The Importance of Family Support

Warning, the following message may be offensive to some audiences. These audiences may include, but are not limited to, professing Christians who never read their

Bible, sissies, sodomites, men with man buns, those who approve of men with man buns, man bun enablers, white knights for men with man buns, homemakers who have finished

Netflix but don't know how to meal plan, and people who refer to their pets as fur babies. Viewer discretion is advised. People are tired of hearing nothing but doom and despair on the radio.

The message of Christianity is that salvation is found in Christ alone, and any who reject

Christ therefore forfeit any hope of salvation, any hope of heaven.

The issue is that humanity is in sin, and the wrath of Almighty God is hanging over our heads.

They will hear His words, they will not act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment, when the fires of wrath come, they will be consumed, and they will perish.

God wrapped Himself in flesh, condescended and became a man, died on the cross for sin, was resurrected on the third day, has ascended to the right hand of the

Father, where He sits now to make intercession for us. Jesus is saying there is a group of people who will hear

His words, they will act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment come in that final day, their house will stand.

Welcome to Bible Bash, where we aim to equip the saints for the work of ministry by answering the questions you're not allowed to ask.

We're your hosts, Harrison Kering and Pastor Tim Mullett, and today we'll answer the age -old question, should

Christians desire to live close to their parents? Now Tim, as we kick this episode off, what

Bible verse do you have for us related to children living close to their parents as they become adults?

Yes, so Genesis 2 24 says, Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.

So that's it. All right, so leave them, never look back, right? Basically don't talk to them ever again, right?

Yeah, don't be Lot's wife, right? Don't turn back. So essentially what

I'm learning here, what I'm hearing from you, Tim, is, you know, once I find a wife, ditch my parents, excommunicate them, never talk to them again, or I'll become a pillar of salt.

I mean, yeah. Okay, I feel like that can't be the answer. No, no.

Yeah, obviously, yeah. So obviously a man should fully take on the role of provider when he starts out his marriage, essentially.

So this used to be a common impulse that people had, where they thought of marriage as a fundamental leaving of their father and mother and taking on their roles.

You know, I think you have a lot of people right now. I interacted with a young lady on Twitter who basically was saying that that was not her non -negotiable anymore, because like that a man would be fully able to provide for her because the economy is so bad.

I mean, I think, yeah, the economy has always been bad, and, you know, at the risk of sounding like a boomer, even though I'm a millennial.

Yeah, I mean, the economy has always been bad, and, you know, surely a man has some kind of responsibility to take on this role of provider.

And, you know, there's times in history that are where it's more difficult to do that than others.

But, yeah, I mean, certainly you should make a break from being financially supported by your parents.

Sure, yeah. Typically that's going to involve having your own place of residence. I mean, it's almost – you could see – so what

I mean is like there's going to be a leaving their house kind of thing. Right. I mean, people can react to that by basically saying that, you know, in biblical times they all lived in a similar geographic location.

Maybe the house was a larger house that was functioning kind of like a village or something along those lines and everything else.

Now, I mean, you do have to look at the current situation and think about the way that houses are set up.

And when people start off marriage being financially dependent on their parents from the beginning for their basic necessities, then what happens is the person who is paying the bills is going to be the one who is in charge, right?

Right. Yeah, so whoever is paying the bills is going to be in charge. And then typically what happens is you have your wife who has impulses to run her household in a particular way and your mom or, you know, your mother -in -law who has their own impulses.

Now, if it's her mother -in -law, then they're going to team up against you. If it's your mother -in -law.

You just multiplied your opposition, right?

Yeah. It's two on one. If it's your mom, then there's going to be, you know, a constant. You're trying to figure out how to.

They're going to pit each other against you, you know, or pit you against each other and force you to pick.

And that's just a nightmare. But yes, I think you should leave the house. You shouldn't be financially dependent on your parents.

I mean, I think in the best case scenario, as a generality, I'm able to generalize.

In general, I would say you should want to be around your parents. You should want to be around your parents, right? Yeah, you should want to be around your parents.

In an ideal world, you should want to be located close to them. I've always wanted to be close to my parents.

That's a good thing. If you don't have significantly bad relationships with your parents, you should want to be around them.

I think that's part of honoring them. So honor your father and mother so your days are long in the earth. I mean, certainly, there are marriages where two people pursue a long -distance relationship, and you're going to have to pick which parents to honor, you know, so there's messy situations you can find yourself in.

But as a standard basic impulse, you should want to be around your parents. It would be nice to be a part of their life.

It would be nice to have your grandchildren to be a part of their life.

Like, all those things are good. Those are things that should be the standard Christian impulse.

There shouldn't be so much bitterness that's in your heart and bitterness in your relationship where you're just like, man,

I need to get away from them. So if that's your standard posture, that's certainly not a good posture.

But then I can imagine some situations where you might need to leave, you know, kind of thing.

I mean, I can imagine some situations where you might need to leave. I can imagine situations where even though you don't have – they're not good influences on your children, they're trying to cause division between you and your wife.

I mean, I can imagine situations where you still want to be around them for the sake of honoring them. So I think

I have a pretty high standard of you need to leave, you know, for the sake of everyone's spiritual benefit.

I mean, I'm not a big fan of all the safe space kind of, you know, I need to set boundaries and protect myself, keep you at a distance because I'm unsafe, you know, and all that.

I feel like that's pretty crazy, like a pretty crazy way to think about these kinds of things in general.

But then, I mean, I can imagine some situations where they really are so evil to the point where, you know, it's not even helpful to be around them.

And then I can also imagine situations where life just takes you away. God in his providence opens doors that you need to walk through and not that you walk through every open door, but you know what may be desirable in certain ways isn't the wisest move.

So yeah. Right. I mean, I think as a general impulse, you should want to be around them for sure. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Because essentially, Hey, how do you, it's hard to honor your father and mother if you're, you know, hundreds or thousands of miles away from them.

Right. I mean, you still can. And like you said, there's probably, you know, situations where that's just not possible for one reason or another.

But in general, you should want to, at least want to be close to your parents for a ton of different reasons.

You know, as they get older, they're going to need, they're going to become more dependent on other people.

Right. To help take care of them. You're going to, you know, ideally, Lord willing, you're going to be having children.

So their grandchildren, you know, when it's good for them to see their grandchildren and the

Bible talks over and over about how that's a, you know, that's a great blessing. When, when people get to see their children's children.

And so there's just, there's a ton of, there's a ton of, not to mention, like, I mean, you do still get, assuming you're, you know, assuming your parents are, are able to, and they prioritize this, which they probably should, there is still significant support that comes from being close to your parents.

Right. I mean, I mean, you know, I can't tell you how many times my in -laws have, have been able to really help us out, you know, when, when we,

I mean, we had that fire, right. And, and so we had to go stay with them for like a week or two weeks just out of the blue, you know, because, because otherwise it would be,

Hey, you know, we got to spend a ton of money living in a hotel or something like that. And so, so, you know, part of it is just like, there's a benefit to you as well.

Right. Yeah. I mean, they bless you, you bless them. Right. So I think a lot of young parents, they don't have, this is particularly true.

I think on the mom side of things, they don't necessarily, they have impulses to love their family, but then they don't have necessarily impulses to love their husband's family.

So then, you know, they can be very protective of their children and they don't have impulses to necessarily share them with their, their extended family in the same way they may have impulses to share them with their own extended family.

So, so that, that often happens with ladies with their children to where they don't have inside of them this, um, like I really need to allow my grandparents to be grandparents, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. They think about it primarily in terms of they have a mom responsibility to protect their kids and there's nothing more to it than that, you know, but then grandparents have, they don't have the same rights to the children, but you know, if you act like they have no rights whatsoever to their grandchildren, then

I think you've significantly misunderstood the nature of why you exist, you know, basically.

Yeah. Yeah. Why, why this marriage was even possible was because you had people who spent, you know, 20 years basically or more, you know, at times less or more, but I mean a significant amount of time and resources changing diapers for your husband, getting your husband to a place where he could marry you, right?

Cleaning up his throw up, you know, I remember one time when I was sick, my dad, I, um, I walked out of the room and my dad was down there and then

I just kind of looked at him and then I just hurled all over the floor, you know, right in front of him and he just kind of looked at me and just shook his head and it was like, all right, go lay down.

I'll get the mop bucket. But I mean, I understand that because I've had the same reaction to my children when they puke like that.

It's just like, well, why couldn't you just make it a few? You know, then you're struggling internally to fight it and then you're like,

I'm being a jerk, you know? Yeah. Yeah. They couldn't help it, I guess. Maybe.

Why couldn't they help it? But it seems like they shouldn't, but you know, you're missing. I think, yeah, just you need to think about those kinds of things, you know, so a man can often be a lot more loyal to his mom than he should be, you know, then, you know, he has impulses to be more loyal to his mom and then they're fighting and all that.

But no, I think you should, you should, you really should. Yeah. Think to yourself that there are, there are some real response, like you have real responsibilities to them.