Calvinism and... Parenting?

Sometimes I feel the weight of the world fall down on me so heavily

And I need a friendly voice with some good theology

Calvinisticly speaking So I mix a manly drink Pepsi and shoe polish

And I hit the YouTube link Don't say hit, that sounds violent And I feel my troubles all melt away

Oh -oh -oh -oh -oh It's your Calvinist Podcast with Keith Borosky Beards and bow ties

Laughs till sunrise It's your

Calvinist Podcast with Keith Borosky He's not like most

Calvinists He's nice Your Calvinist Podcast is filmed before a live studio audience

Hey guys, it's Keith Foskey again And I'm here at the Why Calvinism Conference in Tullahoma, Tennessee And I am with my new friend

And we're sharing a house together We really are Aaron Brewster and I We've seen and known so much about each other that we've never imagined

Yeah May have to take that part out Laughs People may reinterpret that the wrong way

Don't, be good Laughs So, but Aaron it's been great to get to know you

And I just want to say You are, one of us is the Bizarro version of the other And for those who don't know

Bizarro is a Superman character where he lived in the Bizarro world And everything was backwards But he was the same as Superman But everything was slightly different And I say that because you are a martial artist

You have black belts in several arts Just like me You've done magic professionally Just like me

And you have, just, you're very quick witted And you're funny and smart

Don't forget about our rugged good looks Well I mean, there's that I'll give that one to you

I think I have a better beard We're the same Yeah, you do have a better beard Totally, you win Yeah So, but you also are a, you're a podcaster

Yep You have a show And your show is about parenting One of them Okay, so you have multiple shows

Tell the audience about yourself Okay, so I'm the president of Evermind Ministries And Evermind, we focus on multiple different things

And so Truth Love Family was my first podcast Well, Truth Love Parent was my first podcast

And we have over 500 episodes All dedicated to marriage and primarily parenting

But then I started the year -long Celebration of God And there was a year -long And the Celebration of God podcast

Which is about personal discipleship And worship of God Worshiping God better this year than I did last year So that was something you actually

In one of your last discussions Were talking a little bit about Sabbath And that's something that we've discussed And noodled through a little bit

And I'm a biblical counselor And I travel and speak and write Okay, is this your full -time position?

Yeah Okay, so your ministry is your full -time job Yes Now, are you a pastor anywhere as well?

Okay, so counseling, ministry, that's your Correct, yeah Counseling and writing

Awesome, awesome Well, we had talked a little bit about A question that you had And that was the question of How Calvinism works itself out practically

Can you flesh that out a little bit? Because I wanted us to Kind of talk a little bit about that There are two parts to this

One is I am a philosopher at heart Always have been And if you define philosophy as Why we do what we do

Then that's always a very important question And then within my ministry I love what we're doing here

Because I think the academic Obviously the academic side of things Knowing God And understanding these doctrines

And everything is very important But within the context of Biblical counseling, discipleship, one -anothering

There's always that additional step That we want to take And we want to say Okay, well how does this information change me?

How do I take this information And worship God better this year Than I did last year? And so that's always a question

That I'm seeking to answer just for myself And then if I have the privilege of You know, speaking to someone else's life

Help them to also grapple with And I was just considering Okay, so Calvinism Obviously lots of conversations about that On an academic level

Conversation with a Calvinist Exactly But how practical do we get?

Obviously I think people easily think to themselves Okay, well there's some practical application To evangelism There's other applications

But since so much of what I do Is within the realm of helping families Whether they're hurting or just growing

I was kind of just thinking about Alright, so what type of How can

I be a better father In light of the truths of Calvinism?

And so again, being a philosopher Just messing around with that My mind was going in much different directions Gotcha Now, and I want to get this right

Are you personally Calvinistic? Based on our conversations I think you said you're kind of not I would definitely say

Calvinistic For sure Within the Augustinian tradition Yeah We'll go with that Pat myself on the back on that I can claim that title

So in your mind then What would be the practical things That should work themselves out of Calvinism?

When we were talking earlier You mentioned a little bit about I think it was baptism

No, not baptism I think every parent grapples Oh, salvation of children That was with us

Yeah, yeah With this concept Okay, it's possible that I may be Bringing into this world a life

Who is going to reject the Lord And end up in hell, right? Who some people might argue

Would be destined to hell And so I think every single Christian parent

Has thought about that And I think so I was going to say I don't know that that's necessarily I'm not trying to cut you off I'm not sure that that's necessarily unique Yeah Not necessarily unique to Calvinism Because I think all believers have to say

You know, I'm having a child I don't know that they're going to come to faith I don't know if they're going to die in infancy

Or if they're going to die at 80 years old And what's going to happen in that So there's a... But I agree with that I see where Calvinism can go to another step

Yes Has God chosen this child Exactly And I guess my point was I was saying if I just put out I actually looked this up on Google I put in Calvinism and parenting

Just to see what came up And only one thing actually came up That even remotely fits

It was actually called Calvinistic child rearing But the article really only had anything to do

With just the original sin And the children's depravity So I was just imagining If I gave two...

If I pulled a word here And I pulled a word there And said Calvinism and parenting, go I imagine that most people would be like Oh, wow

And that consideration of having a child And how God's sovereignty works into all of that But is there something more?

Is there something that could affect Not just how I think about parenting Or my children But actually how

I parent my children And I'm really big One of the taglines for my podcast is

Parenting has nothing to do with us, the parents It actually has nothing to do with our children Parenting is an act of worship to God I need to parent the way

I parent Not because I'm hoping to get something for my kids Or I want something But because God says

This is how I need to parent So as I consider the sovereignty of God That obviously...

How I parent and why I parent And how I want to understand the scriptures And how I parent Has to go back to the fact that He deserves it

He absolutely needs to be the sole motivation for my parenting So then...

It's funny because in evangelism I talk about this It's something Piper said He said the reason why we evangelize

Is because there are people who aren't worshiping Who should be It's not only about going to heaven, right? It's about... God should be worshipped

He deserves to be worshipped Everybody should be worshipping Him So I'm going into the world to tell people There's a God who deserves your worship

And I always thought that was an interesting way of looking at it It sort of goes... Not quite the same but in similar view

It is very close Because it takes... It's just so easy for us to be self -focused Our parenting is we're trying to help our kids

To become this great thing And obviously there are really sinful motivations But this is bigger I literally...

It's like I said to somebody once Why do you love me? It gives real pain in the neck Why do you love me? And I said honestly

Because God tells me I have to Because you're not lovable, right? But I have to love you

And in a certain way I've got to parent my children a certain way As an act of worship to God I have to So I was going through Tulip And I was thinking to myself

Which of these actually has practical application In my parenting? And again, just light philosophy

A couple of them didn't It really is hard to apply limited atonement Or even irresistible grace to your parenting

Unless you want to start extrapolating out The necessity of our having grace with our children And so on and so forth But I think that's a stretch

And I think more so The idea of...

Which P do you use? I say perseverance at the same time I don't have a problem with it I know preservation is more...

People want to say preservation Because they don't want to make it feel like It's something we're doing But I just think if you think of perseverance

As something that God does as a gift of grace That we are able to persevere I normally go for perseverance as well

The concepts from James and everything So as a parent

I'm here at a conference And we're talking And none of the sessions have really been on perseverance

But as I'm thinking and meditating on these things One of the things I think we need to...

Aaron Bruce needs to be confronted with the fact Am I persevering in my faith

And is that reflected in my parenting? Is my parenting changing and growing As I'm being sanctified?

Am I worshiping God better in my parenting Now than I was a couple years ago?

Is my parenting a reflection Of the perseverance of this saint?

And I think that's something that... You stop and you think like that Conviction starts to set in You have more kids than I do, right?

You've got five? Six You have six kids I have ranging in age from 25 down to one

That's a spread My older two were adopted We adopted them when they were four and six years old

And our first natural child didn't come Until we'd been married for 12 years My wife and I were married in 99 And she didn't come until 2012

It's a long story But since then God has been gracious to give us children Every few years

And we think this is our last one We don't know Because God's in control of that But we're at six

So I think the cliche is And I don't know I have two So it's a little bit harder for me to tell But I think the cliche is that As you have more and more kids

Your parenting gets more and more pulled back The last child We don't have the rules

We don't give them the same consequences I mean, that's the cliche The stereotype, right? Yeah, they say the first one You put in a glass case

And the last one gets to juggle knives Exactly But the question we need to be asking ourselves is Is that last one going to be parented better Than the first one?

Because as Christians That's how it needs to be What are your thoughts? That we pull back?

No, no, no Not how are you doing? No, no I want to know how well you're doing No, no, no But I mean, that concept of Would you agree, though That in light of what sanctification is

And what God's doing in our lives You should be parenting this youngest one Better than you parented the first one? Oh, absolutely

I think, honestly I am a better father to Theodore Than I was to Justice That's my children growing up And I am a better father to Justice Than I was to Cody And I have three boys and three girls

So I'm just going through my boys Cody and I, we love each other And he's a great young man

And he's in the Air Force right now And we have a great relationship But I was a kid when I adopted him

You know, I was 25 And we adopted him and his sister And we loved them

But I was so new to everything And we didn't have to go Through the diaper stage

So I didn't get a run up Oh, that's right, yeah I had a kid who had Opinions and thoughts and sins

And vocabulary Yeah, right there And we loved them

And we fell in love with them The day we met them So we have such a great Wonderful relationship But I actually recently

Told my son this Because he's in Germany He's in the Air Force But he came home For a little while And was with us

And I actually took him aside It was just me and him And I said, yeah, I want you to know I'm sorry for where I failed you

I said, I know there are areas That I now have learned As a father To be a better dad

And I wasn't that with you As good as I should have been And I remember one time I even, from the pulpit admitted

One of the things I failed with him Was I was preaching Through First Corinthians And First Corinthians There's a passage at the end

That talks about If you don't love Christ You're not a believer So I forget how it says it

But it basically says You have to love Christ And I opined from the pulpit I said, one of the things I've struggled with Is did

I teach my son To love Jesus? I taught him to believe in Jesus I taught him to fear

God You know, these are things That are important and necessary But did I really teach him To love

Him? And it really caused A consternation in my heart Did I fail in teaching him

To love Jesus? And so yes, I think As a father, I definitely

Yeah, for sure And you're obviously A good counselor You get me to open up right here I know It's like, tell me about your mother

Well, but you know Now we're just actually sitting here Reflecting on the fact that If we want to go back To the sovereignty of God Yeah Your oldest son

I'm sorry, his name again? Cody And then the other one, The youngest? Theodore Theodore, okay So Cody, in God's sovereignty

Was the child who The less mature father Version of you

Sure, absolutely It was better for Cody Than it was for Theodore Theodore needs the more mature dad

Because in God's We come to that conclusion Because in God's providence Theodore is the youngest And you are more mature

And so you are going to Parent him differently And that's exactly what he needs At this stage in his life So we praise the

Lord That even in our failure He still helps us But the other one

Okay, so Total depravity Obviously it's easy to try To apply that to our kids But do we look here first?

Yeah Because in my depravity In my complete inability To parent in a way

That glorifies God In my own strength It's so easy to parent

In our own strength So if I'm sitting here And I'm learning about The truths of depravity

In my sin, my inability And so on and so forth Am I going to allow that To inform my parenting?

Because you know what that does? That knocks you out at the legs That absolutely takes away The arrogance and the pride

That we approach Like I'm a good parent Or that self -focus To parent for my own goals

And desires And remind myself that No, in the flesh In that moment Because I always say that Parents, we don't improvise well

So if I'm just improvising I'm probably going to Improvise in the flesh A lot faster than I'm improvising in the spirit

Yeah, no doubt So again, for me As I was just philosophizing about Okay, what are some

Practical applications of Calvinism As it regards this very real

And tangible moment of my life Called parenting What does it look like? And the reality is

It's less about how I Less about the content Or the method of my parenting

And more about the How I view myself And my relationship And responsibility to God And how that needs to be

The undergirding foundation For everything I build On top of that Which of course is

Humble recognition of the fact That I am nothing He's everything I'm doing this for him And that's the perfect position

From which we need to then Step in and build The parenting model That is what

God gives us From the scriptures Amen I tell you what This is the type of thing

That I think is so missing In the reformed conversation Is how this becomes real

Where it's not just Hashtag priest up or something You know what

I mean by that There are these things That we glom onto God is sovereign And as much as I Get frustrated with Stephen Anderson You know who that is

Stephen Anderson I'm familiar with the name But not the work He's an IFB pastor He's very anti -Calvinist

Very anti And he makes this There's a recording of him going God is sovereign God is sovereign

And he's doing He's parroting Like a parrot saying it He said that's all You reformed guys ever say God is sovereign

God is sovereign And as much as I Disagree with so much Of what he says He's In that I get what he's saying

You know sometimes We say these things We parrot these things That are supposed to have meaning

But how do they work out practically Yeah No definitely And I had the privilege

Of working with a group of men Who were diagnosed With stage 4 cancer And other lethal illnesses

And the group kind of counseling Ended up being focused

On this idea of suffering well Amen We can't avoid suffering I mean to a certain degree

We should try to a degree Oh sure You go to the doctor Yeah exactly We're not masochists

But as But we need to suffer In a certain way So to your point

We say God is sovereign And of course he is But the moment I complain I'm denying the

God's sovereignty The moment I get angry About how things are going

I'm practically A circumstance Denying God's sovereignty So having to Being forced to see

How frequently I don't live out What I say I believe And then really

Digging into the scriptures And say okay How do I span that From knowledge and understanding

Which are both important And they're seminal To that next step Of actual belief And that actual belief

Which is that practical Outworking of that truth In my life Again you're humbled By the fact that Wow I so often don't live

What I say I believe But then you're also Pushing toward The academic knowledge

Desperately important Deepening the comprehension Of course But then you have A more important step

To take after that And I think that's Like a really great place To put our focus And we all need to do that Regardless of our

Traditions or our beliefs If we are truly Christians We've got to take What the scriptures give us

And go beyond just The understanding of it Yeah And this is what you do

On your show So I mean in a sense Yeah from a practical Parenting perspective 100 %

Like we're saying Okay so the scriptures Say this So what does that Look like guys? Yeah But really more so For sure in my

Counseling Yeah That is definitely Something where we are Able to come together And look at the scriptures

And get really Really specific And say okay This is what we say

We believe But what in our lives Proves that we don't Yeah Now are you Your counseling

I've heard a lot about ACBC Is that what you are? I am ACBC certified I have my master's degree

In biblical counseling Okay so your master's degree Plus your ACBC certified Okay alright So you would

Endorse their philosophies And things Yeah What they teach And everything I think they are doing A fantastic job I have the privilege Of speaking at their

Annual conference As a workshop breakout Yeah Actually we are talking About counseling

Sorrowing children That's my particular workshop But I love the group And I love what they are doing

Wonderful Yeah I have some friends In Jacksonville Do you know Heath Lambert? Yeah He is a good guy

He is a pastor At First Baptist Jacksonville He is also He did a book On counseling And I read it

A few years ago And I was surprised How Calvinistic it was And then later To find out He is more Calvinistic In his theology

But yeah that is interesting And I am grateful For guys like you Who make that Your focus

We had a lady In our church Who was an ACBC counselor She is not with us anymore She moved But I always

Was grateful To have someone In the church Especially women That if they needed Someone to talk to They had the training

And they were godly And I wasn't Just sending them off To somebody I didn't know Or sending them off To an organization

I couldn't trust There was somebody In the body So I am grateful For ACBC That's what

I always say Let's start By me helping you Find someone in your church Who can help you Before I need to Step in and get involved

Well Aaron If people want to Get in touch with you Or want to listen To your podcasts Or want to be able

To know what you do Can you give us Just a quick commercial For yourself Yeah yeah So if you go to Evermind Ministries Okay Evermindministries .com

You can see Truth Love Family You can see Year Long Celebration of God And our counseling ministry

Faith Tree Biblical Counseling And Discipleship You can see those there You can click out To their websites But we have

An app now Which is about a year old And that app Is where we are really Putting a lot of our content That Suffering Well Is on there

I have a conference I did called The Biblical Parenting Essentials That's on there So that's where People can find

A lot of that stuff Have it right there In an app on their phone Wonderful But Evermindministries .com

Excellent Well I want to thank you For being on the show with me Thank you I thank you for Becoming a new friend

I feel like I went To church camp this week Because we are all Staying in the same house

It's like being At church camp Playing games Yeah Staying up till 2am Doing karate on each other

Doing magic tricks For each other But brother It's been great Getting to know you Thank you for being On the show Very much Welcome back

To your Calvinist I'm still at The Tullahoma Conference Here The Y Calvinist Conference In Tullahoma Tennessee And I am now

Going to be convinced Of Calvinism By a card magician Wow Put it that way

Introduce yourself To the audience brother My name is Aaron Brewster I am president Of Evermind Ministries And so I know

That you and I Share a love For Calvinism In magic And illusion And things like that But this is actually

Less illusion And magic And more so An object Less than utilizing cards But you said

You know Pretend I'm not a Calvinist Change my mind And I wanted to I want

But this is going To be interesting Because this is going To be actually Somewhere in the middle Okay And you'll see

What I mean in a second Okay So if you're not A Calvinist Then obviously Free will is your thing Right? That's your jam

You were born again Because of your choice Brewster is so Astrian Well sure I mean And those guys

Are abounding On the other side So what you struggle with If you're not a

Calvinist Is the Destination The election I'm sorry I can't help it He's like Why don't you struggle

With my weight I can't Okay I'm sorry You struggle With the idea That God chooses

Right? If I'm not a Calvinist Yes You're convincing me You have to pretend

I'm sorry You can do better than this Yes So If you are If you're struggling

With God's choice I'm going to suggest That it's not An either or But that it's

A both and Okay And maybe this Illustration And this is more For fun obviously But maybe this

Illustration can help With that So Greg here Is going to assist This is

Greg From the Deadman Walking Podcast Who currently Has his head cut off So I'll bring this up There we go

There he is He's beautiful Bring a chair There we go Greg in this Illustration Okay You are going to Take the place of God I don't want to be

Blasphemous or anything But that's the position That you are going to have In all of this That's what he makes His wife call him Wow I was just Talking to my wife

We almost went there Oh my goodness My wife would be Rolling her eyes right now And I'm not a

Calvinist Keith You are going to Represent mankind Okay The rustler

You're having A hard time So many things Are going through his brain Exactly You're going to Represent mankind

We're all in trouble Alright So what I'd like you to do Is just Name a card Any card?

Anything Just name one King of hearts King of hearts What you don't like that?

No I was trying to Send it into his brain I had one in my brain Now The natural

He wanted to say Hallmark I'll play along Wow Okay Name another one

That's not Hallmark Jack of spades That's exactly What you were thinking of Wasn't it?

No it wasn't Alright Okay so Here's a King of hearts

Jack of spades Okay Now I know You're not on the camera But you've got To be a little bit

Of a part of this No I can't I can just cut it in half Right here What was that? I have a camera on me too You have a camera on you

There you go Fantastic Alright You don't even need two hands You can just leave the cards Where they are What I want you to do Is without looking at the cards

Place one card at a time Face down right here And stop whenever you want Okay Without looking at the cards

Yeah without Yeah it doesn't matter What the card is One card at a time Yeah just set it there Without looking at them Yeah and you stop whenever you want

In a 27 minute video Now this could take a while Knowing We don't need to go Through all 52 cards

Alright 50 cards I'm going to stop Right there Do you want to take one back? Do you want to add a couple more?

It's completely your choice I think I'm going to leave it be Leave it be Alright cool And King of Hearts I think is the first one you said

So we're just going to Mark your spot with that Pick up the entire deck And just set it right on top

Boom right there Slide it toward you There we go And then repeat

Rinse and repeat Just make Yep just Go until you want to stop Whenever he wants to stop Whenever he wants to stop

He'll stop No influence from us Don't listen to us at all Don't If I say stop now Stop Oh but he did

Oh Stop That's exactly I didn't stop Because you told me I did exactly What I wanted to do I used my own free will

The will that's under me Not above me Like the Lutherans say There we go Wow this tablecloth Is messing everything up Good application

So I'm just going to take this I'm just going to spread it out So that we can see Where you stop There's one

Oh there's the other one Okay Okay So So in the scriptures We see clearly

From the Calvinist perspective We see clearly Predestination and election Is there Is there God chooses Who will be born again

And I'm simplifying this Just for the sake Of the illustration That's okay I like it On the other side of it though Obviously if you're not a

Calvinist You're hardcore Believe that we have free will We choose Right And I said that I don't What if it's not an either or What if it is a both and And in this particular situation

What we have And this is a very And I call you a heretic sir Actually he just explained Compatibilism But go ahead

Well I'm not God Right I'm not God And you're not God We're all mortals We're all men But at the beginning You chose two cards

King of hearts And the jack of spades In the place of God In the place of God And what you did Is you went through the cards

And you stopped Wherever you wanted Completely not influenced By us And yet despite all of that You stopped

Right next to the exact Opposites Of the cards that he chose Nice And so my thought

My thought is this My thought is this Is it possible Is it possible

That And I think I think This has been answered Right Is it possible That God In his

His paradox And I say You know The hypostatic union of Christ 100 % man 100 %

God The trinity God is a God of paradoxes From our perspective Is it possible That That man's choice

He has the capacity to choose He has the command to choose He has the consequences of choice And God's Sovereignty Work together in a way

That we can't possibly Begin to understand And that they don't have to Necessarily be fought As much As they have to be understood

As what They are presented as In scripture So Am I convincing you To be a

Calvinist And accept 100 % The one side And rejecting the other side Yes And no

I don't know What are your thoughts No I like it I I Knowing a little bit

Of how you did it I think Of course But that's just Because you and I Of course Because we're on the

Same wavelength Well we Can't play the Dumb He's like I know how you do it No no no That's not what I meant

What I was going to say is He's like I'm not No no no I'm not being that guy I promise

I'm never that guy I love magic And I love But I would say There's still More of a determining

Aspect that you Created prior to You introduce something That nobody else

Knows about And that's God's Sovereignty In that So I think It would lean more

Into The There was a Determined outcome That you Influenced Well in a similar way

To what I think You were saying And other people Have said Is that As a sinner You are only Capable of choosing

To sin Yeah But by God's grace You now have the Capacity to choose Something that you Couldn't have previously

Already chosen Right? Yeah And in a similar way What I did Was function Actually more so In the

God position Than Greg did Because I Capacitated you To do something That you could not Have chosen to do

On your own But your choice Was still Legitimate Yeah I still chose Four cards Five cards

Exactly I like it I do like it I wonder about The paradox

Of the USB port Of the USB port? Meaning why Don't I always Put it in wrong Doesn't go in Flip it over Still doesn't go in Flip it back over And then it goes in There is no answer

Okay I think that was great It was good

Yeah yeah yeah Thank you My seminary professor liked it I got a good grade Well good Well that was your Well thank you

Sometimes I feel The weight of the world Fall down on me

And I need a friendly voice With some good theology

So I mix a manly drink Then I hit the

YouTube link And I feel my troubles All melt away

Oh it's your Calvinist podcast With Keith Foskey Beards and bowties

Laughs till sunrise It's your

Calvinist podcast With Keith Foskey He's not like most

Calvinists He's nice Your Calvinist podcast With Keith Foskey Striving for superior theology