Answering Questions about Family

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I'm your host, Andrew Rapoport, the Executive Director of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community. First off, right at the beginning, we want to welcome those from the 1618 podcast.

This is maybe your first time joining us at The Wrap Report. We want to welcome you as that podcast feed has moved over.

We sent a message on that feed so you knew this was coming. Hope you enjoy the content here at The Wrap Report.

Another thing we want to do before we get started, we're going to be talking about Q &A from a conference that we had.

This is the Michiana Reforming Families Conference. We could not answer all the questions in the

Q &A, so those who are part of that panel are joining together to answer all of the questions, and we hope you enjoy it.

However, before that, I want to give a shout out to Heidi. Heidi was at the Post Mill Conference, and she was sitting down with none other than Bud Alheim, the former co -host here, sitting and talking with him for a while.

He said he was from Florida. She goes, wait, you're Bud from Florida? He said, yes, I am. And she goes, you podcast with Andrew Rapoport on The Wrap Report?

And he said, yes, I did. And so it was funny. They got to enjoy that. So I was told her name is

Heidi, and I wanted to give a shout out to her. She said that she had called, or I reached out to her to help with some situations that she wanted to help with, with her church.

I'm sorry, I don't remember. I talked to a lot of people who called the ministry and who I would call, but I was just excited to hear that Strucking Turner was able to bless her, and she recognized

Bud's voice and knew who he was after they had some conversation. So that was kind of neat. So this episode of The Wrap Report is from the

Michiana Reforming Families Conference. It is the Q &A that we had there. There's a lot of different topics we covered, and I hope that this becomes really helpful for you.

The voices you're going to hear are Aaron Brewster, or AM Brewster. He is from Truth, Love, Parent, and Celebrate God podcasts.

They are part of the Christian podcast community. And Dr. Anthony Silvestro, and he is with Strucking Fraternity.

And you will see or hear from each of us, myself included, and this is something where we were talking about family, obviously, but a lot of other things did come up at different times.

I hope that you find this helpful, useful, and that you'd consider sharing it with others.

And we'll see you next time. Okay, so the first question we had, and these are based on the voting, because people were able to vote ones up, so it's based on popularity that we're going to do.

The first question that we have is, how do we withhold the things of the world from our children without driving them straight into it?

Yeah, and this one we had an opportunity to answer while we were at the conference. Most of these we didn't. I just chimed in here, and I made the observation that it really has very little to do with the things of the world.

If somebody were to walk up to me today and offer me drugs, I wouldn't be tempted to take those drugs.

I have no interest in that. It really has everything to do with the preoccupation and the orientation of the child.

So I don't hand a carving knife to a child who wants to take that knife and hurt themselves or hurt other people.

However, I have no problem handing it to a child of any age if they are going to use it in a Christ -honoring way. And the quote -unquote things of the world is the exact same thing.

When the child is mature enough and Christ -honoring enough to want to respond to it and deal with it the right way, then we handle that on a case -by -case basis.

But we should never be afraid necessarily that, oh, if I take my mature child, and they are aware of transgenderism or abortion or homosexuality, that that is the thing that is going to make them want to become that.

That's not from the outside temptation. That's really from the inside temptation of their own hearts where that's going to be a big issue. The next one that we had, to all the speakers, is there such a thing as an age of accountability?

If not, how should that affect our parenting? And this is one that we're not asked, and I think we,

Aaron, I think you and I have differing views on this. I'm not actually sure where Anthony comes down, so I'll let you start.

Yeah, so my wife and I talked about this early on. This is obviously a really tough one.

You know, we argued, we went back and forth with each other. If there is no age of accountability, does that mean that a child that dies in a miscarriage is just going to go to hell?

That's just all there is to it. If somebody who is predisposed to having miscarriages, would it be wicked and sinful for them to continue to try to have children if there is no age of accountability?

Now, that's not necessarily a biblical answer, but that is something that no doubt other couples have struggled with.

So, I recognize the question is a really important one. I believe that the Scriptures give us enough information that we can feel comfortable to say that there is an age of accountability.

So, as an example, obviously, most people point to the passage where David, David's son through Bathsheba, died, and he made the observation that he was going to go to his son, and so therefore he had no reason to mourn.

Some people say, well, David was just saying, I'm going to die too, he's dead, there's nothing we can do about it. But David was using this as an argument for why he no longer needed to mourn and fast.

And so I think that there's a little bit more going on there than, well, he's dead and I'm going to die too, so it's no big deal.

Also, one other passage that I think people tend to point to and I think is common is

Isaiah 7, 15 and 16. He will eat curds and honey at the time he knows enough to refuse evil and choose good.

Verse 16 says, for before the boy will know enough to refuse evil and choose good, the land whose two kings you dread will be forsaken.

So, this interesting observation here that there's a specific time in a child's life where they are either old enough or not old enough to refuse evil and to choose good.

And coupling that with everything else we know about God in His Word and the fact that salvation is always by grace through faith, it's work that God does in us.

As a biblical counselor, I have absolutely zero problem sitting down with a couple who is grieving the loss of a child and giving them hope that they potentially will likely see that child again in eternity.

Okay, so I'll give an answer, then we'll allow Dr. Silvestre to be a tiebreaker. So, obviously,

I disagree. You knew that, Aaron. But I don't think there is an age of accountability. Now, let me preface it by saying

I have lost a child in the womb. Our first child died while still in the womb. So, the issue for me is

I just say Scripture doesn't give enough information for me to be able to say whether a child in the womb or a young child is or is not saved.

And I'll include in that someone who may be mentally challenged and not, people would say, not able to make decisions of right and wrong.

I'm going to put them all in a category that says we just don't know. Now, one issue

I have with age of accountability is does that mean there's two ways of salvation? One of the issues we had on Apologetics Live last night was the question of the age of accountability tied to sin nature.

Because if the child has a sin nature, have they sinned? Well, I would argue,

I personally argue that a child crying for milk is an act of selfishness.

We might think, well, there's nothing wrong with that. We may accept that, but it still is a selfish act, which, are they aware of it?

No, none of us remember. So, my issue is God saves one way. He saves us all the same.

And so, John the Baptist was able to recognize Mary's voice while still in the womb.

Scripture tells us this. So, we don't know what a child in the womb has the capability of knowing when

God is working in them. And so, I would argue that a child in the womb is no different than you and I in our 30s, 40s, 50s, whatever.

That God works through us to bring a knowledge of Him to repentance.

He does that work, and I believe He could do that in the womb. He could do that outside the womb. He could do it with an adult.

He could do it with a child. He could do it with someone who's mentally challenged. It's the same salvation

God working through us brings us to repentance. So, I don't think there's an age of accountability. I think God can save very young children.

That doesn't mean I'd go baptizing them. But I would kind of wait to see some evidence of fruit, maybe.

I don't see the age of accountability. The example with David that a lot of people use, and you and I have talked about this before, and you don't rest everything on that, but I see the claim that David makes there as a

Jewish idiom. And he's just saying, as you mentioned, I can go to death. He can't come back to life.

I would take that as a Jewish idiom. But again, even if it wasn't a Jewish idiom, we have to remember

David was told by prophecy this child would die. So, if David is saying he will see this child in heaven, if he knows that, the question is how does he know that?

I think it's arguing from silence to say he knows that, therefore we all know that, because all of us don't know our child's going to die within a certain period of time.

It's a judgment based on what we've done. So, there's a little difference there with David. Now, you bring up other verses that we'd end up having to deal with.

But I don't believe in any age of accountability. I won't say that all children are going to hell.

I'm not Presbyterian, so I won't say that if they're baptized, they're baptized into the covenant, and therefore they're saved by their parents' profession or by the covenant family's perspective.

So, I will just have to appeal to the mercy and wisdom of God, who knows better than me, and say either way,

I think God knows what he's doing and will handle it rightly. So, I'm just in a position where it may not be the most comfortable.

I say I don't know, and I can't say either way. And I'm saying this as someone who, you know, my wife and I lost a child.

So, it's not like we want to let our emotions dictate. Anthony, break the tie or come up.

Maybe Dr. Silvestro will come up with a third way and we will have a three -way tie. Well, you know, as you know,

Andrew, we've suffered numerous miscarriages after our one and only son.

And my wife and I've had this discussion many times. So, I have a bias, right?

On one hand, I want to believe that all of my children are in heaven right now.

On the other hand, I also know that in the scriptures, there is nothing clear in there that says about an age of accountability.

So, the position I take is that I do believe God cares about the children.

And we see Jesus speaking about the children numerous times in the gospels and that God is good. So, I trust

God that he's good and that he loves his children. And I'm going to look at it in the most positive light possible.

And I think the take -home message for this is that I would never counsel somebody who lost a child, whether it's a young child or miscarriage, so still in the womb,

I would never counsel them and say, your child's probably in hell today. Or I'm not really sure what to believe, right? And that really,

I think, is the take -home message. Like, we can't speak to that. Yeah, and I just noticed, you know, there's a part of this question none of us actually answered.

And I don't know that we're going to answer it differently. How does it affect our parenting? For me, I don't think it affects my parenting either way.

And I don't know if it would—for either of you, does it affect your parenting, whether you believe or not believe in an age of accountability?

I would hope that we have a want for discipling our children from a really early age.

So, it's not like we should be lackadaisical in our discipling until the kid is 11 or 12 years old.

And, uh -oh, age of accountability is in a year. We better really hammer down on our teaching. I don't think it has affected me at all in that regard.

I think it does, though. I think it really does. Here's why. Well, first of all, I will say that John MacArthur does hold the position that I hold.

Yes, he does. And not a distinction per se, but he just says that there is no, quote -unquote, age of accountability, meaning that there's no consistent age.

Like, all children, when they reach this numerical age, they're all now officially accountable. He argues that it depends really on the maturity of the child, which

I think is a really great point. But, no, I would say it definitively does. If my six -month -old –

I mean, obviously, I'm trying to do everything I can to keep my six -month -old alive, right? But if my six -month -old is going to die and go to hell versus die and go to heaven, then

I think the way that I try to keep that child physically safe is going – I mean, again, you might be saying, okay, so,

Aaron, so you didn't keep your child as safe as they could be when they were six months old? Well, I mean, now, you see these parents, they toss their kids five feet, six feet up in the air, and they catch them.

If I thought that there was the slightest chance that I could drop my child and his neck would be broken, and then he would die and go to hell, there's no way on earth

I'd ever throw my child in the air. There's a ton of stuff that I wouldn't have done, not because it was inherently unsafe, but because the weight of reality that if this child dies, that's it.

Man, oh, man. And I can see how some parents who aren't trusting God as much as they should and whatever else, would almost become reclusive.

They literally would put their children into a bubble because babies die, and the sudden infant death syndrome happens all the time and so on and so forth.

I think the weight of responsibility to keep that child physically safe, lest they slip into a

Christless eternity, that weight becomes far greater on a person who's – I think who's being honest with their position if they don't believe in an age of accountability.

Now, I wasn't in that position, and I wasn't afraid because I trust God's sovereignty, but there was also that, in the back of my mind, that comforting thought that, you know,

God forbid, a terrible travesty were to occur. I have more hope in that moment than I would otherwise.

Well, I don't know. My wife thinks all children are going to heaven, and she still wouldn't let me throw the kids up in the air, so I don't know if that –

I'll say this on a negative. The only way I could think of that effects is Andrea Yates, if you remember her, the

Mormon, because in Mormonism at the age of eight, that's the age of accountability. And she killed her six children because her seven -year -old, she saw him sinning, and she wanted her children to go to heaven.

And so, in her mind, an act of love was to kill all six of her children. Oh, that's so wicked.

It is. Don't follow her advice. Don't follow her advice. Don't do what she did. Yeah. And that's not a good reason to say, well, there's no age of accountability because of what she did.

I don't see it in the scriptures. So, the next question that we had was, how do you submit to your husband and be lowly when it's against your nature and how you've always been?

And I'll just answer real quick with this. For me, I think the way it is, you're submitting to Christ first.

You submit to God, and in submitting to God, you submit to your husband. So, it's not that I'm submitting to my husband because of how he treats me.

I'm not submitting to my husband because of what it'll give me. You're submitting to your husband because it's an act of submitting to God, and you trust

God. And this is the hardest thing, I think, for many people, not just wives, but even for men loving our wives like Christ loves the church.

I think the hard thing is to see it as a submission to God, to doing what he says and leaving the results in his hand where we want to manufacture results.

We want to try to force what we want to be. So, I think that's—the focus has to be on the real goal.

And this, I think, would expand to how you do your job at work. Are you submitting to God, doing the best you can because you want to get a bonus, or are you doing the best you can because you want to glorify

God and submit to him? I think there's another important thing to add to this as well. 1 Peter 3 basically commands, you know, women, submit to your husbands.

I mean, it basically says, even if your husbands aren't doing what they should be doing. The question here, I don't think, is necessarily a question always of, how do

I submit? What do I have to work up in myself? It goes against my nature to submit to such and such. The reality,

I think, here is a question of sanctification. We have this idea in our culture, well, this is who I am, this is how

I'm wired, this is how God made me. No, how is God making you? How is he making you?

Well, if you're truly born again, you should be being conformed to the image of Christ, which means that if Jesus could submit to the wicked, sinful, awful, vile men who put him on the cross, you, as you become more like Christ, should be able to submit to Jesus.

So it becomes less of a question about, how do I work this thing up inside of me in order to submit to this person, and more of, are you pursuing your sanctification?

Are you being conformed to the image of Christ? Because, yeah, you might not be a naturally submissive person, but you can be a supernaturally submissive person as you continue to strive to love

God. And as Andrew said, keep your focus, right, definitely on Christ, less on the husband, and be changed into his image.

Okay. Amen. I can't say it any better than that. Alright, next one. I wasn't raised in a

Christian home. How do I start teaching my kids biblically? So, Anthony, I think this would count for you and I, we weren't raised in Christian homes.

So, I'll let you tackle this one. Well, I think first you have to seek the advice of your pastor, right?

We have to actually learn how to do this. And there's a lot of good, well, first of all, there's

Bible passages that command us to do this. I mean, so we start there. And of course, the

Bible passages command us in Deuteronomy and other areas that we're supposed to teach them in the scriptures. So we know that that's the starting point.

When it comes to practical tips, talk to your pastor about how he did it. Talk to your pastor about resources they used, that he and his wife used.

And I think that's a great start right then and there. Yeah, I would just add, if not your pastor who's ever discipling you, which we would hope is happening within the

Church. Yeah. Okay, next question that we had was, Is there a period at which the father should make a purposeful effort to bond more with his teen daughter?

If so, is it similar with moms and sons? I guess, let me just answer real quick, and I'll let you guys tackle it.

But I would just say, yeah, there is a time, the moment they're born. I mean, you should always be bonding with both your children, both genders.

And by the way, there's only two genders. But yeah, the moment you're born, you start that bonding with each child. And this grows out of a pop -psychologized idea, which is rooted in evolution, that as children go through quote -unquote phases, that we need to parent them differently.

But Andrew, you hit the nail on the head. Ever since my child, my daughter in particular, was very, very young, she was daddy's girlfriend.

Mommy was his wife, and she was my girlfriend. And we go out on dates, and we do all these things.

Because the question that probably is likely being asked from the perspective of, well, what if they start becoming more interested in boys?

Daddy needs to have a more significant part in her life, blah, blah, blah. But this needs to always be this way.

We don't start parenting better because our child came to a certain age. We try to always parent to the glory of God, whatever age they may be, because God deserves it.

I remember Votie Bauckham teaching at a family conference about how to help your teen daughter select their future husband.

And he said, if fathers, you have not been in your daughter's life all these years, and now at 18 years old, you're holding a gun by the door every time a boy comes and knocks on the door to ask for courting, you've already lost the ability to do that.

Because you haven't gone through all these years of development with your daughter.

So what I would say is, let's say you reach 12 or 13 years old, and you've not done the job you should have been doing all these years about bonding with your daughter, and now she's a teenager.

What you need to do is go to her and repent that you haven't done these things, that you wish you would have done these things, and you now would like to start doing those things that you were called to do all along, and try to get a new relationship at that point going forward, the way it was meant to be.

Alright, so the next question is, how do you make children more grateful? Can it be taught, or is it something that they have to learn through experience such as suffering?

And this is when we answered, let me just give the answer that I kind of gave, and I think you guys had an answer as well at the conference.

But there are practical things you could do. Can you teach it? Yes. One of the things that we did in our family was we would actually sit down at dinner, and have everybody share something they're grateful for one another at the dinner table.

So you had to think of something for each other family member to be grateful for. That ends up teaching it, because they know every night at dinner they got to come up with something.

And it had to be a legitimate thing, and we didn't allow for repeats. So you had to think about the other person.

There's things like that. Another thing that we would do is we gave a fixed number of notes that just said,

I love you, and the goal was to be out of notes by the end of the day.

And so what you did was you had to do something for other people in the home without them knowing you did it, and you just leave the note behind.

And it was an act of where it would help us to see what people are doing for us, and we could be grateful even if we don't know who it is that did it.

So those are just some practical things that we did in our home. Suffering is not the only way, and I would say that we can learn a lot of times without suffering to be grateful for what others have done.

A couple resources. If you go to TruthLoveParent .com on the podcast series tab, we have a two -part episode about teaching your children to be thankful, as well as a two -part episode about parenting complainers.

Just real quick, I would say, the first part of the question actually stuck out to me more. How do you make children more grateful?

You don't make them. You guide them to what God's Word has to say, and you trust

Him to do the work as your salt and light in their life. The reality of ungratefulness is the fact that the person who is truly born again can't live in a perpetual state of complaining ungratefulness.

It just doesn't work. Consistent complaining is not a fruit of someone who has a relationship with God. And this idea of gratitude comes from the fact that we are born again.

A thankful person is somebody who trusts. A thankful person is somebody who is content. A thankful person realizes that they don't deserve anything and have, therefore, no problem being thankful for it.

Okay, the next question we have is—and you may have the same response with this one, Aaron— but how do you get your kids to take responsibility for their own spirituality?

For example, getting them to do their own devotions, quiet time, etc.? Just to that first part, and I'll let you guys answer the second part.

We need to be really careful. What we say comes from our hearts. And I'll tell you what, when

I'm working with my counselees, there is just so much that is revealed about the way they look at life by the words they choose to use.

And I don't know who these people are, and they're all anonymous, but we do need to be careful. We don't make our kids do something.

We don't change our kids. We don't get our kids to do something. And I think if we just started by changing the way we view our purpose in parenting, man, oh man, that would have a much larger effect on our parenting than even being able to answer a specific question like this.

Dr. Sveshra? Yeah. On one sense, we can't make them take on responsibility, but what we can do is guide them and grow them.

And look, there's plenty of parents who have kids that are not saved, and it doesn't mean that we can't require them for their own good to read their

Bibles for 15, 20 minutes a day, whatever it is. And we pray that through our teaching of God's Word and their sitting down and reading

God's Word, that God's Word will have an effect on their hearts by the power of the Spirit. And so I think it's both.

While we can't make them do anything, we do guide them into this, and we do set the example, and we set our boundaries in our households.

What I thought Dr. Sveshra was going to say, because I know he does this as well, is you disciple them like you would anyone else.

I mean, I have discipled my children. I had them go through Bible studies where they would dig into the

Scriptures, they would have to answer questions, and then we would get together and discuss it. I know, Dr. Sveshra, you do that in your home with your son.

That would be the thing. We can't make them take responsibility, but we disciple them, and we train them.

What are some practical examples of women in the home discipling her children? What is her role in the home versus her husband's good practical resources, dot, dot, dot, books?

I think we answered this one as well, and what we came up with is it's the

Bible. The parents are both responsible for teaching their children in the ways of the

Lord. We see this in Deuteronomy. The husband is the head of the household, oversees all of this, but the husband is often the one that's working while the wife is often the one at home.

And so she takes that responsibility under the headship of her husband in discipling her children.

And so it would be all in the same ways. It would be going through the Bible, it would be reading passages of the

Bible, using other kids' books that are really well written for kids. It might be using certain children's catechisms.

I know Spurge and Luther both have children's catechisms. So there's a lot of practical resources that way, but it always starts with the

Bible. When it comes to discipling the children, the father and the mother's roles are nearly identical, with the exception that the father just has ultimate authority over the trajectory and some of those particular points.

There are a lot of resources. I mean, I created a whole resource called The Year -Long Celebration of God, which is about enabling a tool for parents to be able to disciple their children, even during the holidays and during those low moments in life, too.

So I think every good parenting resource out there is for mom.

It's for you to help disciple your children. And just remember this, all of the one -and -others in the Scripture, those are for mothers, and they're born -again children.

So those are the things you should be doing. This next one I think we're going to have a quick answer for, because I think it's going to be a real short one, but how can a fatherless man prepare to be a good father?

I think probably we're all going to say from the Bible. Unless you guys disagree, the idea of evolutionary thinking is that somehow you need to have the example of a good father, but we have it in the

Scripture. I don't know if you guys have anything different to say. Well, it's helpful to have a father in the home.

I mean, all the statistics bear that out, no doubt. But ultimately, our father is our father in heaven, and he's already written his instruction to us for what we can use in our own homes.

And so, yeah, I agree with you completely, Andrew. But, I mean, look, there is always a benefit with a father in the home.

Still do without. But you can get—if it's just the example, if that's the question, you can get that in church from other godly men, too, if that's what they're looking for.

That's right. A lot of this is just some practical fallacies, I think, involved in it, but I think also, too, we need to allow our theology to weigh in on this.

You know, if I can't obey God and submit to my husband because that's not how he made me, then

I'm making me and my situation bigger than God. If I can't be a good father because I didn't have a good father or I didn't have a father at all, then, again,

I'm stealing from the sufficiency and the sovereignty of God. So, how does a fatherless man prepare to be a good father?

Going to the Word, developing relationships with men who love the Lord and can be a good example to him of what it is to be a godly man.

Definitely, it's all there. So, this one, for the record, before I read this, this one

I did not write. I'm just saying for the record, even though Aaron— I thought for sure he wrote it.

I would have put all my money on the fact that he wrote it. I actually, you know, if I was a betting man, I would have taken that bet because I would have won, but I did not write this, even though once I saw it,

I assumed Aaron would say I wrote this. But this is the question. I did not write that.

And I just had to assume that this was being asked with a smirk. I mean, the two halves of the question, everything.

Obviously, I'm not using any flying ninja kicks or karate chops on my kids when they need to be disciplined.

Okay, explain that, though, for my audience listening. They don't know the background of maybe what ninja jiu -jitsu is.

I'm a martial artist. I have been doing it for a long time. Short story is, one of the styles that I am proficient in is ninja jiu -jitsu.

That's, you know, Hollywood has taken the ninja idea and really made it very not what it originally was. However, I will say that some parents do have legitimate questions.

Some Christians are like, you know, there's a lot of Easter mysticism and there's a lot of false religion and whatever else.

And I would say that really that's not the case for modern American martial arts. I do believe the

Bible makes an argument for self -defense. I think that's clear in scriptures. So, I'm going to say that it's not inappropriate to study the martial arts and self -defense, nor to teach your kids how to do it.

However, you're not going to use it on your kids in a disciplined situation. So, I think the second half of the question is potentially really the honest question being asked, the deep question.

How can we discipline our children and make it evident it's out of love for their good? A quick story.

When I was very young, I had a baby doll. Don't judge me. I had this baby doll. He was a boy.

His name was Tommy. And one day, my mom witnessed that I saw this doll on the edge of the hearth, right, on our fireplace.

And I was never allowed to be there or on that part, but that's where he was sitting.

And I think my mom was vacuuming, and she took him off the floor and set him on the fireplace hearth. Well, I saw him over there, and I walked over to him.

And this is me, like, four or five years old. And I picked him up, and I said, Tommy, no, you're not supposed to be there.

I turned him over, put him over my knee, gave him two quick smacks on the rear end, lifted him up, and I said,

Daddy loves you. And I held him, and I hugged him. And where did that come from?

Well, I was just parroting all of the things that my parents had been doing. My parents had told me the rule.

If I disobeyed the rule, there was quote -unquote punishment. There was a spanking. But then my parents always drew me in and always reminded me that they loved me and always hugged me.

And I think, really, it just comes down to explaining to your children the fact that sin hurts. Sin hurts.

It's always going to hurt. And sin is always going to destroy far worse than any consequence that you may receive in discipline.

So, therefore, you know, we want to explain to our children, I'm doing this for your greater good.

It's much better for you to accidentally burn your fingers on a stove and to pull your hand away and to go, ooh, I need to not touch that, than to put your whole hand on the stove as you climb up onto the hot stove in order to open up a cabinet.

Clearly, that tiny little burn designed to teach you an important lesson was way better for you than the atrocities that could come if you don't learn about the consequences of hot surfaces.

The next question is, is it a good idea to sing in family worship, dot, dot, dot, if you can't hold a note?

If so, why? I know I can't hold a note. I was going to say, Andrew, you have to answer this because you can't hold a note.

I'm the one that can't hold a note. You guys both can hold a note. But I would, and I said this at the conference, was we would have church before we went to church.

I mean, as a family, I was training the kids to sit still. I was training them to take notes. I was training them.

And when they're really young, the notes were just color or picture, but we would sing. We would do things that they're going to have in church to train them for that.

Dr. Svester, what are your thoughts? That was it, yeah. You were going to point out I can't hold a note either? No, it doesn't matter how we perceive our voices.

God hears them. And it all sounds great to him somehow. You guys have the advantage of being able to sing.

I just make a joyful noise. It's joyful to me, not the hearers. So next question is, as a wife, what is my role if I can't have children?

And I think this is a really good question, because what it does show is that for the women who can't have children, there's this mindset, and I'll expand this, because we got into discussion with some of the ladies who are single, because there is this notion we have in our culture that somehow you must be married or something's wrong with you, and furthermore, you must have children or something's wrong with you.

And we see times in Scripture where God made people barren. I think we answered this one live, and it doesn't change your role as a wife.

It just changes your role as a mother, because you're not one. But I don't think it changes the role as a wife.

In fact, it gives the wife more time to devote to her husband, and if someone's single, it gives them more time to devote to the things of God.

I just shared a resource called Girl Defined, and there was a book by the same title that really does a wonderful job of stepping through God's expectations for the role of a woman.

And even a single woman or a woman who cannot have children, she is fully capable of fulfilling all of God's expectations for her life, and the roles for which

He's created her. Okay, let me get a little more specific with the next question, then. What about single mothers? What should they take away from these messages?

Sorry, what should they take away from the messages today? Well, the messages to which they're referring, obviously, with a conference, and I think that those are online on Facebook, if anyone's interested in going and listening to those.

But specifically, I mean, I can't remember a single thing that was preached aside from the specific roles of a husband and father that would not equally apply to the mothers.

And if there is no husband and father in the life of the wife and the children, then

I would say that to a very large degree, the mother naturally falls into that.

Now, I would say it would be a sin for a wife or mother to try to take those roles, if there is a man in the house, especially, even if he's not doing the job well.

But if he's not there, then yeah, those are things that she needs to be doing in the life of her family.

I would also say that find some godly men in the church who would be willing to help. I see

Andrew pointing his finger. He's like, yeah, because I know I've heard Andrew give this advice before, too. There are men in the church that can help with that role of fatherhood, because it is really, really important.

There are certain things a mom cannot do that a man can. Yeah, and this gets back to the question of fatherlessness.

Be an example for someone, as what I used to do is take other single mom's boys out to ballgames and things like that.

They had some male example role model in their life. Maybe I'm not the best role model, but I tried. Next question.

What is a biblical healthy example of a husband loving his wife and a wife submitting to her husband?

Ephesians 5, 22 -33. I think they're looking for a little bit more than that.

Yeah, I know, I know. That's it, though. That's the passage where a husband is compared to Christ and his love for the church, the church compared to the wife.

And I think that there are so many specific points, and we can't teach it all right now, but studying that passage and seeing the correspondence between the two,

I mean, that is an amazing starting point of a healthy biblical example of what it is for a husband to love his wife and his wife to submit.

But I'll let you guys be more specific. Dr. Schlesinger, any practical things that we could add to this? Well, I would say let's go even a step further,

Aaron. I mean, I agree with you completely about that passage. And then when you combine that with 1 Peter 3, that's a wife is to submit to her husband, even if he doesn't seem to be worthy of it, right?

She's still supposed to win him over by her heart and her actions.

And obviously, if the roles were reversed, the same thing would be true. If it's a believing husband or an unbelieving wife, that he is to still serve her the way he's called to according to the

Bible and win her without words that way. So, yes, I think that submission thing going to Ephesians 5 is really, really important to go down those points and break them down.

And I'm sure that you have messages you can point people to if they want to know more about that. I think, yeah, so the

Family United in God series that we did definitely hits on those roles toward the end as we study through Ephesians chapter 5.

And I know that we hit on a lot of these things in different podcast episodes we've done for sure. It's something we've talked about a lot.

I would say go back to the conference videos as well. So the next question is, what does honor your father?

Sorry, let me read it the way they have it. What does honor your mother and father look like for an adult child of unbelieving parents?

Well, I don't know if you guys, I mean, I was in that situation. Anthony, I know you were in that situation. Aaron, I'm not sure you were.

But I think what it is is showing respect and love to them, even though you have disagreements on views.

You know, I'll let Anthony explain more. But, you know, his family has always shown a lot.

And I'm using Anthony maybe as the example. Let him explain, because my family was, over these issues, were very, there was great division over it.

And so I didn't have close relations with my family after I'd be converted to Christianity. So I'd just talk to my parents for 10 minutes a week, because that's basically, then they'd get off the phone and I'd see them maybe once a year.

But I still, I go out of my way to try to spend time with them and to show them that I love and care for them, even though it sometimes is something they don't appreciate.

But Anthony, you had more opportunities than I did. So you're probably better suited to answer this.

Yeah. Well, I would say is that there's no qualifiers on the fifth commandment, honor your father and your mother.

So it doesn't matter what age you are. And it doesn't matter what their state is, whether they're believers or unbelievers.

Honor your father and your mother. So that would be my first point. My second point would be, yes, personally,

I dealt with this. And I would say that, number one, it would, in part, it would mean don't sin against your parents.

And if you do, you repent the same way you would against anybody else who's an unbeliever or believer. Number two, you don't sin against God or go against God's word in your process of how you deal with your parents.

So if your if your parents that you honor and respect, even if they're unbelievers, ask you to sin, you don't sin.

Right. I mean, I know it seems like common sense, but you honor your parents up until the point they would ask you to do something that compromises your integrity.

And certainly what God's law clearly states. And so I was able to do that over the years with with with my parents.

And praise God that that my dad, we we still had a great relationship over the years. And he he would he would listen to me.

And he didn't ask me to do things outside of bounds. I always respected him and loved him and and praise

God he was saved on his deathbed. My mom is still alive today and she's still an unbeliever.

I still treat her the same way. But when we have conversations, I will not go down certain roads in conversations that would would cause that would be dishonoring to God in those conversations.

And I'll stop there on that. And maybe what I'll say for Aaron's audience, because they may not know my background so much.

So I came from a Jewish background when I my parents found out I converted to Christianity. They actually went casket shopping and they decided not to bury an empty casket for some reasons that happened within our family.

However, the next step, I was in ROTC at the time and I really wanted to go into the army.

I was training with with the National Guard, training with Rangers. So I got a lot of privileges and I really wanted to do that.

However, my father had never wanted his boys in military. The guy next to him got shot and killed in military.

And I had ROTC as a backup plan if my father stopped paying for my education, which I anticipated.

And that was what he said. We we decided not to bury an empty casket, but I'm not paying for your college if you continue with this

Christianity. And I just said, I understand that, Dad. And that's why I'm in ROTC. And he continued to pay for my education.

So when it came time for me to sign up or get out of ROTC, part of honoring my father, even though it was something

I wanted to do, I knew that was something he really didn't want. And he continued to pay for my education so that I wouldn't go into the military.

Now, is that something that's, like Anthony says, that against scripture? No. So out of honoring my father,

I never entered into the military. And in fact, when I got to the age where I couldn't enter anymore, I remember that birthday saying like, that's it.

It's over. I have no more choice. You know, I had always thought, had my father passed away, would I enter?

Would I do it later in life? But that's part of honoring him, is knowing his wishes.

And he continued to pay my education. So I never went into the military. So it's kind of, you know, one of those regrets

I have in life. But next question is, what should the first course of action be in a marriage with no love?

Get help. I want to answer the multiple layers of this question. First of all, if there is no love, then we have a husband and a wife who are both unsaved.

We love because he first loved us. So that's huge. You're both unsaved and you need to know

God. Secondly, if one or the other is saved, then there is love there.

And that's a really important concept. But if you're both born again, and your understanding of love has been polluted by the world's understanding of love, you obviously need help.

I think, though, potentially, this question was being asked from the standpoint of attraction, sexual attraction and affection and things like that, which is biblically not love.

I mean, I think it's going to be part of a healthy marriage relationship, but it's not technically the big parts of marital love, which is why a born -again believer can genuinely, biblically love their spouse, and the spouse not, quote -unquote, feel loved.

But either way, any of those issues, any layer or level, whatever was meant by this original question, is going to be answered by, if you truly love the

Lord, if you want to be the husband or wife that He's called you to be, you guys need help. And doing that on your own is very, very difficult.

You can, by God's grace, His strength, His power, His word. You can become the husband and wife

God wants you to be. But I would just strongly encourage you to get help from a biblically mature, God -honoring individual who can help disciple you guys in this.

Yeah. I mean, Anthony, you want to answer that? No, that's perfect. Okay. Yeah, there's not much. I mean, like I said, there shouldn't be a marriage with a

Christian with no love. But Aaron, this will be a quick one. Some people are upset with you.

They said, Android users are offended, Aaron. So I'm going to have to let you explain what's behind that. It's not really a question.

The quick answer is that Evermind Ministries has put out an app. It's available on the iOS store.

And we haven't yet rolled it out on Android. And we're going to. It's going to be out there. You guys can access it.

However, whether it's out there or not, when you guys hear this and you want to check it out, you can go to TruthLoveParent .com

or EvermindMinistries .com. You can sign up for the app and you can still access everything online, right here, live, right now.

And then hopefully very soon you can put the app on your phone. Well, the real question, did you ever resolve with Dr.

Silvestro? Because you guys were trying to figure out how he could get set up with the app. I found out what the issue was.

It was funny. It had nothing to do with the app. It had everything to do with the payment account app part of it. And they weren't accepting payments because I hadn't updated my address.

And I had this conversation with them yesterday. And I was like, are you kidding me? People are trying to pay me money. But we can't take your money because Aaron's address isn't right yet.

That's all my work. All right. So next question we have is, how can the

Church help young men learn and apply these principles? So these are the principles that we taught throughout the day.

We've kind of answered this. A lot of these questions seem to be very similar in answer, but Dr. Silvestro, what do you think?

How can the Church help young men to learn the principles that were taught at this conference? Through discipleship.

And unfortunately, a lot of churches are lacking in intentional discipleship. Amen. And if you're one of those churches, and you've addressed the pastor and other elders in the church, and they don't seem to want to fix these things and go to a church that does discipleship, because that's the way it happens.

I agree. So the next one is, is slightly changing wording of a sentence not sin?

Now this one, I'm not sure what it was referring to. There's so many possible questions being asked here. Yeah.

Well, I talked a lot about, as I have on this show today, the importance of vocabulary.

I wondered if that question had to do with that, you know, not being careful in the verbiage that we use and the definitions that we have for words.

I also wondered if this, because in biblical counseling, you know, I've had to sit through so many disagreements between people.

And so one person said, I'm not going to take out the garbage.

But the other person is like, no, you said I'm absolutely not going to take out the garbage. You know, and so maybe the question is being asked, if somebody were to add in that word, absolutely, and it wasn't originally said in the original sentence, aren't they sinning because they're lying about what the other person said?

Well, I'm sorry, I don't know what the original intent of this question is. I will say, though, that our yeses need to be yes, our nos need to be nos.

A vocabulary needs to be biblically defined. We need to use words the way God uses words.

And we need to be careful because when we say things that are not true, even if we're not intentionally planning to deceive, what we said was untrue.

It was a falsehood. It was not accurate. And so therefore, we do need to take responsibility for that.

We need to strive that everything that we say is true. They spoken in truth and love, regardless of the situation.

Yeah, I would add a word in there. Precision, right? We want to be precise with our words. And because they're if I'm reading this question the way

I'm thinking it was written, was for people who who might be recalling a situation or talking to somebody about something and have changed a word or a couple of words just slightly to to intentionally change the meaning of it.

And that would absolutely be sin and absolutely be wrong. So I think precision in our speech.

And as you said, Aaron, make sure everything we say is biblically defined. That's where we shouldn't go wrong.

Yeah, that's actually bring up a really good point because of the fact that and Aaron, you said like we really don't know what's behind this question because there's so much that this could be.

But this is a point that I thought of as well. People will purposely deceive by saying things that are true, but they switch order around or they leave words out or they add words.

So to purposely deceive people. You see us with politicians all the time.

So but that's that as Anthony said, that'd be deception if that's the motive of it.

So the next question is, as an adult child living at home should honor their parents.

However, as Paul Washer teaches, they do not obey them because they are an adult.

What are your views? So maybe the wording the question is the best, but I think that what's getting to is,

OK, you're an adult child living in the home. Do you still have to honor your parents and obey them or not?

I think we kind of answer this a bit, but I think there is one slight caveat. And I've spoken to lots of people about this.

If you are living in their home, I mean, if they had a renter, a complete stranger come live in their home, as every landlord does, they would have rules for that home.

If you are living in your parents' home and they have expectations for what you do or do not do in their home or because you live in their home, then definitely you need to submit to that or you need to move out.

That is just the way it is because that's what you do when you respect a landlord. So I would say, no, if you're choosing to live in their home, you've put yourself in a position where you do need to obey certain things.

Obviously, you don't obey them if they command you to disobey God. They say, well, if you're going to live in our home, we don't want you to go to church.

Well, you need to go to church. And I think the most honoring thing you could do for your parents at that point would be to move out and to live someplace else.

But if you're going to live under their home, then no, there are certain ways that you still are under their authority because they're landlords, not necessarily because they're parents, and you should obey them to that regard.

Yeah, I would agree with that. My only issue with this is there's a hidden statement in this question, which is, however, as Paul Washer teaches, they do not obey them because they're an adult.

I have never heard Paul Washer say that an adult child is not to obey their parents if they're still living in the home.

And that's an implication that's put in here. And so I want to make sure I make that perfectly clear.

I've never heard Paul Washer actually say that. And that was going to be a question I was going to ask of you,

Anthony, because I don't listen to a lot of Paul Washer, read a lot of his books, so I was ignorant to that.

And I was like, what is Paul Washer teaching? Yeah, I didn't know either. Yeah, I didn't know that part.

So, all right, the last question that we have is, now that—sorry, let me read it.

It's in quotes. Now, if there is no resurrection, what will those who are baptized for the dead, if the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized for them?

And he's quoting loosely—he's quoting from 1 Corinthians 15, a conversation that Paul was having with the

Corinthians. And so as we look at this, I mean, that's the quote of it. Now, there wasn't really a question here.

It was just question marks. I think the person's asking, what's the meaning of this? So let me start, and then

I'll let you guys continue. But the only thing I could think of that this is referring to, because there's only one place where I know that people practice a thing of baptism for the dead, and that is

Mormonism. And so they will—they teach that people are saved through baptism, and so they go back in the past, and people think people have a second chance of having salvation, so they get baptized for those dead people, people who have died years before.

So that's sort of the thinking where we only have one passage that talks about baptism for the dead. This is the quotation of it, or loosely.

And so I think that's what they're asking. What is the meaning of it is what I'm guessing. That's the Mormon meaning, is that they're getting baptized physically for dead people.

So let me let you guys answer first. Yeah, because that's not what the Bible says. I'm not sure where they're getting this from, other than what you're interpreting it as,

Andrew. I mean, out of the NASB, it says in verse 12, Now if Christ is preached, then he has been raised from the dead.

How do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even

Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised and their preaching is in vain, your faith also is vain.

So, I mean, whatever they wrote there is absolutely completely different from what is written in 1

Corinthians 15 in those verses. Well, actually, no, verse 29,

Otherwise what will those do who are baptized for the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why then are they baptized for them?

So I don't know where the first part came from now. If there is no resurrection, it's potentially a different translation.

I'm using the NASB, too. But the second part of it, yeah. They're jamming together verses 12, 13 down to 29, right?

Oh, I see what you're saying. They're taking it all out of context. They've jammed those verses together and removed everything in between.

Yeah, you have to start with context, right? This is the basic rule of interpretation.

You have to start with where the question starts. So the question starts in verse 12. Now, if Christ is proclaimed as risen from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead?

So the whole idea is the resurrection. And so the issue is not the baptism.

Now, this is in a case where people are saying baptism would save. Well, he'd be arguing everything about the resurrection.

Now, we're not arguing Andy Stanley. He says let's throw out the Bible because it's all the resurrection.

How do you know anything about the resurrection, Andy? From the Bible. Oh, okay. Well, I'll say that there are a lot of interpretations of this particular passage.

I don't think anyone's actually come to complete consensus on it. Gotquestions .org does a pretty good job answering this question.

MacArthur says that the people being baptized, quote -unquote, for the dead could possibly be translated, quote -unquote, because of death.

And he says this would mean that people who are baptized in lieu of death are doing it vainly as no one would be resurrected.

And I think that's kind of more pointing in the direction that I go. It was interesting that Paul used the resurrection from the dead to his advantage during another situation where the

Pharisees and the Sadducees were all coming against him. And knowing that the Sadducees didn't believe in the resurrection from the dead, he basically brought up resurrection so that they would fight amongst themselves and basically ignore him, which is what happened.

And he also is very—he uses irony, he uses sarcasm frequently.

I think the point he's trying to make here in Chapter 15 is that resurrection is a thing, right? And I think what he's doing is he's trying to help these people that he's specifically talking to who we don't know, we don't know who they were, we don't know what they were doing, but he knew,

Paul knew, God knew, that these people potentially who didn't believe in the resurrection were also being baptized for the dead.

They were following this ancient custom, whatever it meant, and they were being baptized for the dead. And I have the feeling that he's probably saying, hey, listen, the resurrection's a real thing.

And if it's not a real thing, what on earth are you doing getting baptized for the dead? That makes zero sense at all.

They're dead. So I kind of think that we can simplify this because getting baptized for the dead is nowhere commanded in Scripture.

It's not seen anywhere else in Scripture. And I think he's just using this to point out the fact that resurrection of Christ was real.

His people will be resurrected. And even the fact that you would think that you needed to be baptized for the dead points to the fact that you, deep down inside, know that people will be resurrected.

And so that really answers the questions we had. We do want to thank, I think all of us would want to thank,

Michiana Reforming Families Conference for having us there, allowing us the privilege of speaking, doing the

Q &A. I think it was a real honor that it was just the three of us in the Q &A out of the many speakers that I think did a great job speaking.

And yet, for some reason, it was only the three of us in the Q &A. It was a shorter Q &A, and that's why we had agreed we would do this podcast.

And I think it was a real honor to be there. They plan, I believe, to do this as a yearly conference. So if you want to check that out, look up the

Michiana Reforming Families Conference and check out the pastor there at the church is

Kevin James. Check out what they're doing so that you can be in touch with the next year's conference, whoever may be speaking, because I think it'll be a good conference.

And we were just privileged to be part of it. Yes. Thank you, Pastor Kevin, for inviting us. Yes. Thank you, Pastor Kevin. We had a great time out there.

Got to meet a lot of good people. Got to, you know, a lot of folks who asked questions.

It was a good fellowship. So with that, I think that's a wrap. Everybody's choosy about something.

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