had just took the easy route every time of sending them in when they, you know, again, for children's church, whatever it is, I don't have to do the tough thing as a parent. Same as the iPad, same as all these other things we've thrown out there. And so that's an important part of this to understand as well is, yeah, nobody said that trying to wrangle three small kids during worship service was the easiest thing in the world and that you're probably gonna get a ton out of the sermon.
But it's training. It's about training your children understand this life is not about them. They don't always get to go through life with, you know what's gonna entertain me next? What's the next thing on the agenda that is that I'm gonna enjoy as a three year old? It's not what life's about. In this hour, hour and a half, our worship service where I worship is consistently about 80 to 90 minutes. It's a long time to sit still. And yeah, by the end of it, kids are getting a little restless. They know they've been trained. And I'm not trying to toot my own horn like I've got everything figured out.
[00:58:35] Speaker A: I'm just saying it can be done.
[00:58:36] Speaker B: It can be done. And it's the tough thing to do, but it's worth the investment.
[00:58:40] Speaker A: One of the funniest comments I got was a lady who said, well, clearly the guy who wrote this speaking of me because somebody shared my post. And she commented then, clearly the guy who wrote this doesn't have kids. Like, well, the fifth and the sixth are on the way, number one. Number two, we had four and four years. So four year olds all the way down to newborn twins.
You know, some of those times I was up there preaching and Allison was in the pew with them by herself. We have done this on hard mode, okay? So don't tell me that this can't be done. My son, we nicknamed him the Beast because of how much energy he has. He is all over the place. We've still taught him, you sit still for worship, like it can be done. And so that's ridiculous. The other thing that came to mind in this, a couple months ago, we were all talking about, we had an episode on the loud kids in church.
Like there is a happy medium between they're allowed to scream their lungs out or we just can't have them in here at all. Like they can be seen and not heard. It's okay. Like, that has been the human standard for a long time. We should probably get back to that.
[00:59:34] Speaker C: I'd love to know the statistics on kids faithfulness for those that grow up in children's church until fifth grade, until 11, you know, does that create further faithfulness? I'm going to hazard a guess and say probably not to give the Church
[00:59:47] Speaker B: of Christ a little credit as well. Sorry, I know we got to wrap up soon. I do think this is far more prevalent in the community church.
[00:59:53] Speaker A: Kind of like Christianity.
[00:59:55] Speaker B: I've been. Sorry. Yeah. I've been exposed to a lot of churches of Christ and not, not a lot of them from my experience. I mean, some do certainly, but not a lot of them have children's church and so credit to them for that. But yeah, like the community church, you know, circle Joe, you know, to your point, I would be very curious what, what the, you know, retention rate of young people is for that.
[01:00:14] Speaker C: Well, and here, here's the other thing that would, you know, once again, another little hot take. I think it's the, the obvious or it is the end conclusion of big VBS's.
It's the same. It's the same concept.
[01:00:27] Speaker A: Kids need a fun version for themselves, right?
[01:00:29] Speaker C: We need.
[01:00:30] Speaker B: Except the difference is this one's every single week, right?
[01:00:33] Speaker C: Correct.
[01:00:34] Speaker A: Yeah, it's, it's right.
[01:00:35] Speaker C: It's just keeping it rolling. That concept of like, we need something for the kids, we need something for the kids. They, kids just need to learn the Bible. Kids need to know something better. Like yeah, they can learn it from here. But either way, I'm not gonna go for bbs. Everybody knows where I stand on that. So I'll, I'll let that one go. But fellas, I, I think we had the only other thing we were going to get into.
We weren't going to touch on the ac. That's huge news. The AC issue on in Europe. Not a. Yeah, the air conditioning.
[01:00:57] Speaker B: Forgive me for not having the strongest take on that one.
[01:01:00] Speaker C: Exactly. Not a lot of takes on that. I do feel bad. I mean there are people dying over there, so obviously I feel very bad about it. But on the other hand, it's like man, bad leaders making bad decisions for the people. You know, I think that goes to it. And then we also, we were going to cover the, the Kids act and the online privacy that passed the House, hasn't passed. Pass the Senate. We'll see.
Just about.
Basically you have to have your ID to show that you're old enough to get online.
On the surface it sounds good to protect the kids. But then that's a lot of government oversight. And now they know exactly what you're
[01:01:29] Speaker A: doing and can doing parents jobs for them.
[01:01:32] Speaker C: Correct. And I think there's some interesting Ls. We didn't get to that. Maybe we pushed that to the, to the deep end.
[01:01:37] Speaker A: But let us know if there's interest for it there on Focus Plus.
[01:01:41] Speaker C: Absolutely. Or if there's other things that, that you'd like us to hit. But anything else I would just say,
[01:01:48] Speaker B: I was just gonna say for anybody listening who's like, what's Focus Plus? What's the deep end?
Check it out. Focus plus focuspress.org/ we do, we do an extra episode every single week. We respond to comments, we respond to just thoughts. If you've got thoughts on the episode, it's a, you know, subscription based, you get all kinds of stuff. You get that extra episode. You get daily devotionals, you get a audio Bible class through some of the,
[01:02:12] Speaker A: you know, less popular finished Song of Solomon. So there you go.
[01:02:16] Speaker B: So if you're looking for that Song of Solomon class. Yeah, exactly. Right. So yeah. FocusPress.org plus for any new listeners, we do again that extra deep. We call it the deep end episode every single week. We'd love to have you be a part of it. So I just wanted to throw that out there 100%.
[01:02:29] Speaker A: So thank you guys for listening as always.
It's a good time. We enjoy doing it but we hope you enjoy it as well. Talking about the news is something that we like doing. This is one of the most consistent comments we get is you guys talk about things other people won't talk about. And it's exactly what we started off saying, connecting the world around you, just helping you see it through the Christian worldview. So we, we hope this episode has helped you do that again. Check out focuspress.org/ and we'll talk to you guys on the next.
Hey guys, Jack Wilke here. If you enjoy our work with podcasts like Think Deeper and Godly Young Men and our books, articles, seminars and want to support the work that we do, the best way to do so is to go to focuspress.org donate that's focuspress.org donate thanks again for listening.
