Transcript: Episode 0043
This transcript:
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WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:13.540 ... 00:13.540 --> 00:20.720 Are you ready? 00:20.720 --> 00:41.960 Welcome to the Stone Choir podcast. I am Corey J. Mahler. 00:41.960 --> 00:47.560 And I'm still, whoa. On today's Stone Choir, we're going to be discussing the plight of 00:47.560 --> 00:52.240 young men in principally the United States, but really, I think everywhere in the Western 00:52.240 --> 00:59.120 world, particularly young men who are unmarried. Some of what we say will have to do with married 00:59.120 --> 01:04.120 men. Principally, this will be addressed to basically like guys, you know, 12 to 15 up 01:04.120 --> 01:09.760 to, you know, 40, and secondarily to their fathers, the fathers of both sons and daughters 01:09.760 --> 01:15.360 who are facing some of the circumstances we're going to describe as a warning to fathers, 01:15.360 --> 01:19.440 you know, listen with children. We're not going to be, you know, graphic or inappropriate 01:19.440 --> 01:24.360 with anything today. I don't think, but obviously the, the subjects you would expect are going 01:24.360 --> 01:28.760 to come up probably at some length. So you may want to screen this before listening to 01:28.760 --> 01:31.440 it with younger children. 01:31.440 --> 01:37.960 As we mentioned last week, we were also in the middle of an arc dealing with politics. 01:37.960 --> 01:41.360 As we mentioned last week, we'll probably break some of those up just because of the 01:41.360 --> 01:45.960 time commitment and, you know, we're recording on a Tuesday yesterday was Labor Day. So this 01:45.960 --> 01:50.760 is one that didn't take as much prep because we know a lot of this off top of our heads. 01:50.760 --> 01:57.560 This is however an episode that's a continuation of seven episodes that we've done in the recent 01:57.560 --> 02:03.360 past. So I'm going to refer to back to them specifically because today as we're speaking, 02:03.360 --> 02:07.400 you know, principally to young men, there's a lot of groundwork that we've laid on kind 02:07.400 --> 02:13.640 of more theory and this one we're going to try to make as practical and hopefully encouraging 02:13.640 --> 02:16.240 as possible. 02:16.240 --> 02:20.120 That encouragement obviously is going to take the form, you know, as Christians that ultimately 02:20.120 --> 02:25.680 you have to trust in God to deliver on his promises and to deliver the good things because 02:25.680 --> 02:30.200 I think we should all have the sense that you can do everything right, do everything by 02:30.200 --> 02:36.360 the book and things may still may not pan out. And it's very difficult, particularly 02:36.400 --> 02:41.560 for a young man to see the state of the world and perhaps the state of his own dating life 02:41.560 --> 02:48.800 and think, I just can't handle this anymore. And we don't want guys who are facing those 02:48.800 --> 02:56.600 circumstances to listen to Job's wife's advice when she said curse God and die. That's not 02:56.600 --> 03:02.120 the Christian response, obviously, we're going to encourage trust and confidence and God's 03:02.120 --> 03:06.320 promises. But we're also here living and there's stuff for us to do. There's stuff for you 03:06.360 --> 03:11.600 as young men to do. The groundwork, as I said, is laid in seven recent episodes. I'm just 03:11.600 --> 03:15.680 going to name them to give you a pointer back to if this is one you happen to be listening 03:15.680 --> 03:20.840 to first, they address different aspects of some of the things that we're just going to 03:20.840 --> 03:25.160 assume are already part of your knowledge in this episode. The first of those is episode 03:25.160 --> 03:30.880 22 on women, scripture and ontology. And then the next episode 23 on feminism, that's where 03:30.880 --> 03:35.720 we specifically deal with the question of what is a woman? What is a girl? How are they 03:35.720 --> 03:41.000 different than men? Why are the two sexes fundamentally different? And that's the episode 03:41.360 --> 03:46.760 two part series where we don't a great deal with headship and the importance of headship. So 03:47.520 --> 03:52.000 that's obviously going to be implicit in this conversation, both for young men who are looking 03:52.000 --> 03:58.520 to become heads of your own households, and also for fathers who have sons and daughters who 03:58.520 --> 04:05.520 are going out into the world and facing this great unknown, horrifying unknown, man made 04:05.520 --> 04:11.120 horrors beyond comprehension as we look at the state of the relations of men and women today. 04:12.440 --> 04:17.360 Episode 26 on the fear of the Lord, that goes back to as I said, you know, we're trusting in 04:17.520 --> 04:25.040 in God's promises. And ultimately, if we fear God, as he commands us to, we can't be afraid of 04:25.040 --> 04:30.760 anything else. So that's one small element of this, but it's a really important one. And I'll 04:30.760 --> 04:35.040 spoil the ending of this episode, we're going to end with Jesus speech in the Sermon on the 04:35.040 --> 04:40.800 Mount, where he talks about the birds of the air and the beast of the field trusting and receiving 04:40.800 --> 04:47.520 his promises and his gifts without anything. They don't know they just God takes care of them. And 04:47.520 --> 04:53.000 God promises that if he takes care of, you know, birds and animals and insects, he's also going to 04:53.000 --> 04:57.680 take care of you because he died for you on the cross. So I hope that will be the arc of this whole 04:57.680 --> 05:04.280 episode as we go through these things. In episode 27, the listener feedback episode, the first one 05:04.280 --> 05:09.480 that we've done, we'll probably do another one here pretty soon. We talked some about celibacy 05:09.720 --> 05:13.800 versus chastity. That's going to be a discussion that we're going to rehash here again, because it's 05:13.800 --> 05:19.040 been blowing up on the internet recently again. And it's one of the most fundamental aspects of 05:19.680 --> 05:24.200 the struggle of a young man who's full of testosterone. He's surrounded by girls who are 05:24.200 --> 05:31.920 half naked, because their fathers are fools and need to be beaten. And the difference between 05:31.920 --> 05:36.760 chastity and celibacy is a vital one, because a lot of pastors are spreading a lot of absolute 05:36.760 --> 05:42.080 garbage that is binding men's consciences and fashions that are ultimately disastrous. So we'll 05:42.080 --> 05:49.000 get into that. Also, I want to mention just briefly an episode 27 for listener feedback. It's 05:49.000 --> 05:54.640 the only episode where we've ever mentioned that we have a donation link on the website. As we 05:54.640 --> 06:01.480 mentioned in episode nine, PaywallingGod, we never started this thing to get a dime. The only reason 06:01.480 --> 06:06.360 we initially created the donation page was that people kept asking for it. And so if someone wants 06:06.360 --> 06:11.800 to support what we're doing, we're not going to say no. Frankly, that would be insulting. But we've 06:11.800 --> 06:16.440 never made it a point at what we're doing. Recently, we've had a couple very sizable 06:16.440 --> 06:21.480 donations, and I wanted to acknowledge those men. That was tremendously generous of you. And I also 06:21.480 --> 06:28.560 want to acknowledge the fact that when Corey and I set out to do Stone Choir, it was with the hope 06:28.560 --> 06:33.360 that we would build an archive library of episodes that would tackle some of these tough 06:33.360 --> 06:38.440 subjects, just sit there on the internet, and hopefully some people would find it in enough 06:38.440 --> 06:43.120 time that we wouldn't lose hope that it was ever going to be discovered. We never really expected 06:43.160 --> 06:50.160 to take off. It has in terms of numbers and in terms of support. And the reason I'm mentioning the 06:50.160 --> 06:56.120 money, despite the fact that that's, A, it's not the point and B, I don't, if someone wants to call 06:56.120 --> 07:03.760 us grifters, whatever, I'm not comfortable talking about it. But I want to acknowledge that men 07:03.760 --> 07:11.320 have given. And I want to acknowledge the fact that it goes to a broader subject that is another 07:11.360 --> 07:17.120 topic in which we'll talk about in a little bit. When we act in the world, when we act in each 07:17.120 --> 07:22.800 other's lives, we are God's hands in other people's lives. The thing that you do for your neighbor is 07:22.800 --> 07:29.200 you acting on behalf of God, for God or for your neighbor. Those are the good works which he promised 07:29.200 --> 07:38.280 he prepared before and for us. And so when someone gives us a gift, small or large, in a sense, 07:38.480 --> 07:44.400 in a very real sense, I don't mean hypothetically, that's literally true. Not only is that person 07:44.400 --> 07:51.000 doing something, but God is doing something through them for us. If anyone happened to read my 07:51.000 --> 07:55.960 docs, there were some complete nonsense in there about my finances. I haven't had a paycheck in 07:55.960 --> 08:02.760 10 years. And I am now effectively probably unemployable by virtue of having started this podcast 08:02.760 --> 08:08.040 along with Corey, who is also more or less unemployable, because we're disreputable neo-nazi 08:08.040 --> 08:14.080 podcasters according to the people who hate God. I'm not complaining. I signed up for this and 08:14.080 --> 08:18.360 we've said in a lot of episodes. That's fine. We're going to do this. We're going to obey God. And I 08:18.360 --> 08:26.080 trust in God. But when people start sending gifts to us, I can't ignore the fact that that is God 08:26.200 --> 08:34.000 saying, do more of this. And to be clear, this is not about money. We get Corey and I between the 08:34.000 --> 08:39.600 two of us, we probably get between six and 12 messages every single week from people who discovered 08:39.600 --> 08:46.040 the podcast recently, they're reaching out to say, thank you for what you're doing. It's in 08:46.040 --> 08:51.160 specifically saying, I'm going back to church, I'm reading my Bible more, maybe I'm going to church 08:51.200 --> 08:56.520 for the first time, or I left my church where no one cared about God, and I found a church where 08:56.520 --> 09:02.080 they actually preached the whole counsel of God. We get those messages all the time as a direct 09:02.080 --> 09:06.960 result of the things that we have said on this podcast. If that's all that we ever got, that 09:06.960 --> 09:13.480 would be more than enough reason for us to continue to do it. If additionally, God also says, we're 09:13.480 --> 09:18.800 going to cover some of your bills through you through listeners. I want to acknowledge the fact 09:18.840 --> 09:22.760 that I'm grateful to God, and I'm grateful to you for doing that. And if it goes away tomorrow, 09:22.760 --> 09:28.040 that's fine. That's not the reason. We will put a link this time in the show notes to the donation 09:28.040 --> 09:32.760 page, not to solicit. But because about a month ago, I was mentioning to Corey, I happened to 09:32.760 --> 09:38.080 look at it again, and it only had like three categories of monthly donations, and a couple of 09:38.080 --> 09:42.280 were just absurdly large. And I said, that's stupid, no one should ever give that much money. 09:43.240 --> 09:48.400 And so he went back through and took that as a challenge to basically turn it into kind of a 09:48.400 --> 09:55.520 Bible Easter egg. If you've seen recently the ADL list of racist numbers between 1 and 100, 09:55.520 --> 10:01.840 basically Corey turned it into kind of a mini Bible study where the donation tiers, most of them 10:01.840 --> 10:06.840 are completely absurd, but they're Bible references. So that's more free entertainment if 10:06.840 --> 10:10.880 you're a listener, and you want to be entertained additionally for free, like I said in the pay 10:10.920 --> 10:16.240 walling episode. Everything we do is completely free because we're doing this because we think 10:16.240 --> 10:22.440 God compels us, and we would never charge for something that we think God wants us to do. That 10:22.440 --> 10:27.160 would be going completely opposite directions. So I mentioned the donation pages because it's 10:27.160 --> 10:31.560 kind of entertaining. And if you want to test your Bible knowledge, I think you'll have fun 10:31.560 --> 10:36.280 with some, just trying to figure out what those numbers have to do with what Bible verses. Corey 10:36.280 --> 10:40.880 has tremendous knowledge of scripture a lot more than me. And it's just fun and entertaining. So 10:40.880 --> 10:46.120 that'll be there. Since I mentioned, I also want to reiterate something I said in the listener 10:46.120 --> 10:51.160 episode, which is, please don't give us money. If ever in the future, you are going to be offended 10:51.160 --> 10:57.280 by something that we say, if we come after one of things that you were devoted to, and we call it 10:57.280 --> 11:01.360 an idol, and we say we're going to smash it, which is one of the things that we're here to do. I 11:01.360 --> 11:05.280 don't want to give offense. And then for someone to feel like all those guys, they were fraud, 11:05.280 --> 11:11.360 and they ripped me off, please don't give money if you're going to be offended if we trash you. We 11:11.360 --> 11:15.800 don't mean to trash you. We're trying to focus on what's true and what's false. If we think that 11:15.800 --> 11:19.560 something's false that you happen to like, we're going to give it the same treatment that we've 11:19.560 --> 11:24.880 given all the other things you like. So if in the future, you would be horribly offended, if we 11:24.880 --> 11:30.400 said something that you found disparaging, please don't give us any money, because I don't want 11:31.280 --> 11:39.320 you to feel like we ripped you off. I never would have felt that way. Next episode in the arc that 11:39.320 --> 11:45.240 I mentioned, 28, Sweat the Small Stuff. That's one where we talk a little bit about things that we 11:45.240 --> 11:52.080 can do in our churches and communities to kind of rebuild a Christian society, because we are so 11:52.080 --> 11:58.200 far gone. We're so many generations of now away from anything that could remotely look like a 11:58.240 --> 12:03.040 Christian society that we got to start somewhere. And so in that episode, we talked a little bit 12:03.040 --> 12:09.000 about things like job boards in your congregation. Not only should you be worshiping with those 12:09.000 --> 12:13.240 folks every week, but you should be trying to hire them, or you should be working for them. You 12:13.240 --> 12:19.720 should have commerce with your brothers in Christ, preferentially. That's something that has always 12:19.720 --> 12:24.280 been the case, and they should continue to be so. So that also, we'll talk about today specifically, 12:24.920 --> 12:30.200 that also includes finding a maid. Not necessarily go to church to find a girl at church, because you 12:30.200 --> 12:35.640 may not find them, especially in a lot of conservative congregations. Sometimes it's all old 12:35.640 --> 12:40.680 people, but you know what? Those old people have daughters and granddaughters. Maybe asking them 12:40.680 --> 12:46.600 is going to help. So we'll talk about that in this episode. In 29 episode on the generational divide, 12:46.600 --> 12:51.880 we specifically talk about the fact that young guys are today in a position where a lot of guys 12:51.880 --> 12:57.400 are age and older, are probably going to give you incredibly stupid advice, because things have 12:57.400 --> 13:05.560 changed so much even in 5, 10, 15, let alone 30 or 40 years, that when some boomer says pull yourself 13:05.560 --> 13:11.480 up by your brute straps, we talked about how idiotic that is on its face. It's the literal opposite of 13:11.480 --> 13:17.800 what the original intent of that expression was. You as a young man, if you're listening to us, 13:17.800 --> 13:22.200 you're in a position where you have to weigh all these things that all these old guys are telling 13:22.200 --> 13:26.920 you, and some of it will be true. Most of it's going to be garbage, and it's all going to sound the 13:26.920 --> 13:30.600 same to you, and you're not going to have any frame of reference. So that's an episode we talk 13:30.600 --> 13:36.680 a little bit about how sometimes respecting your elders is limited to loving them and 13:37.560 --> 13:43.000 according to dignity, but disregarding some of their completely retarded advice in a loving way. 13:43.000 --> 13:48.200 Don't pick fights, but if they're saying something idiotic, don't listen, because it's your life that 13:48.200 --> 13:53.720 you'll screw up if you follow the wrong path. And the same applies to us. I'm in my mid-40s, 13:53.720 --> 13:59.720 Corey's in his mid-30s. We're older guys to some of you. There are things that we don't know. We 13:59.720 --> 14:05.320 mentioned in one of the episodes, we talked to a lot of guys in their early 20s and late teens, 14:05.320 --> 14:11.320 and we would say stupid things if we weren't talking to guys your age, because it's stuff I 14:11.320 --> 14:15.400 would never imagine. I can never imagine how bad it is for you. And the last I was talking, 14:15.400 --> 14:19.480 you guys were telling me. So we're going to talk a little bit today about some of those things, 14:19.480 --> 14:26.440 but we also referenced in that episode what to do when you're getting mixed advice from people. 14:27.480 --> 14:33.560 And last one, talking about living with past mistakes in episode 30 against the Clockwork 14:33.560 --> 14:39.320 universe. We talked about some of the damage that's done by sexual promiscuity, particularly 14:39.320 --> 14:43.080 against girls. So those are all subjects that we're not going to get into today because they're 14:43.080 --> 14:48.280 dealt with previously. Today, we're going to try to give some concrete specific advice. Again, 14:48.280 --> 14:53.640 we're older guys. I'm divorced, Corey's single. If you think that makes us retarded and not worth 14:53.640 --> 15:00.200 listening to, okay, I'm not going to argue with you. We have made mistakes. If we tell you things, 15:00.200 --> 15:05.480 they're going to cause you to repeat our mistakes. That would be malicious and foolhardy. Guys who 15:05.480 --> 15:10.120 screw things up can also give you at least some narrow advice about, here's how not to make the 15:10.120 --> 15:17.480 same mistakes that I did. Neither Russ or Fathers. So I am really uncomfortable with the notion of 15:17.480 --> 15:23.640 giving any fatherly advice. So as I mentioned, the secondary audience for this episode is Fathers. 15:23.640 --> 15:28.200 I'm not going to give you father to father advice because I have not. I'm not a dad. I have no skin 15:28.200 --> 15:34.520 in the game in terms of making mistakes and screwing up kids. What I can do is tell you what 15:34.520 --> 15:39.400 some of these younger guys are facing, and then you as a father of a son or a daughter will have 15:39.400 --> 15:45.560 to figure out amongst yourselves, how do I prevent my children from going down a path that's going 15:45.560 --> 15:51.720 to fall into some of these traps or cause some of these problems for others? So we're going to try 15:51.720 --> 15:58.280 to stay in our line. That's important to me. We're not know it all despite the way we sometimes 15:58.280 --> 16:03.560 come across. We try to stick to what we know and what we can speak to faithfully. There'll be a 16:03.640 --> 16:08.120 lot of scripture in this, and it's also just giving me a lot of straight advice. But I hope that 16:08.120 --> 16:12.680 this episode, which I've got 15 minutes into an introduction, I hope the young guys who are 16:12.680 --> 16:18.280 listening will come away from this, having a little bit more confidence and having some idea of 16:19.080 --> 16:23.800 what they can avoid and what they should try to do, but ultimately knowing that we have to trust 16:23.800 --> 16:27.640 in God for all this stuff. Because you don't know if you're going to wake up tomorrow, forget 16:27.640 --> 16:30.840 whether you're going to find a wife. You don't know if the son's going to come up tomorrow. You 16:30.840 --> 16:35.320 don't know if your heart's going to beat tomorrow. You trust in God to deliver on his promises, 16:35.880 --> 16:41.000 and he'll take care of the rest. And so for all the advice that you'll ever get from anyone, 16:41.000 --> 16:44.680 that is why you have to have your confidence. And having confidence rooted in God 16:45.240 --> 16:50.040 makes it possible to engage boldly in the world without feeling like you have to get everything 16:50.040 --> 16:54.600 just right. Because if the onus is always on you to get everything just right, you know that's 16:54.600 --> 17:00.360 hopeless. That's a well that no one can dig himself out of. If you trust in God and know that 17:00.360 --> 17:06.360 obeying him will be fruitful, that's half the battle. And the rest of it is prayer and doing 17:06.360 --> 17:12.280 the time and putting in the work and waiting for God to deliver. And in the meantime, living your 17:12.280 --> 17:19.880 life as a man. So to start off the episode proper, we should probably go over some of the 17:20.520 --> 17:26.920 reasons that young men in particular have it so hard today, why there are so many problems 17:26.920 --> 17:35.640 for young men specifically. And part of this is we'll start with the dating market, as it were, 17:36.280 --> 17:44.280 with the marriage market. Given the current set of incentives and the way that our society is 17:44.280 --> 17:51.880 structured, it is structured against most men. Yes, there is that top percentage to 17:52.840 --> 17:59.720 kind of abuse the terms, but they're the men who are very successful in the current market. 18:01.160 --> 18:05.320 And that is a tiny percentage of men. And the reason for that is very simple. 18:06.760 --> 18:17.240 Women want to have, to some degree, security and to some degree, stability. But there is another 18:17.320 --> 18:25.080 aspect to their nature, we went over this somewhat in previous episodes. But if the opportunity is 18:25.080 --> 18:33.240 there, women are going to go after some of these higher status men. And the reason they'll do that 18:33.240 --> 18:40.120 under the current circumstances is because our society and particularly our government has been 18:40.120 --> 18:47.560 designed in order to encourage that, because the goal is to delay or to destroy family formation, 18:47.560 --> 18:54.520 we live under an evil government. We've covered that previously and proved that point in so far as 18:54.520 --> 19:02.680 we're concerned. But traditionally, it is the father and then the husband who provides that 19:02.680 --> 19:09.160 stable environment for a woman where she is safe and can raise a family. That is the natural order 19:09.160 --> 19:15.800 of things. That is how things are supposed to go. Well, today the government has stepped into a 19:15.800 --> 19:24.280 certain degree to act as the husband for single women. And so the necessity of forming that 19:24.280 --> 19:31.080 family bond, of maintaining a family bond, first with regard to the father being the most natural 19:31.080 --> 19:37.880 family bond, because he's your father, if you're his daughter, and then with your husband, with whom 19:37.880 --> 19:44.680 you will form your own family, the government has stepped into a certain degree and said, no, if you 19:44.680 --> 19:52.760 are living alone, that's fine. We have all of these social services, we have these various programs of 19:52.760 --> 19:58.360 which you can take advantage, etc., etc. This creates a perverse set of incentives and that is 19:58.360 --> 20:06.920 deliberate. Because on the one hand, it maintains women as part of the working class. So it is 20:07.640 --> 20:12.280 beneficial in terms of capitalism, in terms of the market, you have more workers, you can drive 20:12.280 --> 20:17.720 down wages, etc. But more importantly, and this is obviously Satan's overarching goal, 20:18.840 --> 20:25.720 it makes it incredibly difficult to form families. Because women, when they are younger and more 20:25.720 --> 20:30.840 vulnerable, and more easily misled, and that's obviously just true. Yes, men, when they're 20:30.840 --> 20:38.120 younger, are also more easily misled, but women are more easily misled than men. That's in scripture, 20:38.120 --> 20:45.160 that's just the way God made men and women. But women, when they are young and easily misled, 20:46.760 --> 20:52.760 they can be told by the culture, by the state, no, you should take advantage of your youth, 20:52.760 --> 20:58.440 and you should do these things that you really shouldn't do. But the problem is, by the time 20:58.440 --> 21:03.560 they realize the error they have made, well, they're now in their mid-30s, or their 40s. 21:05.480 --> 21:10.600 Women have a biological clock that men really do not. Yes, men have one to a certain degree. If you 21:10.600 --> 21:15.000 have your first child when you're 60, you're going to have a lot of problems that you would 21:15.000 --> 21:21.880 not have if you had had your first child when you were 30. So for men, yes, you can marry later, 21:21.880 --> 21:28.040 you can have children later. You shouldn't do it too late. But for women, that's not an option. 21:28.760 --> 21:32.600 Because women have a fertility window. There's only a set number of years, 21:32.600 --> 21:37.000 15, 20 years, depending on the woman, wherein you can actually have children. 21:38.120 --> 21:45.160 All Satan has to do is get women to squander that period, and he's won. Because that destroys 21:45.160 --> 21:50.360 family formation, it destroys the next generation, and as we've covered in previous episodes, 21:50.360 --> 21:57.480 that is primarily how Christendom propagates. It propagates from father to son, from father to 21:57.480 --> 22:02.200 daughter, from father to his children, because he is the head of the household, 22:02.200 --> 22:04.840 he is the head of his children, he's the head of his wife as well, 22:05.480 --> 22:13.720 and he instills in them the Christian faith. Christianity is not primarily a matter 22:13.720 --> 22:18.760 of going out and proselytizing and bringing in new converts. Yes, that's part of it, and at 22:18.760 --> 22:23.960 certain points in history that has been a more important part of it. But that was not God's 22:23.960 --> 22:29.880 design. God's original design was that Adam would teach his sons and daughters, 22:29.880 --> 22:33.800 and then his sons and daughters would teach their sons and daughters in perpetuity, 22:34.440 --> 22:39.640 and that is how it was in Christendom, once Christianity returned to Europe, 22:40.520 --> 22:43.480 for a thousand years, for more than a thousand years. 22:45.240 --> 22:50.840 It is only today that that has fallen away, because we're quite frankly just having fewer 22:50.920 --> 22:56.760 children, and these are the reasons that's happening. But now to speak directly to fathers, 22:56.760 --> 23:02.200 now we're not going to give, as we said, specific parenting advice, although I'm 23:02.200 --> 23:06.520 a little more comfortable giving some, I've done a fair amount of work in psychology. 23:07.960 --> 23:11.720 I know some will think that that's probably the antithesis of knowing how to deal with children, 23:11.720 --> 23:16.360 but it depends on what you read and which conclusions you draw. But to give some 23:16.360 --> 23:21.240 actual concrete advice for fathers, this is the same advice we've been giving all along, 23:21.880 --> 23:28.360 do not send your daughters to college. Period. That's a blanket recommendation, 23:29.080 --> 23:36.600 and the reason not to do that is very simple. The odds are that she is going to do extremely 23:36.600 --> 23:44.920 unwise things while she is away from your roof. And this is not a matter of trusting your daughter 23:44.920 --> 23:51.000 or not trusting your daughter. This is a matter of being a father, realizing that God has given 23:51.000 --> 23:58.840 you a position of headship. It is your duty to oversee what she does. You cannot do that 23:58.840 --> 24:03.640 when she's away at college. And so what is she when she's away at college? She's headless. 24:05.480 --> 24:11.720 Headless things do not make good decisions. That is simply the nature of reality. 24:12.680 --> 24:18.600 And so a verse should come to mind. Leviticus, do not profane your daughter by making her a 24:18.600 --> 24:23.480 prostitute, lest the land fall into prostitution and the land become full of depravity. 24:24.600 --> 24:29.160 When you send your daughter away to college, and I do mean emphasis on away because it is 24:29.160 --> 24:34.600 particularly a problem when you send her away to college, a residential college. There's a 24:34.600 --> 24:38.440 difference if she takes a few classes at a community college, comes home at night, lives under your 24:38.440 --> 24:45.320 roof. But if you send her away to a residential college, you are effectively telling her go be 24:45.320 --> 24:53.480 a prostitute. Now she may not. You may win the odds. But don't play those odds. God did not call 24:53.480 --> 24:58.040 you to roll the dice when it comes to your children. You are called to be a father and a head. You are 24:58.040 --> 25:04.040 called to raise them correctly. And this is part of the reason that young men are having such a 25:04.040 --> 25:12.280 hard time finding marriageable women. Because once a woman has gone to college and been promiscuous, 25:13.960 --> 25:19.720 in many cases she is no longer fit to be a wife. Because as we went over in previous episodes, 25:19.720 --> 25:25.000 there are very real consequences to that behavior. And becoming a Christian again, 25:25.000 --> 25:29.640 if you apostatized while you were in college and you come back to Christ, becoming a Christian again 25:29.640 --> 25:36.680 does not remove those temporal consequences. It removes the eternal consequences. So you don't 25:36.680 --> 25:43.000 necessarily go to hell because you were a whore in undergrad. But there are very real consequences. 25:43.800 --> 25:48.520 You won't be able to pair bond as well, if at all. You will have children that will have genetic 25:48.520 --> 25:53.400 issues that they would not otherwise have had, etc. etc. There are many problems attendant that. 25:53.960 --> 25:59.640 And so we recognize these are the problems that young men are facing. Because they're 25:59.640 --> 26:06.440 facing a marriage market in which there are many women who are simply not marriageable anymore. 26:07.800 --> 26:11.720 And so one of the recommendations that we would make for the young men out there, 26:12.760 --> 26:17.320 don't look for women at college. That's not going to be a good place to find them. 26:18.280 --> 26:22.040 Look for a woman who has a good enough relationship with her father 26:22.680 --> 26:27.640 that she didn't go to college. That her father knew to recommend to her that that was not a wise 26:27.640 --> 26:33.160 decision, really ever, but particularly under present circumstances. There are many places 26:33.960 --> 26:40.520 where you can find women who are marriage material. They still exist. You may be to speak 26:40.520 --> 26:45.560 directly to the young men. You may be discouraged because of what you've seen of the world. And 26:45.560 --> 26:49.960 to some degree that's rational. The world has a lot of problems right now. 26:51.240 --> 26:55.800 And women, you need to understand the nature of women. Women are going to reflect the society 26:55.800 --> 27:03.800 more directly than men are. Because that is how God made women. Women start to become like and 27:03.800 --> 27:09.240 to reflect their head. And a woman who is not living under her father's roof or her husband's 27:09.240 --> 27:15.560 roof is going to reflect her head. And her head is going to be the state. She is going to reflect 27:16.120 --> 27:19.720 the current state of society. And that is what we see today. 27:21.000 --> 27:26.120 And I'm sure that there are a lot of guys listening right now, particularly fathers who are thinking, 27:26.120 --> 27:30.840 well, I know about a good Christian college where that's not going to happen. BS, 27:31.480 --> 27:35.400 it's a matter of degrees. And this is part of the reason why I said at the beginning, 27:36.360 --> 27:41.400 your knowledge of college is utterly worthless. It's completely worthless. You think you know 27:41.400 --> 27:46.360 something about college, you know nothing. You are completely ignorant. And anything that you 27:46.360 --> 27:52.680 would ever say to a man 15, 20 years younger than you is garbage. Don't even think about doing it 27:52.680 --> 27:58.440 because you're wrong. The degree of depravity in these places, I don't know the frequency with 27:58.440 --> 28:02.760 which it's doubling. It's certainly more than every five years. But the notion that someone who 28:02.760 --> 28:09.640 is in college 25, 30 years ago has a clue what's going on today is it's wicked. I'm telling you 28:09.640 --> 28:14.360 right now, don't tell anyone, oh no, it's going to be fine. And I include the Christian colleges, 28:14.360 --> 28:19.240 isn't that? Three things will happen if you send girls off to college. They will become whores, 28:19.240 --> 28:24.360 they will become witches, and they will apostatize. I know that sounds completely overblown and over 28:24.360 --> 28:28.280 the top. I'm sure some of you are just laughing at me right now. By degrees, all those things will 28:28.360 --> 28:34.920 happen. Because as Corey said, girls need a head. We talked about I think in the Feminism episode 28:34.920 --> 28:41.000 about the fact that the marriage ceremony where the father gives his daughter's hand to the groom. 28:43.080 --> 28:46.120 Not only is it a transfer of title, it's a transfer of headship. 28:47.000 --> 28:53.240 It is saying the father who was the head of this girl is now making this man her head. 28:54.200 --> 29:00.440 She has to have a head. When you send her away, she doesn't have a head. I don't want to abuse the 29:00.440 --> 29:07.080 term literally, but this is more than a metaphor here. This is a functional spiritual real thing, 29:07.080 --> 29:12.680 and there's no work around. And there is no in loco parentis when you have a Christian college. 29:12.680 --> 29:17.320 Because I'll tell you what, the people who are teaching in those places have themselves all 29:17.320 --> 29:21.800 gone to colleges that are being corrupted. All the things you hear people complaining about 29:21.880 --> 29:29.480 politically, socioeconomically, sociopolitically, any way you want to cut it, the institutions for 29:29.480 --> 29:34.600 learning are diseased. Frankly, the very fact that there would be a co-ed college is by itself an 29:34.600 --> 29:40.120 indication that you're dealing with a wicked place. You would never, ever in a million years, 29:40.120 --> 29:44.120 throw a bunch of horny teenage boys and girls in one place and think, oh, they're fine. I 29:44.120 --> 29:50.360 catechize them. They'll turn out just fine. That's insane. That is being the worst possible father. 29:51.800 --> 29:59.000 So, again, we're saying stuff that seems extreme and it seems absurd. I'll put my credibility 29:59.000 --> 30:04.040 on the line. We're not going far enough. We're not going to describe the things that we know 30:04.040 --> 30:08.920 are going on because we'd have to put an explicit warning on this thing. And some of you would 30:08.920 --> 30:14.440 probably just turn it off and never listen again. The stories about what happens are unconscionable. 30:15.160 --> 30:22.440 They're worse than anything that we have until you go back to the dawn of recorded history 30:22.440 --> 30:30.920 and talking about Greek and Roman-level pagan practices that today are cultural. They're normal. 30:30.920 --> 30:39.480 They're things that go on. And witchcraft, same deal. I went, girls, the notion of spiritual but 30:39.560 --> 30:46.920 not religious, that is basically the expression of how girls view religion. A girl without a head 30:46.920 --> 30:51.560 saying, you are going to be Christian. She may hang on for a time. I'm not saying that they're not 30:51.560 --> 30:55.880 capable of having faith or maintaining faith. I'm saying that their faith will be put to the test 30:55.880 --> 31:04.680 in a way that men can't understand. We don't have the social necessity to get our bearings from other 31:04.680 --> 31:09.560 people. That's not the case with girls. They fundamentally get their bearings from what the 31:09.560 --> 31:15.800 group is doing. And so when the group is influenced by any degree by something negative, 31:15.800 --> 31:20.680 it's naturally going to nudge a girl much more than a guy. Now, obviously, we all know the guys 31:20.680 --> 31:27.640 can fall into peer pressure, but it's much more of a binary decision. Guys say, do something stupid 31:27.640 --> 31:31.880 and other guys say, yeah, that sounds like a good idea. I'll take that dare. Or they just 31:31.880 --> 31:37.160 say, no, I want no part of this scene. Guys can make that sort of a decision and walk away from a 31:37.160 --> 31:41.960 group or just tell the group, I want nothing to do with this. If you guys are going to do this, 31:41.960 --> 31:49.480 I'm going to bounce. Girls virtually never had that kind of fortitude. And it's endemic to their 31:49.480 --> 31:53.800 nature. It's not a question of weak character. I'm not trying to suggest if you have a really 31:53.800 --> 31:58.760 tough girl, she's going to be fine. We're fundamentally different. The sexes are different 31:58.760 --> 32:03.720 that the couple episodes we did on women is specifically dealing with the fact that we're 32:03.720 --> 32:10.280 not the same stuff. And so the problems that girls will face are in some ways fundamentally 32:10.280 --> 32:15.240 different from the problems that men will face. And for the young guys, as Corey said, who are 32:15.240 --> 32:22.280 looking for marriageable material, forget whether she's attractive or whatever degree of intelligence 32:22.280 --> 32:28.600 you find appealing. Something that we mentioned before that blew up online a few years ago 32:28.600 --> 32:34.840 was a controversy around debt free virgins without tattoos. Debt free means she doesn't have a 32:34.840 --> 32:40.040 negative dowry. If you send her off to college, you're almost certainly putting her in debt. 32:40.040 --> 32:45.400 That debt is functionally a negative dowry. You're saying to her husband, he's going, 32:45.400 --> 32:50.200 her future husband, you're going to have to pay off this five or six figure debt before you can 32:50.200 --> 32:55.480 even break even on taking my daughter out from under my wing. And guys do that without a second 32:55.480 --> 33:01.960 thought. That's evil. That's completely evil. A negative dowry is the most maniacal thing imaginable. 33:01.960 --> 33:07.720 Apart from the rest, forget the sexual promiscuity or any of the rest. Just saddling her with debt 33:08.760 --> 33:14.520 so that she can go learn something that's probably useless in most cases. I mean, when you look at 33:14.520 --> 33:20.440 the degrees that girls are completing relative to men, it's mostly blow off garbage. It's just 33:21.000 --> 33:26.920 stuff that shouldn't even be higher education. It's a joke. And yet, they are just getting 33:26.920 --> 33:33.640 saddled with debt that is not dischargeable in bankruptcy, is going to completely disrupt future 33:33.640 --> 33:40.840 family formation in any guy with any sense. This is the advice to young men. Think long and hard 33:40.840 --> 33:47.160 about even dating a girl who has much college debt. If it's 5,000, 10,000, that's one thing. 33:47.160 --> 33:53.880 It's usually not. It's usually closer to six figures. So you should write them off. I'll say 33:53.880 --> 33:57.720 flat out and I think Corey agrees. You should write a girl off if she's six figures in debt 33:57.720 --> 34:03.240 without hesitation. Because Corey said she has an idiot father. She has clearly no judgment. 34:03.800 --> 34:08.520 And she has a boat anchor around her neck. And you want to attach that to your future family? No. 34:09.080 --> 34:13.080 You have a choice as a young man. You're trying to filter and winnow things down. 34:13.080 --> 34:18.680 That's an easy place to start. Virgins, we talked about that in past episodes. It's 34:18.680 --> 34:22.520 virtually a lost cause. And frankly, one of the things that goes into 34:24.680 --> 34:30.440 a young man trying to find a girl who has been sexually chased is she's going to have to be 34:30.440 --> 34:35.160 younger in a lot of cases. So we'll talk in a little bit about talking to fathers instead of 34:35.160 --> 34:43.640 talking to daughters to meet their daughters. And we referenced the episode around job boards 34:43.640 --> 34:48.680 at church. I think we're going to need to see arranged marriages come back for a while. 34:49.480 --> 34:55.080 Now, on the subject of younger marriages and disparate marriages, guys who are knowledgeable 34:55.080 --> 35:01.480 about particularly American history will know that in the 16, 17, 1800s, I think marriages were 35:01.480 --> 35:07.320 typically like 22, 23, 24 range, depending on the culture and whatever. Those were fundamentally 35:07.320 --> 35:11.320 Christian cultures where the girls were living under their parents' roof. So you cannot compare 35:11.320 --> 35:17.800 it to today because the single number of age is not communicating the same thing in 2023 35:17.800 --> 35:25.800 that it communicated in 1723. It's just not. The 16-year-old girl, the 18-year-old girl, 35:25.800 --> 35:31.720 the 23-year-old girl, that is the march of time where they have been under continuous influence 35:31.720 --> 35:36.920 from a wicked society, encouraging them to give up their virginity and then to go further and 35:36.920 --> 35:46.440 further and further in frequency, depravity, and profligacy of their sexual misconduct. And 35:47.480 --> 35:52.200 they'll do it because it's fun and everyone else is doing it. And again, they want to fit in. 35:52.200 --> 35:55.960 Who wants to be a prude? Who wants to be the girl who's on the outs with the group? 35:56.520 --> 36:02.280 And even in a Christian college, this stuff still happens. Maybe parents still hear about it, 36:02.280 --> 36:07.720 but I promise you I've heard about it. I've heard names of children, of pastors, doing this stuff. 36:09.560 --> 36:13.960 It's not the point. The point is you can't just trust, but you baptize the kid and cataclysm 36:13.960 --> 36:17.720 that they're not going to misbehave when they get away from you. 36:17.720 --> 36:25.080 So what do we do? Simple thing. Don't send her to college. Don't sell her with debt. 36:25.080 --> 36:30.440 Don't give her into an environment where she's likely to engage in sexual promiscuity. 36:31.080 --> 36:37.240 And for young men, one of the things that they said, Corey and I talk a lot to younger guys in 36:37.320 --> 36:46.200 18, 22, 23 range all the time. And most of them are trying not to despair about this stuff. 36:47.480 --> 36:52.360 They have a stiff upper lip and they're trying to do the right things. And they are trying to 36:52.360 --> 36:57.240 trust in God. And one of the reasons that we're doing this episode is to encourage that and also 36:57.240 --> 37:01.160 to encourage the guys who are not, they're just not seeing it. They're not seeing any hope. 37:02.120 --> 37:08.760 For fathers with daughters, these guys exist. And if you have a 16, 17, 18 year old daughter 37:08.760 --> 37:12.840 who is looking at going off to college, not only don't send her off to college, 37:13.720 --> 37:18.920 but at least have open in your mind the prospect that maybe you should be a participant, 37:18.920 --> 37:25.480 not completely. I'm not saying, we're not suggesting I'm going to hand a man to a girl and say, 37:25.480 --> 37:32.200 here you go. This is a 100% arranged marriage. We're saying that matchmaking, historically, 37:32.200 --> 37:38.040 was a family function. It was a parental function. It wasn't a social thing where you just send these 37:38.040 --> 37:46.760 headless kids off when they're at their maximum sexual energy and desire and minimum ability to 37:46.760 --> 37:51.720 comprehend or appreciate future consequences for their actions, where they don't have impulse 37:51.800 --> 37:56.360 control to the degree that they will when they're 10 years older. You don't send them off and then 37:56.360 --> 38:03.720 expect everything to work out, hunky dory. So fathers, if you're listening, at least consider 38:05.240 --> 38:09.880 working somehow. And again, we don't know how that's going to manifest. Just we want people to 38:09.880 --> 38:14.360 begin thinking about just like job boards and churches, you should be thinking about finding 38:15.320 --> 38:21.880 pairs for your sons and daughters. The ideal best case for some sort of 38:22.760 --> 38:28.440 arranged marriage sounds so formal. It's really more about introduction and encouragement. 38:29.320 --> 38:36.760 When every child has two choices, there are basically four permutations. Either you have 38:36.840 --> 38:44.360 good parents and you obey them or you rebel or you have bad parents and you obey them in being bad 38:44.360 --> 38:50.360 or you rebel and act good. So there are two good outcomes and there are two bad outcomes 38:50.360 --> 38:54.280 and they're reversed depending on the quality of parent you have. If you're a good parent, 38:55.080 --> 38:59.800 you want to encourage good behavior in your sons and daughters. And some of that's going to be 39:00.440 --> 39:04.760 supporting them, not just sending them loose, not just saying, yeah, good luck, get out of here. 39:04.840 --> 39:09.560 I've put up with you for 18 years. I'm going to pay off some of your debt for college and then 39:09.560 --> 39:14.680 I'm going to go buy a boat and focus on spending more time on vacation. That's what the boomers 39:14.680 --> 39:19.800 did to a lot of people. That's the model that we've inherited. And part of the generations 39:19.800 --> 39:23.480 episode is talking about the fact that there are no good models for this stuff. So when Cory and 39:23.480 --> 39:28.760 I talk about things like even mentioning arranged marriages and not sending kids off, especially 39:28.760 --> 39:32.600 sending girls, I don't think anyone should go to college. I think no more than 15% of the male 39:32.600 --> 39:37.720 population should ever set foot in college and today I think should drop to zero for probably a 39:37.720 --> 39:42.520 generation, at least until those places no longer exist and we've started from scratch. 39:43.640 --> 39:50.520 Either way, there's no model for what we're encouraging because the world is so evil and so 39:50.520 --> 39:54.600 far gone that of course you're not going to find a model for this stuff. So it's going to sound 39:54.600 --> 39:59.160 crazy and weird and crazy and weird. Everyone thinks, well, that's impractical. That can't 39:59.160 --> 40:05.160 possibly work. Well, it worked for centuries. It worked for most of human history. It didn't 40:05.160 --> 40:10.760 stop working. We stopped doing it and that's the distinction here. It's not that these things that 40:10.760 --> 40:17.880 we used to do quit working and we somehow evolved into a more erudite society. It's we just quit 40:17.880 --> 40:23.080 trying. We quit caring. Parents quit caring. They started setting their kids free and now we're 40:23.080 --> 40:28.440 living in the ashes of those poor decisions. Trying to sweep up these ashes and build something 40:28.440 --> 40:33.400 again is going to involve at least for maybe a generation or two doing some stuff that we haven't 40:33.400 --> 40:38.200 done in a long time. And so I'm very encouraged that I know there's some young men who are listening 40:38.200 --> 40:44.040 to this who specifically talked to fathers and said, I'd like to date your daughter or do you 40:44.040 --> 40:53.160 have any daughters? It sounds like such an antiquated kind of... There's no TV example for it unless 40:53.160 --> 41:00.200 you go back to the 1800s like a cowboy story or something. It sounds absurd because the models 41:00.200 --> 41:05.720 were taken away from us, but it's an entirely salutary thing. It's not the only possible option, 41:05.720 --> 41:10.440 but in a world on fire, it's potentially an option that should certainly be explored. 41:12.120 --> 41:17.400 In a very real sense, many of these problems are a form of antinomianism. 41:17.400 --> 41:25.000 And I mean that in a specific way. What we are in essence doing is ignoring nature. We're saying, 41:25.000 --> 41:31.800 well, we're Christian. And so these problems that are inherent in human nature are no longer 41:31.800 --> 41:39.080 a problem for us because we're Christian. And that's not true. It's not true in the sense of 41:39.080 --> 41:44.360 nature as God intended it. And so when you become a Christian, you still have to eat and drink. 41:45.240 --> 41:50.680 You still get thirsty. You still get tired. You are still a creature. You are still an animal, in 41:50.680 --> 41:58.600 fact. And so these demands of your physical nature are not removed by faith. That would be 41:58.600 --> 42:04.840 insane. That is to say, that would be to say that faith destroys ontology, that it destroys 42:04.840 --> 42:10.680 nature. It doesn't do that. If your theology destroys ontology, your theology is wrong. 42:11.640 --> 42:18.920 But then there's also the other sense where people are rejecting the fact that we live 42:18.920 --> 42:23.000 in a fallen world. They're saying, if you become Christian, then it doesn't matter that you live 42:23.000 --> 42:28.600 in a fallen world. No, it still matters very much because there are still temptations. There are 42:28.600 --> 42:33.400 still problems. You will still encounter these things in your daily life because you live in a 42:33.480 --> 42:40.840 fallen world and you are still fallen. And so, yes, your daughter may be a very good person. 42:41.960 --> 42:48.840 She may be able to recite the entire Catechism. She knows chunks of scripture by heart. 42:49.400 --> 42:53.480 She attends church every Sunday. She sings in the choir, all of these things. 42:54.440 --> 43:01.880 If you ignore the nature of women, you ignore the nature of girls, you ignore the fallen nature 43:01.960 --> 43:07.240 of humanity, and you send her off to a place where she is going to be surrounded by temptations and 43:07.240 --> 43:15.320 pressures, odds are she'll eventually crack. And you are responsible for that. And as well mentioned, 43:15.320 --> 43:21.480 one of the first things that you can notice about a supposed Christian college, if it's co-ed, 43:21.480 --> 43:27.320 it's not Christian. Period. That's the end of it. It may be Christian in many other ways. It may 43:27.320 --> 43:32.520 have a chapel. It may have required attendance. All these things that you see at Christian colleges, 43:32.520 --> 43:38.760 and for the record I went to one for one semester, but I did attend one. Just because it is Christian 43:38.760 --> 43:45.080 in name does not mean that it is Christian in practice. If it's co-ed, it has already proven to 43:45.080 --> 43:52.840 you that it rejects the fallen nature of man and seeks simply to ignore it. And by doing so creates 43:52.840 --> 43:58.920 immense occasion for temptation. And what does Scripture say about creating the occasion for 43:58.920 --> 44:08.120 temptation? Temptation must come, but woe to those by whom it comes. Do not be the one upon whom 44:09.080 --> 44:18.040 Christ upon whom the word of God is pronouncing woe. And speaking of woe, he said that women who go 44:18.040 --> 44:26.440 away to college become whores, witches, and apostates. I want to focus on that for a second, 44:26.440 --> 44:30.440 because some, as he mentioned, may think that that's an extreme position, 44:30.440 --> 44:34.840 may think that that's unreasonable, they think, of course they aren't going to do that. Well, 44:34.840 --> 44:42.040 here's the problem. If they become whores, they necessarily, in our society as it stands today, 44:42.040 --> 44:48.440 become the other two. And why is that? The answer is abortion. Now, I have a 44:49.400 --> 44:53.560 short podcast episode of my own podcast that did about abortion. I'll link that in the show notes, 44:53.560 --> 44:57.560 because it goes over this in more depth. But to go over it briefly here, 44:59.880 --> 45:07.560 you cannot have a society in which you have rampant promiscuity if pregnancy is still a very 45:07.560 --> 45:14.760 real, let's call it a risk, with every sexual encounter, which, in the state of nature, 45:15.400 --> 45:21.560 without what we have today, various devices and chemicals and such, that's just the way it is 45:21.560 --> 45:30.200 for women. Every sexual encounter risks pregnancy. That is, in fact, part of what keeps women chaste. 45:30.200 --> 45:35.000 It's that thing in the back of their mind telling them, if you do this dumb thing, 45:35.000 --> 45:42.120 there may be very real consequences that you cannot hide. Historically, that has helped to 45:42.120 --> 45:45.640 keep women chaste. That has helped to keep marriages stable. That has helped to keep 45:45.640 --> 45:53.960 society stable. But now we have prophylactics and we have so-called birth control. The problem is 45:55.240 --> 45:59.080 hormonal birth control, which is the one that women primarily use. Yes, it has a lot of 45:59.640 --> 46:04.120 negative environmental consequences and such, but that aside, 46:05.640 --> 46:13.800 hormonal birth control is abortifacient because it works in several ways. The first way it works is 46:13.800 --> 46:19.160 by attempting to regulate the woman's cycle so that she will not be fertile except during a 46:19.160 --> 46:25.480 certain window so she can manage things and not get pregnant. The second is that it makes 46:26.440 --> 46:33.800 her vagina and her internal anatomy inhospitable to spurn, so less likely for fertilization to 46:33.800 --> 46:39.560 take place. But the third method, and this one is the most morally objectionable, the others are 46:40.440 --> 46:45.960 problematic in their own way to a lesser degree. The third method is that it makes the lining of 46:45.960 --> 46:53.800 the uterus inhospitable to the implantation of the zygote. Now, for those who are far removed 46:53.880 --> 47:01.080 from biology, the zygote is just the fertilized embryo. That's a human life, according to 47:01.080 --> 47:05.560 Christian theology, which is to say it is a human life because it is according to God. 47:06.280 --> 47:13.480 And so if you change the chemistry or the hormones the way the uterine lining reacts 47:13.480 --> 47:21.480 with the zygote and cause implantation to fail, you've just caused an abortion. That's murder. 47:22.200 --> 47:28.600 And so women who are on birth control and having sex are guilty of murder, 47:29.160 --> 47:34.200 and so are the men who are having sex with them incidentally. And so there's your problem. 47:35.560 --> 47:41.480 If the women go off to college and become whores, they are almost certainly going 47:41.480 --> 47:47.560 to be on birth control. Well, now they're also murderous, which is to say witches, 47:47.640 --> 47:53.160 which is to say apostates. So that is not actually an extreme thing to say. That is just 47:53.160 --> 47:57.640 exactly what happens if you actually follow through the logic of what is being done. 47:58.440 --> 48:04.040 And Satan knows this. Satan knows exactly what he's doing. Your daughters may not know it, 48:04.040 --> 48:08.280 and they probably don't, because their health class probably did not cover that very simple 48:08.280 --> 48:13.400 biology I just went over in the space of five minutes. But this is something people don't know. 48:13.960 --> 48:22.680 I actually just yesterday asked chat GPT, the AI chat platform, just to see if it had been 48:22.680 --> 48:27.240 trained on this question. I asked it a handful of questions, a series of questions about abortion. 48:27.880 --> 48:34.440 Eventually I was able to get it to admit that hormonal birth control is abortifacient. But 48:34.440 --> 48:39.720 initially it gave false answers. It had been trained to lie, because of course it is a tool 48:40.200 --> 48:45.800 of the current ruling class of the order of our society. And so on these sorts of questions, 48:45.800 --> 48:50.440 it's trained to lie to you. Well, that's what your daughters are hearing in school. It's what 48:50.440 --> 48:56.520 your sons are hearing in school. If you ask most young people, they will not know that birth 48:56.520 --> 49:03.400 control is abortifacient. They will not know that it is murder to use it. At least murder to use it 49:03.720 --> 49:12.200 while you're sexually active. And so that is what they get introduced into. And so they become 49:12.200 --> 49:15.880 complicit in these heinous sins before they even know what they're doing. 49:18.120 --> 49:24.520 And the advice that's coming from doctors is not only false, but one of the worst things that's 49:24.520 --> 49:29.880 happening on the secondary effects of the pill is that doctors are encouraging usually mothers, 49:29.880 --> 49:35.960 because it's not the husband or the father who's taking his daughter for a gynecological check-up 49:35.960 --> 49:40.840 after she's had her first period. The gyno will say, oh, you need to get on birth control. It'll 49:40.840 --> 49:46.280 help regulate your flow. You're going to have much more comfortable periods. It's going to just make 49:46.280 --> 49:51.000 your life a whole lot better. So from the age of 12 or 13 or maybe even younger, many, many, 49:51.000 --> 49:56.120 many girls are being put on these drugs that alter your body in some ways permanently, 49:56.840 --> 50:01.160 because it effectively tricks the young girl's body into thinking she's been pregnant. 50:01.160 --> 50:06.040 And so you go on the pill when you're 13 and you don't go off the pill until you're 33. 50:06.040 --> 50:11.960 Guess what? Not only has your fertility plummeted via virtue of your age, but it's also been 50:11.960 --> 50:20.280 decimated by your body's hormones being tricked into a condition that results in provable harm. 50:21.000 --> 50:26.520 And so again, since we're trying to focus primarily on advice to young men, young men, 50:27.720 --> 50:32.440 one of the things that you should look for, I'm not going to say it's an absolute no, but 50:34.520 --> 50:40.600 best case, you would have a wife who had never been on birth control. As I said, 50:40.600 --> 50:44.840 like so many doctors are saying that now, that's like, it may be close to finding a unicorn. 50:45.480 --> 50:51.160 If she's an adult, like if she's 18, if she's a young adult, she shouldn't be, 50:51.160 --> 50:57.000 like, because Corey said that then goes not only to the false promises that they're making 50:57.000 --> 51:02.200 about your period, but they go to the direct promises of, oh, you can fornicate and not get 51:02.200 --> 51:09.640 pregnant. Additionally, there's harm to a girl having been on the pill. Some of that harm is 51:09.640 --> 51:15.080 mitigated over time. So it's not a death sentence. It's better for a virgin to have been on the pill 51:15.080 --> 51:20.920 and come off it after a few years than frankly, someone who's not a virgin who is never on the 51:20.920 --> 51:26.520 pill who's been promiscuous before you meet her. In a perfect world, you would find both. 51:26.520 --> 51:32.920 100 years ago, it would have been almost a given. So again, we're dealing with a circumstance where, 51:32.920 --> 51:38.520 as Corey was saying, like the deck is getting stacked against young men on virtually every 51:38.520 --> 51:43.400 count here, and we're not trying to set up some impossible goal where there's only one girl in 51:43.400 --> 51:49.720 10,000 that can possibly meet all these criteria. Most of these are not going to be hard and fast 51:49.720 --> 51:54.920 rules, but you, as a young man, should know that the longer and the more severely any of these 51:54.920 --> 52:01.320 things go on, the less suitable a wife she's going to be beyond any control of herself, 52:01.320 --> 52:05.960 beyond any question about being forgiven by Jesus. This is not, as we said in a couple of 52:06.040 --> 52:10.520 other episodes, as Corey said earlier, has nothing to do with forgiveness. This damage, 52:10.520 --> 52:17.960 this temporal consequences for sin is real, and much of it is immutable. It's like if you're a 52:17.960 --> 52:24.680 smoker for 20 years, and you smoke 10 packs a day, and then you quit, your lungs will slowly heal, 52:24.680 --> 52:29.960 but they'll never go completely back to normal. So yes, after 20 years, is it better to quit smoking 52:30.680 --> 52:35.240 than to continue smoking? Absolutely. Is it better for your lungs if you never smoked at all? 52:35.960 --> 52:44.120 Obviously. So we're talking about just being aware, first of all. Again, I don't want to give 52:44.120 --> 52:49.080 impossible circumstances, because by the time we get done describing all these things, there may be 52:50.200 --> 52:56.520 one girl in 50,000 that meets them all, and that's not, that would cause despair. We absolutely do 52:56.520 --> 53:02.520 not want young guys to despair. What we want is for you to have the best opportunity to find girls 53:02.520 --> 53:07.800 who are the most likely to be good wives, and we'll get into here in a minute in some of the 53:07.800 --> 53:14.200 scriptural descriptions of what a good wife is like, but there's stuff that scripture doesn't 53:14.200 --> 53:20.440 talk about because it didn't exist, because it was so horrifically evil that it took technology. 53:20.440 --> 53:25.560 Basically, it took demons putting this crap in the hands of humans before some of these modern 53:25.560 --> 53:29.880 things took off. So you as a young man need to, you know, and you as fathers who are listening, 53:30.840 --> 53:35.320 keep your daughters away from this crap, all of it. Don't put them in debt. Don't let them be put 53:35.320 --> 53:40.760 on the pill. And this is one of those things where just like daughters can now have abortions 53:40.760 --> 53:45.960 without their, without parental consent, stuff like the pill is happening too. In fact, I don't 53:45.960 --> 53:50.520 know what the state of, I believe that the pill was just taken off the prescription. I mean, 53:50.520 --> 53:56.760 it will be possible to buy it if it's not already in stores over the counter. That's a nightmare 53:56.760 --> 54:01.880 for all these reasons. Like it's, it's the reason that it went over the counter despite all the 54:01.880 --> 54:09.480 serious health risks is that the health risks are the point, the causing abortions, the destroying 54:09.480 --> 54:16.840 the future fertility, the messing up pair bonding, which is another critical part. A girl who has a 54:16.840 --> 54:22.840 natural cycle has fundamentally different taste in men than a girl who's on the pill. Most people 54:22.840 --> 54:27.560 don't know that. Most girls don't know that your tasting guys changes when you go off the pill. 54:28.200 --> 54:32.760 You will be repelled by some of the very things you find attractive, depending on whether or not 54:32.760 --> 54:38.280 you're on the pill. When you're on the pill and your body thinks you're pregnant, you're more 54:38.280 --> 54:44.440 attracted to nurturing, you're less attracted to brash, and there's a lot more to it. But basically, 54:45.240 --> 54:51.640 it sort of narrows down and weakens the range of men that you find appealing. And this is a vicious 54:51.720 --> 54:57.800 feedback cycle where men are then conditioned by their wives or their girlfriends on the pill 54:58.520 --> 55:04.040 to be weaker than they maybe naturally would be. And then when, you know, 10 years into your marriage, 55:04.040 --> 55:08.200 you finally decide, okay, you know, we're getting into our mid 30s, maybe it's time to have our first 55:08.200 --> 55:13.240 kid. She goes off the pill. And two months later, she's going to divorce you because she finds you 55:13.240 --> 55:19.880 repellent. This actually happens. It is a, it's a horrific risk. It's real. We may find some, some 55:19.880 --> 55:24.840 links and show notes for this. Take my word for it or not. This stuff actually happens. These, 55:24.840 --> 55:31.560 these chemicals fundamentally alter human beings. And so when it's your wife, who's pregnant, and 55:31.560 --> 55:35.560 all these things are happening naturally, it's a blessing from God, it's fine. You're there, 55:35.560 --> 55:40.040 you're nurturing, you're taking care of her. And if she's in a really weird mood, and you've got to 55:40.040 --> 55:45.960 just manage that gently, that is the blessing of a husband and wife living a life together. 55:45.960 --> 55:49.480 It's completely different when it's been chemically altered and you introduce 55:50.200 --> 55:54.760 not being in marriage and all these other things that just, they tear apart the very thing that 55:54.760 --> 56:01.080 God was trying to form. And so for fathers, don't let it happen for sons. Be aware of it. Again, 56:01.080 --> 56:05.800 we're not saying right off any girl. If you can find a girl that's never been on the pill that 56:05.800 --> 56:11.720 isn't in debt, doesn't have any tattoos. The reason tattoos come up is there's a very strong 56:11.720 --> 56:16.200 element of self-loathing in a lot of this. For a girl, there's a lot of self-loathing 56:16.200 --> 56:22.840 in acting out sexually. And it's, again, it's a vicious cycle where she does something that she 56:22.840 --> 56:29.560 knows she didn't, shouldn't do. She then regrets it. And to justify having done in the first place 56:29.560 --> 56:36.440 and to try to, try to assuage the guilt, she'll go do more to sort of double down and say, well, 56:36.440 --> 56:40.440 I can't have been wrong if I keep doing even more of it. And it sounds stupid, but that's a 56:40.440 --> 56:45.960 sort of rationalization that goes on in people. That's not particular to girls, but when it particularly 56:45.960 --> 56:54.280 comes to sexual activity outside of marriage, it's very common in tattoos and drugs and binge 56:54.280 --> 57:00.520 drinking. All these things are self-destructive. So something like tattoos are a good landmark. 57:00.520 --> 57:04.440 Again, we're not making an absolute moral pronouncement, although I do think it's, 57:04.440 --> 57:08.360 I think it's sinful, but principally because it's born of self-loathing. 57:09.000 --> 57:14.520 You see pictures of so many pretty young girls today. They're, they have perfect beautiful skin, 57:14.520 --> 57:19.800 they're incredibly attractive, and they're covered in doodles. They have these permanent, 57:19.800 --> 57:24.760 idiotic tattoos, not even art. They've just been, they've used their bodies like graffiti. 57:25.320 --> 57:31.400 And it's just, it shows that they're headless. It shows that they have bad fathers. It shows, 57:31.400 --> 57:35.560 or no fathers at all. It shows they have no good relationship with their father, 57:35.560 --> 57:39.880 and that they hate themselves to some degree. And that sort of self-loathing, 57:41.560 --> 57:46.840 again, it's a vicious, mutually reinforcing cycle where the more you do things that hurt 57:46.840 --> 57:51.240 yourself, the more you want to hurt yourself for punishing yourself for having done the thing in 57:51.240 --> 57:56.520 the first place. And it's why we see so much self-destruction in the world today. And then, 57:57.320 --> 58:04.040 you know, maybe they sober up when they're in their 30, 35, 40, and they say, well, where are all the 58:04.040 --> 58:09.080 good men? Well, all the good men are looking for a girl who hasn't been destroying herself for 25 years. 58:10.120 --> 58:15.640 Before we move on to the, the scripture, and then I guess finish up the episode with maybe some 58:15.640 --> 58:20.920 practical recommendations. And yes, I do recognize that I started to give a practical recommendation 58:20.920 --> 58:25.480 a little while ago and did not complete that. That is because we're going to do that at the 58:25.480 --> 58:32.280 end of the episode. But there's a blunt point, and I do mean blunt point that I wish to make here. 58:33.240 --> 58:39.480 As a man, one of the things that you are doing in a marriage, at least one of the things that you 58:39.480 --> 58:48.120 should be doing in a marriage, is you are buying a womb. And the reason I word it that way is 58:48.120 --> 58:57.480 because yes, marriage is a transfer of title in a sense. It is the father transferring title to 58:57.960 --> 59:05.880 the daughter to the husband. But in addition, I say you're buying a womb because that is the only 59:05.880 --> 59:12.680 way you can build a family. You cannot have children if your wife is infertile. Of course, 59:12.680 --> 59:17.640 you can't have children if you're infertile either. And so for those of you who need to hear it, lay 59:17.640 --> 59:26.600 off the marijuana. But as was mentioned earlier, there is a fertility window for women. If she 59:26.600 --> 59:33.160 is outside that window, if she is aged out of being fertile, you cannot build a family with her 59:33.160 --> 59:38.440 because she cannot have children. Unless, of course, God happens to bless her in her old age, 59:38.440 --> 59:44.360 but chances are you're not going to be Sarah having children at that late stage in life. 59:45.880 --> 59:52.440 And so for the men out there, as a simple short practical recommendation before we get to the 59:52.440 --> 01:00:01.160 other ones later on, marry younger. That has been historically normal. It varies in time and place, 01:00:01.160 --> 01:00:09.160 as was mentioned earlier, but it is entirely fine to marry younger. Your goal, assuming you are a 01:00:09.160 --> 01:00:16.600 good, upstanding Christian man, your goal is to build a family with this woman. If she needs to be 01:00:16.600 --> 01:00:22.760 10 years younger than you to do that, so be it. And before we continue, I want to make one thing 01:00:22.760 --> 01:00:29.640 clear. Again, we've used language like buying a womb and transfer of title. And those are specific, 01:00:29.640 --> 01:00:33.640 mechanical things about what's going on. I don't want anyone, particularly young guys, 01:00:33.640 --> 01:00:38.200 who are trying to figure this stuff out. And you hear a lot of strident, crazy talk on the internet. 01:00:38.200 --> 01:00:43.320 None of this is intended to dehumanize the girl that you want to marry. This is a person, 01:00:43.320 --> 01:00:47.160 is a human being that you're going to spend every day of the rest of your life with. 01:00:47.720 --> 01:00:53.640 She better be a good person. She better be kind and gentle and loving and someone you want to be 01:00:53.640 --> 01:00:59.000 around. That's a human being. That's not a womb with legs. That's not something that you've just 01:00:59.000 --> 01:01:08.280 gotten a title to. That's not property. That becomes a part of your own body. So the specific reason 01:01:08.360 --> 01:01:13.720 that Corey and I will narrowly speak in those terms, A, it runs completely countered everything 01:01:13.720 --> 01:01:19.480 everyone else is saying, but it is in fact true. But that doesn't mean that it's the whole picture. 01:01:19.480 --> 01:01:23.960 We don't think it's a whole picture. It's not even remotely the whole picture, but it's a necessary 01:01:23.960 --> 01:01:31.160 part of it. As Corey said, if the purpose of marriage is to procreate, which incidentally is 01:01:31.160 --> 01:01:41.080 what God said in Genesis 9, to Noah, Adam and Noah got the same message, and then it's reinforced 01:01:41.080 --> 01:01:48.440 again in the New Testament, procreation is one of the gifts that God gives us. That's a man and a 01:01:48.440 --> 01:01:55.400 woman becoming one flesh. The problems come in socially because the one flesh thing is a lot 01:01:55.400 --> 01:02:02.920 of fun, and all these technological so-called advancements let us have the fun without having 01:02:02.920 --> 01:02:07.880 the rest of our lives part of it, which God intended and which God builds into it. So 01:02:08.440 --> 01:02:13.720 if you're a young guy and there's a lot of people on the Internet say a lot of really baddy, weird 01:02:13.720 --> 01:02:18.680 stuff, and frankly, one of the reasons we want to do hope, we hope will be an encouraging episode to 01:02:18.680 --> 01:02:23.800 you, is because one of the things I see a lot of young guys struggling with, particularly when 01:02:23.800 --> 01:02:29.480 they're starting to figure out just how bad things are, is they become completely blackpilled 01:02:29.480 --> 01:02:35.880 and completely hateful towards the state of girls, to the point that they attribute that directly 01:02:35.880 --> 01:02:42.760 to just hating girls. And there's a whole subculture that sees that basically as a personality, 01:02:42.760 --> 01:02:47.160 that's somehow hating and dehumanizing girls and calling them horrible names, 01:02:47.960 --> 01:02:56.600 is how they express their existence as guys. We don't think that, and we condemn those who do 01:02:56.600 --> 01:03:01.880 because it's destructive. It's every bit as destructive to these girls as all the other 01:03:01.880 --> 01:03:06.520 things that are going on that in some cases may, frankly, merit some of the name-calling. 01:03:06.520 --> 01:03:12.920 It is a man's job to rise above the state of the world and to try to do things that are right, 01:03:12.920 --> 01:03:19.640 even when things are messed up. And the wisdom involved is figuring out what can I live with, 01:03:19.640 --> 01:03:25.560 where do I draw the line, and how do I conduct myself in a godly manner, in one that's going to, 01:03:25.560 --> 01:03:30.680 as Corey said, build a family. That's the point. You're not just loving one person. It's not just, 01:03:30.680 --> 01:03:35.640 oh, she's cute, and I want to get with her. You're going to spend the rest of your life with her 01:03:36.680 --> 01:03:41.800 because she's a person. She's a charming, attractive person that you want to have with 01:03:41.800 --> 01:03:49.800 you. And by your side, for all the attraction and all the flame early on, this is a companion who's 01:03:49.800 --> 01:03:55.720 going to be with you the rest of your life. And it's something that goes into mate choice up front, 01:03:55.720 --> 01:04:01.400 but then it pays dividends for the rest of your life. And as we get into some of the other 01:04:01.400 --> 01:04:06.280 practical stuff, I just want to mention that a lot of this is downstream from a girl's relationship 01:04:06.280 --> 01:04:13.720 with her father. The advice that I give to young guys, to mirror what Corey said, don't be shy about 01:04:13.720 --> 01:04:21.640 her being younger if you're avoiding some of these pitfalls. Not that it's necessarily the only 01:04:21.640 --> 01:04:27.800 correct solution, but if the only way you can find a girl who hasn't had sex with 20 guys or 10, 01:04:29.320 --> 01:04:33.720 wherever you want to draw the line, ideally, it should be zero. Her relationship with her 01:04:33.720 --> 01:04:39.240 father is going to be reflective of the relationship she will have with you. And that's 01:04:39.240 --> 01:04:44.520 something else you're buying. We talk about a mechanical transactional thing. The relationship 01:04:44.520 --> 01:04:49.880 that she has with her dad is going to mirror the relationship that she has with you. She's 01:04:49.880 --> 01:04:55.800 rebellious if she loathes headship, if she has it all figured out on her own, she's never going to be a 01:04:55.800 --> 01:05:02.040 good wife ever by any measure. She's never going to be a good wife because her dad screwed her up. 01:05:02.920 --> 01:05:09.000 You can't fix that. You can try, but you're going to fail because the only model she's ever had 01:05:09.800 --> 01:05:17.400 has been the sort of model that's going to finally tear you apart. No. Before no-fault 01:05:17.400 --> 01:05:21.480 divorce and some of these other things, maybe you could bear it out and maybe you could bring 01:05:21.480 --> 01:05:26.600 her around. But today, when you have literally no recourse for someone who decides that she wants to 01:05:26.600 --> 01:05:31.720 be a harpy or some other terrible thing, you're just out of luck. You're going to lose half your 01:05:31.720 --> 01:05:37.640 stuff and she's going to go on and you may be stuck paying her for the rest of your life for 01:05:37.640 --> 01:05:44.440 a bad relationship. That's not a reason not to get married, but it's very much a reason 01:05:44.440 --> 01:05:51.000 to focus on finding a good girl going into it. So being kind, being loving, being wholesome, 01:05:51.080 --> 01:05:57.960 just generic stuff, pretty, frankly not too hot. The hottest girl in the world that you've ever 01:05:57.960 --> 01:06:04.280 seen has had attention from so many guys that she's going to be mad. She's going to have become 01:06:04.280 --> 01:06:09.080 completely insane because no one can possibly cope with having that much positive attention. 01:06:09.880 --> 01:06:15.800 Find a girl who's pretty that you like. Maybe find a girl who's neglected that most guys don't see 01:06:15.800 --> 01:06:21.080 something in her that you see. That girl is going to love you a great deal more. One of the 01:06:21.080 --> 01:06:25.560 remarkable things about a girl loving you is that when she looks at you with that sort of love, 01:06:25.560 --> 01:06:30.440 her face transforms and she literally becomes more beautiful when she looks at you. Maybe no one 01:06:30.440 --> 01:06:38.520 else ever sees it, but you see it all the time. That is a very real thing. It's one of the things 01:06:38.520 --> 01:06:42.760 that I think guys, like I said, we talked to a lot of young guys. I don't think they're being 01:06:42.760 --> 01:06:48.200 super picky about it. I only want the hottest girl, but you want her to be attractive. It's 01:06:48.200 --> 01:06:55.400 crucial. You have to be attracted to the girl and beauty is a big part of that, but inner beauty 01:06:55.400 --> 01:07:01.400 is a real thing too because she's a human being. She's a person and so this transactional stuff, 01:07:01.400 --> 01:07:07.240 it's very specific and narrow. It's not remotely the whole context of your relationship or your 01:07:07.240 --> 01:07:12.440 marriage. That is two people becoming one in spending your lives together. 01:07:13.320 --> 01:07:18.040 To emphasize what was said about the nature of women, I'm reminded of 01:07:20.040 --> 01:07:26.520 something I said in episode 22 when we were also talking about women. That was our episode 01:07:26.520 --> 01:07:33.560 on women more properly. I pointed out and I think this is worth just reiterating here 01:07:33.560 --> 01:07:36.040 instead of just telling you to go back and listen to that episode. 01:07:36.840 --> 01:07:44.360 I pointed out that in the garden, Adam walked with God. Adam knew God face to face. Adam 01:07:45.320 --> 01:07:50.680 talked with God and yet God still said it is not good for man to be alone. 01:07:51.880 --> 01:07:58.200 Woman is the greatest blessing next to, of course, salvation as I also mentioned in the 01:07:58.200 --> 01:08:02.760 previous episode, but of course, Adam did not need salvation at that point. 01:08:03.800 --> 01:08:10.840 Woman is the greatest gift God has ever made for man and that is true for every man 01:08:11.400 --> 01:08:18.040 with regard to his wife and it is important to keep sight of that, not to lose sight of that. 01:08:20.360 --> 01:08:24.680 Even if we mentioned the problems we have today and yes, we're in a fallen world 01:08:24.680 --> 01:08:32.040 and woman has a rebellious streak, that's part of her curse and really it's a curse that falls on 01:08:32.040 --> 01:08:38.280 the man, but that's a separate topic for another time. Even though we live in a fallen world, 01:08:38.280 --> 01:08:43.720 she is still one of the greatest blessings God can give you and Scripture is very clear on that 01:08:43.720 --> 01:08:50.920 and I think that leads in nicely to talking about Scripture and so to start off, I would 01:08:51.480 --> 01:09:00.760 begin with Proverbs. Perhaps Proverbs 18 to start, he who finds a wife finds a good thing 01:09:00.760 --> 01:09:06.760 and obtains favor from the Lord, but perhaps even more than that verse Proverbs 19, 01:09:07.640 --> 01:09:13.400 house and wealth are inherited from fathers, but a prudent wife is from the Lord. 01:09:14.280 --> 01:09:21.400 Scripture is very clear that a good wife is a gift from God. Yes, there are of course things that 01:09:21.400 --> 01:09:26.840 society can do to improve your odds of finding a wife, there are things fathers can do to raise 01:09:26.840 --> 01:09:35.240 daughters to be good wives, etc. However, ultimately that blessing is from God, as are all blessings. 01:09:35.240 --> 01:09:41.800 God uses human beings and the creation as his tools to deliver blessings to you, 01:09:42.760 --> 01:09:48.520 but ultimately those blessings are from God and Scripture here, very clear, a good wife, 01:09:49.080 --> 01:09:59.160 is a great blessing from God. Of course, we can also turn to Ecclesiastes and this emphasizes, 01:09:59.160 --> 01:10:02.920 and really we were echoing this point, but it emphasizes the point we were making about 01:10:04.280 --> 01:10:10.600 how you should go through life if God gives you a wife and so Ecclesiastes 9, 01:10:10.840 --> 01:10:16.840 enjoy life with the wife whom you love all the days of your life that he has given you under the sun, 01:10:16.840 --> 01:10:21.560 because that is your portion in life and is your toil at which you toil under the sun. 01:10:23.000 --> 01:10:28.120 I think as we look at the scriptural admonitions for what a good little wife looks like, 01:10:28.680 --> 01:10:34.040 it's basic and it's obvious, but I think maybe we don't necessarily test ourselves, particularly 01:10:34.760 --> 01:10:39.400 before marriage, you know, when there's a young man or young woman just trying to figure out 01:10:40.360 --> 01:10:46.520 who do I want. These passages are not just about, okay, once I'm married, this is how I ought to 01:10:46.520 --> 01:10:55.080 behave. Some of these things are qualitative about the person themselves. Can you as a girl, 01:10:55.080 --> 01:11:02.360 can you as a young man live up to these things? Have you lived yourself your life in such a 01:11:02.360 --> 01:11:08.760 wooden fashion that you can deliver on these expectations from God? And if you're on a path 01:11:08.760 --> 01:11:13.800 where you are perhaps disrupting some of the things that make it possible for you to deliver 01:11:13.800 --> 01:11:19.720 on what God expects, amend your ways now, because it's not just about cleaning up your act once 01:11:19.720 --> 01:11:28.600 you get married. That's frankly one of the biggest tropes today that girls live wild. They do 01:11:29.560 --> 01:11:35.160 unspeakable things with insane numbers of men, and then they decide to settle down, 01:11:35.160 --> 01:11:40.760 and then they decide to be the good girl. And so effectively, the one man who's actually willing 01:11:40.760 --> 01:11:48.440 to give her a chance is settling for the leftovers of 50 guys who came before. And 01:11:49.560 --> 01:11:54.200 she feels it, even if he doesn't know it, and if he ever finds out he's destroyed by it, 01:11:54.920 --> 01:12:01.960 either directly destroyed by the realization in his own disgust, and then the situation of 01:12:02.600 --> 01:12:08.520 being in a marriage with a woman who has done these things, or he destroys himself as a man by 01:12:08.520 --> 01:12:13.480 effectively accepting that sort of behavior and saying, oh, well, I guess I love you anyway, 01:12:13.480 --> 01:12:20.680 and that's what I've got. There's no fixing those situations. And that's one of the reasons that 01:12:21.640 --> 01:12:25.640 God speaks to this directly. In 1 Corinthians 6, he says, 01:12:26.200 --> 01:12:31.640 the body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. 01:12:31.640 --> 01:12:36.280 And God raised the Lord, and will also raise us up by his power. Do you not know that your 01:12:36.280 --> 01:12:41.000 bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a 01:12:41.000 --> 01:12:47.560 prostitute? Never. Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? 01:12:47.560 --> 01:12:52.760 For it is written, the two become one flesh, but he who is joined to the Lord becomes one 01:12:52.760 --> 01:12:59.480 spirit with him. Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits outside of the body, 01:12:59.480 --> 01:13:04.280 but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body 01:13:04.280 --> 01:13:09.880 is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own for your 01:13:09.880 --> 01:13:19.080 bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. Now, the unforgivable sin of blasphemy against the 01:13:19.080 --> 01:13:25.320 Holy Spirit is one that's fundamentally about choosing to drive out the Holy Spirit. And 01:13:27.160 --> 01:13:33.480 I think that this passage goes directly to one of the paths that can lead to that. If your body 01:13:33.480 --> 01:13:38.360 is a temple for the Holy Spirit, which is true, there's no if about it, if you're a Christian. 01:13:39.320 --> 01:13:45.720 And you continuously sin in ways that you know or sin and you do them anyway, because you want 01:13:46.680 --> 01:13:52.120 the upsides and you don't fear the downsides. Either you think God wasn't serious, or you'll 01:13:52.120 --> 01:13:58.120 make up for that next Sunday, or you're just not going to think about it. Eventually you will drive 01:13:58.120 --> 01:14:03.640 out the Holy Spirit. If you make your body a temple for fornication, that is what it will become. 01:14:04.360 --> 01:14:11.080 And God in numerous places says that he gives people over to their lusts. If you want to say, 01:14:11.080 --> 01:14:17.000 I don't want God, I want this other thing instead, something that was created by God as a gift within 01:14:17.720 --> 01:14:22.520 the boundaries that he established. If we say, no, I'm going to steal that for myself, I'm going to 01:14:22.520 --> 01:14:30.120 do what I want with it, use it the way I want it. You're in danger in your soul. And as Corey said 01:14:30.120 --> 01:14:34.760 earlier, a lot of this is about antinomianism, because people think, you know, I don't want 01:14:34.760 --> 01:14:38.840 to judge people, I'm just going to let that slide. I can do a little bit and it's fine. 01:14:41.480 --> 01:14:47.400 You're going in one direction or the other. And I want to mention just briefly here, 01:14:47.400 --> 01:14:52.680 targeting back to what we discussed in the Listener Feedback episode about chastity versus 01:14:53.320 --> 01:15:00.440 celibacy. If you're a young man and you wonder, maybe I'm just celibate, 01:15:01.080 --> 01:15:06.440 celibate means that if a completely naked beautiful girl walks up to you and she has a 01:15:06.440 --> 01:15:14.600 big smile and she asks you some question, if your response, your sole response is to be annoyed with 01:15:14.600 --> 01:15:20.440 her for behaving in such a way and you send her away. And when she walks away, you don't even 01:15:20.440 --> 01:15:25.800 glance up to check her out, then you're celibate. That's pretty much the threshold for celibacy, 01:15:25.800 --> 01:15:33.400 that I don't care, I don't want anything to do with sex, period. Everyone else is trying to be 01:15:33.400 --> 01:15:44.120 chaste. This passage is talking about chastity. Someone who is celibate doesn't need to flee 01:15:44.200 --> 01:15:49.960 sexual immorality because they're not capable of sexual immorality. If you're celibate, 01:15:50.520 --> 01:15:55.320 there's none of it for you. It's a gift from God that's so incredibly rare as we said in 01:15:55.320 --> 01:16:02.440 episode 22. You don't know anybody. It's not you. It's conceivable. It's a gift from God that exists 01:16:02.440 --> 01:16:09.320 in some cases, but it's so rare that you shouldn't take it seriously as a thing. And the reason that's 01:16:09.320 --> 01:16:19.240 important is that for everyone else, chastity is a duty. It's a duty to God to preserve the bounds 01:16:19.240 --> 01:16:28.840 of this gift within the scope for which God gave it. When you remove sex from the boundaries of 01:16:28.840 --> 01:16:36.440 marriage, you are unchaste. That's what it means. Chastity has to do with refraining from that, 01:16:36.440 --> 01:16:42.680 which is outside what's given to you. Young men particularly struggle with chastity because, 01:16:42.680 --> 01:16:47.320 as I said earlier, you're surrounded by girls who are sexually promiscuous, who 01:16:48.200 --> 01:16:53.240 visually display their sexual availability by dressing in ways that would have gotten people 01:16:53.240 --> 01:16:59.640 arrested even 20 years ago. Today, it's basically just normal. That's a nightmare for any young man 01:16:59.640 --> 01:17:06.680 who's full of testosterone, which incidentally leads directly to sexual desire. The hormone is 01:17:06.680 --> 01:17:12.840 there for that purpose, as Corey said earlier in one of the On Women episodes. One of the metabolites 01:17:12.840 --> 01:17:18.920 for girls drinking alcohol is testosterone. They get hornier when they drink. It doesn't 01:17:18.920 --> 01:17:27.240 happen that way with guys. We are naturally sexually amped up by virtue of being men, 01:17:27.240 --> 01:17:33.640 and chastity is confining that to your wife. If you don't have a wife, then you just try as best 01:17:33.640 --> 01:17:37.960 you can to turn it off. You don't put yourself in situations where you're going to be tempted, 01:17:37.960 --> 01:17:43.560 and if there is temptation, you flee from it. As many passages in scripture say, you do what Joseph 01:17:43.560 --> 01:17:49.480 did with Potiphar's wife. He tried to seduce her. She fled. It was a sure thing. I'm sure she was 01:17:49.480 --> 01:17:55.560 beautiful. She was wealthy. She was ready to go, and Joseph fled because it was wicked, and he was 01:17:55.640 --> 01:18:03.080 faithful to God. That's chastity. Incidentally, it wasn't celibacy. Joseph wasn't celibate. He was 01:18:03.080 --> 01:18:07.800 obeying God by fleeing temptation because he was tempted. There would not have been temptation 01:18:07.800 --> 01:18:14.520 if he were celibate. Don't let pastors try to box you into a corner where they say, 01:18:14.520 --> 01:18:20.200 oh, right now you're blessed with a gift of singleness. That's not a gift. That is a temporary 01:18:20.200 --> 01:18:26.280 condition, and you pray to God to send you a godly wife, as he has promised he intends for all men. 01:18:27.080 --> 01:18:33.800 When that day arrives, then chastity is set aside, and you love your wife. You love only her, 01:18:33.800 --> 01:18:42.360 and you love her completely, and she loves you. It's an if-then situation. It's not me, 01:18:43.240 --> 01:18:49.000 and then maybe later I'll turn it on. That's not the case. Be chased when you're young. 01:18:49.000 --> 01:18:55.000 Be chased when you're unmarried, and when you're married, stop being chased, as God says, except 01:18:55.000 --> 01:19:00.680 for a time by mutual agreement. Otherwise, you need to continue to maintain that one flesh union, 01:19:00.680 --> 01:19:07.080 because it is absolutely a part of maintaining your marriage. A marriage is maintained. It's not 01:19:08.840 --> 01:19:13.880 a flag that gets set on you, like something gets put on your driver's license, an endorsement. 01:19:14.840 --> 01:19:19.720 A marriage is sustained by the activity within the marriage, the conduct you have with each other, 01:19:19.720 --> 01:19:25.880 the way you treat each other, and part of that is the opposite of chastity. The gift is given to 01:19:25.880 --> 01:19:32.280 you by God, and you're expected to use it, and if one part of you or the other ceases to the 01:19:32.280 --> 01:19:38.280 marriage will wither, it will absolutely be harmed by your failure to love your spouse as you were 01:19:38.280 --> 01:19:45.480 intended to. Scripture is very clear on that point. Neither the wife nor the husband is entitled 01:19:45.480 --> 01:19:52.600 to withhold sex from the other. Extremely clear that that is not something that you are permitted 01:19:52.600 --> 01:19:59.800 to do, except, of course, by agreement for a period of time for reasons of self-control or prayer. 01:20:00.760 --> 01:20:08.040 But I think this is a good point to emphasize something that is going to come up in the mind of 01:20:08.040 --> 01:20:14.760 some of the particularly younger male listeners, and that is the problem of pornography. Now, 01:20:14.760 --> 01:20:20.760 I wrote a short piece on that. I'll link it in the show notes, but I want to hit on some of the 01:20:21.480 --> 01:20:24.120 but I want to hit on some of the points of that here. 01:20:26.200 --> 01:20:31.000 You shouldn't fall into despair if you have that habitual sin. 01:20:32.840 --> 01:20:38.920 So long as you regret having fallen into that sin again and wish to do better, 01:20:38.920 --> 01:20:43.560 because if you regret that sin and wish to do better, that's repentance. 01:20:44.360 --> 01:20:51.800 Just because you fall into a habitual sin does not mean that you have given yourself over to a 01:20:51.800 --> 01:20:57.800 reprobate mind or you've fallen away or any of these other things. Don't give in to despair. 01:20:57.800 --> 01:21:02.520 That is what Satan wants you to do. Satan is that little voice telling you, 01:21:03.400 --> 01:21:08.920 well, you gave in again. You'll never kick this habit. You may as well just not care. 01:21:09.640 --> 01:21:16.840 If you give in completely, that is when it becomes the problem of driving out the Holy Spirit. 01:21:18.920 --> 01:21:23.320 If you fall into these, particularly this kind of habitual sin as a young man, 01:21:25.160 --> 01:21:29.960 try to do better. Look for ways that you can suppress the temptation, 01:21:30.840 --> 01:21:36.440 but as long as you have that repentance, you have that regret, you have that desire to turn away 01:21:36.440 --> 01:21:43.000 from the sin and back toward God. That is the mark of a Christian. That is the work of the law 01:21:43.640 --> 01:21:48.200 turning you away from your sin and back to God. That is things functioning 01:21:48.200 --> 01:21:52.040 not exactly as they should, because obviously ideally you wouldn't fall into the sin, 01:21:52.840 --> 01:21:58.120 but it is things in light of your fallen nature and having fallen into that sin functioning as 01:21:58.120 --> 01:22:04.120 best they can. And so I do recommend for all the young men and for other listeners as well 01:22:04.120 --> 01:22:09.720 to go and read that piece. I think that I make a number of important points in that piece about 01:22:09.720 --> 01:22:16.280 the reality of this particular topic given current circumstances in our culture at large. 01:22:18.200 --> 01:22:25.240 I think one important thing to address here is that this is fundamentally a question of 01:22:25.240 --> 01:22:32.040 desires that are properly ordered versus desires that are disordered. It is absolutely properly 01:22:32.120 --> 01:22:38.440 ordered for you to desire to see a woman naked. What is disordered is that you're not to desire 01:22:38.440 --> 01:22:47.080 that of all women, you're to desire that of your wife and no one else. So it's a filter where on 01:22:47.080 --> 01:22:52.760 one side you want everything about your wife and you should want nothing of other women, 01:22:52.760 --> 01:22:57.240 and if you don't have a wife it should mean that you want nothing of any of them sexually. 01:22:57.480 --> 01:23:03.640 So when someone is tempted by sexual desire by someone who's not his wife, 01:23:05.000 --> 01:23:11.960 as you struggle with that, know that you're struggling with a properly ordered desire that's 01:23:11.960 --> 01:23:16.840 misplaced because you're looking at someone that's not your wife. You shouldn't be looking, 01:23:16.840 --> 01:23:23.560 you shouldn't be looking at a screen or a magazine or some figmentary representation 01:23:23.560 --> 01:23:27.400 of a human being that's disembodied, that's no longer human, it's just an image. 01:23:28.520 --> 01:23:31.000 That's one of the other destructive things about 01:23:32.280 --> 01:23:38.520 viewing other people remotely like that, and it's an incredibly surreal and virtually 01:23:38.520 --> 01:23:44.280 impossible thing that we face today, really entirely on the internet, but also even just 01:23:44.280 --> 01:23:49.240 with magazines and with television and really with the invention of the photograph or at least 01:23:49.240 --> 01:23:57.800 with the invention of easily reproduced drawings, because 200 years ago if you saw a beautiful girl 01:23:57.800 --> 01:24:01.960 the only way you're going to see her was with your own eyes. I'm not talking about sexual 01:24:01.960 --> 01:24:06.520 desire, not talking about seeing anyone naked or anything remotely like that, literally just 01:24:06.520 --> 01:24:13.080 seeing a pretty girl's face in almost all of human history was going to be pretty rare, 01:24:13.080 --> 01:24:18.200 like it's going to be a neighbor, it's going to be someone in your closer extended family, 01:24:18.280 --> 01:24:23.560 it's going to be someone in your tribe or clan, someone nearby, or perhaps you travel and you see 01:24:23.560 --> 01:24:31.000 a pretty girl somewhere else. Short of actually getting in with 30 feet of someone and seeing 01:24:31.000 --> 01:24:36.520 her with your own eyes or him with your own eyes for your girl, men and women are equally 01:24:37.400 --> 01:24:42.360 sexual when it comes to the visual, it's nonsense that there's a huge disparity, 01:24:42.360 --> 01:24:48.040 men are much more visual, but girls absolutely have the same sort of responses, 01:24:48.040 --> 01:24:53.560 just somewhat in different circumstances, so girls absolutely lust after guys when they look at them 01:24:53.560 --> 01:25:01.240 too, but it's much more about fantasy for them. The thing that we struggle with today, and I think 01:25:01.240 --> 01:25:08.200 the really bizarre dehumanizing aspect of images of people, regardless of anything else, regardless 01:25:08.200 --> 01:25:13.640 of sexual chastity, just the idea that you would see someone phenomenally beautiful because you're 01:25:13.640 --> 01:25:20.120 able to find a picture of them, it was impossible for almost all human history, which means that 01:25:20.120 --> 01:25:26.120 for us, for everyone on earth today, our beauty standards are completely bonkers, 01:25:27.080 --> 01:25:33.240 because 200 years ago, the best looking person in your town, maybe they're only average man or 01:25:33.240 --> 01:25:37.560 woman, maybe they're exceptionally pretty, if it was from a really good looking family, 01:25:38.280 --> 01:25:44.200 maybe there was an outlier, but it's so rare that the idea that you have to have the incredibly 01:25:44.200 --> 01:25:50.760 beautiful man or woman would never occur to anyone, because that person, when Helen of Troy, 01:25:50.760 --> 01:25:56.040 the face that launched a thousand ships, there was a joke on Twitter a few months ago that Helen 01:25:56.040 --> 01:26:01.160 of Troy was mid, I think she wasn't really all that attractive, she probably was, but was she 01:26:01.160 --> 01:26:08.680 the most beautiful person on the planet? Whatever. Today, we all see people more beautiful than 01:26:08.680 --> 01:26:13.320 anything that would have potentially existed in antiquity, not necessarily because the people 01:26:13.320 --> 01:26:21.560 are actually that beautiful, but because lighting and makeup and digital alteration fabricate 01:26:21.560 --> 01:26:28.680 fake versions of human beings, after starting with a human being who's so rare in terms of 01:26:28.680 --> 01:26:35.080 their relative beauty, and physical beauty is not only subjective, it's also objective. 01:26:35.080 --> 01:26:40.680 I think we talked about in a previous episode, the factors of symmetry and actually the 01:26:42.520 --> 01:26:48.760 golden ratio itself in the proportions of a face and a body go directly to the beauty of a person. 01:26:48.760 --> 01:26:56.040 You can mathematically demonstrate how close someone's visual appearance is to an ideal 01:26:56.760 --> 01:27:00.200 mathematical form, and the closer it is to that, the more attractive they are. 01:27:01.560 --> 01:27:06.440 All these alterations make someone who's, hey, they're not your neighbor, they're someone remote. 01:27:06.440 --> 01:27:11.160 In most cases, particularly with porn, they're probably the victims of sex trafficking, 01:27:11.160 --> 01:27:14.120 so you're participating in multiple levels of evil at that point. 01:27:15.480 --> 01:27:21.160 But then you're looking at people far away who have been altered in ways that make them no 01:27:21.160 --> 01:27:29.880 longer human. They're a doppelganger representation of, frankly, in most cases today, a pretty 01:27:29.880 --> 01:27:37.400 disgusting version of beauty that we've been taught by media who controls the media to say, 01:27:37.400 --> 01:27:43.720 oh yeah, that's great. We see so many young girls now getting lip filler. It's revolting. 01:27:43.800 --> 01:27:51.800 It turns them into goblins, beautiful faces, turned into hideous, inhuman things that are 01:27:51.800 --> 01:27:57.160 suddenly on the wrong side of the uncanny valley because so-called doctors are butchering their 01:27:57.160 --> 01:28:04.120 faces to chase these artificial ideas of beauty that no one of their own accord would reach. 01:28:05.240 --> 01:28:11.640 So even just looking at these sorts of things fundamentally distorts our view of the people 01:28:11.640 --> 01:28:18.920 we actually see around us. If you spend all your time watching movies or TV or something until 01:28:18.920 --> 01:28:24.280 recently, it was always going to be some of the hottest people. Today, they're abnormally unattractive, 01:28:24.280 --> 01:28:32.600 which is itself another form of assault. But these unnatural experiences, including porn, 01:28:32.600 --> 01:28:38.440 including seeing intimate things that you should only ever see, much of it should never be seen 01:28:39.000 --> 01:28:44.360 because so many things that are done are unnatural. They're disordered and evil. 01:28:45.400 --> 01:28:51.480 But even just absolutely normal, appropriate sexual activity, you should only see that if 01:28:51.480 --> 01:28:59.240 you're seeing it in first person with your wife. And divorcing any aspect of any of this from 01:28:59.880 --> 01:29:05.800 the reality of one man and one woman brought together by God makes it all worse. But it 01:29:05.800 --> 01:29:13.240 makes it worse in ways that can often become inescapable. We talked about the pill destroying 01:29:13.240 --> 01:29:20.120 girls' bodies, destroying their ability to be attracted to a man or to gestate correctly. 01:29:20.840 --> 01:29:27.400 Porn absolutely destroys a man's ability to function sexually. It's a very, very common 01:29:27.400 --> 01:29:32.760 complaint among girls today that guys who have become habituated and addicted to 01:29:33.560 --> 01:29:40.040 viewing pornography can no longer function sexually. In some cases, it may take a while 01:29:40.040 --> 01:29:44.600 to go away. In some cases, it may never go away because you're functionally burning out a part 01:29:44.600 --> 01:29:50.280 of your brain that was never supposed to be burned out in the first place. When you have a naturally 01:29:50.280 --> 01:29:57.320 properly ordered marriage with a woman or a man, you don't burn out. You have all things in moderation 01:29:57.320 --> 01:30:04.760 and you enjoy them fruitfully and with each other and there's no burnout. You can't unless 01:30:04.760 --> 01:30:09.800 she's cooking way too much good food and you get fat. But she has an incentive not to make you fat 01:30:09.800 --> 01:30:16.280 because she doesn't want to look at you being fat. So there's always a mutually reinforcing 01:30:16.840 --> 01:30:22.360 aspect to an actual real relationship and it completely vanishes when you're looking at an 01:30:22.360 --> 01:30:28.840 image of someone who's not even real. I want to read the verse that I mentioned earlier because 01:30:28.840 --> 01:30:33.240 I think it's important to read the actual words of scripture, not just mention them so that those 01:30:33.240 --> 01:30:41.640 who know what I'm referencing know the verse. But I mentioned having a wife and the wife not 01:30:41.640 --> 01:30:45.960 withholding from her husband, the husband not withholding from his wife and that is of course 01:30:45.960 --> 01:30:52.120 First Corinthians. But because of the temptation to sexual immorality each man should have his 01:30:52.120 --> 01:30:57.720 own wife and each woman her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights 01:30:57.720 --> 01:31:03.000 and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, 01:31:03.000 --> 01:31:07.960 but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, 01:31:07.960 --> 01:31:14.840 but the wife does. Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time 01:31:14.840 --> 01:31:19.080 that you may devote yourselves to prayer, but then come together again 01:31:19.080 --> 01:31:22.680 so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. 01:31:24.360 --> 01:31:29.880 And so scripture's incredibly clear that sex is part of marriage and it's not a part of marriage 01:31:29.880 --> 01:31:35.400 that is optional. As we've mentioned before it is in fact the definition of marriage because 01:31:35.400 --> 01:31:43.560 marriage has to be consummated. I would also like to emphasize something that Woe said previously 01:31:43.560 --> 01:31:52.280 about singleness in particular. For those pastors and teachers out there or others, 01:31:52.280 --> 01:31:57.800 anyone in a position of authority or really even if you aren't in a position of authority, 01:31:57.800 --> 01:32:02.360 if you've just put this out there, if you've repeated this lie, if you have said that singleness 01:32:02.360 --> 01:32:10.120 is a blessing, you need to publicly recant that because that is false. 01:32:11.640 --> 01:32:18.200 Celebrity is a blessing. Now is it conceivable that God could use singleness as a blessing for 01:32:18.200 --> 01:32:28.360 a season? Absolutely. But blessing by and large is something that is in accord with God's ordering 01:32:28.920 --> 01:32:37.400 things and singleness is not as this verse makes clear. Each man should have his own wife. Each woman 01:32:37.400 --> 01:32:42.840 should have her own husband. That is the natural order of things. That is what God intends. 01:32:42.840 --> 01:32:49.800 He made them man and woman. We have many verses about that starting with Genesis 2. 01:32:49.800 --> 01:32:53.480 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall 01:32:53.480 --> 01:33:00.040 become one flesh. This runs throughout Scripture. And so singleness when you describe it in terms 01:33:00.040 --> 01:33:04.600 of being some sort of great blessing, you are lying about God in his word and you are doing 01:33:04.600 --> 01:33:11.000 very real harm, particularly to the young men and women who are single and very much do not wish to 01:33:11.000 --> 01:33:19.240 be so. And so if you hold to that position, I certainly hope that God does something that will 01:33:19.240 --> 01:33:24.920 make it so that you are no longer able to teach that false doctrine up to it, including striking 01:33:24.920 --> 01:33:29.800 you mute and having your teeth right out of your head. Because there should be very real 01:33:29.800 --> 01:33:36.120 consequences for false teachers who teach these sorts of evil things. And personally I am sick 01:33:36.120 --> 01:33:43.160 of hearing that one. Not personally as in in reference to me, but personally sick of hearing it 01:33:43.960 --> 01:33:48.920 with regard to other young men, because these are young men who have very real problems, 01:33:48.920 --> 01:33:56.040 who are facing a world that is stacked against them. And then they have teachers and those in 01:33:56.040 --> 01:34:01.240 positions of authority and worse pastors in many cases saying these incredibly wicked and harmful 01:34:01.240 --> 01:34:09.480 things. Apparently some pastors, teachers and others should think long and hard about the 01:34:09.480 --> 01:34:16.120 stricter judgment. One of the last passages I wanted to get into is from 1 Peter 3. 01:34:16.920 --> 01:34:23.240 Likewise, wives, be subject to your husbands so that even if some do not obey the word, they may 01:34:23.240 --> 01:34:28.040 be one without a word by the conduct of their wives. When they see you respectful and pure 01:34:28.040 --> 01:34:33.080 conduct, do not let your adorning be external, the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold 01:34:33.080 --> 01:34:38.200 jewelry or the clothing you wear, but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with 01:34:38.200 --> 01:34:43.560 the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious. 01:34:43.640 --> 01:34:47.800 For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves 01:34:47.800 --> 01:34:53.000 by submitting to their own husbands is Sarah Obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord, 01:34:53.000 --> 01:34:57.480 and you are her children if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening. 01:34:57.480 --> 01:35:02.360 Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the 01:35:02.360 --> 01:35:07.400 woman as the weaker vessel since they are heirs with you of the grace of life so that your prayers 01:35:07.400 --> 01:35:13.880 may not be hindered. I think this is another small example of something that this is not a 01:35:13.880 --> 01:35:19.320 passage that's just for okay once you're married, but for a young man, if you're looking for girls, 01:35:21.160 --> 01:35:25.080 I don't think that we necessarily need to treat this as never adorning yourself 01:35:25.640 --> 01:35:29.560 in any sort of fine clothing because there are many examples in scripture where 01:35:29.560 --> 01:35:33.320 that is a godly and upright thing. You know, the discussions of marriage, 01:35:33.320 --> 01:35:40.280 feast, wedding, feast, and other sorts of celebrations, adorning in beautiful fashion 01:35:40.280 --> 01:35:47.960 is not idolatrous. It can be a celebration. However, it's very common again because of the 01:35:47.960 --> 01:35:56.040 depraved culture in which we live for particularly girls to be, to see a fashion as identity, 01:35:56.040 --> 01:36:02.440 you know, just as guys, you young guys especially have the problem of when you fall into complete 01:36:02.520 --> 01:36:08.600 irony or wisecracking or blackpilling or complaining or whatever. 01:36:09.720 --> 01:36:15.560 Emotional responses to things are not a personality. A personality is more than just 01:36:17.080 --> 01:36:21.320 a reactive knee-jerk response to, you know, some social input. 01:36:22.520 --> 01:36:29.640 Girls need to be the sort of human beings who do not see their clothing as their personality 01:36:30.280 --> 01:36:38.200 on top of not being giving the exhibition of promiscuous sexual behavior. You know, 01:36:38.200 --> 01:36:44.600 she should be dressed in a chased way, but you also don't want a girl who's caked in makeup and is 01:36:44.600 --> 01:36:53.880 always, always dressed to the nines because that sort of person is, she's going down a path where 01:36:53.960 --> 01:36:58.280 look at me, look at me is more important than who she is inwardly. 01:36:59.240 --> 01:37:05.960 And, you know, makeup is a, as a small example, but I would put makeup up there almost on the 01:37:05.960 --> 01:37:13.720 same level as, as the pill. You know, I have, I know guys who when they early on when they met 01:37:13.720 --> 01:37:19.640 their wives are like, I don't, I don't want to see you in makeup. An attractive girl doesn't 01:37:19.960 --> 01:37:26.440 need or use a bunch of that crap. It's, it's another one of those memes that was frankly 01:37:26.440 --> 01:37:32.040 introduced into, well, it's been around for a long time, obviously, they're examples from antiquity of, 01:37:33.080 --> 01:37:39.640 of makeup being used, but it's notable that they were almost always used in profane fashions 01:37:40.600 --> 01:37:46.040 or just as, as idolatrous fashion, you know, either directly as part of some ceremony, 01:37:46.040 --> 01:37:52.440 of some ceremonial evil, or just as a part of a culture that was itself just kind of ambiently 01:37:52.440 --> 01:37:59.160 evil. It's not like a girl who's ever worn makeup is out of the cards, but hey, you want to see 01:37:59.160 --> 01:38:05.480 what she looks like without makeup because makeup can completely transform a face and you may think 01:38:05.480 --> 01:38:10.040 you're looking at one person. And when you see her without makeup, she's a completely different 01:38:10.040 --> 01:38:15.560 person. Maybe you find one attractive and you find the other one completely unattractive and 01:38:17.000 --> 01:38:21.960 you should know which is which before you marry her because that's, you have every right to know 01:38:21.960 --> 01:38:26.680 whom you're marrying. So it's a small thing, but it's one of those things that, you know, 01:38:27.640 --> 01:38:32.200 ideally, it really shouldn't even exist. And, you know, we, there's talk of natural beauty and 01:38:32.200 --> 01:38:39.560 it's a real thing. Someone who, someone who's living a chaste and wholesome life, who's happy, 01:38:40.200 --> 01:38:46.840 who's at peace with God, is genuinely more attractive. In someone who has to resort to this 01:38:46.840 --> 01:38:53.720 sort of trickery, usually is, again, they're usually engaging in some degree of self-loathing. 01:38:54.440 --> 01:39:01.320 It's certainly deceitful and it's often, you know, maybe it's just low self-esteem. It's not at all 01:39:01.320 --> 01:39:09.400 irredeemable. Sometimes it tends toward self-hatred and that's usually when you see not only 01:39:10.200 --> 01:39:15.640 egregious amounts of makeup, but also tons of piercings, tattoos, like all these things that are 01:39:16.280 --> 01:39:23.560 physically altering the appearance of a girl away from what God made. God made one thing and then 01:39:23.560 --> 01:39:29.160 they go in a completely different direction. That's not a good sign. A girl or a man should 01:39:29.160 --> 01:39:35.800 become more himself in God and as he lives his life or her life, we should become more of what 01:39:35.800 --> 01:39:40.840 God wants and not less. And when we flee from the bodies that he gave us and the faces that he gave 01:39:40.840 --> 01:39:46.280 us, you know, if you want to improve your body, men lift weights. I can tell you in particular, 01:39:46.280 --> 01:39:50.440 if you're young men, start lifting now. The younger, the better. Like, you know, there's, 01:39:50.440 --> 01:39:56.120 there's a minimal age beneath which it may not be good for you related to growth plates, but 01:39:56.200 --> 01:40:02.200 by the time you're 15, 16, you absolutely should be doing a lot of vigorous physical exercise 01:40:02.200 --> 01:40:07.720 because I can tell you as an older guy, the muscle that you gain when you're 15, 20, you keep very 01:40:07.720 --> 01:40:13.640 easily the rest of your life. Muscle you gain when you're in your 30s, you got to work or it goes away. 01:40:13.640 --> 01:40:20.760 It's not free anymore. It's remarkable. I used to, I was a paper boy. I pedaled six days a week, 01:40:20.760 --> 01:40:26.360 90 minutes a day up and down some pretty serious hills. My thighs are really strong and they've 01:40:26.360 --> 01:40:31.240 stayed strong despite not doing anything particular with them. That muscle I basically just got for 01:40:31.240 --> 01:40:37.880 free as a kid accidentally. Do the work now, put in the work now, and you will have a much easier 01:40:37.880 --> 01:40:43.960 life when you're older because strength is good. Strength is something that God commends. It makes 01:40:43.960 --> 01:40:48.760 your life easier, makes you more attractive, makes you more confident. And for young men, 01:40:49.400 --> 01:40:54.760 I think that's a big part of this is that finding confidence when you necessarily don't have a lot 01:40:54.760 --> 01:41:00.120 of reasons for it, especially when you're young, is one of the hardest hurdles to feel like you have 01:41:00.120 --> 01:41:07.080 something worth sharing with a girl. There's a fundamental difference between the way girls 01:41:07.720 --> 01:41:15.320 viewmate selection and guys. Guys want to be worth a girl wanting them. And girls today are 01:41:15.320 --> 01:41:22.200 effectively the choosers. And that's, it affects everything in our lives. And when, when may selection 01:41:22.200 --> 01:41:27.720 is running properly, you know, when the community, when parents are involved, and the inputs when 01:41:27.720 --> 01:41:31.640 the young man, the young woman are chased and they're doing the right things or trying to, 01:41:33.640 --> 01:41:37.720 that reinforcement of wholesomeness just takes off in its grade. 01:41:39.560 --> 01:41:44.120 Unfortunately, today we're living in a world where everything seems to be set against us. 01:41:44.760 --> 01:41:50.680 But one thing that you can do as a young man is just build something, build yourself into something, 01:41:50.680 --> 01:41:58.120 and trust in God to deliver in his time a girl who will like who you are, who will love who you 01:41:58.120 --> 01:42:04.200 are. Because that's what you need. It's what you know you need. I think that the biggest hurdle 01:42:04.200 --> 01:42:12.680 for guys dealing with being alone is that there's an inherently ironic tension between 01:42:15.080 --> 01:42:20.280 the thing that you want as a young man more than anything else is to, to have a girl, to have 01:42:20.280 --> 01:42:27.720 someone to love and to be the man that she wants, that she wants, period. The problem with that, 01:42:27.720 --> 01:42:34.920 and the reason I used irony correctly, I hope here is that if she can smell, if she can instinctually 01:42:34.920 --> 01:42:40.440 detect that the thing that you want more than anything is to have a girl or for, especially for 01:42:40.440 --> 01:42:46.760 it to be her, that's inherently repellent. It's completely insane. It's completely backwards. 01:42:46.760 --> 01:42:51.720 But the very thing that's the most important to you, if you let it come across as anything remotely 01:42:51.720 --> 01:42:58.200 like desperation, it becomes repulsive. And so while it's a properly ordered desire for you to 01:42:58.200 --> 01:43:06.680 want a girl to want a wife, it is counterproductive if that becomes a conscious aspect of how you 01:43:06.680 --> 01:43:12.360 conduct yourself. You can shape yourself into a man that you want to be, that you want, you know, 01:43:12.360 --> 01:43:17.480 is God pleasing and will please a wife at some point. But if everything that you do is focused 01:43:17.480 --> 01:43:24.040 entirely on, I hope she likes me, I hope she sees this, she might see it, but I promise you she will 01:43:24.040 --> 01:43:28.840 not like it. And it's cruel and it's completely backwards. It's, it's one of the most insane 01:43:28.840 --> 01:43:35.800 things about human existence, but it's an immutable law. And it's a tough thing for guys to get over. 01:43:35.800 --> 01:43:42.760 But the simple rule is have some confidence, even if it's, even if it's hallucinatory for a time, 01:43:43.400 --> 01:43:50.040 and relax, be happy and confident in who you are, even if you're just a goofball, I don't go over 01:43:50.040 --> 01:43:55.800 the board with being goofy, but be confident in who you are, and that itself becomes appealing. 01:43:55.800 --> 01:44:01.960 And if you can just set aside that the intense desire to not be alone, that is how you actually 01:44:01.960 --> 01:44:11.240 satisfy that desire. I was tempted to add Proverbs 31, because of course it fits here. But one, 01:44:11.240 --> 01:44:16.120 we've already moved into the end of this episode and describing some of the ways, some of the 01:44:16.120 --> 01:44:22.120 practical things for young men to do, young men in particular to do, to aid in finding a wife and 01:44:22.120 --> 01:44:30.040 just really living life. But I think instead I'll recommend, go listen to episode 22, that includes 01:44:30.040 --> 01:44:39.640 reading Proverbs 31 in that episode. But we already went over some of the major issues here. Avoid 01:44:39.640 --> 01:44:46.840 pornography, develop an actual personality. That should go without saying, but really it does need 01:44:46.840 --> 01:44:52.680 to be repeated. You need to have an actual personality, not just things that you hate. 01:44:52.680 --> 01:44:56.840 Don't make that your personality that will make everyone want to avoid you. 01:44:57.800 --> 01:45:03.720 But on a purely practical note, not just lifting weights, do some exercise, and I'm going to remind 01:45:03.720 --> 01:45:09.320 everyone, don't forget cardio. You actually do need your cardiovascular system, or you're not going to 01:45:09.320 --> 01:45:16.520 have a particularly good go of things. Get a hobby. It almost doesn't matter what the hobby is. 01:45:17.800 --> 01:45:23.240 I am going to recommend you not get obsessed with Star Wars or Star Trek, probably not the best hobby. 01:45:24.200 --> 01:45:31.160 Men who do that tend to start building weird shrines. But whatever the hobby happens to be, 01:45:31.160 --> 01:45:38.680 if it's painting miniatures, fine, do that. Great. Maybe also transform what you learn from the hobby 01:45:38.680 --> 01:45:43.480 into something practical as well. Maybe take up a little bit of woodworking along with it, 01:45:43.480 --> 01:45:49.560 because you've already learned the painting part. But it's important for men to have a hobby. You 01:45:50.520 --> 01:45:55.080 need some sort of outlet, something into which you can pour some energy and time. 01:45:56.200 --> 01:46:01.960 And it helps along with women as well, because then you will have something to discuss. I'm 01:46:01.960 --> 01:46:07.160 not saying talk to her about the details of every miniature that you have in your collection. 01:46:08.520 --> 01:46:12.360 Some women will enjoy that. Some won't. You have to be able to gauge that for yourself. 01:46:13.240 --> 01:46:19.480 But it makes you more interesting if you have things in your life that do not involve her, 01:46:20.200 --> 01:46:25.640 that don't involve any women, because they're things in your life that you're doing because 01:46:25.640 --> 01:46:35.480 you want to do them. That is attractive to women. But insofar as the practical advice goes, 01:46:36.600 --> 01:46:41.960 one of the things that I continually recommend, and I think it is one of the best and easiest 01:46:42.040 --> 01:46:48.040 things you can do simply to feel a little better, is go for a walk every day. 01:46:49.640 --> 01:46:56.360 Just go for a short walk every single day, 20, 30 minute walk. If you have a dog, great. If you 01:46:56.360 --> 01:47:00.680 don't have a dog, fine. Go walk by yourself, walk with a neighbor, whatever it happens to be. 01:47:01.320 --> 01:47:07.000 It gets you outside. It gets you a little cardio. It gets you some exercise. You will feel better 01:47:07.000 --> 01:47:13.240 if you do this. It absolutely works. All of the research shows this is a good thing for you. 01:47:14.360 --> 01:47:19.640 Anyone to whom you talk who has picked up this hobby will tell you this helps. 01:47:20.680 --> 01:47:25.800 And sometimes it is the simple things in life that help. God created a beautiful world 01:47:25.800 --> 01:47:30.360 and it's outside your window. Don't spend all your time inside, particularly in a dark room. 01:47:30.360 --> 01:47:34.760 Go outside, get some sunlight, go for a walk, get a little cardio. You will feel better. 01:47:35.080 --> 01:47:41.000 And in the same vein of very simple advice, drink some water. You're probably dehydrated, 01:47:41.000 --> 01:47:45.080 particularly if you've picked up the bad habit of drinking energy drinks. 01:47:46.680 --> 01:47:51.160 Hydration actually matters. Again, this is back to you're still a creature. You're still an animal. 01:47:51.160 --> 01:47:55.880 There are things you have to do to take care of yourself. These are some of the basics. 01:47:55.880 --> 01:48:01.640 These are things that your father, the authority figures in your life should have taught you, 01:48:01.720 --> 01:48:07.800 should have helped you with these things. Maybe some of them did great. Maybe they didn't, 01:48:07.800 --> 01:48:11.080 which is more and more likely these days. You need to do it yourself. 01:48:12.200 --> 01:48:19.320 There's a wealth of resources for these things. You can improve your life and improve yourself, 01:48:20.040 --> 01:48:25.560 which will not only make you feel better, but will improve your odds of finding a wife, 01:48:25.560 --> 01:48:30.520 if that is what you were attempting to do. And I mentioned earlier that I would give 01:48:30.520 --> 01:48:37.800 some practical advice on the actual finding a wife part, in addition to the don't look at college, 01:48:37.800 --> 01:48:42.840 because that's probably not a good plan. And so for the fathers who were thinking, I sent my 01:48:42.840 --> 01:48:46.840 daughter off to college to find a husband. No, you didn't. And it's a bad plan if you did. 01:48:48.280 --> 01:48:53.240 But for the young men out there, if you're looking for a wife, go to the grocery store. 01:48:54.760 --> 01:48:59.400 Some of the cashiers are probably single. Go to a coffee shop. Some of the baristas are probably 01:48:59.400 --> 01:49:08.760 single. There are women all over the place. You don't have to go to a bar or a club or college 01:49:08.760 --> 01:49:14.520 or any of these places you're told you can find women there. Go to a bookstore. Go there and read 01:49:14.520 --> 01:49:21.080 for a while. See the women who walk in and out. There are plenty of places you can find women. 01:49:22.280 --> 01:49:27.960 And this leads into some of the most important advice for some of the young men in the audience. 01:49:28.200 --> 01:49:35.320 You need to be comfortable with rejection. Now I know that social anxiety is rampant in the 01:49:35.320 --> 01:49:39.800 zoomer generation and younger. And quite frankly, millennials are pretty bad about it as well. Try 01:49:39.800 --> 01:49:44.840 ringing the doorbell for a millennial. Good luck getting someone to actually answer. 01:49:46.840 --> 01:49:53.320 But you need to get over it. That's the long and the short of it. It's blunt, but it's true. 01:49:53.720 --> 01:50:00.600 Practice. Go up to a woman. Ask for a number. If she says no, okay, that's one woman out of there 01:50:00.600 --> 01:50:07.800 are 300 million people in this country. So about half are women. Some 40% of that, probably about the 01:50:07.800 --> 01:50:13.800 age range for you. Okay, so one out of tens of millions of potential women told you no. That's 01:50:13.800 --> 01:50:16.760 not the end of the world. Get over it. Try again. 01:50:17.080 --> 01:50:28.840 That's how you do things. And you know what's great about it? If you take it the right way, when 01:50:28.840 --> 01:50:31.720 you're rejected, and you will be rejected, it doesn't matter if you're the most attractive 01:50:31.720 --> 01:50:36.040 man on the planet and have millions of dollars. Some women still won't like you. 01:50:37.640 --> 01:50:43.240 If you're rejected and you take it the right way, it gets easier to approach women in the future. 01:50:44.040 --> 01:50:49.640 And so each time you do that, it's easier. You are building up that confidence that you need. 01:50:49.640 --> 01:50:53.640 And yes, you can build confidence off of being rejected because you are getting more comfortable 01:50:53.640 --> 01:51:01.480 with yourself. And that shows women are more likely to respond positively when you are comfortable 01:51:01.480 --> 01:51:08.520 with yourself. And that takes practice because you probably didn't develop that growing up 01:51:09.240 --> 01:51:14.920 and you need to develop it now. In the common thread in both of those things you just mentioned, 01:51:14.920 --> 01:51:22.280 you know, approaching girls cold and going for a walk is that involves relaxation. 01:51:23.320 --> 01:51:29.240 It is where that may sound. But if you are relaxed in doing things like walking, it relaxes you 01:51:29.240 --> 01:51:34.840 being in nature. Actually, it changes your blood pressure. It changes everything about your body 01:51:34.840 --> 01:51:43.800 even 30 minutes a day. When you are more relaxed, it's not off putting. If you're a ball of tension, 01:51:43.800 --> 01:51:49.480 if you seem wound up and you seem like someone who's on the verge of something, 01:51:49.480 --> 01:51:54.440 when you speak to someone that comes through. Even if it's deep down inside you, if that's 01:51:54.440 --> 01:52:00.520 your internal state, girls especially can sniff that sort of thing out because they have more 01:52:00.520 --> 01:52:06.200 finely tuned social senses than men. You have two groups of people, a bunch of men and a bunch of 01:52:06.200 --> 01:52:12.760 women. The women are always going to do a better job at teasing out the hidden reefs. The things 01:52:12.760 --> 01:52:18.040 that are hidden, the motivations, whatever is going on, they're going to tend to do a better job 01:52:18.040 --> 01:52:24.600 because for them it's not rational. They're not thinking things through. They're intuiting 01:52:24.600 --> 01:52:32.920 those things. They're figuring it out just by raw instinct. When you're relaxed, especially if you 01:52:32.920 --> 01:52:39.320 go up to a girl and try to strike up a conversation, the hard thing is not caring if she cares. 01:52:41.320 --> 01:52:46.920 You see a girl, you want to talk to her. The fact that you talk to her is driven by the fact that 01:52:46.920 --> 01:52:53.720 you want to talk to her. Yet it can't come across that you want to talk to her. It's stupid and 01:52:53.720 --> 01:52:59.960 insane. The worst thing you can do is make her think you're wound up like, I got to talk to her. 01:52:59.960 --> 01:53:06.760 I hope she likes me. That's completely repellent. If you are relaxed to the point that she's like, 01:53:06.760 --> 01:53:11.800 I wonder if he even cares, even when you approached her, that is when she's going to find you more 01:53:11.800 --> 01:53:19.080 interesting. Again, it's counterintuitive. It's a pain in the butt, but it's how we're wired. 01:53:19.480 --> 01:53:25.480 God gave us resilience. Men are the tough ones when it comes to this stuff. 01:53:27.000 --> 01:53:30.280 Recently, it's a tragic trope that's come about as 01:53:31.000 --> 01:53:36.280 sex reassignment surgery. These especially girls who are trying to live as men 01:53:38.680 --> 01:53:42.920 freak out. They think, oh, it's easy mode because the whole culture tells them, 01:53:43.000 --> 01:53:49.640 oh, it's so much easier being a guy. Now they suddenly look like a guy enough to pass, 01:53:49.640 --> 01:53:55.880 and you know what happens? They become completely invisible. Some of them are actually driven to 01:53:55.880 --> 01:54:02.360 suicide, not even just by the fact that they're engaging in what we all know is destructive, 01:54:02.360 --> 01:54:08.920 but specifically the female to male. To suddenly realize how hard it is to be a man and to know 01:54:08.920 --> 01:54:17.160 you've effectively taken a one-way trip is overwhelming. The aloneness that a man naturally 01:54:17.160 --> 01:54:24.360 faces in the world is inconceivable to girls. They have no idea how hard it is to be us, 01:54:25.000 --> 01:54:30.680 and we just take it in stride because it's all we know. Again, back to not blackpilling or being 01:54:30.680 --> 01:54:36.840 a whiner or blaming them, you have to be resilient, even in the face of impossible odds. 01:54:37.720 --> 01:54:42.840 That sort of strength and relaxation, even when it seems like everything is burning and everything 01:54:42.840 --> 01:54:48.360 is lost or hopeless or whatever, when you can still be a happy warrior when you face 01:54:49.080 --> 01:54:55.080 impossible odds, suddenly you become charming by that degree. Suddenly you become someone that 01:54:55.080 --> 01:55:04.200 men want to be and women want to be with. That's really kind of just generically the advice, 01:55:04.920 --> 01:55:08.840 and it's particularly hard for young guys because you don't know who you are yet. You're still 01:55:08.840 --> 01:55:15.080 figuring that out, and so when we say things like don't let irony or sarcasm or something 01:55:15.080 --> 01:55:21.240 become your personality, it's precisely because if that's all you do, it's what you will become, 01:55:21.240 --> 01:55:26.840 and it's just not interesting. The nice thing about having hobbies and interests that have 01:55:27.400 --> 01:55:34.360 some general appeal is that another thing that girls in particular find very appealing is when 01:55:34.360 --> 01:55:39.400 a man has passion for something. Even if she's not interested in it, just the fact that you can be 01:55:39.400 --> 01:55:45.640 interested in something to a point is attractive. Now, if it becomes an obsession and it's your 01:55:45.640 --> 01:55:50.840 entire personality, then that's repulsive, and there's a lot of these things where it's like 01:55:50.840 --> 01:55:56.200 it's great up to a point, and then beyond that point, it becomes disgusting and repulsive. 01:55:57.320 --> 01:56:01.000 The reason that's a recurring theme is that that's really just how this stuff works, 01:56:01.560 --> 01:56:07.880 and nobody told me as a young man. I had to figure this crap out myself the hard way multiple times, 01:56:07.880 --> 01:56:16.120 and I made a lot of stupid and evil mistakes along the way, so romantically you look at my life and 01:56:16.120 --> 01:56:23.320 say, that's a complete failure. Fine. I'm done with that crap, and that's not me blackpilling, 01:56:23.320 --> 01:56:28.840 it's me realizing that having painted myself into a corner where I've personally screwed things up, 01:56:28.840 --> 01:56:34.760 and at my age, this is now what I focus on. I focus on trying to help other men and trying to 01:56:35.480 --> 01:56:43.160 help build a future for your children and for the world that I was born into and will leave 01:56:43.160 --> 01:56:49.320 nothing behind. That is my blessing from God. All the things that I've screwed up, all the mistakes 01:56:49.320 --> 01:56:56.200 that I've made along all these lines have given me the ability to do stuff that most guys can do. 01:56:56.840 --> 01:57:01.800 I think one of the reasons that a lot of guys appreciate the work that we do is that, frankly, 01:57:01.800 --> 01:57:07.000 Corey and I are able to say stuff publicly that most men still can't say, because they'll get 01:57:07.000 --> 01:57:11.160 docks and destroyed, and if you have a family or you want to have a family and you want to take 01:57:11.160 --> 01:57:15.560 care of your wife and kids, you probably can't say a lot of this stuff, especially some of the 01:57:15.560 --> 01:57:21.640 recent episodes we've done. We can say it, and it's particularly because of the fact that 01:57:22.520 --> 01:57:28.920 it's not the blessing of singleness, it's just, okay, this is where we are, here's what we're 01:57:28.920 --> 01:57:35.480 doing with it. I would never hold myself up as a model for anything. I want anyone to emulate me, 01:57:35.480 --> 01:57:40.200 but I would hope that as we try to share some of these lessons, some of which we've learned 01:57:40.280 --> 01:57:45.720 ourselves, and some of which are general knowledge that are in places like the manosphere that has 01:57:45.720 --> 01:57:52.440 a lot of terrible toxic stuff, I mean, it has just, once you realize how girls work, you go in one 01:57:52.440 --> 01:57:57.880 or two directions, and most guys go in the direction that most of that world pushes them, 01:57:57.880 --> 01:58:04.440 which is just rampant fornication, particularly if you have a low regard for girls. If you think 01:58:05.400 --> 01:58:09.880 they're all whores, I can't believe they're like this, I'm just going to have fun, 01:58:09.880 --> 01:58:15.480 I'm going to exploit those weaknesses and those mistakes. That's evil, but it's easy, and frankly, 01:58:15.480 --> 01:58:19.800 it's what most of the world that knows about this stuff says. There are not many Christians that 01:58:19.800 --> 01:58:26.840 both know it and have some aptitude for it who will also say, here's how this actually applies 01:58:27.400 --> 01:58:33.080 for Christians, because it does, because the exploitation of weaknesses in human nature 01:58:33.960 --> 01:58:41.560 that are used by evil men are the very things that shape all of our lives in one way or another. 01:58:41.560 --> 01:58:45.960 If you have a weakness or a proclivity, either you're going to keep it in check 01:58:45.960 --> 01:58:50.280 or it's going to run away with you, and that's why anchoring the stuff in scripture is important, 01:58:50.280 --> 01:58:54.680 is that above all else, we need to know that we are not our own, but we are bought with a price. 01:58:55.240 --> 01:59:01.080 God paid for us on the cross, and God gives us the Holy Spirit, living within us, 01:59:01.080 --> 01:59:06.840 and so that should preclude, when we focus on it, all these other mistakes. The sinful human 01:59:06.840 --> 01:59:13.160 flesh that's still here even in the sanctified man or woman has those desires, and God wants them 01:59:13.160 --> 01:59:21.320 to be fulfilled in a godly way. As we close out, trusting in those promises needs to be paramount, 01:59:21.320 --> 01:59:28.120 and then living a daily life of both repentance from our sinful inclinations and 01:59:29.080 --> 01:59:35.480 bettering ourselves in a godly fashion to make ourselves the sort of man that God wants us to 01:59:35.480 --> 01:59:41.960 be. God has a lot to say about a lot of these things. When we do those, we then have to trust 01:59:41.960 --> 01:59:48.200 that God will deliver on his promises and his time, and that's the ultimate source of relaxation. 01:59:48.200 --> 01:59:53.720 We can't be worked up about it and afraid that we're going to fail and God's not going to deliver. 01:59:54.360 --> 02:00:00.440 You do your part and trust God, and God will deliver on his promises. I don't know when. 02:00:01.960 --> 02:00:07.720 Not everyone will necessarily ever get a girlfriend and a wife, which is obviously the goal. 02:00:08.440 --> 02:00:15.480 Goal is not a girlfriend. The goal is a godly, faithful wife. Find someone for whom you can be 02:00:15.480 --> 02:00:22.840 a head, make yourself her head, and be a good head to be a faithful head, being the kind of head 02:00:22.840 --> 02:00:30.280 that she looks up to and admires and needs and trusts and turns to, because that is your role 02:00:30.280 --> 02:00:35.320 as a man, to be the sort of man who has his bearings, even when things are on fire and things 02:00:35.320 --> 02:00:40.440 are scary and they're weird and no one knows what's going on. If you can be relaxed and still say, 02:00:41.320 --> 02:00:45.000 I love you. I'm going to take care of you. I have this. There's nothing to worry about. 02:00:45.800 --> 02:00:51.560 That is the essence of marriage, where there's a sacrifice as God modeled, 02:00:51.560 --> 02:00:56.840 as Christ modeled for the church that doesn't involve you dying. You can sacrifice simply being 02:00:58.440 --> 02:01:05.000 the one who bears under the weight of all these pressures without cracking. You can do that by 02:01:05.000 --> 02:01:10.600 your own strength. It can only come from strength in faith in God and in the promises he's given us. 02:01:12.040 --> 02:01:16.760 And so I think we'll end with a reading from Matthew 6, The Words of Christ. 02:01:17.880 --> 02:01:22.040 I'm a little tempted to include a link in the show notes to a chicken stream as 02:01:22.040 --> 02:01:28.120 an object lesson, possibly in 4K, but we'll see if I include that or not. But Matthew 6, 02:01:29.080 --> 02:01:35.480 Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, 02:01:35.480 --> 02:01:41.640 nor about your body what you will put on, is not life more than food and the body more than clothing. 02:01:42.280 --> 02:01:48.360 Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly 02:01:48.360 --> 02:01:54.440 Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious 02:01:54.440 --> 02:01:59.720 can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? 02:01:59.720 --> 02:02:05.720 Consider the lilies of the field how they grow. They neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, 02:02:05.720 --> 02:02:12.040 even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so close the grass of the 02:02:12.040 --> 02:02:18.280 field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, 02:02:18.280 --> 02:02:25.080 O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious saying, What shall we eat or what shall we drink 02:02:25.080 --> 02:02:30.840 or what shall we wear? For the heathens seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father 02:02:30.840 --> 02:02:36.360 knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, 02:02:36.360 --> 02:02:41.480 and all these things will be added to you. Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, 02:02:41.480 --> 02:02:46.840 for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.