Have You Not Read - S1:E3

Welcome to Have You Not Read, a podcast seeking to answer questions from the text of Scripture for the honor of Christ and the edification of the Saints. I'm Dylan Hamilton. With me, Michael Durham and David Kassem.

Before we dig into our topic, we humbly ask for you to rate, review, and share the podcast. Thank you. And today we have a few questions, I say a few, we have loads of questions from David yet again and his list that he has so graciously given to us.

And we do appreciate it because I wouldn't come up with any of it because I'm here unprepared yet again. But first we're gonna start out with some questions about the Bible, how we are to interpret it, and how we use it for a standard.

The Claim That Leviticus Contradicts Love Your Neighbor

The first one that we've picked out of the long list is, the Bible is fine for a standard, like where it tells us to love one another, but not where it commands us to kill homosexuals. Why should we follow a God that tells us to kill gay people?

Yeah, that's a great, that's an interesting question. Very often questions come in two forms. Sometimes a question is being asked by the curious, and other times a question is being asked by the skeptic.

Sometimes questions are a avenue, a medium, a bridge to get to understanding knowledge, and it's asked from a humble position hoping to learn. Other times questions are asked as a barrier, as a shield, to keep away from particular authority.

So without knowing the, you know, the intent of the question, you know, just answering it outright is, I would be hard-pressed to find anything in the Bible that would instruct solid church members today, you know, people who are called to love one another, love their neighbor as themselves, and so on and so forth.

Can you point to a text in the Bible that tells a church member to go out and kill homosexuals? I'd be pretty hard-pressed to find one. When you do go and read the relevant passages that would cause the anger or concern, depending on the reader, you would find that homosexuality is an abomination to the Lord, that it is deserving of the death penalty, and that as with all the other case law in the writings of Moses, that to bring a charge of homosexuality, first of all, you need to have what you have with everything else, two witnesses.

And in this particular case, to achieve this, it would have to be very blatant, like Sodom and Gomorrah, where the homosexuality, the sodomy, was rampant and it was in your face and egregious. And God showed what He thought of that with bringing His judgment.

And He did send two of His own witnesses, if you recall, who witnessed the attempted sodomy of not only Lot but these angels, and then God brought judgment upon the whole city for their complicity in that.

So when we look at the prohibitions on sodomy in the Old Testament, we are told that it is abomination to God and that the civil authority in Israel was to bring the death penalty, but they weren't going to...but they were not instructed to do that in such a way that broke their own law of, you have to have two witnesses.

So it wasn't some sort of hate-mongering, we're going to look at people and we're going to, like, maybe accuse them of something that maybe they haven't done, or so on and so forth, and just go around and just start lynching people or killing people without due process of the law.

So the idea that the Bible tells Christians to go kill homosexuals is absolutely wrong. It doesn't say that. It does say that homosexuality, not only the act of sodomy, but also the desires of sodomites, are an abomination to the Lord.

So if we're going to be offended about something, be offended about that and don't make those false claims. But I think that's just a starting point to trying to get into this question. The other part, of course, David, is why would we appeal to a standard that in some fashion says, hey, homosexuality proven in the case law in Moses deserves death penalty and also love your neighbor as yourself.

Why should we be using a standard like that? I think that's where the question is going to.

The context for this question, this was not something that I pulled out of my own head. It was put to a member of my wife's extended family. Without revealing too much on that side of the family, this individual says, I'm never going to go to Chick-fil-A because they think that I should die.

I'm not going to go to Chick-fil-A because Christians would rather me be dead. And then this person, having been raised in church and knows their Bible, was referencing, as you did, Leviticus 20, 13, which says, if a man practices homosexuality, having sex with another man as with a woman, both men have committed a detestable act, they must both be put to death for their guilty of a capital offense.

Homosexuality, end of the Mosaic law, was guilty of the death penalty. And that same book, Leviticus, says, love your neighbor as yourself. So this individual, taking a plug at Chick-fil-A, taking a plug at his mother, taking a plug at the church that he hates, says, I'm not going to follow any God that wishes me dead.

And I'm certainly not going to eat that chicken sandwich. So a little tongue-in-cheek, he was a dig, but there is a point. He was making a fair point that was not properly answered. They said, no, they don't want you dead.

And he could just hold up the Bible right in front of it, says, yeah, they do. That's your Bible. And so can you have that person sitting in front of you? And now that you know, it was a loaded question.

It wasn't, I'm kind of curious on the Hebrew and why, you know, when you translate that into Greek and then it comes in, you know, what are we talking about? He says, no, it says, because of who I am, you want me dead.

And he's using Leviticus 20 to prove that. So can you unpack that question for us? Can you say, what are the layers underneath it? I mean, you're probably starting with the idea is because of who I am.

How would you respond to that person who knows what the Bible says, kill the gay person, love your neighbor as yourself? That seems to be a contradiction. And even if it isn't, why would I follow that kind of a God anyway?

How would you respond to this person who is obviously filled with not just anger, but betrayal, looking at his own family and saying, you want me dead?

So it's deeply personal. Yeah, absolutely, deeply personal. I think that this is the kind of accusatory statement in question that is being used as a kind of a, not only as a weapon, but as a kind of defensive weapon of I'm going to attack you as I push you away.

Right, and this is the kind of question from a skeptic, the hermeneutic of suspicion, not the hermeneutic of submission, wherein not only are you being unloving and unrighteous and unholy because you want gay people dead, but you're also being inconsistent because your Bible is absurd because it's inconsistent saying, love your neighbor and kill your gay neighbor.

So you're illegitimate because you're unloving. Your Bible is illegitimate because it's absurd. And therefore, and then it's, I don't think that the person actually truly believes that everybody who is a Christian and reads their Bible and goes to church desires gay people to be dead.

But it is a wonderful rhetorical device. And it helps to feed victim mentality. And this is common to a lot of the Gnosticism of our day in which you build your world of special knowledge. And this has been drenched with victimhood.

So you have to go around telling yourself that the people with power and the people with influence and so on, they hate me, they're after me, they're going to kill me, so on and so forth. So this is common across many different forms of this standpoint of epistemology or ethnic Gnosticism, whatever terminology you want to use.

The question is, how do you answer this person and break through? Or at least how do you answer them in a way that even if you're not able to reach the person, you're going to be rooting Christians in their faith as they listen to the answer, and at the very least, we always need to give someone the Word of God.

So the Word of God is imperishable seed, Peter says in 1 Peter 1. And the Word of the Lord does not return void, Isaiah tells us. So whatever answer we give, we need to give scripture. So I would say that starting with love your neighbor as yourself, who gets to decide what that love is?

Jesus. Right, Jesus, he says, I guess Dylan. Has to find it. Yeah, because everybody's going to be defining that differently. Obviously, somebody who thinks that Chick-fil-A would poison him if he went in there to eat a sandwich, because they're all Christians, and therefore, they all take up the passages in the Bible where God pronounces judgment, and they are filled with holy hatred because of these passages.

Well, I don't think that the person actually believes that, but even if they do, it'd be disproven pretty fast, because Chick-fil-A is not a thoroughly Christian organization, so on and so forth. Even the founder who took the stand or whatever later on said he regretted ever bringing anything up and making that stand, because it caused so many problems in his business and life, and so on and so forth.

It's not like some sort of stalwart, we're going to go after the gays or whatever, and if it were only so that every Christian would take up the Bible and feel just the way that God feels about everything.

But in fact, I would say, if there's anything to say, I would go ahead and acknowledge the fact that that is exactly what Leviticus says, and I would clarify that it would be done by due process of the law.

But I would also say, in fact, it's way worse than you think, and I just want to make sure that you're clear on this. It's way worse than what you've said, because it's not about Christians today hoping to kill gay people.

I don't know any Christians who want to kill gay people. The worst part of it is, is that God is a holy God, and He has wrath against sinners, and it's way worse. Jesus Himself said, do not fear man who can only kill the body, but fear God who after killing the body can cast the person into hellfire, eternal hellfire.

So Jesus says it's way worse for God to hate you than for Christians to hate you or people to hate you, okay?

Now, that's a very different answer than I have heard in the past, where most people, especially in the United States, especially in a Baptist or a fundamentalist background, would say, yes, that is what Leviticus says, but that's Old Testament.

And that's not what you just did. Right. So I think that because the important thing is not that they're gay. The important thing is that they're a sinner before a holy God, and they need to be saved.

And it is a point to be made that even though sins are weighted differently, and some sins are worse than others, even though that is the case, they are put together in lists to remind us just how thoroughly sinful we are on so many different levels.

And it wasn't just that the Old Testament said that people who engage in sodomy should die. The Old Testament also says that people who give a false prophecy or worship a false god and encourage others to worship false gods also should die.

So it's not just gay people, it's Hindus, all of them. And it's also Buddhists, all of them. Muslims, all of them. And the cults, the Mormons, the Jehovah's Witnesses, so it's way, way, way worse than you think.

And in fact, it's also the Baptists, because there's a whole bunch of them that are like lying gluttons and drunkards. And, you know, the Bible says in Psalm 5 that God hates people who lie and steal and shed innocent blood, and that God's wrath abides upon sinners.

So it's actually just way, way worse. You may be gay, but you're not special when it comes to the judgment of God. We all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. The wages of sin is death, and that applies to everybody.

So it's actually way worse. And, you know, I would encourage you not to be afraid of Christians, not to be afraid of men, not to be afraid of Baptists or whoever, or Chick-fil-A employees. And I would encourage you to try out their sandwiches because they're pretty good.

But I would say that you need to fear God, not man. And the Bible says the fear of man is a snare. So don't be afraid of me. Don't be afraid of Chick-fil-A. You need to fear the Lord and hear what he has to say because he's your maker, and you need to get right with him.

He's made a way for you to be right with him, and he gave his only begotten son to die on the cross, shedding his blood under the wrath of God for your forgiveness and mine because, boy, do I need it too.

So I think that those kinds of questions are legitimate to a point, even though if they're being used as a defensive weapon and they're kind of trying to stab you and push you away at the same time, they have no idea how far worse it is.

They think they've hit you with the worst possible thing, but they have no idea. So your answer is de-escalating and disarmament, basically. You've taken away that victimhood that they thought they could use as the weapon, and you've shown them that, no, it's not all about you in this situation.

And I think something can be said, too, for a humorous disarmament in this situation as well. And just answer plainly back, yes, Chick-fil-A does want you dead. They also want me dead. Have you seen the seed oils that they use to cook all of their food?

And in some of these situations, too, because that's what they're using. They're just using bitterness. They're just using a symbol of that bitterness. And the same thing goes for the statues or the schools named after Confederate generals.

It's just a tool to get what I want. And when you answer that way or you answer humorously, a lot of times, you can disarm these people from their bitterness that is their weapon. Yeah. And I think that if we're going to be working at this from a presuppositional angle and to get at the root questions, the root assumptions that people have, then a rhetorical device like, oh, it's way worse than that, helps to get started on that road to run that reductio.

And somebody who's really intending on hating on Christians and hating on the Bible, if they start hearing from a Christian, oh, it's worse than what you think, they might be even interested initially to say, oh, you're going to give me some more dirt?

Yeah. Yeah. And then instead of giving them dirt, you give them gospel. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, because that presuppositional methodology I've learned is nice sandpaper right up front, especially if you use it that way.

And you got to have some of those rhetorical devices as salve on those wounds later on. You can ask Darrell about me using it as sandpaper. I've done that quite a bit. I had an honorary basketball coach one time, and we were on a school trip, and he was helping chaperone or whatever.

And we were at, I think it was Romano State Park over there in Watonga. And there was a deep spring-fed pool that's very crystal clear, and there's a little bit of a pier. You can kind of stand out on it.

You can look all the way down. It's very interesting. In any case, my basketball coach was sneaking up behind me because he was going to give me a big shove into the pool. And I knew something was wrong because all the other guys on the team went super quiet all of a sudden.

And so I turn around, and here comes my basketball coach, arms out. And I didn't even have time to think. But I grabbed his arm, and I just pulled him right down past me. And then he went in the drink, and I stayed dry.

He asked me later, he said, how did you do that? I said, I don't know. But sometimes people come raging and launching at you. They just kind of use their momentum to say, let's just keep going with this and see where we end up.

It's judo.

That's what it was, apparently. Well, the way you addressed it was interesting. And I think that can be applied to a number of different attacks. Everybody's got six bullets in their gun, and they have their verses that they know.

Let's see if I can make this Christian dance. You didn't avoid it. You said, yes, that's there. And it's actually in a long list. Oh, and by the way, it's far worse than you think. And then you expanded that to adultery, and you expanded it to idolatry, expanded it to basically to include everybody in the world, and then you included yourself.

And not only do we have a holy God, we have a sinful humanity. I'm in that boat. And let me tell you about Jesus. Yeah, exactly. I mean, he just kind of came full circle. It was an interesting, I don't want to call it a technique, but an overall strategy that seems to work regardless of the question that's being put to you.

Of course, we have the other part of the question. I think you identified it. You said it was a different way of answering the question than what is typical because a common refrain, a common response to the question about Leviticus or these prohibitions, well, that's in the Old Testament.

Right. So how do you take that approach as far as an answer, a non-answer? What do you think about that, Dillon, David? That's like leaving Tom Bombadil out of the movies. You're leaving out part of the story.

Nice reference. Good reference. Good reference. Well, yeah, you're kind of leaving out a big section of the spine that held the story up when you read it. So maybe Tom Bombadil wasn't that good of an analogy.

No, it is quintessential. It is truly the essence of a lot of American Christianity steeped in dispensational thought that, to overuse an overused phrase, unhitches the New Testament from the old. It had its place.

There was reasons for it. I mean, you can hear everything from, well, they were in a war. They needed, you know, they couldn't have childless couples, and they needed more soldiers, and we couldn't have mail-to-mail because we needed more people.

They needed to expand, you know, all these practical reasons, but never addressing that Exodus and Leviticus are expansions of the Ten Commandments. These are a statement of the holiness of God. This is the law of God, which is a reflection of his character, and he says, this is bad.

This is why. And here's all these other things that are really bad. So, when they say, well, that's Old Testament, then you're saying, is God no longer holy? Does God define holiness? What is that now?

Has holiness changed? Right, yeah. Yeah, and that seems to come from a specific type of dispensationalism because I don't see Johnny Mac necessarily discounting Old Testament law like maybe some others do.

I know that phrase, unhitching the gospel, comes from Stanley, but is that do you think that characterizes most dispensational.

Hermeneutics? Definitely classic dispensationalism. When you're dealing with the founders of DTS, Louis Barry Schaeffer, you're definitely dealing with that kind. John MacArthur uses this analogy. He says, well, I'm kind of a leaky dispensationalist.

It's like I have a blue shirt and gray trousers and I'm being shot at by both sides on the Civil War. I mean, he does have a dispensational framework, but he has a great respect for the Old Testament.

He's a personal hero of mine, even though I have come to disagree with many things that tend to be secondary issues. But now we're dealing with the application of parts of the Bible, and that can't be a secondary issue.

Right.

Yeah, so it comes back to your hermeneutic, how you're going to read the Bible and interpret it, which is, again, dispensationalism is a hermeneutic, not really an eschatology. It's a hermeneutic. Which kind of leads us into our next question that we're going to get into here.

Circular Reasoning, the Scientific Method, and the Authority of Scripture

It's, if you use the Bible to prove that the Bible is true, which is what you basically did in your answer to this question, isn't that just circular reasoning? Why can't you just use the scientific method to prove that the Bible is true?

If you can't, are you admitting that it isn't scientific or even logical? Well, you can't use the scientific method to prove the scientific method. Bingo. And if you employ your reason to defend your reason, well, then we're pretty obviously running around in circles right now.

And the reason why the Bible sustains the Bible is because it is the Word of God. And if there is a complaint against that, this is, you can't use the Bible to prove the Bible, then you have to tell me why that is so.

And when you give me a reason for that, I'm going to ask you to sustain that reason. And then when you give me a reason to sustain your reason, then you're guilty of the same thing that you're complaining about.

The postmoderns observed something that the Bible had already observed many generations before, that it is absurd to deny God. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and knowledge and understanding.

You want wisdom, you have understanding, you want to have knowledge, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of that. That's where it begins. And that's because that's the way God created the world. That's how God created us.

God made us in His image. And thus, everything in terms of proper reasoning and thinking begins with fearing Him. And He has revealed Himself in creation, and He has revealed Himself in His Word supremely.

He's revealed Himself in Christ, who is the light of all reason. He is the lens through which we are to see everything. And He is the center of the space and time, the whole universe around everything.

Everything orbits around Christ. And this is what the Scriptures testify to. So the question is not so much about can you justify the authority of Scripture by some other authority. That's ludicrous. Because whatever authority you're using to justify the Bible, the Bible is under that authority.

And we're explicitly told not to take God's Word and make it subservient to under the authority of any other thing, whether it be Baal or it be reason or anything else. The government. Or the state or whatever it may be.

So the fact of the matter is, is that I'm going to be employing my reason and my senses to engage with creation, engage with the Scriptures and so on and so forth. But I'm not going to then say my reason is the authority or my experiences, my senses are the authority.

What I observe is the, no, everything that I reason and everything that I experience, I must bring into submission to the Word of God or the Word of God will, which speaks to all of human experience, will tell me what this is.

I don't get to say what it is. The state doesn't get to say what it is. Philosophers don't get to say what it is. God gets to say what it is. And He has given us a true word, a perfect word to do that.

So if somebody, you know, is complaining about things like, isn't that circular reasoning? I say, well, what we're talking about here is our presuppositions. What we're talking about here is our first order authorities and mine is the revelation of God in Scripture, okay, what's yours?

And have you thought about that?

You actually used the, you said, using reason to prove that reason is reasonable. That is, you know, a circular argument. I mean, essentially, if you're using the scientific method, you say, well, my hypothesis is that logic and reason is the best way to determine truth.

I'm going to think about that logically and reasonably, and I'm going to reach the conclusion that logic and reason is the best way to determine truth. And you're just engaged in circular reasoning. And if I understand the argument that you just made correctly, if I'm going to use logic and reason, or scientific method, or historical method, or take your pick, chicken bones thrown into a circle, then you've just made what we call the Word of God subserving it to that, or you're using something else higher to prove it, then it's no longer the Word of God.

Right.

And I would say that this isn't, like, this doesn't mean, then, that everyone's left in their own little bubble of circular reasoning, and, you know, all communication and knowledge is lost to the void in between everybody's circular experience, or circular authorities, or so on.

It's postmodernism. Right, because there is, when you have the postmodern approach, or the standpoint of epistemologists talk about that there is a point outside from nowhere from which you can see all these things, well, this is their invention of a god.

They are still insisting that as they speak from their unique experience, which nobody can understand, using their words, which only they can understand, that other people should understand them and agree with them.

And they have no idea why, so they invent some vague notion of a god, and they don't call it a god, to make sure that this communication is still possible. But it just proves the absurdity of it. But because we live in a world of there is creator and there's creation.

We live in a two-ism, not a one-ism. So because God is God and we are not, and he is outside of his creation, he sustains creation, so on and so forth, even though we are limited, we are finite, and so on and so forth, there can still be communication.

There can still be understanding between us, even between people of different languages and different cultural groups and so on. You can make yourself understood to them over time. You can do that. Why is that even possible?

Because of God. I think that when we're concerned about whether or not the circular reasoning, obviously no one should be on my own authority. I can do what I want, think what I want, and there's obviously concern about that.

But I would put it this way. When we think about the fear of the Lord, okay, the fear of the Lord, we're going to be living according to the word of God, the word of God is our authority, and so on. If that is pushed to its limits, and let's say, let's look at some point in history where that was pushed to its limits, to the intensity of living under the authority of the word of God.

Let's think about those moments in history. The days of peace under, what, David and Solomon, high points maybe, the rest and victory under Joshua maybe we could think of in history, the Puritan vision and the good that we can see there.

People would dispute that, but then again, what's their standard? I would say in comparison to that, what happens if you make reason King of Kings and Lord of Lords? What do you get? You get the French Revolution.

You get massive death. Yeah, and what happens if you— Marxism. Well, Marxism, but then even in Marxism, what happens if you make materialism, the writing of the scientific method, the supreme authority, and you just do everything in terms of materialism, material is everything?

Well, I would say that that would be the intensity of Marxism and communism and so on. And let's look at when they ran that to its nth degree, what happens there? These things are not neutral. It's not like up for grabs.

You can believe what you want. There are consequences for what you believe. And when the fear of the Lord is in operation, you see all sorts of blessings and all sorts of good. So there is a real difference.

And when we get that accusation of circular reasoning, I think what is being misunderstood a lot of times is something that is integral to the way that we defend the faith as well, like in 1 Peter 3 .15, but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts.

Right there, we have already made the creature and creator distinction, right? So that circular reasoning that we have is under the lordship of Christ, whereas the circular reasoning that they engage in is completely autonomous and in and of themselves.

They worship and serve the creature rather than the creator. Right. And then we have the natural consequences of that that we find in Romans 1. They're giving up to futile thoughts and mind. Professing to be wise and become fools.

Right. And then you have the results that we know what the results are going to be. And we've seen it play out time and time again with the French Revolution, with Pol Pot, with Stalin, all these leaders who have worked under these frameworks that are circular reasoning, but outside of the lordship of their creator.

Yeah, so I would, you know, so again, with the accusation of circular reasoning, you know, it's way worse than you think.

But we may have a segment on Have You Not Read. Now's the time on Have You Not Read where it's way worse than you think. I'm up for that one. Yeah, yeah.

Arrogance, Knowledge, and Discipling Young Calvinists

All right, so since we've, you know, spoken from our own authority so much tonight and we have so much circular reasoning, our last question for this segment is, I find Reformed people very arrogant. Most of my interactions with Reformed Calvinists have been very negative.

You have a Reformation festival every year, so you obviously like the Reformers. Do you have people like that in your church? Or have you encountered that? I like learning about these great people of God in the 1500s and 1600s, but how do I deal with people like this?

How would I keep from doing it myself? Yeah, well, there's a lot of Calvinists who will say, knowledge puffeth up, I think is the King James. And it's not unique to Calvinists or Reform thinkers or so on and so forth.

It's not unique to that. The danger is in acquiring knowledge for the sake of knowledge and, wow, I can understand all these systems and I have a better handle on theology than you do, and now we're going to have conversations where I prove that and that kind of thing.

I think someone once said that if you say that you're a Calvinist and you're arrogant about that, you don't understand Calvinism. Right? Because the whole idea is that whatever grace you have in your life, whatever love you have for Jesus, whatever understanding you have of the Word of God is entirely by the grace of God.

And that if there's somebody sitting across the table from you who that person loves Christ, they believe that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ, the Son of the living God, that He was born of a virgin, lived a righteous life, died a redemptive atoning death on the cross and was raised the third day, has ascended to the right hand of God and is coming again, that person believes what they believe by the grace of God as well.

And if they haven't fine-tuned the ordo salutis about where regeneration and justification and adoption all land, right, and if they don't have a clear conception of election and the eternal decree of the Godhead and so on and so forth, wouldn't you say that their growth and their understanding and appreciation of their salvation is something that has been absolutely assured by Sovereign God that He'll bring to pass?

Right? He who has done a good work in them, He will continue it to the day of Christ Jesus. Jesus is gonna wash His bride with the water of His Word. So if you really are a Calvinist, then you should have absolute confidence that God is gonna be working His truth in their life and that they're gonna grow more and more confident in His grace, more and more confident and joyous in who God is and how He saves people.

And there is no need for necessarily some sort of avid debate where I prove I know more about these matters than you do. Now, I understand why that happens. I think it happens because the glory of young men is their strength, right?

The glory of young men is their strength. And their strength of knowledge. Exactly. And there has to be a contest. There has to be a struggle. We like to fight. Yes, exactly. And so...

We call it iron sharpens iron. We call it... I mean, I have been in wonderful discussions and part of it is my military background where after a mission, you would not believe the debriefs. It is brutal.

And if somebody doesn't like you, they're not gonna be hard on you in the debrief, because I don't want you to improve. In fact, I hate you so much. Everything you did was great. I hope you die next time.

I mean, that's essentially it. Strategic thinking. But if somebody is picking apart everything that you're doing and sharpening that iron, it's because they want you to come back the next time. And it was also a term of respect, because you can take that.

And I remember having that level of a discussion with another guy, actually, from the Air Force Base. He was a fellow pilot. He was an F -16 pilot. Those guys are really brutal. And we're just going...

They don't blink either, I've noticed. And we're just going back and forth, back and forth. And my dear friend, Jason, who was listening to this, he was appalled. Like, that is not how Christian brothers speak to each other.

And of course, between the two of us, we're like, what are you talking about? This was awesome. I mean, we had a great time doing it, but we didn't realize that other people seeing it, it was harming them or hurting them, or they didn't quite understand what was going on.

So perhaps there's a place for it, maybe behind closed doors, maybe at my kitchen table. But that level of ironing, sharpening iron, although we can justify it, what are the possible second or third order effects of that?