Mega Edition: Al Mohler Fires Conservatives at SBTS, then A Discussion on Dating and Marriage

Welcome to the Conversations in Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. It is a big day today. It's kind of like that song, you know, remember that song,

These are the Days of Elijah, which if that's your favorite song, I'm sorry, but yeah, not great theology in that song, but I remember that song from a few years ago.

And it feels like, I feel like we're in the days of Elijah right now. You know, I'm just waiting, you know, behold, he comes.

We just need, we need to end this thing. We need the Lord to come back because nothing makes sense right now.

But on that note, the encouraging thing about the story of Elijah were the 7 ,000 that had not bowed the knee to Baal and Elijah felt alone.

And if you're feeling alone out there, I'm relating to you right now. Sometimes do you feel like you're the only sane person?

Well, I sometimes feel that way. And then I remind myself and I know, no, there's a number, more than 7 ,000 who have not bowed the knee to post -modernism and critical race theory and neo -Marxism and all that horrible junk that's making its way into formally solid evangelical denominations, institutions, churches, et cetera.

So on that note, here we go. Here's the big news today. And you can go to two places to find this.

You can go to Conversations That Matter. So that's worldviewconversation .com. That's my blog.

Or you can go to enemieswithinthechurch .com. And the story is also there.

And the title is Breaking Al Mohler Fire's Conservative Wing at Southern Seminary.

This happened yesterday on the 21st of April. And I'm gonna go through it.

I'm gonna put the link, by the way, in the info section. It's a lot of good primary sources so you can go there and check it out.

But Albert Mohler, the president of the Flagship Seminary, I'm just gonna go through this, fired yesterday

Russell Fuller, Theodore Cable, Ken Magnuson, and Jim Oreck, who was actually at Boy's College.

And they were terminated, not even by Mohler. It was by Provost Matt Hall. He's the one that did the dirty deed,

I guess you can say. And they were offered salary and benefits through July on the condition that they would sign

NDAs, non -disclosure agreements. And these agreements require them to withhold any potentially damaging information concerning the seminary or the firing process.

So it's a gag order. They can't speak about any of it if they want to get their benefits through July and their salary.

And this is during the pandemic. This is at a time when it's really difficult in general because the market's flooded with seminary professors who've just lost their jobs from places like Liberty and Southwestern.

And this is the environment they're being fired into. And it was almost unanimous.

There was one person on the board of trustees, as I understand, who voted against this. Everyone else voted for it.

And Al Mohler ended up pushing this, this firing because of COVID -19.

And he justified it based on we need to do budget cuts because we're losing money. And he happened to fire, though, those who were conservative, those who were opposing the drift.

And some of this I just know because of the numerous contacts I have, but some of it you can even see for yourself.

Russell Fuller is the only full -time, or was now, full -time Southern Baptist professor that signed a

Dallas statement on social justice, only one. Jim Warwick, he was critical of the

New Calvinism. But the other guys, I mean, they kind of, especially Cable and Magnuson, kind of laid low, but they were, if you knew anything about the internal affairs at Southern, they were opposed to the progressive drift there.

And in their votes, they made decisions with their votes along those lines.

So in a sense, at the school, political enemies of Al Mohler, and they were all fired.

Now, it's important in this context to compare and contrast because there were some who weren't fired.

Herschel York wasn't fired. Matt Hall wasn't fired. Jarvis Williams wasn't fired. And all the primary sources that you want, that you should need, are in that article.

And it'll show you where they've promoted ideas consistent with critical race theory. In addition,

Curtis Woods, who was the chair of the resolutions committee that gave us Resolution 9, he was employed there up until very recently.

You may not know this, but Curtis Woods left of his own accord. He wasn't fired, but that was over a month ago.

So this is completely separate. And my understanding is Curtis Woods left because he was upset that Mohler didn't defend him more.

And the Resolution 9, he thought was defensible, and Mohler criticized it, sort of, instead of defending it.

And this kind of, you know, he works for the Kentucky Baptist Convention, or he will soon, because of this.

But he was there, you know, for a long time. And in 2018, his dissertation was, it says that it employed the principles of critical race theory to guide his thesis, or dissertation, that's what he said in 2018.

And that's, went through Southern, it's there. So, you know, they've approved of these ideas, and they still have professors there who are teaching things consistent with these ideas, or haven't retracted, haven't gone out to try to say, you know,

I was wrong, nothing like that. There's been no firings because of this. They have Jonathan Pennington there.

Jonathan Pennington is a professor who believes in, I quote, a Gadamerian postmodern interpretation of scripture, and denies the one true objective meaning derived from the text.

That's postmodernism, I mean, he says it. We did a whole episode, Bill Roach and I, a few weeks ago on, and now maybe it's a month and a half ago on standpoint epistemology, and we talked about Gadamer.

And, you know, this is being, this is a professor who's employed right now at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Of course, most of you who listen to my podcast, you know Danny Akin, he recently advocated a watered down version of postmodern standpoint epistemology.

And of course you have Walter Strickland, and Matt Mullins, and William Branch, and many other professors at Southeastern pushing neo -Marxist concepts.

And they deny it, of course, but it's happening. The evidence is overwhelming. And Muller hasn't said anything, doesn't done anything about any of it.

Hasn't named any names, hasn't fired anyone over any of this, yet he fires the conservative wing.

So there is no resistance anymore at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. At least there's not enough of a, there aren't enough professors to mount a resistance against any kind of left -leaning agenda that Muller would wanna implement, if he did.

And the interesting part of this also is that this comes roughly a week, a little over a week, after Albert Muller endorsed in kind of a, it was kind of a weird endorsement because it took him forever.

And he was qualifying all of his words, and you could tell he was really nervous. But he endorsed President Trump for re -election, which is a 180 from where he was four years ago.

And this has drawn some criticism. Dwight McKissick, not happy with it. Of course, Tom Buck, very happy with it.

Both Southern Baptist pastors. And he does this. And then right after that, in his own backyard, he fires the conservatives.

And I pointed this out immediately after that happened. I said, well, if he's going to promote, well, it's not just promoting

President Trump. If you listen to his endorsement, it was basically, his endorsement amounted to, we can't accept the

Democrats. Democrats are terrible. Well, if that's true, then why do you put up with the people in your own backyard who promote

Democrat ideas? Why do you put up with the people in your own denomination? I remember, and I can't find it anymore, which is interesting.

I remember when I first went to Southeastern, Walter Strickland had this, basically, endorsement of Hillary as the lesser of two evils on a blog.

And I remember later, years later, it was when I started this podcast, I was like, I should go look up that blog again. And it was gone.

But he wasn't the only one making that case. The BDN Abouyle, he's in the Southern Baptist Convention. He made that case.

Mueller doesn't say anything about that. He doesn't go after Russell Moore, or Beth Moore, who just recently, within the last week, endorsed pretty much full -throated egalitarianism, as far as women pastors are concerned.

Mueller doesn't say anything. But yet, and I don't need to go through all of it. You know, because I did a whole video and I showed you the pattern over the last year.

Every time, it seems like a conservative ruffles some feathers, Mueller goes after them, or defends the liberal, more often than not.

You know, defends Southeastern and Danny Akin, defends Adam Greenway in Southwestern, when Bobby Lopez was fired.

And then, if it's a conservative that's under the microscope, like John MacArthur or Tom Askell, Mueller doesn't lift a finger to help.

I mean, we've seen this pattern now for quite some time. And of course, he attacked the

Conservative Baptist Network. And it's brought us to this point. And so, I wonder, what good is this endorsement of President Donald Trump?

What does it mean? If you're in your own backyard, and the things you actually have real control over, your seminary, your denomination, you wanna be president.

If you're not going to do anything to curb and stop the advance of liberalism in your denomination, the new liberalism, postmodern liberalism, and you're going to instead further it, give it a shot in the arm by getting rid of any resistance to it, then what good is your endorsement?

What does it mean? So what if you were gonna vote for President Donald Trump? I'm not impressed by it anymore.

And so, that's why I feel like these are the days of Elijah. I'm like, am I crazy? Am I alone in this?

Does anyone else see this? And I know you do. I know there's a lot of you who do. But this is unbelievable in some ways.

And in other ways, if you've been watching I'm Mueller for a year, maybe it is believable. Maybe this kind of thing makes sense. And I don't know.

I don't wanna, I don't have any direct source from Mueller saying he endorsed Trump because he wanted to cover himself, cover his right flank so he could make this move.

I don't know. But it is weird, I will say that. It is very weird. So I kind of mourn over this.

I know that unfortunately I get messages from students all the time that ask me,

I'm going to seminary, whether it's Southeastern or Southern or another Southern Baptist school or they ask me,

I haven't chosen a seminary but I wanna go to seminary, where should I go? Or if I am going, what should I do when

I get there? I get these messages. I got two yesterday. One of them was a student going to Southern.

And I just told them, try to find conservative professors. Stick by them. That's my advice generally if you're gonna go to one of these institutions.

And I don't know how I can even say that anymore in a place like Southern. What conservative professors? Who am

I gonna recommend? So it's discouraging in some ways, but here's something I wanna pitch to you guys.

And I think we've all been, those of you who follow this podcast, we're fed up with it, right? So here's what

I wanna propose. And I don't have like a master plan, but I think that seminary education is going the way of the dodo bird anyways, the academic model for seminary education.

And I'm basing that partially on the fact that, at Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary, Southwestern, and now

Southern, there's been all these firings lately. I mean, Greenway fired, I think, a bunch of professors, like 10 professors or something, again, just within the last few months.

I mean, it's just, last year and this year have been pretty bad. And the market's flooded.

And so there are people who are qualified to teach, but they don't have anywhere to go to teach because I guess the demand just isn't there.

The money's not there. So with that being said, is this an opportunity to go back to maybe a more biblical model, which

I think is education, seminary, theology, all of that should take place within the purview of a local church anyways.

And there's some, I know like Expositors Theological Seminary is trying to sort of create that model. They have like an online

Zoom kind of thing. And then they have churches that have campuses on them for their seminary.

And I think that's a good step. That's the right step in that direction. I was thinking though, maybe even to make that better, and you could do this in conjunction with like an

Expositors, I guess, but to make that even better, maybe like an internship, like real practical ministry.

Churches start using their property to put up, or not, maybe people that go to the church can house students, but put up some kind of building where students can come, they can intern.

And while they're there, they'll take classes, they'll learn, but it'll be practical ministry. And who cares about the accreditation?

Because let's face it, we know the way things are going, any faithful seminary is gonna lose accreditation anyways, if things keep going in the way that they're going.

They're not gonna be able to comply with the standards that are gonna be foisted upon them, really, from non -discrimination language and that kind of thing, especially in regards to homosexuality and transgenderism and all of that.

So why don't we get ahead of that? And why don't we start a new model? Why don't we start local churches interning and teaching classes, and then come up with our own degree system of some kind, our own accreditation.

It doesn't have to be within the guild, and really give people a theological background.

Don't make them addicts of academia, but make them actually students of the word that know how to not just preach it, but also shepherd and evangelize and do all the things that pastors should be able to do.

And so anyways, that's my thought. I think the resources are available, because you have now conservative professors who have been fired.

We have resources, we have the knowledge, the brainpower exists for this. And I know that there are churches that have facilities that they could probably host something like that.

It's just a matter of finding administrators that are willing to help pull something like this off, and perhaps even some financial backing of some kind, some donors.

And with all the donors who are pulling out of Southern Baptist and other schools, why can't we create something like that?

So, obviously I don't have all the details worked out on this, but if you're interested in that in some way, some level, please message me and I'll put you on a list.

If, and that could be, you know, hey, I would go to something like that, that you're describing, or it could be,

I got money and I'm willing to help fund this. Or it could be, I'm a pastor and I have resources at my church.

Or, you know, whatever level of help you can give to a plan like that, just send me information, because I'm sure within the next few months,

I'm gonna be having some conversations with people at various levels about finding an alternative of some kind, because I don't know how you take this back anymore.

I really don't. And I don't mean to sound too discouraging, but I think the SBC is going in a direction.

I mean, it would take a miracle of God and I hope God does something, but I think we need to be planning in case, you know, this is just a judgment from God as we've been seeing for years, and it's gonna keep going this direction.

We need alternatives. And so, let me know and we'll put you on the list.

All right, in other news, this is gonna be a lighthearted episode, I promise you. More so, at least.

It was gonna be talking about dating and marriage. And so, I'm still gonna do that.

It's gonna be, you know, mega edition. And I hope you enjoy the discussion I had. I recorded this a few days ago with Josh Sommer at the

Sommercast. And we just shared our stories. Yeah, how do we get to know our wives, dating, marriage, all of that kind of thing.

And I hope you enjoy it, God bless. So, I have with me today Josh Sommer from the

Sommercast. I got that right, right? Is it called the Sommercast? Yeah. And then, A .D. Robles is supposed to join us at some point during this conversation.

And it's actually my fault that he's not with us. I accidentally forgot what time we were gonna start recording this, and A .D.

thought we weren't doing it, because it was like 15 minutes after. But anyway, we're recording. A .D.'s supposed to jump on at some point.

I don't even know if he has a name for his podcast. A .D. Robles Podcast, I guess. And then, of course, you all know me,

John, Conversations That Matter. And this is sort of a time for all of you who listen to us to get to know us a little more personally.

And I thought it would be a fun kind of, sort of a separate conversation than the

COVID -19 and the social justice talk. I think it would be a fun conversation too to talk about how we met our wives, what we think about dating and courtship and marriage.

And I promise we won't talk about COVID except for this first question. So, Josh, I'll put you in the hot seat.

Since you're the only one here. COVID -19, marriages are splitting up.

I know domestic abuse is on the rise. I know people are now having to be together in close quarters.

How are you doing with your wife and your marriage? And I know you pastor a church. What are you seeing in regards to that?

Is that kind of a problem right now? Well, personally, our schedules,

I joke with my wife about this all the time. Our schedules haven't really changed.

I don't know if that means that we're old people, but I still come to the church office most days out of the week and Sundays still semi -normal.

So there really hasn't been a huge upset in the way our household runs.

That being said, I know that there are in other families, and there's been families in our church even that have been affected by it.

And I know that broadly speaking, looking at the Kansas City metro area where we live, there has been a concern about the rise in domestic violence because of the stay -at -home orders.

And in fact, it's kind of becoming this battering ram that people are using to say, hey, open

Kansas City back up. We need to stop doing this. And the sad thing about it is it's a really sad symptom of a really deep issue.

The fact that people coming together and becoming more intimate during this time, forced or not, resulting in something that's bad, that is domestic violence or domestic abuse, is just a terrible indication of where we are in terms of the general health of the

American family. And so it should be an opportunity to get closer together, to have bonding, to maybe rekindle some older elements, maybe some elements that have kind of faded over the years within relationships.

And sadly for a large demographic, it's resulting in just the opposite. It's resulting in divorce, it's resulting in abuse.

And I think that goes to show how materialistic our society in general has become and how the breakdown in gender roles even, going that direction, how that has affected.

You have both parents outside of the home working. There's not both kind of competing in that sense, the wife trying to take the place of the man and the man even expecting the wife to do so.

So yeah, it's a complicated situation because one of the silver linings of this whole thing was that people got to come back together and kind of halt the busyness of life.

But then to see that that has resulted in just the opposite of what it should result in has been pretty sad.

Which is one of the reasons I thought it'd be good to talk about it because it's revealing something that's already a problem that's there.

And that's that as people come closer together, as is often the case, the relationship almost gets worse.

And it should get better, or at least if you have a solid marriage, it should kind of remain the way that it is, ideally.

I know, I'm an extrovert, so this whole thing has been hard for me in general.

I'm just trying to drive out to the store when I don't need anything sometimes.

And I hate to admit that because we're supposed to be social distancing and all that. But I know there's a lot of people like me that are just getting antsy and they're like,

I just got to get out of this house. And so I don't think, for me, I don't think it's changed my relationship with my wife.

I haven't noticed a huge change. But I do know that the other day, because of just being antsy about that,

I did start to take some of that out of my wife. And I caught myself, and I'm sure that there are a lot of well -meaning people that normally don't get into fights with their spouses that are experiencing the same thing.

And so how do we have a foundation, a good marriage foundation, and just in general?

And I'd like to weave our stories through this, kind of like what we've learned in our own marriages, starting from dating to where we are today.

And so, Josh, why don't you share with us, you can include anything you want, you can include your testimony, why you started your podcast, but share with us, though, in that kind of how you went about dating, courting your wife, and then strengthening your marriage to where it is now.

Yeah, for sure. I will just say, going back to the effect on marriage, me personally, it's an added stressor.

And it's kind of a stressor that we can't get away from, right? It's kind of imposed on everyone. So, yeah, there are those, it kind of has resulted in a heightened stress level for both my wife and I, just kind of thinking into the future and kind of wrongly, sinfully even, fearing what's going to come next.

And so, yeah, there is that element. Even though our schedules haven't really changed, it's just the kind of flow of information and the constant bombardment of what's going on out there that has,

I think, heightened stress levels in general for everyone. But if you want to go back, gosh, where do

I start? My wife and I met in Hawaii. And I'm from the

Midwest, so when I tell people that, and I'm here in the Midwest, they're like, whoa!

That's just not something you hear people say all the time. Yeah, we met in Hawaii. We were unbelievers.

We had nominal religious backgrounds.

My wife was a Roman Catholic. I grew up Lutheran, not in a liberal

Lutheran church. We were a conservative Lutheran family. But the

Lord just had not gifted me faith. I wasn't repentant. I didn't really care about the gospel, much less

God's law. And so that's kind of, as far as our religiosity, our lives as people, that's kind of the context, right?

We weren't believers. And we actually met, I haven't really, this will be the first time

I've ever said this on a public forum, but we actually met on the internet.

I usually don't tell people that. It's not the first thing I want to run out and say, because I wouldn't advise anyone to necessarily do that, although I don't think it's necessarily wrong.

But we met on the internet through a dating app. And the same day we met on there, we actually, she was out with a group of friends and I went to the mall and met her.

And we talked for like two and a half hours and the rest is history. But our relationship was not right.

I mean, it was not right at all. There was no biblical foundation. There was no, there wasn't even really a goal for marriage.

Although, we'd have the little cliches we'd say to each other and I love you.

I don't even know if we knew what that meant really. And it wasn't really until I deployed for my second time, this is all happening,

I was in the military and she was in college. And the

Lord actually brought me to himself. He saved me. We were actually having a kind of a barracks party, if you will, in Okinawa, Japan.

And it turned out to be a terrible experience. The end of the night was worse than how it started.

And the next morning, I remember waking up thinking something has to change.

And my mind was immediately taken to Christ.

I mean, I started just thinking about Jesus and had a very rudimentary knowledge of the gospel from my

Lutheran education growing up. And I thank my parents for that.

And then obviously God for his providence in that. And I had a very basic understanding of the gospel.

And I knew that I needed to repent. I felt the need, the pressing need to repent, to turn away from my sin and turn toward Jesus.

And that's all I knew. I didn't know anything else until I started reading scripture. So anyway, after that point, that same day,

I called my, at the time, girlfriend, who's now my wife, and I said, something has changed.

And, you know, God's done something. And I didn't really know how to put it in words then.

And obviously there were arguments from that point on. She was not a believer. She grew up a

Roman Catholic. The conversation more often than not turned toward the rosary, praying to Mary, and things like that.

And the Lord eventually softened her heart and brought her along about a year later.

And that whole time, since I was a new Christian, since she was kind of, she wasn't a believer for that whole, you know, about a year, the relationship still wasn't really right.

I didn't have a biblical grasp on marriage, on the roles between man and woman.

And the placement of a right, you know, relationship before the

Lord according to his standard. And so things didn't just become perfect when

I became a believer, nor when she became a believer. Now I will say that when she became a believer, right after that, soon after that, is when we joined our first, you know, actually solid gospel preaching church.

It was Grace Bible Church of San Diego in California. And we started doing some premarital counseling.

And we actually went and got married at a courthouse and in downtown

San Diego. And I kept doing the premarital counseling though with our pastor.

And of course, you know, being believers at that point, you know, there was,

I knew as a Christian now that, you know, my wife to be who, you know, the woman

I wanted to marry, you know, we needed to be separate. We couldn't be in the same household. And we weren't living in the same house anyway, but it was like, there was more of an emphasis on that.

Okay, you're not gonna come over, there's not gonna be any times where we're gonna, we're gonna minimize, you know, our alone time in any intimate kind of spaces.

And those were kind of ground rules that we set all the way up until we went and got married. And then we moved into an apartment, we continued premarital counseling with my pastor, and which was a blessing by the way.

So at that point, it'd just be marriage counseling though, cause you're already married, right? Right, right, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it started, yeah, it started as premarital counseling.

And then, yeah, it was marital, it just became marital counseling. We finally actually had a proper wedding ceremony and our families came into town and all that.

And, but from that point, it's been, my views on this,

John, have changed quite a bit just since that period of time, just since that point.

I mean, I look back at our pictures of when we got married at a courthouse and I wouldn't necessarily paint it as a regret that that's what we did, getting married at a courthouse, but I would certainly urge anyone moving forward, marry your fiance within the context of the local church.

That's such a blessing to have the affirmation of the body of Christ and families there.

But I think that we did that because we still, even at that time, even being believers, we had a kind of trivial view of intimate relationships.

It was still kind of our worldly view of those things being carried over into our lives, even as Christians.

It's just vestiges of the world left over, right? And so from that point on, especially after doing the marital counseling, moving to Kansas City, when my pastor here, knowing that I wanted to go into ministry, started doing post -marital counseling, that thought was, if you're going to go into ministry, you can't really get enough marital counseling.

There's going to be a lot put on your family and on your marriage, and you need to make sure that that is right going into it.

So we did another round of post -marital counseling, which was very helpful as well.

And since we've been married these last five years, our view of marriage has done a complete 360, not in the sense that it was completely wrong then, but in the sense that exploring the scriptures, looking at places like Genesis 1 and 2, and then also

Jesus' use of the Old Testament in talking about marriage and grounding everything in the creational ordinance, seeing the purpose of men and women within the context of the household, the context of marriage.

I want to do everything I can with my congregation, especially those of us who are not married yet, those of the members here who are not married yet, who are pursuing marriage, to really nail down a proper doctrine of marriage, because it's so important.

And that really goes into the dating piece of it, the courtship piece of it, because I think if you have a solid view of marriage, really the

Bible doesn't, it doesn't prescriptively, at least to my knowledge, address the dating courtship strategy in any amount of detail.

The goal seems to always be marriage. So when you come together with a person and you say, hey, we perceive ourselves to be similar, we desire one another, you say we love one another,

I don't think that this, we shouldn't objectify, a couple in that situation shouldn't objectify one another to where it's basically that situation is relegated to shopping for a new car, but the goal should really be marriage.

Is this person the person that I'm gonna spend the rest of my life with?

And is this person a person that I'm going to be able to image the gospel of the

Lord Jesus Christ per Ephesians 5 .25, right? Is this relationship going to be conducive to that end?

Those are the right kinds of questions, I think, to be asking in the dating slash courtship, wherever you are on that, to be asking.

Yeah, so one of the things I know for you and AD and myself we're known for is we take on the social justice movement, right?

And one of the, I think, core principles of that movement is sort of this egalitarian undercurrent.

And it's different for different people in that movement. I mean, some are more soft, some are more hard, but I've been doing a lot of study on the 1970s evangelical social justice movement, which actually has an enormous influence on what we're seeing right now.

But one of the things that a bunch of these guys said when they got together and formed what's called the

Chicago Declaration of Evangelical Social Concern, was they put in this little passage on, it's kind of like mutual submission.

And I've seen that phrase a number of times since then. And I think one of the things that I know, speaking for all of us, that we are concerned about is that this movement seeks to undermine, even though they wouldn't say it, it actually undermines the unit of the family by undermining the authority of the father and his role, especially by giving the wife a role that really wasn't meant for her, biblically speaking.

And we see this to various degrees. And so I wanted to just ask you, as you're telling me about the telos, the purpose of dating, which is to ultimately find someone to get married, and you, of course,

I think a lot of people relate to your story. You didn't do it right, but you became a Christian, you got married, now you're a pastor.

Talk to me about the role of a husband and wife, and not just how it plays out in your scenario, although I wanna hear that, but talk to me about the advice you give to others in your congregation.

Is there a balance between the patriarch, the strong patriarch, and the weak kind of maternal figure?

Or is there, or has God given us something? Has he shown us kind of what the role is in dating and marriage for a man and a woman?

Yeah, no, I appreciate some of the categories you brought up already, teleology, the concept of balance.

Teleology is really important because you're looking at the intended purpose of something, like what's the purpose of marriage, or what's the purpose of dating or courtship?

And then you brought up balance, and it's like, I think that's how a lot of people think about this, is like, we just need to kind of chart our own and figure out what works best.

And I think that can be the default for a lot of people without even thinking about it. But yeah, no, you're right.

God has given us something. And I think what complementarianism does, at least,

I'm not saying every complementarian does this, but I think complementarianism as a concept, looking at something like the

Danvers segment, it allows for a measure of philosophical egalitarianism within it.

And what I mean by that is you do have this, we wanna say that, yeah, there is a role that's particular to males, there's a role that's particular to females, but they're complementary, and they wanna be careful to emphasize equality.

And now, it's not wrong to say that men and women are equal in value, both being the image of God and things like that.

But if marriage can be used as a way to tell men that they shouldn't be doing certain things within their marriage, that would actually be biblical.

An example, I think, just kind of broadly speaking, is the move away from the patriarchy to complementarity, which is a completely fabricated term, right?

When in the scripture, what we have, the example that we have, I would even say maybe the prescription that we have, it's a patriarchal framework, it's a patriarchal model.

And no, I think when you look at Genesis, Genesis 2, and you see what the purpose of woman is, it's to be a helper, she's a helper.

By definition, that's what she is. The female essence is being an assistant, a helper to the male.

Now, you go to somewhere like the New Testament where the gospel has become clear in the revelation of the

Son of God, and you have Paul saying things like in Ephesians 5 .25,

husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. Now, what Paul's doing there is he's basically encouraging, commanding marriages to image the dynamic of the gospel.

And that dynamic really between Christ and his church. And you can't get away from a patriarchal model when you look at the dynamic between Christ and his church.

The church has no authority over Christ.

Like in no sense can you say that that is the case. In no sense can you say that the church has an authority over Christ, or that Christ submits to the church and the church submits to Christ such that there's this kind of weird mutual submission dynamic.

I don't think you can find that anywhere in the dynamic that's revealed to us in the scriptures between Christ and his church.

And since we have that clearer revelation, I mean, you can look back in Genesis 2 and see the very rudimentary marriage, and all of this is grounded in that, of course.

But I think with the clear revelation of the gospel, it becomes even more detailed for us and even more obvious.

Look, we're looking at a relationship between a Lord and his bride.

And today you would never make the cultural mistake of saying, well, husbands should be referred to as Lord by their wives, right?

But back in the Old Testament, that's what was happening. I mean, Sarah called Abraham Lord. And I think in that you have a picture of Christ as Lord to his church.

And you have that little pictures, little images of that in human marriage. We don't like to think about the fact that the term mister is actually short form for master either.

We have these archaic kind of ideas that have been distilled into terms we use now that we would really bristle at that.

Talk to me though about, here's the obvious question. So, hey, that's great. We're supposed to, you're advocating the patriarchy.

How does that work out in your marriage? You just boss your wife around and she's barefoot pregnant in the kitchen? How does this actually make for a marriage that is stronger through something like the pandemic we're seeing now?

Right, well, if you wanna talk about mutuality, what is going to make this work, what's gonna make marriage work is a mutual understanding of scriptures.

And if you wanna talk about mutual submission, don't talk about mutual submission to one another so much as you should be talking about mutual submission to the scriptures.

So in my own marriage, Christy and I, we do family worship and we encourage people at our church to do family worship.

We've tried to model, as imperfect as it is, we've tried to model our household after that which we see in the scriptures.

And so by God's grace, really our authority has become the Bible. It wasn't like that at first.

And it's still not perfect, we still have sin. But when I think both parties, both spouses have the same understanding of the word of God and its placement in the life of the

Christian and both submit to it as God's speaking to them through it, then you're referencing it, right?

So if I, we've kind of set a precedent in our house now where if I'm talking to my wife and there's something in our household that needs to change, whether it be something that's going on with the boys, we have two sons at home, one's a year old, one's a two year old, something needs to change in regards to their schedule, their sleeping arrangements or something like that and I wanna talk to my wife about that.

The reference point is no longer me. I'm not the standard and she understands that, right?

It's the scriptures. And so when I wanna talk to my wife about something and I want to see something change in the house, it's because I'm seeing something in the

Bible that has convicted me that that should be the case. And yeah, she does.

She needs to know why, you know? And this is a very practical example that I'm giving. I mean, let's say you have a conflict in the marriage because the husband wants one thing to be one way and the wife wants that same thing to be another way, her way, right?

Well, you do owe it to one another in some respect to get into the text of scripture, which is why

I think family worship is so important, you know, that the husband is actually taking on a pastoral role.

Right. And he needs to see himself as a kind of pastor leading the congregation of his household.

Because if you're not on the same, you know, if the scriptures aren't central, if the authority is not

God coming through the husband to lead the household in a godly or holy direction, then you're gonna have a breakdown at that point.

And I think what you're seeing in a lot of egalitarian -ish, maybe semi -complementarian marriages is you're seeing people that they're not, they will, you know, verbally they'll profess scripture to be the authority, right?

The ultimate authority in their faith and practice. But in practice, it's not. Right. Really, they're wanting something different than what the clear word of God says.

And that's where problems arise when that begins to happen. And we've both seen this,

I'm sure, men who tend to be, I mean, sometimes the old term that you hear used, which we would never, of course, say is henpecked, but we see men who have kind of, they've given up.

And maybe they haven't gotten, they're a good Christian, they don't wanna get a divorce, but practically speaking, that's kind of what they've done.

They have their hobbies now, they leave the marriage, let the wife run everything, and it's devastating.

They're miserable. I mean, the only peace they find is in a tree stand or on the golf course or something like that, and they can't actually find it in their home, which is the opposite.

Home, I mean, you look at, you know, there's a verse I was gonna share later, but I'll share it now from Ecclesiastes chapter nine.

It actually talks about, it says, enjoy your life with your wife whom you love all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun.

She, it says, and I know some translations say this differently, but she is your reward, essentially, for your labor, is the sense there.

And, you know, she's not a reward anymore if you just can't wait to get out on the golf course.

She's something you're trying to avoid. And so it's not, you know, when you're forced in a pandemic now to come together, and you can't go on the golf course, of course that's gonna lead to abuse.

And men, I'm sorry, this is just a fact, biologically, men are stronger. And even if you could be as egalitarian as you want, if you lose your temper and you're stronger, we know what happens.

So it sounds to me like what you're saying, this is incredible wisdom, really, is that, you know,

Jesus had a, he had power under control. And men who are emulating him under the authority of God understand that there's someone above them that they are accountable to.

So if you remove that, then of course you're in a free fall. Of course, there's no accountability. Of course, there will be abuse.

But if you take your responsibility and, you know, like Jesus, you sacrifice for your wife and you realize at the end of the day,

God's the one that will hold me accountable, it's a beautiful thing. It's the way to get things to work. And I think what's helpful is to understand, you know, if you look at maybe the three different spheres of the

Christian reality, if you can say it with that kind of imperfect language, and you think of those three different spheres as three different households, really, you have the actual, the household proper, which is the home, you have the church, and you have, you know, out there, you have the world, you have, and then out there, you have a bunch of different complicated kinds of relationships.

But if you could just kind of summarize the whole nine households, you know, the home, the church, and society outside of both, you know, look at the church, for example, no one would deny that there is kind of a, well, maybe they would, but there is a patriarchal model of the church.

I mean, if you think about the idea of a pastor and the idea of elders, right? We even call them elders.

And, you know, going back to the Old Testament, elders, and just ancient society in general, elders were the patriarchs.

They were the ones who maintained the order of their village, of their particular societies.

And we make allusion to that kind of a relationship, even within ecclesiology, within the doctrine of the church, where our elders, our pastors are referred to as elders.

They are the ones that Christ has instituted to maintain order within his bride, specifically within local churches, and to administer the word and sacrament or ordinance.

And I don't think, I think what you have in the home is you have a smaller, albeit no less important version of that, where the man is a pastor of his family, and men are not doing the hard work.

And what you just alluded to this earlier, men are not doing the hard work of pastoring their family.

They'd rather be out on the golf course. And so this is an issue that now extends to both men and women, and the children of the home.

Men are the one tasked with fixing this problem. And it really requires a husband and wife to both be regenerate and to submit to the authority of God's word.

But the onus, just like going back to Adam and Eve, is on men, right? Eve ate the fruit first, but Adam really takes the brunt of the blame for that.

He was not leading her. He did not responsibly correct her. He did not rebuke her. He went along with her.

And in fact, he submitted to her instead of her submitting to him. And so the roles were reversed, even there in those earliest chapters of the

Bible. And I think what you're seeing now is you're seeing men who are just checking out, but that's really symptomatic of really them not wanting to do the hard work.

Pastoring is hard. I mean, it's hard work to pastor a church. It's hard, or sometimes even harder work to pastor your family.

Well, you have to build trust. It's like cultivating a garden. You know, if you get pressed in a spot, you need food now, and you didn't do any cultivation, then that's gonna show.

And, you know, we're seeing that. So let's get started. Let's fill the ground. Let's, you know, you know what to do.

I wanted to share kind of my story, like you shared yours, and then take some questions, because I think we've discussed some really good things.

You've shared some really good principles, I think. And then I wanna just talk about, and I'll try to weave this through my story, how these principles kind of motivated me.

And I did not do things perfectly. I did not. But I was, I will say this, I was a Christian during my dating and courtship years.

And I wrote, this is interesting. I was telling you this before we started recording, but 10 years ago, I wrote this blog called

Isaac and Rebecca, Four Principles for a Prosperous Partnership. And it was my most popular blog until like last year, because, or maybe two years ago or so.

But it was like, for a long time, it was what people read when they went to my blog. And the four principles were this. Fighting to be equally yoked.

And so being sort of one purpose, we often hear 2 Corinthians 6 .14 quoted, and being unequally yoked is a bad thing.

Of course, that's not just talking about marriages, that's talking about relationships in general. But to be bound to someone, to be of one purpose with someone is important.

So if you're gonna marry someone, make sure there's someone that, you have the same kind of philosophy as far as raising kids.

I mean, most people, even my wife was shocked at this. They think it's terrible in some ways. But look, within a month of dating my wife,

I was asking her about joint bank accounts. What she thought just freaked her out. And I'm not saying people need to do that, but just think in those terms though.

Like what does she think about money? What does she think about these things? Are you on the same page?

And then forming no provision for the flesh. And so I wanna, I'll take a little brief kind of pause here until I get to the next one.

So this is something I struggled with for a long time because I started out with a very idealistic kind of courtship model.

And I thought there should absolutely be no provision for the flesh whatsoever, holding hands even.

I don't know about that. And so I know my dad, I thought, gave me some good advice.

He was like, just think about whether you would do it with a sister. If you would do it with your sister, it's probably okay. And there are certain things we even see in scripture, even kissing, there's a kiss that you can do on the cheek or whatever, maybe even on the lips in some cultures.

And it's not necessarily a sensual thing. It's just, it doesn't have to be, is what

I'm saying. I'm telling people to do that. But there are things you can do rather than get into this bunker mentality and be miserable.

But sensual things, and we know what those are that get you going kind of, those are not wise.

I knew that. And I knew God, again, the telos, God made that for marriage.

There's a boundary there. And so I sort of fluctuated between that and then

I got into some situations where, and this is where authority comes in, where I was sort of in the dating scene and the girls

I was dating, their parents didn't really care. I tried even to get parents to care, talk to the fathers.

Hey, I'm interested in your daughter. I just want you to know, I wanna be accountable to you. I would say these kinds of things.

And I think some fathers thought I was weird before that. I remember one time going to a girl's pasture because the father was kind of absent.

And I was just like, hey, could you give me some advice and help me? And what I found was, where I was at least, this was a foreign concept, to have the father or the pastor keeping you accountable for how you were treating a girl.

And I'm not blaming them for this, and I was a virgin when I got married, but I definitely exceeded the boundaries that I had set up for myself.

And it happened sort of one little inch at a time. Wasn't all in one shot, but it was the lack of authority did not help.

And then it's really, if you get yourself in a position where you're alone with a girl and there's no accountability,

I think it's inevitable, honestly. If you're attracted to one another, it's gonna happen. You're gonna wind up in a compromised place.

And so I'm just bringing that up as advice to people who are considering dating. It's like, try to get some kind of authority.

And we live in a very non -ideal world. It may not be the father. You may try to go to the pastor, but find someone that even you could call, just to say, look,

I wanna call you after my dates. I just wanna make sure that I'm... So anyway, not to preach on.

I don't know if you have any thoughts on that before I move on with my story. Well, yeah, I mean, I think that's, again, I made allusion to the local church earlier.

I think being within that context, you have a great number of resources that have the potential to keep you accountable.

And from just members of the church to pastors, to leaders, if you do that kind of thing, the local church is so valuable in that respect.

I think that that's probably the first place that someone should probably look for that kind of accountability.

Because you're right. I mean, I went to my wife's dad to ask her hand in marriage. And it was like one of the most awkward conversations

I've ever had, just because I don't think he even expected me to do that.

Right. And so he basically ended up saying, well, you're both adults, so I guess you just do whatever you want.

And part of me was saying, no, you're not supposed to do that. You're supposed to be more challenging than that.

You know, investigate me, you know? So yeah, it is a foreign kind of a concept, but authority, you know, and especially the authority of the faith community,

I think is a huge, huge piece that needs to be seen as essential within those kinds of relationships.

You know, many fathers, I've noticed this, it's not just fathers, mothers too, but they wanna be the best friends of their kids when they get to a certain age, and they're afraid,

I don't want my kid to rebel. So I'm gonna make sure that they have maximum freedom and establish this kind of trust, but sometimes that trust is not merited yet.

And so, you know, it is a scripture that was sent to me last night, which is a good one. This is sort of a model for marriage.

Let your fountain be blessed. This is from Proverbs chapter five. Let your fountain be blessed and rejoice in the wife of your youth.

As a loving hind and graceful doe, let her breast satisfy you at all times. Be exhilarated always with her love. And so there's a proper place for that.

And then in contrast, verse 20, for why should you, my son, be exhilarated with an adulteress and embrace the bosom of a foreigner?

So it's obvious what's being spoken about there. There is a context for physical intimacy and a father's supposed to guard that.

But what I've seen is oftentimes the father doesn't want to come across as to, he doesn't wanna be the shotgun guy sitting there.

He wants them to go have a good time and be the best friend. And he's afraid of that rebellion because he knows if he doesn't want that guy in their life, that maybe she'll rebel.

Maybe she'll just leave the family and you don't want that. And so they kind of advocate their authority.

And I would just encourage anyone listening, if you're a father, please don't do that. It's much more important that your daughter, she needs your input.

You're the other male in her life and you actually have your responsibility to protect her in this situation.

Just because a guy comes across squeaky clean doesn't mean he is. And those guys can fall into sin.

Anyway, parental involvement. I'm sure you agree with that. So in my story, one ended up, oh,

I was doing the principle. So I already did two. This is actually what we were talking about.

Formulating wise counsel was the third one. And not from peers only, get godly counsel from actual people you respect.

Is this someone who matches me? When you're in the situation, you don't see it as well. And then try to find

God's purpose in it as best you can. I don't mean being mystical, but really the other three things that I just mentioned.

If you see that people in your life who you trust and that love God are saying this is a good fit, and we're talking from a guy's perspective here, but it could go either way.

If you're seeing that your potential spouse lines up with you in purpose, then why not go for it?

If she feels like a reward or he feels like a reward, then hey, get married.

And what do you think, I'll pause it for a minute, get your take on this. What do you think of long dating or long engagements?

Once you come to the decision, you know this is the person you wanna marry, what do you think about letting that kind of sit there for a year or more?

A lot of people do it. Yeah, yeah, and I think the reason behind why a lot of people do it is because they're afraid of the commitment, which that's a bad reason.

Again, and it goes back to the kind of test drive mentality. It's like, well, and I think it's the opposite of love at that point.

If your claim is I love this person, I wanna be involved in this person's life and I wanna invest in this person, but then you're like, whoa, no commitment, no strings attached,

I can't be tied down to this person because just what if something goes bad? I think it's an incredibly superficial way to look at relationships.

And so I don't know, I don't think you can put a timeline on it and really define that parameter as far as how long you're dating or courting.

But I think what really needs to be maybe the criteria, if you will, is how long is it going to take for you to identify the similitude?

You're talking about it. Are you on the same page with a lot of these things? And it takes time to explore a lot of those things and to uncover some very important facets of life that are going to really affect your future marriage and your children in the future.

So I think it takes some time to do that, but it's reasonable. It's not, you're not putting it off for a year, two years, and you're actively talking about these things, right?

During this time, you're having meaningful conversations, conversations that matter. And so hopefully it wouldn't take all that long to really find these really important things out.

Aquinas, Thomas Aquinas said that love really begins with a union of similitude.

And I think a lot of people have been taught to really think about love in emotional terms. And so they relate those similarities to something that's superficial.

Well, it's like asking about money and things like that. Well, you don't wanna have those kinds of conversations.

That's not right. Right, yeah, it's not fun. It's not right. It's not emotionally, it's not conducive to emotional impulse and things like that.

But the medievals, and even I think the reformers and the post -reformed, great theologians along the way have said really a true intimate spousal love begins with your similarities.

And so that's okay. And it's very important because if that's where love, if that's where a spousal love begins, that principle is a union of similitude, and that's not right, then you're looking at some major problems down the road.

Yeah, if you just have the warm fuzzies like Hollywood stars do, and something like this pandemic comes along and you're struggling,

I mean, it'll fall apart. That's not a foundation for anything. So yeah, I mean, I agree with everything you just said.

For my story, I'll just give my biography now, how I met my wife and then how I pursued that.

And I don't wanna build a theology office, but Christ pursued the church, right? We love him because he first loved us.

And so my thinking is that it's been the tradition until very recently in Western culture, the man is the one who initiates and proposes.

And it doesn't mean the woman can't make herself available, but I mean, the man takes the lead.

And so I did ask, I was the first one to start communication with my wife.

I met her at, it was like a college career group. And I was actually living in another state.

It was right before I left to go to seminary. And so I'm sort of doing this long distance, but whenever I came back up,

I started to just have a day where I would do things with her. And so I asked her if she wanted to have coffee with me and we got coffee and we became exclusive as far as like eventually, when we wanted to make that decision,

I'm not advocating that you do that right away, but we knew that we had enough similarities, enough foundation that we wanted to pursue a relationship.

And we asked the hard questions, the financial, parenting, all those kinds of things, made sure our faith, we would talk theology.

We didn't just do that, we had fun too, but we made sure, I actually composed a list and I got some help from online, but I added my own questions of over 100 questions to ask.

Yeah. Compatibility, probably free. That's good, that's good. And every time we would do a phone call, which was probably good for another reason, just cause you can't do anything really physically wrong over a phone call, we would go over like maybe five or 10 of those questions, however many, and then the next time we'd go over more.

So we did that for like maybe two months and then eventually over time

I moved back up and I got into a place where I thought, this is the woman I wanna marry. I did marry her,

I did ask her father's permission to do that, we had a one -on -one talk about it, he was very gracious.

And then I pushed for a short engagement, unfortunately, because we live in the

Northeast, so I didn't engage in like late fall, something like that. So we wanted a spring wedding, so it was a little longer than I wanted, but we got married next

May and it wasn't too long. And I noticed during that time though, there were issues that came out that, because the commitment was now there, that hadn't been there before.

So we had to work through those, we went to premarital counseling, like you were just talking about. And I just advise anyone who's gonna go through this and try to get married, like if you're on the other end of this and you haven't approached that yet, make sure that you have premarital counseling, that's really important.

Make sure that you kind of know what you want first, if you can. I mean, that means that you're gonna be friends with other females, if you're a man, if you're a woman, friends with other guys, not in a group settings, mind you, but get to know people, so you kind of know what you're looking for.

And then don't have too much pressure at the beginning, you're just getting to know someone. But then when you make that step of,

I wanna pursue the possibility of marriage with that person, be honest, be open, find authority, make sure that they compliment you spiritually, that you would trust them raising your kids, those kinds of things.

And then once you know, just get married. Don't put yourself in temptation, because I know that was, once we got engaged,

I think the temptation expanded quite a bit, because like, well, we're gonna get married anyway. So we had our boundaries though, our physical boundaries, and we did,

I think, a pretty good job for the most part of keeping those when we felt like we were gonna go over, we would put more boundaries in place and things like that, but we got married and we're happily married now for four years almost.

And so that's my story for those who listened to the podcast and didn't know. So yeah, that's,

I don't, now Josh and I know each other better as well. I wanna take some questions if you're up for it,

Josh, about marriage, and I'll ask you the first one. So I pulled them up here on Twitter.

So I asked people, I said, do you have any questions for us? We're gonna talk about this topic. Here's the first question.

I'm not sure exactly what that means. Paula Hadrowski asks, how do you do this when children attend college out of state?

I think she's talking about accountability. So if your kid's in college and they're dating, how do you keep them accountable long distance?

What do you think about that? Oh gosh. Experientially, I'm not there yet, so I can't really answer from experience, but I guess

I can kind of take a doctrinal track here. Well, you are a pastor, so.

Right, yeah, I mean, why think about the Bible in this? But assuming, let's assume, because I don't know much about, you said her name was

Paula? Paula, yeah. Okay, I don't know much about her situation, but let's assume they're believers, right?

Her kids are believers. They're off to college. It may be the case where the parent, if they've moved out of the home, they're in a different state, that the parent doesn't have that direct accountability over them that they would if they were still in the home or whatever.

But I think what the parents need to be encouraging, they're believing children especially to be part of a local church.

Again, the instrumentality of the local church there and being directly accountable, and then the parents at least being able to maybe make a trip out and visit and be able to meet their person of interest and have a conversation with them.

But what's important is that, like you said, I think you said this earlier where it might be the case where the parents aren't or can't be directly accountable to their children in that kind of a scenario.

I think what really helps in that situation is the local church. I mean, that way they can have authority, whether it be their pastor or friends within the church.

And not only that, but if they do move away and go to college and they're encouraged to join a local church and do, it's possible they'll meet their future spouse within the context of the church, which is -

Yeah, that's good. Again, that's ideal. Church steps in. Yeah. And maybe a parent can just be part of that process of helping find a church ahead of time.

I see this a lot. I mean, I live next to a big Christian college. How many kids come and just church hop and they had no clue before they came what church they might be interested in going to?

And it amazes me a little bit, but I think people assume it's a Christian college. All those boundaries will be there, and of course they'll find a church.

Like, no, if you're a parent, you should probably help out at the very least if you can in that process.

So - For sure, yeah. No, the parents need to be involved. I think that's so important.

That's something we've almost completely lost in our society, is the idea of actually the father giving his daughter in marriage.

Like that. Oh, yeah. Yeah, isn't that right? I mean, that's, and even the family having an involvement as to who that person is that they give the woman to, you know, that's totally a foreign concept.

It would be seen as oppressive. It would be seen as like a total, you know, kind of, if you watch any movie, any movie with like, that concerns a love story, especially like period pieces, like, you know, you're talking about a lot of Jane Austen -

Right. Remakes and stuff like that. The idea of the father being directly invested in who the woman is going to marry is always demonized.

Like, it's always seen as this terrible, oh, you know, I need to go and be with whoever I want to be with, and I need to get away from this terrible oppressive lifestyle.

Have you noticed this every single medieval movie, and I mean like every single one made in the last like 40 years, has two themes.

Sometimes they're together, sometimes it's one or the other, but the themes are, number one, I want to marry for love.

And then the parents are like, what is tradition and responsibility? Right. And then the other theme in every medieval movie is let the people decide.

It's like, let the people decide. It's always the king. And then it's like, no, I have a great idea. So it's democracy and smashing patriarchy.

Every single one. And my wife will watch these and I walk in and I'm like, yep, they're going to say, I know what they're going to say.

They're going to say, you know, the daughter's going to say marry for love and she's going to convince the dad. So anyway. Right, right, right.

Where were we? Oh yeah. All I have to say is authority, you know, the local church, play a part in that, get involved in your children's relationships, you know, and, you know, they're going to be the instances where the kids are like, you know, mom, dad, you're just prying into the, you know, not your business or whatever.

It doesn't have to be like that. That's not the kind of involvement we're talking about. We're not talking about like a nagging, like buzzing, hovering kind of,

I got to know everything, you know, every little detail about what's, you know, and this kind of like caricatured version of authority that you see in Hollywood.

But just count wise counsel, being a great discipleship, you know, and this, gosh, you know, you and I, John, can talk about this for another couple of hours, because really this goes back to parenting in general, because if you don't sow the seeds earlier for that kind of involvement, and then all of a sudden you try to get involved in their relationship, it's going to be like, well, that's totally what you said, that was a raise,

I don't care about this, you know, and you're going to have a rebellion and all that. So gosh, this opens up into a really larger conversation of parenting.

We'll go to the next question instead of getting into that. So here's the next one from a man. This is a good question.

This is from Emma, the reformed Christian blogger. I like her already. From a man's perspective, how do you think ladies should handle dating courtship?

What is required expected of us that we may truly honor and obey the Lord through such a relationship?

For example, is submission still important? And she follows it up with also any advice for single young Christian women who would like to be married someday.

So we're talking about much of this from a male perspective, but from a female perspective, okay, so I'm just going to give you the scenario because I've seen this many times.

You get tired if you're a female of sitting around and waiting for that Prince Charming to come by or just anyone sometimes.

I mean, if you have any standards at all, it can get discouraging because you're like, I don't want these, you know, 30 year old, you know, basement dwelling gamer types when

I just want a man of God who's strong. Like everything you said, John, that's what I want. I don't know where they exist.

Like, what do I do? And how do I pursue that? I don't want to initiate and be like a feminist, right?

Like sometimes there's a subversion that if you can be too aggressive, what do you do? Gosh. Well, you met your wife online.

I thought maybe you'd go for that. Well, I mean, we have some singles in our church now that are experiencing that very same, that very same kind of situation.

And, you know, there's a, it's good to have the desire there.

It's also good to have that desire be accompanied with patience and long -suffering. And by that,

I mean biblical patience and biblical long -suffering, not something that we take and redefine. But with your expectations, just make sure your expectations are substantive, right?

Like don't, try not to have arbitrary expectations. Have substantive, meaningful expectations that really are intended for, you know, they're really intended for the long -term.

They're really intended for - So no like Brad Pitt, John MacArthur hybrids?

Yeah. Yeah, I would say that's probably not a very good, that's probably not a very good standard there.

But yeah, I mean, with that said, you do need to have standards. Just make sure they're substantive, biblical, you know, at least consistent with scripture standards.

You know, don't make it harder. And what I'm trying to say is don't make it harder on yourself than it really is.

Now, with that being said, it is difficult because as a female, you're not wanting to play with a heavy hand and go out there and start, you know, asking guys you like out on dates because that's kind of like flipping the tables a little bit, right?

But I think there are ways to at least, you know, especially if you're social, if you're not social, that makes this even harder.

But if you're able to get out in a group setting with friends and, you know, it's mixed companies, it's both men and women together, fellowshipping, you know,

Bible studies and things like that where, you know, you'd be at least confronted with the opportunity to let people know that you're available, you're not, you know, seeing anyone else.

And some guys just assume, you know, like, oh, you know, it's not even worth asking because she's probably already, you know, she's probably already taken.

That does happen, ladies. It does. Yeah, yeah. And even like, even guys that are honest, well -meaning dudes, you know, they just make the assumption and they, you might interpret them to be jerks, but really they're just saying like, well, she's probably not even available, you know?

Yeah, you know, there's a few things that I was thinking of when you were saying that. Obviously the online thing, I don't necessarily recommend it, but it's like you said, like it can be used.

It can be used, yeah. You gotta be careful with it. It's a tool. Right. Much better to use that as a tool to then transition to actual like getting to know the person on a physical level, not bad physical level, like not online.

Yeah, you know what I mean? Yeah. So that's one part of this.

The other part of this, and this is a hard reality here, but I almost hate to say it, but God does not always provide a spouse.

I used to have this idea and I still want to have it to be honest, but I just can't, that, hey, if God gives you the desire and if you do everything right, like you're pure and everything, there's that idea that, hey, as long as I'm pure, like God's gonna provide someone, like not necessarily.

He may have a different plan for you. And Jesus himself did not get married. So marriage is ideal.

It is part of God's created order, but there are exceptions to that. And we see that throughout time. And so the question is, are you serving

God where you're at and leaving that to him? Yeah, not idolizing the prospect, right?

Because I think it's easy for people who are alone to really idolize the companionship, to go beyond the desire and kind of idolize that possible companionship that you could have.

And then you're totally distracted from the task at hand, which is where God has you, right?

Which is the best place to meet people is, you look into your right or left and you find someone doing what you're doing.

To hear him out, yep. Here's another question. I find that dating couples and married spouses have difficulty being

Christ -like in their conflict with one another. What are your thoughts on biblical conflict resolution that honors and glorifies Christ?

Maybe share examples where you have put that into practice. So biblical conflict resolution?

Yep. You know, this goes back, I think I kind of mentioned this earlier where if you're both believers, you both, if we're gonna talk about mutual submission, talk about mutual submission to the scriptures.

And then when a conflict arises, I know my wife and I have done this plenty of times where we can't get on the same page about something.

And ultimately it came down to me saying, hey, we're gonna sit down, we're gonna have a concentrated discussion.

We're not gonna be distracted. We're not gonna be on our phones. We're not gonna be chasing the kids around. We're gonna put them in the crib or whatever.

And then we're gonna sit down, here's the scriptures, here's the Bible, and we're gonna go through this and we're gonna figure it out.

A lot of it comes down to having that meaningful time of communication. We live such distractive lifestyles.

I think even I would consider myself as one who has a pretty slow lifestyle. But even in my situation, there's so many distractions.

And to have that concentrated time of communication with your spouse, even when you don't perceive the need, but just to do it, even recreationally to some extent, and get to know each other more.

Conversation really is the way into one another's hearts, way to uncover one another and learn about one another.

And so the more that that can take place, I think you're looking at a reduction in conflict. But when the conflict does arise, it needs to be handled.

I mean, the old proverb, don't let the sun go down on your anger, I think is a legitimate one. And you need to be zealous to reconcile with one another.

And the only way that reconciliation is going to happen is if both parties are willing to communicate, willing to, especially,

I know with my wife and I, we're both strong personalities. And so we got on the complimentary and trained pretty quickly.

But growing past that, talking about more of like patriarchy and being able to be seen as the leader of the household, it took some time because we, not in theory, we were both okay with it in theory, but in practice, because we both have strong personalities, that took some time to iron out.

And you both need to be clear. And you both need to have trust in one another and then sit down and have those conversations.

And the husband needs to be willing to be the initiator, to pull together that conversation, have the scriptures ready, and appeal to God for that kind of conflict resolution.

Again, he's the pastor in the household. He's the pastor of the household. He needs to be able to go to the scriptures and be able to resolve conflict in that manner.

Yeah, that's good. The only thing I'd add, because I agree with everything you said, is that I've seen this example that's common, unfortunately, where husbands and wives, families even, will have a problem of some kind that comes up.

And sometimes they'll wait too long. They know it's a problem and then it just blows, it just becomes this huge thing that it didn't need to be.

Explodes, there you go. Boils over. And then what happens is they air their feelings, very feelings -based, and then nothing gets resolved and they all just kind of brush it under the carpet and then move on with their life until it comes up again in another form somewhere else.

And I've seen families, I've seen spouses that live that way and it's like they don't know another way or maybe that's just the only thing,

I don't know, that's how they live. But that technically, that is dysfunction, whether you know it or not, that's dysfunctional communication.

And like you just said, we're not supposed to let the sun go down on our anger. And so I know what

I try to do, and this is, my wife has been very good with me on this, is whenever there's a problem that comes up,

I wanna nip it in the bud. And sometimes I know it takes, look, darling, I need to spend a few moments, maybe an hour,

I need to go on a walk, I need to think through this. And sometimes we do that, but with the assurance every time, like I don't wanna talk about it now, but I'm committed to, we are going to do this and we're gonna do it soon, like before we go to bed.

And so it's been like that in every one of my conflicts with my wife that I can remember,

I will, we always take that tact. Sometimes we'll talk about it right away, sometimes we'll take a few minutes, but we will talk about it within that hour or the next two hours or something like that.

And sometimes our conversations will go on for hours, but we're really trying to get at the root it caused. We're thinking about it, not just feeling, we're thinking.

And sometimes I have to make concessions or admit I was wrong, or sometimes she doesn't like the decision, the final decision that I make, but she knows that she needs to live with it because, and maybe it'll blow up in my face, but we work through it that way.

That's very similar to our situation. Is it? Okay. Yeah, I mean from the - Oh no, gosh.

When we first got married. Are you there? And after that, I've been very adamant to say, yeah, yeah,

I'm still here. Can you hear me? Yeah, no, no, no, you just broke up for a minute. So, no, I heard what you said. It's very similar. Yeah, I've been adamant to uncover, really try to uncover the deeper issues even on that same day and try to figure out what's causing whatever conflict we're experiencing.

And then we make decisions moving forward. And you're right. I mean, sometimes you do have to, I think a lot of people have this view of the patriarchy where the male is never wrong and they never make concessions and they just rule with this iron fist.

And it's like, well, no, not really because I've been wrong a lot. Like I'm living proof of that and having to apologize to my wife and seek her forgiveness.

And, but decisions do have to be made, right? And those conversations are the only way that right decisions, if they're going to be right at all, are going to be made without having those conversations, without being willing to, even if it's things that are nagging, like maybe they haven't really presented themselves as an issue yet explicitly, it's important to have your finger on things that you think might potentially turn out to be an issue later on.

Yes. And to be able to enter into conversations about those things and express your needs to one another without you guys getting offended.

Right. In my experience, I don't know if this is like the same way for you, but in dating or courtship, things tend to, especially in the beginning, when you're in that, they call it infatuation, but when things are new, you're not going to have as many conflicts.

It's going to be like, you're so great, you're so great. Oh, you like that? I like that too. And then somewhere along the line, you get familiar and then that's when you start to see conflicts arise over things.

Generally, if you're in that phase, dating, courting, and you start to see dysfunctional communication or there's an unwillingness to resolve issues, like you might want to pause and don't think for a minute it gets better in marriage and that you just get married, like these problems will take care of themselves.

I've heard that. It's not true. No, that is not true, that is not true. That's why there's premarital.

You gotta make sure that you have those ducks lined up before marriage if you can. That's why there's post -marital because sometimes it doesn't just, you know, issues, these issues don't just go away.

That's right. And marriage isn't some magical sacrament that's going to just do away with all those things.

So if you have problems, fissures in the relationship now, yeah, you're right. Put it on pause, seek some counsel, get to the bottom of it.

So there's one more question before we end and I think I know the answer. Flirt to convert, question mark?

Yeah, no. Yeah, no, yeah, no, no. You don't flirt to convert. I know people that have done that and it worked out but they would admit that they were in the wrong and that they knew now or then what they knew now they would never have done.

Yeah, yeah. There we go. All right, Josh, how can people find your podcast if they wanna listen to your material?

Yeah, thanks for asking. You can find it on the website, joshsummer .org. I have a YouTube channel as well.

If you just search Josh Summer, I should be one of the first ones that pops up there. My podcast is on Anchor which means it's also on iTunes so you can look up Summercast and find it on either.

And yeah, that's it. Josh, you mainly talk about what like cooking and crafts I think.

Scrapbooking actually. Oh, okay. If you wanna know more about scrapbooking, you can go. Josh. I'm a total theology nerd.

So you're gonna, but you know, with the aim of applying that theology. So it's not a lot of, it's not, everything's not theoretical.

Some of it is, some of it's philosophical but I do try to work to apply the theory.

Awesome. I want everyone listening to this to send this to A .D. Robles on Twitter or Facebook, however you're connected with him and just tell him that Josh and John solved all the problems with dating and courtship without his help.

Yep, yep. All right, Josh. Thank you. God bless you. All right, brother. Thanks for having me on.