← The CBMW Podcast
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- [00:05]
A
Greetings, everyone. Welcome to the CBMW podcast, and it is my joy and pleasure to welcome to the program Sean DeMars. I should mention our normal host is not here. I'm by myself. This is Denny BURKE. But Sean DeMars is here with me because we are going to talk to him about a new book that he's written. Just a little bit about Sean before we begin. Sean is a husband to Amber and a dad to Patience and to Isabella. He's also the pastor of Glory Community Church in Decatur, Alabama. And many of our listeners are going to recognize Sean because he is the host of the ubiquitous podcast, Room for Nuance. And we're hosting Sean, though, as I mentioned a minute ago, just to talk about his book. And this is it right here. It's titled get married, have Babies, Join a Church. It's like, staccato, man. This right here is the whole point of the book. It's kind of the title is the book. It's the thesis of the book. So we're going to talk about this book here in a second. But before we do that, Sean, I want you to tell us a little bit about yourself. In particular, tell us your testimony in brief, and tell us about your call to ministry.
- [01:23]
B
Yeah. Well, brother, first of all, I just want to thank you for having me on the show. And I also just want to honor you for all that you've done and you and everyone else at the cbmw. I'm not just saying this to be honorific because you have me on your show. I really mean it. I've appreciated your work and benefited from it for years, and I think the Lord has really used it to build up the church. And I just don't know where we'd be without all the hard work you guys have done for the kingdom. So thank you so much. Yeah, man. So my testimony is I grew up in a family full of drug addicts and alcoholics all the way up my family tree, as far as I know, drug addicts, alcoholics, and abusers. And that was my early life growing up. I tell the story a little bit more in a book called Rebel to your Will, my earliest mem. Good book. You like?
- [02:13]
A
Yeah. Yes, I love Rebel to your Will. Highly recommend it to everyone.
- [02:17]
B
Great. Thanks, man. Basically, my earliest memories in life are of being abused by my mom. I didn't have a father. My dad was a drug dealer who knocked my mom up and then left before I was born. And then basically that happened most of my life until I was old enough to stop it. And then as soon as I got away from all of the abuse and stuff in my home, I basically became an abuser. I became a drug user and then a drug dealer and a pimp. And I was running the streets, living a wild life. I was facing 20 years in prison when I was 18 and I got accepted into a Christian program, a last chance Christian program. And I heard the gospel and was saved there by God's grace. That was 20 years ago. I spent five years in the military as a combat medic. I spent four years in the jungles of Peru as a missionary to the Uradina people group. Then came home, tried to be a Presbyterian for a year. Didn't quite work out. Now I'm a Baptist pastor in Alabama because God has a sense of humor and I've been here. It was a church revitalization. It was a dying church of God church. And we came in and by God's grace, you're charismatic. So it's interesting, there are two kinds of Church of God. One is Cleveland, Tennessee. They are charismatic. This church of God is Anderson. They're both downstream from the Wesleyan Holiness movement, but this is more egalitarian. No creed but the Bible, no church discipline. Part of a come outers movement, but not charismatic. And now we're none of those things. We're, I would say a very like minded church. To Kenwood, nine marks, reformed, strongly complementarian,
- [04:02]
A
all that good stuff for people who don't know. Kenwood is my church. Sean knows that, but a lot of our listeners will not know that.
- [04:10]
B
Yeah.
- [04:11]
A
So you tried to be Presbyterian?
- [04:14]
B
Yeah, when I came home from the mission field, I didn't have a lot of job opportunities and a very good brother at a PCA church hired me and basically they paid me and said, we'll pay you to work for us while you figure out if you want to be a Presbyterian. And they paid well. Oh, that's nice. And I knew it was going to be a fork in the road situation and yeah, I couldn't quite get there. So when I resigned from that position, I ended up doing the internship with Mark Dever up at Capitol Hill Baptist Church. And my Baptist bona fides have never been in doubt since.
- [04:48]
A
Okay, so when did you start becoming pastor of Grace of Glory Community Church?
- [04:54]
B
Yeah, about nine and a half years ago. I was basically discipling this guy from across town. I was in the Presbyterian Church. He was in this church. He had become reformed. He was leading this Church of God church. He really didn't know what he was doing. This Interim pastor. And he would tell you, he would say it that way, you know, he was doing his best to be faithful. He was preaching the word, but he didn't know what he was doing. He asked if I would come be the pastor, and I said no. You guys have female pastors. You haven't paid any of your clergy. There's these problems and that Problem, no way. And you can't really be a Baptist pastor unless you have a story like this, right? I tried to run from the call. It's cliche for a reason. So I was supposed to go up in D.C. and work with a bunch of the 9 marks guys and do church planting in the D.C. area. But halfway through my internship, we did a block on church revitalization and the dam broke. I couldn't stop thinking about this tiny, dying church in Decatur, Alabama. Little did I know my wife had been praying imprecatory prayers against our DC plans the whole time she had been praying for us to come back to Alabama. And, you know, when I talked about it with people, they were like, what?
- [06:03]
A
This was Alabama, your home?
- [06:07]
B
Yeah. Kind. Yeah, yeah. It's the place that I always touched back down at whenever I wasn't gallivanting around the globe.
- [06:14]
A
Okay.
- [06:16]
B
Yeah. And, yeah, we came here and by God's grace, over the course, and we. Sorry. Shameless promotion. There's a new book coming out called the Perfect Church, where I tell the story of our church revitalization in a comedy memoir. Because everything that happened was so insane, you would think it has to be fake. So, yeah, it took us about four years, but we revitalized the church. And by God's grace, we're doing well. We're growing. Our church building burned down about two years ago, so we've been scrambling a little bit since then, but the church itself is doing great.
- [06:51]
A
Man, that's fantastic. Now, all of that is necessary background to this book because of the way that you wrote the book. Again, the title of the book is Get Married, have Babies, Join a Church. So I think everybody should read this book. It's not super long, it's pretty short. And as I mentioned a minute ago, this is the outline of the book. So if you're just looking at the chapters in the book, you've got an introduction, a conclusion, and in between there, you got 11 chapters. And the first, what, four chapters are about get married, it's an expectation to get married. Then you've got the middle, what, five chapters, which are about have children, and then the last couple of chapters there about church Commitment, join a church. So the way that you wrote the book, though, is as a pastor, counseling church members. So, you know, I found it really a compelling way to do a book because it just. It was a real page turner as a result, because you're not giving us this discursive, you know, explication of why you should get married, why you should have children. And it's not that. It's a conversation of a pastor and congregates. Congregates, yeah. So why did you write it that way?
- [08:13]
B
Yeah. Denny, you'll appreciate this. You write a lot and to great benefit. So I'm always trying. Trying to think through as a local church pastor, how do I get my people to read more good books that will help them to be better students of the Bible? And as you well know, and maybe you don't. I don't know, Kenwood, maybe it's not hard to get people at your local church with all the seminary students and all that stuff, to read books, but, man, it is so hard to get people to read. So I try to not write long books. Not that there's not a place for that. There most certainly is. But I try to write books that are pretty short, with short chapters that make people like my wife feel like you finished a chapter and it didn't take that long. It's an easy win. I also try to think about this style. So rebel to your will. I wanted that book to go into prisons and jails and rehabs and halfway houses. And I remember when I was a recovering meth addict, I couldn't sit down and read for more than 30 seconds. I just couldn't do it. So I wrote it in a very staccato style, trying to keep the pace very fast, building momentum in this book. I knew that the subject matter itself was going to be so confrontational to many young Christians that I needed a style that would, you know, they're already being confronted theologically and intellectually. I need a style that will feel more warm and pastoral and accommodating. And also, I've actually read theology books written in dialogical form, and I actually really enjoy them. So I even tried to do a thing where I did a dialogue for the chapter and then followed up with a more discursive analysis, and it just sucked the life out of it. And so far, what I've heard back from people who have read it is that it's been super easy to read, which makes my heart happy.
- [10:02]
A
Well, it's really fantastic. I was thinking as I was reading it, that, you know, people who are sort of cutting their teeth on social media sound bites like this is going to engage them, in my view. In other words, they'd be able to pick this up and just, you know, be able to make their way through, even if they're not really used to reading a book. So I thought it was really effective in that sense.
- [10:26]
B
Praise the Lord, man.
- [10:27]
A
Yeah. So. And I think it's really well done. I do have. Listen, we haven't even got into the main subject matter yet, but I have one question here that I just is, how did you do this? Because obviously you didn't have a tape recorder on. These conversations, are these real conversations or are they made up? Or did you, you know, are they based on true stories and then you, you know, filled in some fictional things here and there, or did you reconstruct the dialogue? Or do you have a photographic memory? I mean, how. I could not even begin to, like, recreate conversations. So what. How did you do this?
- [11:06]
B
Yeah, so my secret hobby is writing fiction. So I love. And a lot of that is writing dialogue. So I'm pretty used to writing dialogue, but still, where does the material come from? It comes from years and years and years of pastoral conversations. You know, one of the chapters in the book is the guy who has the sort of the Excel spreadsheet with his budget all laid out.
- [11:33]
A
Right.
- [11:33]
B
And he's trying to. Huh?
- [11:35]
A
Yeah, I know. Yeah, yeah.
- [11:37]
B
He's trying to explain how he doesn't have the money to have children.
- [11:40]
A
Right.
- [11:42]
B
I've had a conversation almost exactly like that, but, you know, I turned the dial up a little bit for the sake of the. Of the book.
- [11:50]
A
Okay. So some of them, they're based on true stories, but they're sort of fictionalized to make a point. Is that. Am I understanding it correctly?
- [12:01]
B
Yeah. I'm kind of using like a Socratic method where I'm just leading people usually by way of questions, down a particular path until we arrive at the biblical truth. And I'm using a lot of fodder from real life pastoral conversations. Some of them, I'm putting a lot of disparate pieces together. Some of it is like a one for one with a conversation I've had in real life.
- [12:25]
A
Yeah. Okay. So some of these characters, because you've got, you know, like chapter one, it's about, you know, Tyler and Emily, for example. These are not real people.
- [12:35]
B
These are not in my church. No.
- [12:37]
A
Yeah. They're composites of your experience, basically. Okay.
- [12:41]
B
Yeah, that's right.
- [12:42]
A
All right, so I didn't know what I was looking at here. So that's very, very helpful. I think it's very, very effective, too. And I think that readers will benefit. Readers will benefit from it. So get married, have children, join a church. Those are your three main points here. Why those? Why'd you pick those three?
- [13:04]
B
I feel like one of the main threads that I'm seeing with young Christians is a desire to put off the ordinary means that God uses to mature his people. Okay, so I've been thinking about this a lot, lady, a lot lately, as I have women in their 30s telling me, I don't know if we're ready to have kids yet. Or, you know, there's a couple who. They've been engaged for a year and a half. They love each other. There's no doubt they're both Christians. Both of their parents approve. There's money in the bank for the wedding. And they say, we don't know if we're ready to get married. And I'm like, what do you mean, you don't know? And my heart. There isn't just, I want you to get married. It's. I actually think getting married is going to be good for your soul. I think there's something about uniting yourself to this other person that you love and you're going to spend the rest of your life with is going to mature you in Christ faster than if you continue to live apart. Not to mention the First Corinthians 7, you know, burning with passion stuff. And the same thing with having children. You know, I've seen young men in my congregation who are married who are, you know, they were single and they were kind of turds, but they were turds in Jesus. Okay? There's more of this language in the book. And then they get married, and all of a sudden I see them step up to the plate, right? There's something about being married that makes them step up and become more of a godly leader. But then when they have kids, it's like everything tightens up even more. I think there's something in. And this happens for men and women, by the way. I think there's something in us that God has designed as part of his creational order that when we become more responsible, we grow up into that. And it creates a kind of pressure for us to grow in Christlikeness. And I want that for people. That's one of, like, 15 different reasons why I wrote this book.
- [15:02]
A
So. Have you heard of the phrase prolonged adolescence? You know what I'm talking about?
- [15:08]
B
Yeah.
- [15:10]
A
You don't use that word in here, but it's a phrase that demographers have been using for a long time about this whole new life stage that has been carved out for young people. The traditional transitions to adulthood usually are about four or five things. You finish school, you move out of your parents home, you become economically independent, you get married, you have children. Those are your basic five transitions to adulthood. As I'm reading your book, I'm thinking about that framework. If I were writing the book, I would write about the five transitions to adulthood and how children. But you're not using those terms, you're just fleshing out the stories. Now what I've seen is that as I've done reading on this, it used to be like a generation ago, people were completing all those things by their early to mid 20s. Now they're finishing all five of those things. Maybe around their 30s, around 30 is the average age. It's different for men and women. But what you're chronicling here is that this life stage where you're delaying marriage, that's not something that's just happening outside the church, it's happening within the church. Is this something that you found that's pretty widespread in your own church?
- [16:36]
B
Yeah, it's interesting. First of all, thank you for elaborating on that in such a helpful way. It's one of the reasons why I appreciate your work so much and I really mean that. And the thing is, I don't have that academic brain. And the reason why I wrote it this way and not that way, honestly, brother, is just because I can't do it that way. I take those ideas and I try to translate them into the language of the plebs. I am seeing that in our church. By God's grace, I think it's changing. I mean, we're a relatively small church. We have 125 members and I think we have 150 children right now. So a lot has changed over the last.
- [17:17]
A
Are you serious? 150?
- [17:19]
B
Yeah. And we only have two tiny rooms for Gospel, kids, children, ministry, pray for our building project. But it has changed. But it's changed because the word of God has come to bear on the consciences of young people in our church. Just to give you one example, there's a family in our church where the young couple was married. The husband was not saved. He got radically saved. They were following Jesus really well together in our church and they weren't getting pregnant. And I just asked them one day
- [17:48]
A
like, hey, why are you.
- [17:49]
B
Why are you waiting on this, you know, you guys seem like you'd be great parents, you'd have a beautiful family. And the wife says, well, you know, career stuff. And I don't have to give you all the details. You can probably imagine what that sounds like. And so we had a couple of long heart to heart conversations about that. And what we found out is essentially her dad kind of trained her up her whole life, her whole goal was to be like this successful career woman. And it was a real identity crisis in her to let that go and to realize that God might be calling her to something more glorious as a mother now she has three kids and she's loving every second of it and she wouldn't change a thing. But there's been a lot of that in our church and. And it has certainly not been easy. And by the way, I'm not saying that a woman can't have a career and have children, but I think you
- [18:45]
A
know what I mean. Oh, no, I know. It's the feminist script, right? And these ideas have consequences in real people's lives. And they're being told that they can have it all. And then they get there and they realize, I don't really want it all. I would like to have children and a family. And I've got this massive distraction keeping me from that. In fact, you know, I thought the way that you. Oh, what chapter was it? Chapter 8. Why are we Afraid of Children? You have a character there named Ashley who is. She's fearing motherhood, basically, but she has this deep physical ache for a baby. But she's got this, you know, what you're diagnosing is that she has this, you know, quote, ontological longing for motherhood. But then she's got this other narrative in competition with that. But that other narrative, you don't ever say it, but it's kind of the feminist narrative.
- [19:44]
B
Not kind of.
- [19:45]
A
It is the feminist narrative, the self actualizing narrative of feminism that's driving that. Which is why I think this book is important for the CBMW podcast, because it's speaking right at those issues.
- [19:56]
B
Yeah, yeah. Thanks, man. That chapter was super interesting to write again, because, you know, as Mohler likes to say, autonomy will never beat ontology. So you can try to live by this artificial law of Satan, quite honestly. But the fact of the matter is, God created men to be husbands and fathers. I know some people will, you know, remain single and childless, but by and large, normatively, he's called men to be husbands and fathers, and he's called women to be wives. And mothers. And when I see a young woman come into my church and she's pursuing her career and she's not interested in kids, and I don't like kids, I just don't even believe it for a second. I don't go, hmm, that's interesting. You know, I wonder why she doesn't want to be a mom. I go, you want to be a mom, even if you don't know you want to be a mom. I know that you want to be a mom on some level. And of course, it always comes out. The example that I use in that chapter about the pang of motherhood desire when she's, like, in Target or when she's at a baby shower. I've had women in our church tell me that, like, I tried to deny it, but when I would walk by baby clothes at Target, I would find myself weeping, and I wouldn't know why I was crying. And then later, I realized it's because I knew on some level I wanted to be a mom. It's like, yes, I know. I know you did. And so now, what's interesting, Denny, is that our church is, by God's grace, a real success story in this area. A lot of men and women have overcome worldly ideologies and immature impulses to do what the title of the book says. But a lot of evangelical churches are not seeing this because they're not addressing it. And unfortunately, the only real people that I'm seeing address this in a big, popular way are, like, the Canon Doug Wilson world. Now, listen, I appreciate much of what Doug does. I had him on Room for Nuance, but I had him on Room for Nuance to debate him. Okay? To tell him all the things that I don't really like about their ministry. Okay? I'm very concerned with much of what's coming out of Moscow, but they're doing all of Christ for all of life. They're talking about marriage and child rearing. And this book is kind of like my attempt to say, like, guys, we can do this, too. You know, you don't have to be a theonomist to write books about getting married and having babies. Like, we can do this, too, and we need to do this.
- [22:31]
A
Yeah, absolutely.
- [22:31]
B
I'm preaching now. Sorry.
- [22:33]
A
No, no, that's spot on. I think they diagnose a lot of things that are wrong. I think theonomy is the wrong answer and some other things, like you do. But, I mean, we've got to be able to speak robustly to this. Now, one of the ways that you Speak to it is talking about the four Cs. Can you tell us about the four Cs?
- [22:52]
B
Dude, don't ask me to remember what the four Cs are right now.
- [22:55]
A
Credentials, cash, career, comfort.
- [22:59]
B
Yeah, there it is.
- [23:00]
A
It's a pop quiz on your book.
- [23:03]
B
Have you had that happen before where you're being interviewed about your book and you can't remember something?
- [23:07]
A
Man, one of the worst experiences I ever had was when I first came to Southern Seminary and Peter Gentry asked me a question about my dissertation and, man, I couldn't remember. I used to believe something really important about this, but I no longer remember what it was. I was like, that's basically I had to tell him. I was like, you know, I used to have a really strong view on this, but now I can't remember what it was. It was very important.
- [23:33]
B
Yeah, that's hilarious. I've had people come to interview me, come to be interviewed by me on Room for Nuance. And they'll tell me like, I reread my book on the plane on the way over here so I could remember everything that I believed. That's normal. Okay. The four Cs are basically these things that people feel like they need to have before they can start a family. And this was actually a big part of my experience too. I came from a broken home. We were very poor. Food stamps, section 8 housing. And I somehow imbibed from the world this idea that you had to have a certain amount of money before you could have children. I also, me and my wife had this view that we had to live our life before we could have kids. You have to have enough life experience because when you have kids, you're not going to be able to experience life. So get that out of the way first. Or you need to have college or career aspirations locked in. Right. So, for example, I can't tell you how often I've been sitting with a young college age couple who I know for a fact loves Jesus, loves each other. They're going to spend their life together by God's grace. And I'll say, why aren't you getting married? And they'll say, because Gina, Gina's mom wants her to finish college before we get married. And then I'll just ask questions. And when we get down to the bottom of that, there's nothing biblical or theological behind any of that. It's all very honestly carnal. Not saying that there can't be any prudential reasons why someone ought to get a degree before they get married. But by and Large. I haven't heard any good explanations for that. Or when a young man says, I have to reach this point on the career ladder. I have to reach this rung before I can get married or have kids. When I ask those questions and try to understand, like, how did you get there? I'm looking in my Bible, and I'm not seeing that. I'm reading theologians, and I'm not seeing that. Where are you seeing that? And honestly, they've gotten it from the world. So it's our job to help them see whatever happens. Let me just take a couple of those at a time. First of all, like, your life, this idea that you can't live your life if you have kids. The only way that. What's so tricky about this is that the only way you can know that that's not true is by having kids. Does that make sense?
- [25:54]
A
Yeah.
- [25:55]
B
It's only when you have kids that you realize that kids are actually not at all getting in the way of your life, that they're actually going to improve your life. But until you have those kids, you really have to believe. Do you have to take it on faith from wiser people who have come before you, who are telling you that that's a lie from Satan, you know, so it's just tough.
- [26:15]
A
Yeah. I could remember reading, I think it was in Desiring God years ago as a single man, where Piper talks about how marriage is a matrix for sanctification because you learn about how much of a sinner you are, and it's what the Lord uses to sanctify you. It was one thing reading about that. It was another thing to get married.
- [26:43]
B
Amen.
- [26:44]
A
And then realize, oh, I'm not nearly as incredible as I thought I was. In other words, whenever you do it, then you realize, you know, I was impoverished because I just didn't know this. You actually had to get into the experience to understand what the Lord was going to teach you through it. I think it's the same thing with kids on all these things. And a lot of what you're saying in this book, to me, it just sounds like marriage, children, these normal transitions to adulthood. By the way, one of the transitions to adulthood, which is not included by the secular demographers, is joining a church. But for a Christian, this is definitely a part of it. But one of the things that people miss is that they treat all of these things as the capstone of the good life rather than the foundation of the good life.
- [27:42]
B
Can you elaborate that in case nobody's heard? Capstone versus foundation. Can you explain that concept well.
- [27:49]
A
You say the four Cs are. People are delaying all of marriage, childbearing, all the rest, because they want to get credentials first, they want to have their career established, they want to have cash, and they want to have comfort. And so a lot of people think I have to have all of those things. And then as a capstone, I'm going to add to that marriage and kids, because then I'm ready for that. It's like an achievement you're working towards when really the foundation of the good life should start with marriage and children. And then all these other things are things that you'll be working towards because the good life is developed on top of those things, not without those things. Which I think is the point of the book is it's just trying to get normal Christians to grow up and embrace responsibility and embrace the conflicts that come with responsibility, which is. That's all throughout the book. In fact, you've got the one chapter on Satan Loves Lonely Men, which is about a guy you named Caleb. Tell us why you did that chapter, which I think is a good one and very relevant.
- [29:01]
B
Yeah, I mean, think about, by the way, if you hear a pinging, I'm getting messages coming through my computer that I'm recording this interview on, and I am too much of an idiot. I don't know how to turn that off. So, sorry.
- [29:13]
A
I've had the same conversation before, too.
- [29:16]
B
Yeah. So again, this chapter was born out of, like, a burden that I've been experiencing pastorally, where I'm seeing young men who are perfectly content to just sort of, you know, live at home with Mom. They're not really pursuing any sort of career. They're living on a shoestring budget and they're getting by, but they're content to work, like, 20 hours a week at a middling job and then just living on beans and rice so that they can live on that little bit of money that they're making from their crappy job. And when I'm talking to them about pursuing marriage, there doesn't seem to be any real strong interest there, not to mention kids and accepting responsibility in the church and so on and so forth. And I'm wondering, why is that? And I think one of the things that God uses to turn men into, to take the coal and turn it into a diamond is responsibility. The ordinary path to growing into Christian maturity is responsibility. And so what does Satan want? He wants them at home alone in their mom's basement watching porn and masturbating, accountable to no one responsible for nothing. So that pressure never comes to bear on them. And if they're genuinely saved, they just remain sort of impotent and useless for the kingdom of God. And I've seen different variations of that over the years.
- [30:41]
A
Yeah, it's just another prolonging of adolescence subsidized by the wealth and the work of a generation that came before.
- [30:50]
B
And I think I just, I'm trying to take the spiritual warfare angle on it, you know, because I really do. I'm a big fan of CS Lewis, the way he thinks, like, if I were Satan, how would I try to accomplish this end? You know, if I were Satan, how would I want to utterly incapacitate a church? Well, when I got to my local church that was dying and we did a revitalization, one of the key signs that it was dying is that there were no men taking charge, there were no men leading, no men responsible for anything. It was essentially a social club where half the people who were here were almost certainly not even regenerate. And the social club was a bunch of women getting together to basically run things. And the way that the church was brought back to life was the gospel came to bear on men and call them into leadership and responsibility. And wouldn't you know it? Also the women got sucked up in the tailwinds of that. And they were, you know, some of them didn't like it, but the vast majority of them, they came to life under this, you know, and so it's starting with that experience, like, oh yeah, when Satan wanted to destroy this church, he kneecapped the men. And then looking around and seeing that also happening with young single men at the same time.
- [32:07]
A
Man. Absolutely. Let me talk to you about probably an objection you've heard before because you're making the case in this book that marriage and child rearing is the norm. And a lot of people will respond to that with that is very insensitive to single people. And you're focusing way too much on the married life. Jesus was single, and you're denigrating singleness and the whole, you know, the Bible's emphasis on singleness and how important that is. Can you respond to that? Objection.
- [32:44]
B
Yeah. Yeah. So I think singleness according to Paul in 1 Corinthians is the greater gift. And some people argue is that the gift of singleness is the gift of celibacy. What I understand the Apostle Paul to be saying there is that if you are not married, you have the gift of non marriage, not a lifelong gift, just while you are not Married. That is your gift. If you are married, then marriage is your gift. And Paul says that's a greater gift. There's some debate about this present trial that Paul refers to. Is it the famine in Jerusalem? Let's just set all that aside for a moment. What I understand Paul to be saying, if you do an exegesis through the chapter, is that the reason why singleness is a greater gift is because there's more gospel freedom. Okay? And as a man who's married and has children, I very much understand that. Sometimes I just want to go, you know, put all my stuff in a casket and go to Africa and preach the gospel there. But I have earthly responsibilities to my wife and children that keep me, you know, one eye's up to heaven. One eye's kind of focused on these. I got to get the AC fixed and the hot water heater broke and homeschool stuff and homework assignments. And I'm a man divided in a sense, because of that. And Paul says that when you don't have those responsibilities, those more temporal responsibilities, you have the greater gift. So I want to say it's quite the opposite. I actually want to honor singleness by recognizing that not only is it the greater gift, but it's also the rarer gift. And doesn't that make sense? If it were the greater gift, it probably wouldn't be the most common gift, but. But it's so beautiful because it is so rare. The most normal thing in the Bible for people who are not the incarnate Son of God is to be married is to find someone to unite yourself with and serve Jesus together. You see, the pattern begins in Genesis 1. The Bible begins and ends with marriage. Let that be the bookends of your biblical theology. And we're called to be fruitful and to multiply as a means of imaging God. I know there's a lot of debate about what it means to image God, but I think the heartbeat of that is not intellectual capacity, because you can still image God if your intellect is destroyed by an accident or something like that. If you're in a coma. I don't think it's this. I think it's that. I think it's ruling and reigning in God's stead, okay, being his vice regents. And God didn't call Adam to do that alone. He called Adam to do that with his helpmate Eve. It wasn't good for Adam to be alone because he couldn't be the vice regent. God was. He couldn't represent the image of God on the face of the earth alone, the way he ought to. So God gave him a helpmate Eve, and then the first thing that he told them to do was to be fruitful and multiply. I don't think that the fall fundamentally change that. I still think that's the call on all of humanity, and I still think it's the fundamental way that Christians are called to live their lives. When I meet someone who is very content in their singleness and they're pressing into it for the sake of the kingdom, I celebrate that. But I also am surprised because it's so rare.
- [36:02]
A
Yeah, it is rare. And even with Paul in 1 Corinthians 7, the way he talks sounds like he was married at one point.
- [36:09]
B
It does, right? Do you believe the Paul widower thing?
- [36:14]
A
Oh, definitely. Yeah. I've written on it before. I think he. It's almost impossible to imagine someone calling themselves a Pharisee of Pharisees who was not married because they didn't view marriage and sex the way we do. You know, after Augustine, you know, where there's sort of extra level of sanctification if you never get married and you're a celibate. If you were a good Jew, you were going to be married because you had to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. And a Pharisee of Pharisees, one of the first marks of piety would be marriage.
- [36:52]
B
Can I say one more thing about the singleness thing, Denny, before I forget? By the way, everyone is going to have the gift of singleness for a time, as a Christian. And also, you might re. Enter. And almost certainly actually, if you're a man, the odds are lower for you. But, you know, sometimes, sadly, through divorce, you'll re. Enter into a season of singleness, or through the loss of your spouse, you'll re. Enter into the gift of singleness. And so, yeah, I just want to say that there are all kinds of reasons why you might end up being single again and be able to press into that gift for the kingdom.
- [37:29]
A
Amen. And I think that that's what Paul is talking about in 1 Corinthians 7, because he says to the widows and the unmarried, I wish that they would remain even as I. And the widows, I think it's talking about females who were, you know, their husbands have died. I think the unmarried is not just unmarried in general. I think it's men whose wives have died. And so he's putting himself in the category of those who were once married, but now they've been bereaved of a spouse. And then he comes later to talk about people who've never been married. Here he's talking about people who were once married. And so even Paul, I think, is describing a situation of, I was in this condition, but now I'm single. So he's moved in and out of being married and single as well. And so these are seasons of life, and you never know. And I think it's wonderful the way you said, the real thing that you need to work on is contentment. You don't have to be happy about it. You can be praying for the Lord to change it. You can be taking steps and actively pursuing marriage. But the issue is contentment and understanding that the Lord gives grace for that to whatever calling it puts on your life. Okay, one more thing here. I know this is a longer podcast than for usual for us. Not for me. I'm cruising room for nuance. You're up there for a couple hours, I think. I listened to one recently. You're almost two hours. We're typically a shorter format. But there's one more thing I want to mention about the book that I really appreciate and then just let you elaborate on how you will, is that you do take on controversial subjects. And kind of like in politics, the third rail is Social Security. Nobody wants to talk about it, how they're going to fix it. You talk about ivf. You talk about families that are more committed to Travel Ball than they are to committing to a church. Can you talk about both those things just a little bit?
- [39:26]
B
Yeah. So the IVF thing again, is just born of pastoral pressures. I had a couple come into my office and tell me, we're barren. We've been afraid to say anything about it. We're pursuing ivf. What counsel do you have for us? I'm like, I don't know. Why wouldn't you do ivf? And then you dig around a little bit and you're like, dang, I. I really didn't serve them that well. Now it feels like we're in this age.
- [39:53]
A
It's so funny to hear you say that, because in the chapter, I didn't know if I was reading real accounts or if these were fictionalized. But in the chapter, man, you knew everything about ivf, right?
- [40:06]
B
I knew it all, brother.
- [40:07]
A
In the first conversation, I was like, man, I didn't have all those facts and figures at my fingertips. I need to level up over here. Sean is like, I couldn't believe you knew all this. Okay. Anyway.
- [40:20]
B
Well, it's kind of like the classical trinitarian theology stuff, like, 15 years ago, nobody was really paying attention to this stuff. Now everyone acts like they, oh, yeah, I totally understood efs, you know?
- [40:34]
A
You did? Yeah. We've leveled up.
- [40:36]
B
We've leveled up. Okay. The same thing is true with ivf. I remember the first time I heard somebody say, hey, IVF is actually really unethical. I was like, what are you talking about? And then you dig around a little bit and you're like, oh, okay. We just haven't really, as evangelicals, done well thinking about this. Well, now I think, by God's grace, we're kind of on the other side of that. And we have tons of resources on this discussion on the subject. And I do think we have the ability to make more informed pastoral recommendations. And it is just so common. It's common in the Bible. It's common in everyday practice. It's even becoming more common in light of women taking birth control for so long and then having trouble conceiving when they come off of birth control. Or young men doing things like getting vasectomies because they've been told it's a totally morally neutral procedure and they've never heard Christians talk about it. And they have two kids and they're really tired, and they go, I don't want another one. I get a vasectomy. And so. And then they realize, they wake up years later and they realize, oh, no, I want another kid. What are we going to do? And that leads to, like, surrogate. All these crazy questions. And so I just wanted to try to tackle at least one of them. What I would recommend is if you haven't thought well about any of this stuff, buy Katie Faust's book, Them Before Us. Are you familiar with this book, Denny?
- [41:58]
A
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
- [42:00]
B
Oh, Katie Faust.
- [42:02]
A
Got it right behind me.
- [42:04]
B
Oh, yeah. Pastor's wife from Seattle. If Ben Shapiro were a WASPy woman. Okay, on this subject. But she makes all those arguments better than I do in the book. Okay, so that's one. And then the travel ball thing again. As you might imagine, this is born of pastoral experience. You have this otherwise really godly husband and father who, like, loves the word and loves the church and wants to be faithful to Jesus, but he's kind of letting his kids. Sports run the family. I mean, when I say run the family, I don't just mean they're missing church on a lot of Sundays. I mean, it's running their bank account, it's running their schedule. If for whatever reason they can't make a game, it's ruining the peace of the household. He's allowing his children's hopes and dreams and aspirations to be rooted and anchored in sports. And so, for like, 15 different reasons, it's really unhealthy. Now, somebody might say, well, why address that in this book? What's the point of even writing the book if you're not going to tackle the hard things? I mean, I'm not writing the book to just sit down and have a nice, calm conversation. I want to persuade you. I want to calibrate your conscience by the word of God so that you'll grow in faithfulness. It's not hard for me to do that because I've actually seen it. I've seen the family come into my church, and their daughter is really good at soccer, and she can probably get scholarships if she busts her butt. And if they're gone, half of the weekend's out of the year. And we slowly, patiently walk through this question with them. And before you know it, they've made the decision, the very difficult decision in their mind, the very difficult decision to trust Jesus and to be faithful to the ordinary means of grace and to. And to leave the soccer stuff up into the. The providence of God and how he's going to work that out. And then we've seen them grow and become more holy and more Christlike. And I just want that for people. And sometimes all it takes, Denny, is for you to put a pebble in somebody's shoe. You know, so. Sorry, I know I'm rambling. Let me just tell you one more thing about that pebble in the shoe. I just came out with a book on the ethics of mixed martial arts where I argue that professional mixed martial arts is unethical. That book has been 15 years in the making. I was in the office of a pastor. You and I both know I won't say his name right now. And I was telling him I was going to go see a boxing match. He said, you really shouldn't do that. Boxing is unethical. It's unchristian. I'm like, okay, you know, curmudgeon, pharisee, you know, whatever. I'm going to go watch my boxing match. But that pebble in my shoe, I couldn't get rid of it. And then God providentially allowed a couple of things to happen in my life where I reconsidered what he had said. And then I dug around more, and now I've completely changed my position. But it all started with that pebble. A burr under the saddle. So that's what I'm trying to do. If I can't completely persuade you in 20 pages of one chapter in my book to take the local church more seriously, maybe I can put a pebble in your shoe.
- [45:09]
A
Yeah. And I hope that people have had enough experiences at this point to know if you do this, you're teaching a massive lesson to your children about what's important. And your chapter on this, I think, is very effective in showing that. Because a lot of parents, I don't think, are thinking through this. We have to do this. We have to be gone on the Lord's Day, because travel ball is important. And they think somehow that's going to teach their kids that church is the most important thing. You're teaching them the opposite whenever you do that. And they're going to treat church as sort of a, you know, maybe we'll do it, maybe we won't.
- [45:50]
B
Yeah, an optional add on, because you've built the liturgy of your life around sports instead of Christ and his community. You know, I don't know where you stand on regulative principle, holy day stuff, but I think the only liturgical calendar given to Christians in the New Testament is weekly, and it is the Lord's Day. And the God that we serve is very intentional about building rhythms into the lives of his people because we're prone to forget. Okay? So in the Old Testament, that liturgical calendar was very ample and the rhythms were yearly and sometimes weekly and seasonally and sometimes every seven years and the Jubilee stuff and all of that. But in the New Testament, it's just much more simple. It's Sunday to Sunday, Lord's Day to Lord's Day. We need these constant gospel reminders because we are so sinful, we're so prone to forget. And the Lord uses that to strengthen us when we sing and pray and listen to the Word together. And it has to be a priority over even really important things like scholarships earned by playing basketball or baseball or football.
- [46:56]
A
Amen and hallelujah to that. So listen, I want to tell listeners to get this book, get married, have babies, join a church.
- [47:05]
B
Join a church.
- [47:06]
A
It's fantastic. And, man, I really appreciate it. Thank you for the work you did in it. Where can folks get this?
- [47:12]
B
Yeah, so you can get it on Amazon. And by the way, you can get it for super cheap. So I wrote this book. I'm taking no royalties from it. It's published by Room for Nuance Press. If you write for Room for Nuance Press, you agree to not take any royalties. Can I elaborate that for 30 seconds?
- [47:31]
A
Sure, sure.
- [47:32]
B
The reason why is the dirty little secret of Christian publishing that most people don't know is that you really don't make money, okay? If you're Rick Warren, you make money on Purpose Driven Life. If you write a book like the kinds of books I write, you don't really make money, okay? You don't really sell that many books. We're trying to give away more copies of resources like this than most books will actually sell of copies of resources like this. So our goal is to give these away as cheap as possible. What that means is that it's 99 cents on Amazon or $4.99 on paperback. $4.99 is literally as cheap as you can sell a book on Amazon. And what that basically says is whoever's publishing it agrees not to take a profit. And the only cost is the cost for Amazon to print and ship the book. So in light of how cheap we've made it, buy 15 copies and read them with the young people in your chur, please.
- [48:27]
A
Man, that's a wonderful ministry. Thank you for doing that and man, thank you for coming on here. We are very much in lockstep with the priorities that you're outlining in this book at cbmw and I just love this and thank you so much for doing it and anybody that's listening. If you want to know more about our ministry cbmw, just visit@cbmw.com and if you would like to partner with us and donate, please visit there. There will be a Donate tab. We would love to have you partner with us. Thank you for joining us today.