WEBVTT 00:00:37.040 --> 00:00:39.520 Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. 00:00:39.520 --> 00:00:40.720 I am Corey J. 00:00:40.720 --> 00:00:41.840 Mahler. And 00:00:41.840 --> 00:00:43.920 I'm still Wo. 00:00:45.040 --> 00:00:48.880 On today's Stone Choir, we are continuing what is the second of 00:00:48.880 --> 00:00:52.160 our three-part series on various facets of love. 00:00:52.160 --> 00:00:57.280 Last week we talked about sacrifice and charity as certain aspects of 00:00:57.280 --> 00:01:00.240 love. And we made the point in the intro to that episode 00:01:00.240 --> 00:01:03.360 that these are really all facets of one thing. 00:01:03.360 --> 00:01:05.280 And so there are lots of different words for them. 00:01:05.280 --> 00:01:06.400 They're different concepts. 00:01:06.640 --> 00:01:10.560 And some of those concepts and words vary in different languages. 00:01:10.560 --> 00:01:15.760 But our ultimate point is to be talking about love overall, because 00:01:15.760 --> 00:01:19.680 it's not always the way that we think about love in English. 00:01:19.680 --> 00:01:23.200 You might say that you love Stone Choir, but that's not the 00:01:23.200 --> 00:01:26.080 same way that you love your kid, or the same way that 00:01:26.080 --> 00:01:28.720 you love the state that you live in. 00:01:28.960 --> 00:01:32.960 It's okay for that word to be overloaded like that, and we 00:01:32.960 --> 00:01:36.640 all instinctively understand that there are different facets when we're using those 00:01:36.640 --> 00:01:41.040 things, but by spending a little time discussing the specifics of the 00:01:41.040 --> 00:01:45.600 individual facets, we can begin to see certain places in our lives 00:01:45.600 --> 00:01:49.600 where we're failing to live up to some aspect of them. 00:01:49.600 --> 00:01:53.920 And ultimately, the reason for doing this three-part series is both to 00:01:53.920 --> 00:01:57.760 illustrate, especially in the third part next week, which is I mentioned 00:01:57.760 --> 00:02:00.480 last week when we're doing the episode on marriage, that will be 00:02:00.480 --> 00:02:04.960 a strictly no kids allowed episode, and we've already had that conversation 00:02:05.120 --> 00:02:07.680 screened with your kids and want them to hear it. 00:02:07.680 --> 00:02:10.640 But we're gonna segregate everything about marriage in that. 00:02:10.640 --> 00:02:14.640 But marriage itself, when you're talking about even Eros, there's also agape 00:02:14.960 --> 00:02:18.720 and there's a more there the different facets, you know, in Greek 00:02:18.880 --> 00:02:22.160 of what we will call marital love in English. 00:02:22.160 --> 00:02:26.720 It's a continuum, there's overlap, there are exclusions in some cases, because 00:02:26.720 --> 00:02:29.280 the way you love your wife isn't the way you love your 00:02:29.280 --> 00:02:31.600 best friend, isn't the way you love your dog. 00:02:31.600 --> 00:02:32.560 That's okay. 00:02:32.560 --> 00:02:36.400 And so when we talk about it, we want to uh shine 00:02:36.400 --> 00:02:40.080 a light on where it does come into play because that also 00:02:40.080 --> 00:02:42.560 to illustrates when some of those things are absent. 00:02:42.560 --> 00:02:47.120 Because ultimately all these are duties from God that we have to 00:02:47.520 --> 00:02:50.080 these various parts of our life. 00:02:50.080 --> 00:02:51.520 We're finite beings. 00:02:51.520 --> 00:02:56.320 We can only love so much in the context around us. 00:02:56.320 --> 00:02:59.360 I can't love you the way I would love my family. 00:02:59.360 --> 00:03:00.720 I'm not supposed to. 00:03:00.720 --> 00:03:02.960 It would be perverted to try. 00:03:02.960 --> 00:03:06.560 And that's something that we're being told the opposite in most of 00:03:06.560 --> 00:03:06.880 the world. 00:03:06.880 --> 00:03:09.680 We're all being told, oh you have to have infinite love for 00:03:09.680 --> 00:03:12.240 everyone. Well that's God's job. 00:03:12.240 --> 00:03:13.920 God can do that. 00:03:13.920 --> 00:03:14.960 We can't. 00:03:14.960 --> 00:03:19.120 So when God puts us into contacts with neighbors and family, etc., 00:03:19.120 --> 00:03:21.600 that is where we are to manifest that love. 00:03:21.600 --> 00:03:25.280 And it includes things like love of neighbor that we'll be getting 00:03:25.280 --> 00:03:26.720 into some today. 00:03:26.880 --> 00:03:32.160 uh that there's a duty that's involved, there are relationships that are 00:03:32.160 --> 00:03:36.880 involved, and sometimes they're formal relationships, sometimes they're structural, like family, and 00:03:36.880 --> 00:03:40.800 sometimes they're transient, like the relationship that you have to a neighbor, 00:03:40.800 --> 00:03:43.360 as in the case of the Good Samaritan. 00:03:43.360 --> 00:03:47.040 That was a relationship only insofar as he found a man injured 00:03:47.040 --> 00:03:49.440 by the side of the road, took care of him, paid his 00:03:49.440 --> 00:03:52.720 medical bills, took him someplace to be cared for, and then left. 00:03:52.720 --> 00:03:56.480 That wasn't the sort of relationship that you have with family, but 00:03:56.480 --> 00:03:59.840 it was a commendable relationship because in the moment the duty that 00:03:59.840 --> 00:04:02.160 he had was to the man right in front of him. 00:04:02.160 --> 00:04:06.240 So there are all these different aspects that as as Christians and 00:04:06.240 --> 00:04:09.280 as men, we have these duties all the time, and we don't 00:04:09.200 --> 00:04:11.040 think about it for the most part. 00:04:11.040 --> 00:04:14.800 That becomes a problem when we fail to exercise those duties. 00:04:14.800 --> 00:04:17.920 You know, we did the episode on slander, for example. 00:04:17.920 --> 00:04:22.480 It is a failure to love whomever you are hearing slander about 00:04:22.480 --> 00:04:26.800 when you continue to entertain it, because their reputation is being eroded 00:04:26.800 --> 00:04:29.840 in your mind, even if you don't believe what's being said, if 00:04:29.840 --> 00:04:33.280 you will tolerate slander against a man who's not present and his 00:04:33.280 --> 00:04:36.000 name is being destroyed, and you don't speak up for him and 00:04:36.000 --> 00:04:38.320 say, if you got a problem with this guy, go talk to 00:04:38.320 --> 00:04:40.080 him. Don't tell me about it. 00:04:40.080 --> 00:04:43.760 The failure to do that is a deficit of love. 00:04:43.760 --> 00:04:47.440 And so you don't think about, you know, not engaging in something 00:04:47.440 --> 00:04:52.800 like slander as love or not love, but it's fundamentally always present. 00:04:52.800 --> 00:04:56.720 Whenever we fail to do any of these duties to any of 00:04:56.720 --> 00:05:01.600 our concentric circles of relationships, there's some failure of love there. 00:05:01.600 --> 00:05:04.880 As I said last week, ultimately pointing to all these things is 00:05:04.880 --> 00:05:08.160 not a bunch of la la la, we must do this. 00:05:08.160 --> 00:05:12.800 Ultimately this is talking about God's good things being poured out through 00:05:12.800 --> 00:05:17.280 us in his image, in facets of his image, as imperfect humans 00:05:17.360 --> 00:05:20.400 were able to demonstrate to each other, and the good works that 00:05:20.400 --> 00:05:22.320 were prepared for us were for others. 00:05:22.320 --> 00:05:24.560 God didn't give me good works to do for myself. 00:05:24.800 --> 00:05:27.280 It's not a good work unless I give it away. 00:05:27.280 --> 00:05:31.200 And so the love that's involved in that sort of giving, that 00:05:31.200 --> 00:05:33.600 sort of service, is from God. 00:05:33.600 --> 00:05:34.480 It's for neighbor. 00:05:34.480 --> 00:05:35.760 Like it's it's good stuff. 00:05:35.760 --> 00:05:40.240 It's all ultimately about doing and being good in the image of 00:05:40.240 --> 00:05:45.360 God. And as Christians with that restored image of God, that is 00:05:45.360 --> 00:05:47.120 what we're doing in the world. 00:05:47.120 --> 00:05:50.320 So today we're going to be talking about six other facets. 00:05:50.480 --> 00:05:53.520 This is gonna be kind of the biggest collection of the three 00:05:53.520 --> 00:05:56.240 episodes, but there's all a lot of overlap. 00:05:56.240 --> 00:05:58.480 And so these aren't exclusive. 00:05:58.480 --> 00:06:00.720 Yeah, we made the case last week. 00:06:00.720 --> 00:06:04.880 We're not trying to subdivide this stuff because like I said, sometimes 00:06:04.880 --> 00:06:05.760 there's a continuum. 00:06:05.760 --> 00:06:10.080 Sometimes like if he's your buddy, what aspect of love is it? 00:06:10.080 --> 00:06:12.640 Even though you never say it's love, a man is typically not 00:06:12.640 --> 00:06:14.800 gonna say that he loves another man most of the time. 00:06:14.800 --> 00:06:16.240 There's nothing wrong with that. 00:06:16.640 --> 00:06:19.680 And it's something that's been destroyed in our culture that now for 00:06:19.680 --> 00:06:22.240 a man to say that he loves another man in any context, 00:06:22.240 --> 00:06:24.400 people, oh that's that's gay. 00:06:24.400 --> 00:06:25.120 Like well 00:06:26.000 --> 00:06:28.880 it's kind of perverted that we begun to think that way. 00:06:28.880 --> 00:06:31.680 That's not how the Christian mind should work. 00:06:31.760 --> 00:06:33.760 You know, there are a lot of other words for these things. 00:06:33.760 --> 00:06:37.120 And so as we go through today's examples, just keep in mind 00:06:37.120 --> 00:06:40.320 that these are not subdivided, these are not exclusive of each other. 00:06:40.320 --> 00:06:43.440 These are These are all just different ways that we as men, 00:06:43.440 --> 00:06:47.360 and particularly we as Christians, interact with each other as we live 00:06:47.360 --> 00:06:49.760 our lives in the world. 00:06:50.160 --> 00:06:50.320 So 00:06:50.400 --> 00:06:56.000 as Will mentioned, we're really going over six not necessarily distinct, but 00:06:56.000 --> 00:07:01.920 related and overlapping concepts today, types of love. 00:07:01.920 --> 00:07:05.680 You could say there's a seventh if you want to include friendship, 00:07:05.680 --> 00:07:09.840 but friendship is really at one at one end of the spectrum 00:07:10.080 --> 00:07:13.120 under one of these types of love. 00:07:13.120 --> 00:07:18.800 And so the six types we'll be going over are Philia, Storge, 00:07:18.800 --> 00:07:24.400 Delectio, Amor, Pietas, and Amor Paternus. 00:07:24.400 --> 00:07:28.000 That last one is important and is sort of faded from our 00:07:28.000 --> 00:07:32.480 cultural understanding and really from our culture, and so we'll probably spend 00:07:32.480 --> 00:07:36.080 a fair amount of time on that one. 00:07:36.080 --> 00:07:40.880 But as we've said throughout and as we'll mention additional times in 00:07:40.880 --> 00:07:45.360 this series, the focus is not the terms themselves. 00:07:45.360 --> 00:07:48.640 The focus is not the Greek and the Latin. 00:07:48.640 --> 00:07:51.840 We have words for all of these in English. 00:07:51.840 --> 00:07:55.200 We just don't have single words for many of them. 00:07:55.200 --> 00:08:00.880 And so Storge, as mentioned in last week's episode is familial love. 00:08:00.880 --> 00:08:04.800 Felia is brotherly love, and that is the one under which we 00:08:04.800 --> 00:08:07.600 would place friendship if we were going to use that as an 00:08:07.600 --> 00:08:10.400 umbrella term, which it really is. 00:08:10.400 --> 00:08:16.160 Delectio and amore are respectively intellectual and emotional love. 00:08:16.160 --> 00:08:20.800 I want to spend a little time on how exactly we're using 00:08:20.800 --> 00:08:24.960 those terms because it is distinct to some degree from the historical 00:08:25.520 --> 00:08:27.840 usage, but not entirely. 00:08:27.840 --> 00:08:31.440 We don't have to be entirely in line with how any particular 00:08:31.440 --> 00:08:35.360 ancient culture used these terms, and so we're not saying that how 00:08:35.360 --> 00:08:38.800 the Romans conceived of these was exactly correct and were using only 00:08:38.800 --> 00:08:42.720 those terms, which should be obvious from the fact that we're using 00:08:42.720 --> 00:08:45.600 both Greek and Latin terms. 00:08:45.600 --> 00:08:48.720 To some degree we are using them in the same sense that 00:08:48.720 --> 00:08:52.480 they would have been used in the ancient world. 00:08:52.480 --> 00:08:56.720 But we're using them with a particular nuance or force to them, 00:08:56.720 --> 00:08:59.760 and I want you to think of these two forms of love 00:09:00.960 --> 00:09:06.400 almost more as an accent or an emphasis for the other forms 00:09:06.400 --> 00:09:07.200 of love. 00:09:07.200 --> 00:09:10.480 They don't really stand alone, as it were. 00:09:10.480 --> 00:09:12.480 None of these forms stand alone. 00:09:12.480 --> 00:09:15.040 They're all interrelated to the point where if you have one, you'll 00:09:15.040 --> 00:09:18.800 always have one of the others present as well, one or more 00:09:18.800 --> 00:09:21.040 of the others present. 00:09:21.040 --> 00:09:26.000 But again, think of a more as emotional love and delectio as 00:09:26.000 --> 00:09:28.000 intellectual love. 00:09:28.000 --> 00:09:32.640 Because those are two different, two distinct kinds of love, two different 00:09:32.640 --> 00:09:36.880 emphases that you can place onto the other forms of love. 00:09:36.880 --> 00:09:40.800 And so, for instance, you could have a friend that would fall 00:09:40.800 --> 00:09:46.080 under Philia, the brotherly love, but you could have a relationship with 00:09:46.080 --> 00:09:49.200 that friend that is more intellectual than emotional. 00:09:49.200 --> 00:09:52.080 And there are some friends where it's more of an emotional relationship 00:09:52.080 --> 00:09:56.480 than an intellectual one, and there will be distinctions there between male 00:09:56.480 --> 00:09:58.960 friendship and female friendship. 00:09:58.960 --> 00:10:03.600 There are going to be different nuances for different kinds of relationships, 00:10:03.600 --> 00:10:09.120 and so a more emotional love and delectio, intellectual love, are a 00:10:09.120 --> 00:10:13.040 sort of accent onto the other forms of love, a way that 00:10:13.040 --> 00:10:19.360 you can help couch those forms with regard to actual human relationships. 00:10:19.680 --> 00:10:24.320 And then the third pair would be Pietas and Amor Peternus. 00:10:24.320 --> 00:10:27.840 Pietas, of course, we have the term piety. 00:10:27.840 --> 00:10:31.360 We are using it in this series in a particular sense that 00:10:31.360 --> 00:10:35.760 is more in line with the ancient sense than the modern sense. 00:10:35.760 --> 00:10:39.600 Because the modern sense really has been collapsed into the religious sense 00:10:39.600 --> 00:10:45.040 of the ancient term, which is piety with regard to religion, with 00:10:45.040 --> 00:10:49.280 regard to veneration, worship, things like that. 00:10:49.280 --> 00:10:52.240 That's not the extent of the ancient term, and it's not the 00:10:52.240 --> 00:10:56.160 way not the exclusive way in which we are using it in 00:10:56.160 --> 00:10:57.600 this series. 00:10:57.600 --> 00:11:00.160 So I want you to think of pietos. 00:11:00.160 --> 00:11:03.440 Piety will probably just stick with the English term mostly. 00:11:03.440 --> 00:11:07.200 I want you to think of it as being more expansive than 00:11:07.200 --> 00:11:10.880 how you have become accustomed to using it and thinking of it 00:11:10.880 --> 00:11:11.760 in English. 00:11:11.760 --> 00:11:14.640 It is not just with regard to religion. 00:11:14.640 --> 00:11:17.840 It is also with regard to those who are above you in 00:11:17.840 --> 00:11:19.600 the social hierarchy. 00:11:19.600 --> 00:11:22.960 It is with regard to those who are higher up the latter 00:11:23.120 --> 00:11:27.680 with regard to the government. 00:11:27.680 --> 00:11:31.840 Not necessarily with regard to our current form of government, but think 00:11:31.840 --> 00:11:36.240 of a more appropriate form of government, how the government should be, 00:11:36.240 --> 00:11:37.840 how things should be run. 00:11:37.840 --> 00:11:43.280 And so if we had an aristocracy, the aristocrat with regard to 00:11:44.080 --> 00:11:47.200 the peasant, serf, whatever you want to call the person at the 00:11:47.200 --> 00:11:52.240 lowest rung of the ladder, with regard to that man, he would 00:11:52.240 --> 00:11:58.000 have He would have the paternalistic love with regard to those lower, 00:11:58.000 --> 00:12:01.760 but the man who is lower down would have piety with regard 00:12:01.760 --> 00:12:02.960 to those higher. 00:12:02.960 --> 00:12:06.160 And of course that leads into the other half of this pair, 00:12:06.160 --> 00:12:11.760 which is a more paternus, which is paternal or paternalistic love. 00:12:11.760 --> 00:12:14.720 Do not think of that as simply being fatherly. 00:12:14.720 --> 00:12:16.880 That's why I didn't say fatherly love. 00:12:16.880 --> 00:12:21.440 It is paternal or paternalistic love, those are equivalent terms for all 00:12:21.440 --> 00:12:23.600 of our purposes here. 00:12:23.600 --> 00:12:26.800 That is the love of the higher for the lower. 00:12:26.800 --> 00:12:29.760 Because there are certain duties that flow from that, and we'll get 00:12:29.760 --> 00:12:32.720 more into that as the episode proceeds. 00:12:32.720 --> 00:12:36.560 But there are duties that you have if you are higher up 00:12:36.560 --> 00:12:41.200 the social hierarchy, if you are effectively an aristocrat. 00:12:41.200 --> 00:12:44.080 We still have that to some degree in our society because we 00:12:44.080 --> 00:12:44.480 do have 00:12:46.080 --> 00:12:50.800 largely economic classes today instead of what they used to be. 00:12:50.800 --> 00:12:55.200 But nonetheless, if God has blessed you with that station, with a 00:12:55.200 --> 00:12:58.960 higher station in life, you are to use that in part in 00:12:58.960 --> 00:13:02.960 part to the benefit of those beneath you. 00:13:02.960 --> 00:13:06.480 As we have mentioned many times before, simply saying that someone is 00:13:06.480 --> 00:13:10.720 beneath or below or another person is superior or higher is not 00:13:10.720 --> 00:13:12.640 an assessment of moral worth. 00:13:12.640 --> 00:13:15.600 It is simply a reflection of the reality. 00:13:15.600 --> 00:13:20.000 If you are king, you are superior to everyone else in your 00:13:20.000 --> 00:13:25.920 kingdom. If you are an aristocrat, you are superior to the serfs 00:13:26.080 --> 00:13:29.760 who are below you in the hierarchy, and you're going to have 00:13:29.760 --> 00:13:34.640 various levels of lords and aristocrats and such in a properly organized 00:13:34.640 --> 00:13:37.840 system. We won't get into those because the terms don't matter. 00:13:37.840 --> 00:13:41.200 A given system is going to use one set versus another system 00:13:41.200 --> 00:13:42.400 using another set. 00:13:42.400 --> 00:13:47.600 The point is the existence of that hierarchy and the duties that 00:13:47.600 --> 00:13:51.680 are owed up the ladder and down the ladder and the form 00:13:51.680 --> 00:13:53.920 of love that that takes. 00:13:53.920 --> 00:13:55.680 Because all of this should be done in love. 00:13:55.680 --> 00:13:58.560 As a Christian, that much should be obvious. 00:13:58.560 --> 00:14:03.200 Scripture speaks everywhere of love. 00:14:03.200 --> 00:14:06.480 And love is not just a warm feeling, and so a more 00:14:06.800 --> 00:14:09.120 emotional love is not just a warm feeling. 00:14:09.120 --> 00:14:10.000 There's more to it. 00:14:10.000 --> 00:14:14.080 There's a depth to it that isn't encompassed by just a warm 00:14:14.080 --> 00:14:19.440 feeling. But there are duties that come along with love as well. 00:14:19.440 --> 00:14:23.280 We see this very clearly in the instance of paternal love when 00:14:23.280 --> 00:14:27.040 it applies specifically to a father, because we all know that a 00:14:27.040 --> 00:14:29.040 father has certain duties. 00:14:29.040 --> 00:14:32.320 Now, of course, this is going to be related to agape as 00:14:32.320 --> 00:14:36.640 well and Storge, because Storge is familial love. 00:14:36.640 --> 00:14:41.840 But with regard to the father, specifically, you have the paternalistic duties 00:14:41.840 --> 00:14:46.080 that come along with it, and that is a form of love. 00:14:46.080 --> 00:14:50.480 However, to start off the episode, as it were, now that we've 00:14:50.640 --> 00:14:54.160 laid the foundation, the groundwork for it, will start with the pairing 00:14:54.160 --> 00:14:57.440 of Felia and Storge. 00:14:57.440 --> 00:15:02.000 These two are relatively closely related. 00:15:02.000 --> 00:15:05.600 In essence, the difference between them is the form of the form 00:15:05.600 --> 00:15:06.400 of relationship. 00:15:06.400 --> 00:15:10.320 So remember that framework that we gave you last week? 00:15:10.320 --> 00:15:13.520 Who is doing the love? 00:15:13.520 --> 00:15:16.720 To whom is the love being done or to whom is it 00:15:16.720 --> 00:15:24.320 owed? And what is the nature and scope of the love. 00:15:24.320 --> 00:15:30.800 That essentially is the distinction here, the first two, who and whom. 00:15:30.800 --> 00:15:33.680 Really it's whom, but obviously you can change either one and have 00:15:33.680 --> 00:15:35.520 that change. 00:15:35.520 --> 00:15:39.280 The whom has to be related to the who with regard to 00:15:39.280 --> 00:15:40.080 familial love. 00:15:40.080 --> 00:15:43.920 One would think that practically goes without saying, given that the type 00:15:43.920 --> 00:15:46.560 of love is familial love. 00:15:46.560 --> 00:15:50.400 It is the love of one family member for another. 00:15:50.400 --> 00:15:54.000 As we mentioned in the last episode, each of these terms for 00:15:54.000 --> 00:15:56.080 love we'll be going over in the series 00:15:57.280 --> 00:16:01.600 Really hide underneath them, within them, a spectrum. 00:16:01.600 --> 00:16:05.040 And that is the same for familial love, because of course you 00:16:05.040 --> 00:16:10.240 owe a higher duty to your parents than your third cousins. 00:16:10.240 --> 00:16:13.360 Many of these things in this episode and in the series in 00:16:13.360 --> 00:16:15.760 general are going to be obvious. 00:16:15.760 --> 00:16:20.000 You inherently understand this because God has built this into nature, he 00:16:20.000 --> 00:16:21.760 has built it into reality. 00:16:21.760 --> 00:16:23.760 This is how you live out your life. 00:16:23.760 --> 00:16:28.880 If things do not follow these patterns, then they are disordered. 00:16:28.880 --> 00:16:33.920 And our society is incredibly disordered with regard to some of these 00:16:33.920 --> 00:16:38.000 pairs. When it comes to familial love, things inherently are going to 00:16:38.000 --> 00:16:42.560 be a little more ordered just because of the way that biology 00:16:42.560 --> 00:16:44.480 works, quite frankly. 00:16:44.480 --> 00:16:50.080 You are most closely related to your siblings, assuming you have the 00:16:50.080 --> 00:16:54.240 same parents, you are then most closely related to your parents, and 00:16:54.240 --> 00:16:59.200 then you start moving outward from there for cousins and whatever degree 00:16:59.200 --> 00:17:02.400 removed, whatever degree of cousin. 00:17:02.400 --> 00:17:04.800 These are concentric circles. 00:17:04.800 --> 00:17:09.440 You owe the higher duty, you owe the stronger form of philia 00:17:09.600 --> 00:17:12.240 to those who are in the inner circle. 00:17:12.240 --> 00:17:18.000 And then as it extends outward, you owe a weaker version, a 00:17:18.000 --> 00:17:25.760 less demanding version of felia to each of those in those circles. 00:17:25.760 --> 00:17:32.080 Now with regard to familial love, the greatest extent of it is 00:17:32.080 --> 00:17:34.240 going to be the nation. 00:17:34.240 --> 00:17:38.000 Because a nation, as we have mentioned many times before in many 00:17:38.000 --> 00:17:40.320 other episodes, properly understood 00:17:41.440 --> 00:17:44.560 is just an extended family. 00:17:44.560 --> 00:17:46.640 That is what it means to be a nation. 00:17:46.640 --> 00:17:49.280 A nation is an extended family. 00:17:49.280 --> 00:17:51.680 It is a people of one blood. 00:17:51.680 --> 00:17:57.280 And so the most tenuous as it were, the most extended form 00:17:57.280 --> 00:18:01.280 of Philia is going to be for your nation. 00:18:01.280 --> 00:18:05.680 This of course overlaps with piety because piety is also a matter 00:18:05.680 --> 00:18:06.880 of national love. 00:18:06.880 --> 00:18:09.840 You could almost use the term national love for one of the 00:18:09.840 --> 00:18:11.520 aspects of piety. 00:18:11.520 --> 00:18:14.560 You just can't use it for all of piety because it encompasses 00:18:14.560 --> 00:18:18.320 more things to remind you that that term is being used more 00:18:18.320 --> 00:18:23.680 expansively than English typically uses it, modern English typically uses it. 00:18:23.680 --> 00:18:27.200 Many terms have lost some of the scope of their meaning over 00:18:27.200 --> 00:18:32.480 time. But that gives you the full spectrum, as it were, of 00:18:32.480 --> 00:18:36.000 the types of felia, and of course they shade one into the 00:18:36.000 --> 00:18:37.520 other at the edges. 00:18:37.520 --> 00:18:42.240 You have your immediate family, to whom you owe the highest duty, 00:18:42.240 --> 00:18:46.480 the strongest form of Philia, and then you have your nation, which 00:18:46.480 --> 00:18:50.720 is the most extended form of that. 00:18:50.720 --> 00:18:57.360 And then you have, as we've mentioned, Philia, which is brotherly love. 00:18:57.360 --> 00:19:01.600 This is what you have for for your friends, for your acquaintances, 00:19:01.600 --> 00:19:05.520 for those to whom you are not related. 00:19:05.520 --> 00:19:09.920 Now you can have Philia for those to whom you're related on 00:19:09.920 --> 00:19:13.040 top of as it were or in addition to Storge, in addition 00:19:13.120 --> 00:19:15.920 to familial love. 00:19:15.920 --> 00:19:18.080 But it's not the same. 00:19:18.080 --> 00:19:19.600 And we all know this. 00:19:19.600 --> 00:19:22.560 The love that you have for a sibling is a different thing 00:19:22.560 --> 00:19:24.560 from the love you have for a friend. 00:19:24.560 --> 00:19:25.520 And that's fine. 00:19:25.520 --> 00:19:26.480 That is good order. 00:19:26.480 --> 00:19:29.280 That is how God has designed things. 00:19:29.280 --> 00:19:31.360 You don't choose your siblings. 00:19:31.360 --> 00:19:35.280 You do to some degree choose your friends. 00:19:35.280 --> 00:19:37.680 Of course, part of that is just going to be the fact 00:19:37.680 --> 00:19:43.040 that you are near certain people for extended periods of time, or 00:19:43.040 --> 00:19:46.640 you work with them, whatever it happens to be. 00:19:46.640 --> 00:19:50.640 Philia also is a spectrum. 00:19:50.640 --> 00:19:54.080 Brotherly love is a spectrum, much like familial love. 00:19:54.080 --> 00:19:57.200 And in English maybe that gets a little confusing, a little grey, 00:19:57.200 --> 00:20:02.480 because they sound very similar, the Greek philia and the English familial 00:20:02.480 --> 00:20:07.760 love. That's part of the reason we're distinguishing them as familial love 00:20:07.760 --> 00:20:12.240 and brotherly love, and yes, to say something that practically doesn't need 00:20:12.240 --> 00:20:17.360 to be said, it doesn't just apply for men or between men. 00:20:17.360 --> 00:20:23.120 We are using the expansive form of brother or brotherly here. 00:20:23.120 --> 00:20:28.240 This is simply the love between those who are unrelated to one 00:20:28.240 --> 00:20:29.600 another. 00:20:31.280 --> 00:20:31.520 I 00:20:31.520 --> 00:20:36.400 think that the Latin it helps here, fraternal, is the way that 00:20:37.040 --> 00:20:39.760 works better in English because that's more of a word that we 00:20:39.760 --> 00:20:43.360 understand. It comes from the Latin for brother, just like Philia in 00:20:43.360 --> 00:20:49.280 Greek. We understand the things like fraternal societies, fraternal brotherhoods, which is 00:20:49.680 --> 00:20:53.520 is redundant, but it's an important way of thinking about it because 00:20:54.320 --> 00:20:58.320 these are based on some sort of commonality. 00:20:58.320 --> 00:21:04.000 It's based on opting into something or some common shared bond that 00:21:04.000 --> 00:21:06.960 isn't necessarily directly familial. 00:21:06.960 --> 00:21:07.280 And 00:21:08.880 --> 00:21:13.200 One of the things that we see with fraternal bonds is that 00:21:13.200 --> 00:21:19.440 sometimes their formation comes about through specific events in someone's life. 00:21:19.440 --> 00:21:22.480 I think one of the most prominent examples of a fraternal bond 00:21:22.480 --> 00:21:26.400 that's very deep being formed between two men who are not related 00:21:26.640 --> 00:21:30.240 would be in the circumstance of combat, someone who's been in conflict, 00:21:30.240 --> 00:21:35.440 armed conflict, where you're physically in danger next to another man. 00:21:35.440 --> 00:21:40.000 As Corey said, that combines Philia and Amor, there's emotional love, there's 00:21:39.920 --> 00:21:44.000 an emotional bond, and there's a brotherly, fraternal bond. 00:21:44.000 --> 00:21:47.920 It's figuratively forged in fire by the fact that you are next 00:21:47.920 --> 00:21:50.800 to a man and you're fighting for his life and he's fighting 00:21:50.800 --> 00:21:51.680 for yours. 00:21:51.680 --> 00:21:55.680 And that creates what is a lifelong fraternal bond that in many 00:21:55.680 --> 00:21:59.920 cases is stronger than what you're even necessarily going to feel for 00:21:59.920 --> 00:22:02.560 your own immediate biological family. 00:22:02.560 --> 00:22:06.400 Because as Corey said, you don't opt into your family members and 00:22:06.400 --> 00:22:09.760 you don't necessarily opt into the man you're in a foxhole with. 00:22:09.760 --> 00:22:15.280 But when you're put through that together, no matter what the politics 00:22:15.280 --> 00:22:19.600 are no matter what someone who hasn't served, like myself, you know, 00:22:19.600 --> 00:22:23.040 when I hear the term service, to me it kind of conjures 00:22:23.040 --> 00:22:24.400 the political sphere. 00:22:24.400 --> 00:22:26.960 It conjures things that I have a lot of problems with in 00:22:26.960 --> 00:22:27.760 one sense. 00:22:27.760 --> 00:22:32.240 But on the other sense, I absolutely understand that whatever steps it 00:22:32.240 --> 00:22:35.280 takes for a man to end up in a foxhole in United 00:22:35.280 --> 00:22:40.160 States uniform with another man, in that moment, they're not fighting for 00:22:40.160 --> 00:22:43.840 me. They're not fighting for the American flag or for ideals. 00:22:43.840 --> 00:22:46.160 They're fighting for their brother next to them. 00:22:46.160 --> 00:22:50.160 And that brotherhood is formed, that fraternal bond is formed by the 00:22:50.160 --> 00:22:52.480 immediate threat that they're both facing. 00:22:52.480 --> 00:22:56.160 And so that forms an emotional bond, the bond of amour, of 00:22:56.160 --> 00:23:00.480 love, and it forms the bond of brotherly love. 00:23:00.480 --> 00:23:04.560 It's all those at once in the crucible is the immediate physical. 00:23:05.680 --> 00:23:06.560 I haven't been there. 00:23:06.560 --> 00:23:09.360 I can put myself there intellectually and I don't really want to. 00:23:09.360 --> 00:23:11.440 I don't need to think about that. 00:23:11.440 --> 00:23:14.400 Many of you who are listening have served and have been in 00:23:14.400 --> 00:23:17.120 those positions and you have some of those lifelong friendships. 00:23:17.120 --> 00:23:21.920 And many of you perhaps lost brothers in those circumstances. 00:23:21.920 --> 00:23:25.920 And that loss isn't simply the sort of loss that one feels 00:23:25.920 --> 00:23:28.240 for, hey, I knew a coworker and he died. 00:23:28.240 --> 00:23:29.920 Like I have coworkers who died. 00:23:29.920 --> 00:23:34.640 It's not remotely the same as when you're facing immediate danger together 00:23:34.800 --> 00:23:37.200 and one man lives and another man dies. 00:23:37.200 --> 00:23:40.000 That is a familial loss. 00:23:40.000 --> 00:23:45.760 It's a a loss of love that has been forged by circumstance. 00:23:45.760 --> 00:23:49.200 Again, those brothers are your family. 00:23:49.200 --> 00:23:52.800 And it's created by the fact that you've been together in that 00:23:52.800 --> 00:23:57.360 circumstance where you're both facing unbelievable hardship and privation. 00:23:57.360 --> 00:24:00.960 And someone who hasn't been there can't understand, which is why something 00:24:00.960 --> 00:24:05.120 like stolen valor to someone who hasn't served may seem kind of 00:24:05.120 --> 00:24:06.640 goofy and kind of over the top. 00:24:06.640 --> 00:24:09.120 Sometimes it gets made fun of, especially online. 00:24:09.120 --> 00:24:11.840 But for someone who's actually done it, you're absolutely going to take 00:24:11.840 --> 00:24:13.280 it very seriously. 00:24:13.280 --> 00:24:17.520 For someone to pretend to have forged those bonds that you fought 00:24:17.520 --> 00:24:21.760 and you lost people for and you risked for, yeah, you're gonna 00:24:21.760 --> 00:24:22.720 take that personally. 00:24:22.720 --> 00:24:25.920 It's gonna trigger an emotional response because it's someone 00:24:26.880 --> 00:24:30.880 pretending to the sort of fraternal bond that I can't know from 00:24:30.880 --> 00:24:35.760 first hand experience, and for someone to pretend to that is despicable. 00:24:35.760 --> 00:24:37.200 It's absolutely disgusting. 00:24:37.200 --> 00:24:41.120 And it's rightly reviled and r it's rightly received with an emotional 00:24:41.120 --> 00:24:46.480 response because you're messing with family, not with the biological family, with 00:24:46.480 --> 00:24:50.800 the sort of family it's been forged through loss and suffering and 00:24:50.800 --> 00:24:56.240 death in circumstances that someone who hasn't been there cannot understand. 00:24:56.240 --> 00:24:57.520 You can think about it. 00:24:57.520 --> 00:24:58.720 I don't really want to. 00:24:58.880 --> 00:25:01.680 It's not something I think normal men would dwell on, you know, 00:25:01.680 --> 00:25:04.560 unless someone wants to write fiction or something, but even then, leave 00:25:04.560 --> 00:25:07.600 it to somebody who's been there, he's gonna do a better job. 00:25:07.600 --> 00:25:10.560 But for the rest of us, it's kind of difficult to understand 00:25:10.560 --> 00:25:16.080 how closely tied men can be through those circumstances. 00:25:16.240 --> 00:25:20.000 And at the other end, you have the sort of brotherly friendship 00:25:20.000 --> 00:25:22.560 that may just be the guy who helps you move. 00:25:22.560 --> 00:25:25.600 Yeah, I think one of the other good examples of the opposite 00:25:25.600 --> 00:25:29.600 end of bonding is the guy who's a I need to move 00:25:29.600 --> 00:25:30.320 across town. 00:25:30.320 --> 00:25:32.080 Who's going to show up? 00:25:32.080 --> 00:25:33.440 Those guys are your friends. 00:25:33.440 --> 00:25:34.480 Those are real friends. 00:25:34.480 --> 00:25:37.280 You know, maybe you have intellectual friends, guys you like to talk 00:25:37.280 --> 00:25:40.080 to, but the guy who shows up to help you move all 00:25:40.080 --> 00:25:42.640 day, especially if you're a little older and have a bunch of 00:25:42.640 --> 00:25:45.600 crap and it's gonna take eight, ten hours to move it all. 00:25:45.600 --> 00:25:48.720 That's a real friend, even if he's not your closest friend. 00:25:48.720 --> 00:25:52.400 I that's why I think moving is an interesting example because the 00:25:52.400 --> 00:25:55.120 guy who shows up to help you move, it's going to show 00:25:55.120 --> 00:25:58.480 he has a higher degree of character than maybe some of your 00:25:58.480 --> 00:26:00.320 friends who will talk to you all the time, but they're not 00:26:00.400 --> 00:26:02.000 going to show up when you need 'em. 00:26:02.000 --> 00:26:06.400 That's also the difference between the delectio, the intellectual love, and the 00:26:06.400 --> 00:26:07.920 emotional love. 00:26:07.920 --> 00:26:10.160 The guy who will show up to help you move, even if 00:26:10.160 --> 00:26:13.520 he never talks to you all that much, has a a different 00:26:13.520 --> 00:26:14.560 kind of bond. 00:26:14.560 --> 00:26:16.560 And he's willing to just show up and you know you feed 00:26:16.560 --> 00:26:18.000 him pizza and beer. 00:26:18.000 --> 00:26:19.600 And but it's not transactional. 00:26:19.600 --> 00:26:22.080 Like that's you want to keep a guy going so he can 00:26:22.080 --> 00:26:23.280 help you out. 00:26:23.280 --> 00:26:26.480 And there's a sense of brotherhood that's also in something even that 00:26:26.480 --> 00:26:28.240 small. It's not superficial. 00:26:28.240 --> 00:26:30.000 We all need to move at some point. 00:26:30.000 --> 00:26:32.000 Even if it's just moving out of your parents' house into your 00:26:32.000 --> 00:26:33.920 own. Maybe you only move once in your life. 00:26:33.920 --> 00:26:36.000 You know, we've talked about some of that before. 00:26:36.000 --> 00:26:38.880 Like the ideal case of moving around. 00:26:38.880 --> 00:26:41.680 Maybe you move from your parents' house into your own house, you 00:26:41.680 --> 00:26:44.400 know, a block away or something, and that's where you live the 00:26:44.400 --> 00:26:47.520 rest of your life in our kind of hypothetical idealized world. 00:26:47.520 --> 00:26:49.840 Maybe that's what it would look like. 00:26:49.840 --> 00:26:52.480 Even in that case, you still need guys to show up and 00:26:52.480 --> 00:26:53.280 help you. 00:26:53.280 --> 00:26:56.960 And so that's why we said earlier that there's absolutely a spectrum 00:26:56.960 --> 00:27:00.560 here. You have the fraternal bond of the guy who shows up 00:27:00.560 --> 00:27:02.960 to give you a hand, knowing that you would do the same 00:27:02.960 --> 00:27:05.600 for him, and there's the guy in the foxhole that you would 00:27:05.600 --> 00:27:08.000 give your life for because you know that he would as well. 00:27:08.000 --> 00:27:11.600 And sometimes one becomes the other through circumstance. 00:27:11.600 --> 00:27:15.040 But you can kind of tell, you know, when it comes moving 00:27:15.040 --> 00:27:17.520 day, I can say this because I've moved a bunch of times, 00:27:17.520 --> 00:27:20.960 the guy who will show up to help you move is much 00:27:20.960 --> 00:27:23.040 more likely to be the guy that you would want with you 00:27:23.040 --> 00:27:25.920 in a foxhole compared to the guy that you can BS for 00:27:25.920 --> 00:27:28.640 hours at a time, but he doesn't show up when he need 00:27:28.640 --> 00:27:33.360 you. Because that sort of bond, that friendship, that love of just 00:27:33.360 --> 00:27:36.800 showing up and being there beside someone, I think it's a very 00:27:36.800 --> 00:27:38.160 real part of Philia. 00:27:38.560 --> 00:27:40.960 It's just being there beside someone. 00:27:40.960 --> 00:27:42.320 It's not an endorsement. 00:27:42.320 --> 00:27:45.760 It's not retweets or endorsements where you have to agree with everything 00:27:45.760 --> 00:27:47.040 that somebody else says. 00:27:47.040 --> 00:27:48.320 You're saying, this is my guy. 00:27:48.320 --> 00:27:49.280 This is my brother. 00:27:49.280 --> 00:27:52.480 I stand with him against whatever he faces. 00:27:52.480 --> 00:27:55.920 And maybe all he faces is moving day, or maybe he's facing 00:27:55.920 --> 00:27:57.040 a foxhole. 00:27:57.040 --> 00:28:01.920 Either way, that is sort of brotherhood that is absolutely a type 00:28:01.920 --> 00:28:02.720 of love. 00:28:02.720 --> 00:28:06.480 And it's one that I don't think we really take nearly as 00:28:06.480 --> 00:28:08.960 seriously, and I don't think we have nearly as much respect for 00:28:08.960 --> 00:28:10.800 it as we should today. 00:28:11.680 --> 00:28:11.920 I 00:28:11.920 --> 00:28:18.720 think concrete examples really help with understanding sort of the interrelationship, the 00:28:18.720 --> 00:28:22.960 interconnectedness of some of these forms of love, and the ones that 00:28:22.960 --> 00:28:25.600 Woe just gave are some excellent ones. 00:28:25.600 --> 00:28:30.640 With regard to familial love and fraternal love. 00:28:30.640 --> 00:28:34.320 One of the examples of having both of those present would be 00:28:34.320 --> 00:28:37.440 siblings who actually have a good relationship. 00:28:37.440 --> 00:28:41.040 Now, regardless of the relationship you have with your sibling, you should 00:28:41.040 --> 00:28:43.760 always have that that familial love. 00:28:43.760 --> 00:28:47.440 That is something that exists as a function of the fact that 00:28:47.440 --> 00:28:50.000 you are related to this person. 00:28:50.000 --> 00:28:53.520 And that is of course related to the fourth commandment. 00:28:53.520 --> 00:28:55.520 That is something that is ordered by God. 00:28:55.520 --> 00:28:57.360 You have no say in it. 00:28:57.360 --> 00:29:01.920 Now there's going to be a greater or lesser intensity with regard 00:29:01.920 --> 00:29:05.600 to that form of love due to the sort of relationship you've 00:29:05.600 --> 00:29:10.400 cultivated with that sibling over time or with that parent over time, 00:29:10.400 --> 00:29:14.320 but if you have a proper relationship with your siblings, with your 00:29:14.320 --> 00:29:19.120 parents, it should be both familial love and with regard to a 00:29:19.120 --> 00:29:23.760 sibling, the the fraternal love, the brotherly love, the friendship sort of 00:29:23.760 --> 00:29:28.800 love. Because you should have a friendship with your siblings, not just 00:29:29.200 --> 00:29:32.480 we're related because we lived in the same house for many years 00:29:32.480 --> 00:29:34.640 and we have the same parents. 00:29:34.800 --> 00:29:38.960 That is part of it because, again, that was ordered by God. 00:29:38.960 --> 00:29:40.480 You don't have a say in it. 00:29:40.480 --> 00:29:43.440 You have to love your family. 00:29:43.440 --> 00:29:48.400 But if things are functioning as they should, then there's other forms 00:29:48.400 --> 00:29:50.160 of love that develop there. 00:29:50.160 --> 00:29:52.480 If you have a very close sibling or you have very good 00:29:52.480 --> 00:29:56.480 relationship with your parents, and certainly if your parents have gotten older 00:29:56.480 --> 00:29:59.280 and now need help, there should be agape there as well. 00:29:59.280 --> 00:30:04.400 There should be that self sacrificing love that we discussed last week. 00:30:04.400 --> 00:30:10.480 But as Will mentioned, with regard to close friends in particular, you're 00:30:10.480 --> 00:30:16.000 going to have that sort of relationship shade more one direction than 00:30:16.000 --> 00:30:18.160 the other, basically inevitably. 00:30:18.160 --> 00:30:22.000 It is going to be more of the emotional kind of love, 00:30:22.000 --> 00:30:24.800 in large part based on how it was formed, as well mentioned 00:30:24.880 --> 00:30:26.400 if you're in the foxhole. 00:30:26.400 --> 00:30:27.920 That's going to be a more. 00:30:27.920 --> 00:30:30.480 That's going to be that kind of friendship. 00:30:30.480 --> 00:30:34.000 There's going to be a certain emotional intensity to it that won't 00:30:34.000 --> 00:30:37.920 be there if it's a friend you met at university, and you 00:30:37.920 --> 00:30:43.280 just happen to have a lot of interesting discussions with this friend. 00:30:43.280 --> 00:30:45.040 You happen to be intellectual peers. 00:30:45.040 --> 00:30:48.160 You get along very well in that sort of way. 00:30:48.160 --> 00:30:52.960 That's going to shade into delectio, into that intellectual love It is 00:30:52.960 --> 00:30:54.640 a cultivated love. 00:30:54.640 --> 00:30:57.760 Both of these are a cultivated love to a certain degree, but 00:30:57.760 --> 00:31:01.440 you see it more clearly with regard to intellectual love. 00:31:01.440 --> 00:31:04.000 That is something that you cultivate over 00:31:05.120 --> 00:31:09.760 really over long years of interacting with this other person. 00:31:09.760 --> 00:31:12.640 Of course, you should also interact with your other friends where it's 00:31:12.640 --> 00:31:16.000 the more emotional relationship, but there is a distinction there. 00:31:16.000 --> 00:31:21.440 That's why we have distinguished those With regard to the two terms 00:31:21.680 --> 00:31:27.440 and why they're important when thinking about the other forms of love. 00:31:27.440 --> 00:31:32.880 Now we've emphasized to some degree the interconnectedness, the interrelatedness of the 00:31:32.880 --> 00:31:36.000 various forms of love we're discussing in this series. 00:31:36.000 --> 00:31:38.880 But I want to highlight something that will be more important in 00:31:38.880 --> 00:31:42.080 the next episode, but I want to highlight it here as well 00:31:42.080 --> 00:31:44.800 because it plays into some of this, into some of the forms 00:31:44.720 --> 00:31:47.040 of love we're covering today. 00:31:47.040 --> 00:31:54.640 The inverse of that interconnectedness, of the overlapping, is just as important. 00:31:54.640 --> 00:31:59.440 Because some of these forms of love can be distinguished by the 00:31:59.440 --> 00:32:02.160 fact that they are not connected. 00:32:02.160 --> 00:32:05.360 Now there are obvious examples, and there are some that are a 00:32:05.360 --> 00:32:06.560 little less obvious. 00:32:06.560 --> 00:32:10.320 The most obvious would be Eros, which we'll be discussing next week 00:32:10.320 --> 00:32:11.200 primarily 00:32:12.160 --> 00:32:16.080 really exclusively, we're just touching on it in these other episodes by 00:32:16.080 --> 00:32:18.400 way of example. 00:32:18.400 --> 00:32:21.120 Eros should not exist with 00:32:22.080 --> 00:32:27.920 really any of these other loves except for amor and agape, because 00:32:27.920 --> 00:32:30.640 you should have those for your spouse. 00:32:30.640 --> 00:32:35.440 These other forms of love do not touch on Eros. 00:32:35.440 --> 00:32:36.640 It is distinct from them. 00:32:36.800 --> 00:32:39.840 It is disconnected from them. 00:32:39.840 --> 00:32:44.240 Now, if you wanted to argue there's some form of paternal love 00:32:44.240 --> 00:32:49.120 with regard to the Father and his and his wife, fine. 00:32:49.120 --> 00:32:53.280 It can be connected there in one sense of the paternal or 00:32:53.280 --> 00:32:56.400 paternalistic love, but it's only that sliver of it. 00:32:56.400 --> 00:33:01.680 It's not the fullness of that term and what it encompasses. 00:33:02.160 --> 00:33:05.840 But part of the distinction with these terms is that some of 00:33:05.840 --> 00:33:08.080 them cannot properly go together. 00:33:08.080 --> 00:33:12.960 And as we mentioned last week, if a love is disordered with 00:33:12.960 --> 00:33:16.720 regard to who, whom, or the scope slash nature 00:33:17.680 --> 00:33:22.640 it is disordered as mentioned, but if it rises to a certain 00:33:22.640 --> 00:33:26.320 level of disorder, it is no longer love. 00:33:26.320 --> 00:33:30.400 With regard to again Eros, if it is connected to one of 00:33:30.400 --> 00:33:34.080 these other forms of love where it should not be connected, it 00:33:34.080 --> 00:33:38.800 is no longer love, because it is sufficiently disordered no longer to 00:33:38.800 --> 00:33:40.080 be love. 00:33:40.240 --> 00:33:45.120 And so for instance, with regard to brotherly love, with regard to 00:33:45.120 --> 00:33:51.760 fraternal love, if you love your friend in the Eros sense, that 00:33:51.760 --> 00:33:55.520 is no longer love, that is lust, that is disordered. 00:33:55.520 --> 00:33:57.440 That is a sin. 00:33:57.440 --> 00:34:01.680 And so that disorder rises to the level where it destroys the 00:34:01.680 --> 00:34:06.160 thing, the good thing, the love that would otherwise be there. 00:34:06.480 --> 00:34:10.080 And that is the case with a number of these forms of 00:34:10.080 --> 00:34:15.200 love. And so it's important to bear in mind, again, that threefold 00:34:15.200 --> 00:34:20.000 analysis we mentioned: who is doing the love, to whom is the 00:34:20.000 --> 00:34:23.040 love being done as it were? 00:34:23.040 --> 00:34:25.920 And what is the nature slash scope? 00:34:26.880 --> 00:34:27.040 As 00:34:27.040 --> 00:34:30.720 I mentioned in the intro, there are some cases where the best 00:34:30.720 --> 00:34:34.720 illustration of this sort of love is in its absence. 00:34:34.720 --> 00:34:39.120 And there are a couple places in scripture where Storgay is referenced 00:34:39.120 --> 00:34:41.760 in the absence of it. 00:34:41.760 --> 00:34:45.520 In Romans 131 and Second Timothy three. 00:34:45.520 --> 00:34:49.680 I'd recommend you read all of Second Timothy 3, particularly because when 00:34:49.680 --> 00:34:53.760 it talks about this type of love being absent, it is a 00:34:53.760 --> 00:34:55.840 prophecy of end times. 00:34:55.840 --> 00:35:00.640 And we've talked many times about the specific familial form of love 00:35:00.960 --> 00:35:04.640 as an example of the disordered loves, not in the sense of 00:35:04.640 --> 00:35:09.120 introducing Eros into relationships where it has no place, but in the 00:35:09.120 --> 00:35:13.760 sense of the absence of a properly ordered love that everyone should 00:35:13.760 --> 00:35:14.720 naturally have. 00:35:14.720 --> 00:35:17.120 That is what the familial love is. 00:35:17.120 --> 00:35:20.240 So Astorgos or Astorgos. 00:35:20.240 --> 00:35:22.400 King James has a rare W here. 00:35:22.480 --> 00:35:25.360 It translates it without natural affection. 00:35:25.360 --> 00:35:31.760 In Romans 131 and 2 Timothy 3.3, most modern translations say unloving, 00:35:31.760 --> 00:35:32.720 which is absolutely true. 00:35:32.720 --> 00:35:37.280 It's not a bad translation, but it's really missing the essence of 00:35:38.160 --> 00:35:39.920 what is missing. 00:35:39.920 --> 00:35:45.280 Because unloving doesn't necessarily describe that the love is a duty that 00:35:45.280 --> 00:35:46.480 should be present. 00:35:46.480 --> 00:35:50.560 When the King James says without natural affection that is both a 00:35:50.560 --> 00:35:55.200 correct literal translation and is really capturing the essence of what Storge 00:35:55.520 --> 00:36:00.080 is. Familial love is natural affection. 00:36:00.080 --> 00:36:03.680 You should have a natural affection for your family that you don't 00:36:03.600 --> 00:36:05.280 have for your neighbor. 00:36:05.280 --> 00:36:06.560 That is godly. 00:36:06.560 --> 00:36:08.240 That is not despising neighbor. 00:36:08.240 --> 00:36:10.080 It's saying my family is closer. 00:36:10.080 --> 00:36:12.000 I love my family more. 00:36:12.000 --> 00:36:15.680 I prefer my family over my neighbor. 00:36:15.680 --> 00:36:19.200 It is not to the exclusion of doing good works for the 00:36:19.200 --> 00:36:22.640 neighbor, it's saying that my family must be taken care of first 00:36:22.880 --> 00:36:25.360 because God has placed me closer to them. 00:36:25.360 --> 00:36:27.120 That is what storgay is. 00:36:27.120 --> 00:36:30.400 Familial love is a duty to that to whom God is most 00:36:30.880 --> 00:36:32.720 closely situated you. 00:36:32.720 --> 00:36:35.680 Which is why we often bring it up because it does involve 00:36:35.680 --> 00:36:41.600 race, your nation, your race, your clan, like the the concentric circles 00:36:41.760 --> 00:36:45.680 going from the immediate nuclear family all the way out to everyone 00:36:45.680 --> 00:36:49.040 you're related to by blood in the same place. 00:36:49.040 --> 00:36:52.720 By place I typically mean a country, properly ordered, that's what it 00:36:52.720 --> 00:36:53.360 used to be. 00:36:53.360 --> 00:36:55.520 Everybody in England was English. 00:36:55.520 --> 00:36:56.240 That was normal. 00:36:56.240 --> 00:36:57.680 That was good. 00:36:57.680 --> 00:37:01.120 If somebody was there who wasn't English, either as a merchant or 00:37:01.120 --> 00:37:02.320 was an invader. 00:37:02.320 --> 00:37:05.280 And the merchants go home and the invaders you fight. 00:37:05.280 --> 00:37:07.760 And either you kill them or they kill you and they replace 00:37:07.760 --> 00:37:11.840 you. And many times in throughout history you find that when the 00:37:11.840 --> 00:37:15.360 families are displaced, as it happened in English history and history in 00:37:15.360 --> 00:37:19.680 many other places, those who were English two thousand years ago got 00:37:19.680 --> 00:37:22.640 replaced by you know the Saxons who came in. 00:37:22.640 --> 00:37:24.560 There was a wholesale replacement. 00:37:24.560 --> 00:37:27.840 And then the Franks came in and there is a replacement, not 00:37:27.840 --> 00:37:32.720 wholesale, but you have an overwhelming of the blood in a particular 00:37:32.720 --> 00:37:36.080 place. And it does form new blood, but it forms it through 00:37:36.080 --> 00:37:39.840 warfare. And then the winner is the conqueror and that's the new 00:37:39.840 --> 00:37:45.200 family. So intergenerationally, you we're not party to what happened two thousand 00:37:45.200 --> 00:37:45.840 years ago. 00:37:45.840 --> 00:37:49.120 It's kind of screwed up to have some sort of blood feud 00:37:49.120 --> 00:37:50.720 with the Picts or something. 00:37:50.720 --> 00:37:52.560 Those fights are long gone. 00:37:52.560 --> 00:37:54.000 We don't need to worry about that. 00:37:54.000 --> 00:37:56.480 It's one of the reasons I don't find guys who get super 00:37:56.480 --> 00:37:59.600 into history have all that much useful to say about this stuff 00:37:59.760 --> 00:38:04.240 because they're more interesting in litigating ancient fights and ancient battles than 00:38:04.240 --> 00:38:06.480 the one right here in front of us today. 00:38:06.480 --> 00:38:08.400 Because today we still have invasions. 00:38:08.400 --> 00:38:11.760 We have people coming from foreign lands onto our soil who are 00:38:11.760 --> 00:38:13.040 not our family. 00:38:13.040 --> 00:38:14.640 They're not our blood. 00:38:14.640 --> 00:38:19.440 And what we're being told in our churches, in our pulpits, in 00:38:19.440 --> 00:38:23.760 our newspapers, is that we should be without natural affection. 00:38:23.760 --> 00:38:25.920 I shouldn't care about my family. 00:38:25.920 --> 00:38:28.320 I should care about someone from Ethiopia. 00:38:28.320 --> 00:38:31.920 And I should recognize them as my brother every bit as much 00:38:32.080 --> 00:38:34.480 as someone who's actually close to me. 00:38:34.480 --> 00:38:36.400 God says that's evil. 00:38:36.400 --> 00:38:38.240 God says that's a prediction of end times. 00:38:38.560 --> 00:38:40.720 And so when we see it, I think we should take 2 00:38:40.880 --> 00:38:47.040 Timothy 3 seriously and open our eyes when we see without natural 00:38:47.040 --> 00:38:52.320 affection being preached as the law, being literally made the law, as 00:38:52.320 --> 00:38:55.840 it has been since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or 5 00:38:56.000 --> 00:38:57.120 was passed. 00:38:57.120 --> 00:38:59.760 There are two bad acts in 64 and 65 and always get 00:38:59.760 --> 00:39:00.240 them confused. 00:39:00.240 --> 00:39:02.640 There's the Immigr Immigration Act and Civil Rights Act. 00:39:02.640 --> 00:39:03.840 Both were disastrous. 00:39:03.840 --> 00:39:06.000 Both were serving the same purpose. 00:39:06.000 --> 00:39:08.640 They were passed back to back to achieve these ends, to say 00:39:08.720 --> 00:39:12.000 no, no, no, you cannot have natural affection anymore. 00:39:12.000 --> 00:39:15.440 You need to invert that and prefer the distant and bring them 00:39:15.440 --> 00:39:17.760 close, and replace your own family with them. 00:39:18.080 --> 00:39:20.480 This has been a running theme on Stone Choir from the very 00:39:20.480 --> 00:39:24.000 beginning, because most people ignore those parts of Scripture. 00:39:24.000 --> 00:39:29.440 They're ignoring a direct command from God to have familial love. 00:39:29.600 --> 00:39:34.160 When we don't, not only are we sinning against God, not only 00:39:34.160 --> 00:39:37.760 are we failing our actual duty to love, but we're fulfilling a 00:39:37.760 --> 00:39:41.840 prophecy the end times, and we look around, it's kind of hard 00:39:41.840 --> 00:39:43.120 to miss it. 00:39:44.080 --> 00:39:51.120 The issue of lacking natural affection ties into not necessarily a hierarchy, 00:39:51.120 --> 00:39:52.880 but a distinction between sins. 00:39:52.880 --> 00:39:56.000 And I'll actually return to the issue of hierarchy in a moment 00:39:56.000 --> 00:40:00.960 here. But there is a distinction with regard to sin between the 00:40:00.960 --> 00:40:05.440 sin that is against nature and the sin that is in line 00:40:05.440 --> 00:40:06.640 with nature. 00:40:06.640 --> 00:40:10.000 I'll skip the Latin because it doesn't matter. 00:40:10.000 --> 00:40:14.160 But a sin against nature all else being held equal is more 00:40:14.160 --> 00:40:16.480 wrongful, is a worse sin. 00:40:16.480 --> 00:40:20.400 The example that is frequently used and is probably one of the 00:40:20.400 --> 00:40:24.800 best examples to use is the difference between having an affair 00:40:25.920 --> 00:40:28.560 and committing sodomy? 00:40:28.560 --> 00:40:36.320 Homosexual fornication and all homosexual sex is necessarily fornication, but homosexual fornication 00:40:36.320 --> 00:40:41.840 is a greater sin, is a worse sin than simple fornication. 00:40:41.840 --> 00:40:47.040 I'm not saying simple to minimize the sin, I'm saying simple to 00:40:47.040 --> 00:40:48.320 distinguish it. 00:40:48.320 --> 00:40:52.480 But that is because the former is against nature. 00:40:52.480 --> 00:40:55.440 The latter is in line with nature. 00:40:55.440 --> 00:41:00.640 Now it is giving in to our sinful fallen nature, because with 00:41:00.640 --> 00:41:04.240 our nature in a perfect state, we would not desire things that 00:41:04.240 --> 00:41:07.920 are disordered, because again, this is just a disordered form of eros, 00:41:07.920 --> 00:41:12.560 which we will get into next week in greater depth. 00:41:12.560 --> 00:41:16.480 But a sin that is against nature is basically doubly a sin. 00:41:16.480 --> 00:41:21.440 Because you've sinned, because it's sin, but then you've sinned additionally because 00:41:21.440 --> 00:41:23.840 it is unnatural. 00:41:23.840 --> 00:41:28.720 It is unnatural not to have affection for your family members, and 00:41:28.720 --> 00:41:32.160 so that as a particularly egregious form of sin. 00:41:32.160 --> 00:41:34.960 That's one of the reasons that is a sign of the end 00:41:34.960 --> 00:41:39.600 times. The sort of humanity, the sort of culture that would not 00:41:39.600 --> 00:41:47.040 have affection for family, clan, tribe and nation is inhuman. 00:41:47.040 --> 00:41:51.360 It is so corrupt, so debased that it is no longer even 00:41:51.360 --> 00:41:55.040 acting in accord with nature Which is to say it is worse 00:41:55.040 --> 00:41:57.200 even than the animals. 00:41:57.200 --> 00:42:01.200 Not all animals, of course, because certain animals don't really care about 00:42:01.200 --> 00:42:04.800 family at all, but the higher animals, the ones that are worth 00:42:04.800 --> 00:42:09.920 mentioning, the ones that are worth assessing, generally care for their family. 00:42:09.920 --> 00:42:13.760 Lions take care of their cubs, even chickens take care of their 00:42:13.760 --> 00:42:17.360 young. I know because I just had to go and dismantle several 00:42:17.360 --> 00:42:20.880 nests in my chicken coop because they were hiding eggs and attempting 00:42:20.880 --> 00:42:22.400 to hatch them. 00:42:22.400 --> 00:42:26.160 Even birds that are not the brightest animals on the face of 00:42:26.160 --> 00:42:29.520 the planet in particular chickens. 00:42:29.520 --> 00:42:34.800 Even birds care for their young, they have an animalistic form of 00:42:34.800 --> 00:42:39.280 this, and so a human being who doesn't have natural affection is 00:42:39.280 --> 00:42:41.440 worse than an animal. 00:42:41.440 --> 00:42:47.040 That is horrible sin, that is abhorrent sin, and yet that is 00:42:47.040 --> 00:42:50.400 what our society says that we are supposed to have. 00:42:50.400 --> 00:42:54.560 That is what we hear from pulpits in many so called churches. 00:42:54.560 --> 00:42:57.680 And as well mentioned, it is one of the signs where We're 00:42:57.600 --> 00:43:00.240 not saying that it's necessarily coming soon, but it is one of 00:43:00.240 --> 00:43:04.880 the signs of the end times, because that is such a debasement 00:43:04.880 --> 00:43:10.880 of nature, that is such a transgression of moral norms, that it 00:43:10.880 --> 00:43:13.680 is virtually unthinkable Unthinkable. 00:43:13.680 --> 00:43:17.360 That sort of evil, that sort of wickedness is something that would 00:43:17.360 --> 00:43:23.120 have been unthinkable for most human societies throughout most of history, even 00:43:23.120 --> 00:43:25.440 some of the debased ones. 00:43:25.440 --> 00:43:28.880 Now, of course, there are exceptions for those that practiced at least 00:43:28.960 --> 00:43:33.600 widespread human sacrifice because they often sacrifice their own children. 00:43:33.600 --> 00:43:37.600 But by and large, in particular in our context, that was That 00:43:37.600 --> 00:43:42.880 was not a thing that happened in European civilization, even European paganism. 00:43:42.880 --> 00:43:46.480 That was not a thing that happened, with the exception of course 00:43:46.480 --> 00:43:50.640 of exposure in some of the northern countries, but that wasn't sacrifice. 00:43:50.640 --> 00:43:51.680 There is a distinction there. 00:43:52.000 --> 00:43:56.880 Both are wicked, but one is worse than the other. 00:43:56.880 --> 00:44:04.560 This is something, this astorgos, this lack of natural affection, 00:44:04.560 --> 00:44:10.720 that even our pagan ancestors at their worst did not do. 00:44:10.720 --> 00:44:14.880 And so the fact that we have supposed Christians preaching this as 00:44:14.880 --> 00:44:15.760 a good work 00:44:17.280 --> 00:44:18.560 is an abomination. 00:44:18.880 --> 00:44:21.040 It is something that God hates. 00:44:21.040 --> 00:44:23.600 It is something that God will most certainly punish. 00:44:23.600 --> 00:44:25.920 In this case it is one of those things that carries its 00:44:25.920 --> 00:44:27.360 own punishment with it. 00:44:27.360 --> 00:44:32.480 God may punish it additionally, but certainly if you lack the natural 00:44:32.640 --> 00:44:37.840 sort of familial affection, the natural affection you should have for those 00:44:37.840 --> 00:44:41.440 of your shared blood, you are going to be punished in a 00:44:41.440 --> 00:44:42.240 number of ways. 00:44:42.240 --> 00:44:44.480 We've gone over those in previous episodes. 00:44:44.480 --> 00:44:48.320 You will have lower fertility, ultimately you will have a destruction of 00:44:48.320 --> 00:44:51.440 your nation, and you will be replaced by others. 00:44:51.440 --> 00:44:54.400 That is the ultimate punishment for these things. 00:44:55.040 --> 00:44:57.840 I said that I would return to the issue of hierarchy, and 00:44:57.840 --> 00:45:01.280 the reason that I want to return to the issue of hierarchy 00:45:02.400 --> 00:45:06.000 is that some will think of these forms of love. 00:45:06.000 --> 00:45:08.960 Some will think of the things that we've mentioned in the various 00:45:08.960 --> 00:45:13.280 examples and want to arrange them hierarchically. 00:45:13.280 --> 00:45:15.360 In some cases that's good. 00:45:15.360 --> 00:45:20.000 In some cases that is in fact natural, because you should have 00:45:20.800 --> 00:45:27.440 A certain preference for your family over those who are more distantly 00:45:27.440 --> 00:45:30.880 involved in your life, with whom you have a more distant relationship, 00:45:30.880 --> 00:45:32.640 a different form of love. 00:45:32.640 --> 00:45:36.640 And so, yes, you should preference your family over your friends, as 00:45:36.640 --> 00:45:38.560 a general rule. 00:45:38.560 --> 00:45:42.800 I'm not saying that's the case at all times, under all circumstances, 00:45:42.800 --> 00:45:44.240 because it's not. 00:45:44.240 --> 00:45:46.160 And that's part of the point. 00:45:46.160 --> 00:45:51.200 We cannot give you firm rules of this love always trumps this 00:45:51.200 --> 00:45:55.360 love or this relationship always trumps this relationship. 00:45:55.360 --> 00:45:58.720 We can say that this relationship generally trumps this one. 00:45:58.720 --> 00:46:02.480 We can say that this form of love generally trumps this one, 00:46:02.480 --> 00:46:04.960 but only in some cases. 00:46:04.960 --> 00:46:10.160 This is a web of interrelated types of love. 00:46:10.160 --> 00:46:13.680 They are interrelated, they are interconnected, they overlap. 00:46:13.680 --> 00:46:17.440 In many cases where you have one you will practically necessarily have 00:46:17.440 --> 00:46:18.400 the others. 00:46:18.400 --> 00:46:22.000 In some cases you will have an exclusive form, but in most 00:46:22.000 --> 00:46:24.080 cases not. 00:46:24.400 --> 00:46:26.640 This requires wisdom. 00:46:26.640 --> 00:46:29.760 You are going to have to make these calls yourself. 00:46:29.760 --> 00:46:33.360 It is a fact-specific analysis, is what we would generally call it 00:46:33.360 --> 00:46:35.680 in the legal field. 00:46:35.680 --> 00:46:39.920 Which is to say that it is an analysis that is dependent 00:46:39.920 --> 00:46:44.400 on the specific facts of the situation itself. 00:46:44.400 --> 00:46:46.880 As opposed to if you're dealing with an abstraction. 00:46:46.880 --> 00:46:50.080 When you're dealing with an abstraction, you can just apply the rules 00:46:50.880 --> 00:46:52.160 and you're done. 00:46:52.160 --> 00:46:53.760 The rules say this. 00:46:53.760 --> 00:46:54.960 Here's the abstraction. 00:46:54.960 --> 00:46:56.480 The conclusion is easy. 00:46:56.480 --> 00:46:59.600 Not the case with a fact specific analysis. 00:46:59.600 --> 00:47:03.120 You have to make these calls in your own life. 00:47:03.120 --> 00:47:07.600 And so there may be a time where you have to aid 00:47:07.600 --> 00:47:11.840 a friend, perhaps at the expense of a family member to some 00:47:11.840 --> 00:47:15.280 degree. There are times when you're going to go out to dinner 00:47:15.280 --> 00:47:17.680 with friends instead of with a sibling to give a 00:47:18.640 --> 00:47:22.240 completely practically trivial example. 00:47:22.240 --> 00:47:26.080 There are no black and white lines for most of this. 00:47:26.080 --> 00:47:30.080 We cannot simply tell you if X then Y. 00:47:30.080 --> 00:47:33.840 Now next week we can certainly do that because next week is 00:47:33.840 --> 00:47:38.880 the basically one time where the lines are very clear, in most 00:47:38.880 --> 00:47:42.160 cases, of what you may and may not do, of what you 00:47:42.160 --> 00:47:44.000 must and must not do. 00:47:44.000 --> 00:47:46.560 But for But for all of these other forms of love, for 00:47:46.560 --> 00:47:49.440 the ones we're discussing this week, for the ones we discussed last 00:47:49.440 --> 00:47:52.240 week, there are gray areas. 00:47:52.240 --> 00:47:54.880 You have to run the analysis for yourself. 00:47:54.880 --> 00:47:58.000 And so do not try to make these into a hierarchy. 00:47:58.000 --> 00:48:02.640 Do not try to say, well, this relationship is Philia and this 00:48:02.640 --> 00:48:07.360 relationship is Storge and this relationship is a more, whereas that one's 00:48:07.360 --> 00:48:09.920 more delectio, and so I have to preference. 00:48:09.920 --> 00:48:12.080 That's not how this works. 00:48:12.480 --> 00:48:17.600 We are outlining the different facets of love so that we can 00:48:17.600 --> 00:48:21.760 give you basically the full workings of this, so you can have 00:48:21.760 --> 00:48:26.080 a mental construct of what love is, and then make the assessments 00:48:26.160 --> 00:48:28.480 for yourself. 00:48:28.480 --> 00:48:32.400 You don't necessarily break down all of your relationships and start making 00:48:32.400 --> 00:48:35.760 a table or a chart or a spreadsheet, however it is you 00:48:35.760 --> 00:48:38.480 want to do it, and saying, well, this one has these aspects 00:48:38.560 --> 00:48:41.360 and this one has those and then trying to rank people. 00:48:41.360 --> 00:48:43.440 That's not human, that's inhuman. 00:48:43.440 --> 00:48:45.040 That's not how this worked. 00:48:45.040 --> 00:48:46.640 That's not how this works. 00:48:46.640 --> 00:48:50.960 Before we started recording, we were discussing philosophy a little bit, and 00:48:50.960 --> 00:48:56.800 we discussed briefly the fact that if you analyze something too much 00:48:56.800 --> 00:48:59.760 by picking it apart, you wind up with parts 00:49:00.800 --> 00:49:03.520 that are not the sum, that are not the whole. 00:49:03.520 --> 00:49:06.960 There are some things that cannot be picked apart to the point 00:49:06.960 --> 00:49:11.760 where you can analyze each little discrete element because what you've done 00:49:11.760 --> 00:49:15.120 is destroyed the thing in the process, and love is one of 00:49:15.120 --> 00:49:16.080 those things. 00:49:16.080 --> 00:49:17.600 Love is a gestalt. 00:49:17.600 --> 00:49:21.600 Each one of these is you have to take them as a 00:49:21.600 --> 00:49:26.240 totality, as a whole, not as little parts that you can pick 00:49:26.240 --> 00:49:28.480 apart and analyze separately. 00:49:28.480 --> 00:49:34.240 We can look at the facets, we can analyze the facet itself, 00:49:34.240 --> 00:49:37.200 sort of examine how it relates to the other ones, how it's 00:49:37.200 --> 00:49:39.680 connected, but at the end of the day, if you're looking at 00:49:39.680 --> 00:49:43.440 the facets of a gem, it's still one gem. 00:49:43.440 --> 00:49:45.840 And so all of this is still love. 00:49:45.840 --> 00:49:48.640 It's just different facets of love. 00:49:48.640 --> 00:49:51.200 And so don't try to pick it apart, don't try to make 00:49:51.200 --> 00:49:52.800 it into a hierarchy. 00:49:53.040 --> 00:49:54.800 Don't go down that road. 00:49:54.800 --> 00:49:56.160 That's not what this is. 00:49:56.160 --> 00:49:59.680 We are not philosophically dissecting love. 00:49:59.680 --> 00:50:02.320 Because if you do that, you'll end up with something, but it 00:50:02.320 --> 00:50:04.160 won't be love. 00:50:04.160 --> 00:50:08.160 So just take this as it is, as God created it. 00:50:08.160 --> 00:50:10.160 Because this is something God created. 00:50:10.160 --> 00:50:13.520 All of these human relationships, the way we relate to other people, 00:50:13.520 --> 00:50:17.680 whether they're family members or friends or just other members of our 00:50:17.680 --> 00:50:20.320 nation, very distantly related. 00:50:20.320 --> 00:50:22.800 All of this was designed by God. 00:50:22.800 --> 00:50:27.680 There is a rough hierarchy there, and we will be discussing hierarchy 00:50:27.680 --> 00:50:31.840 specifically with regard to the last pair we'll be discussing in this 00:50:31.840 --> 00:50:37.760 episode, but generally speaking, it's not a strict hierarchy for most of 00:50:37.760 --> 00:50:39.680 these forms of love. 00:50:39.680 --> 00:50:43.600 It is all interconnected, it's all interrelated, and it has to be 00:50:43.600 --> 00:50:44.640 treated as such. 00:50:46.000 --> 00:50:46.160 And 00:50:46.160 --> 00:50:51.520 that's an excellent illustration of a disordered form of intellectual love or 00:50:51.520 --> 00:50:58.240 delectio. One of the interesting aspects of delectio or intellectual love in 00:50:58.240 --> 00:51:01.920 particular is that the object of that sort of love is very 00:51:01.920 --> 00:51:04.080 frequently not another person. 00:51:04.080 --> 00:51:08.160 You may have a passion or a love for certain ideas, for 00:51:08.160 --> 00:51:10.720 debate, for explanation, for history. 00:51:10.720 --> 00:51:14.960 Yeah, you can have intellectual love, intellectual zeal for all sorts of 00:51:14.960 --> 00:51:16.960 things that aren't people. 00:51:16.960 --> 00:51:17.760 And that's fine. 00:51:17.760 --> 00:51:18.560 That's good. 00:51:18.560 --> 00:51:23.440 God created us in part to have that sort of zeal for 00:51:23.920 --> 00:51:25.600 things in creation. 00:51:25.600 --> 00:51:28.960 Some dudes completely geek out on science and to a point that 00:51:28.960 --> 00:51:33.280 can be very good because it takes a certain amount of intellectual 00:51:33.280 --> 00:51:37.520 love to devote your entire life to particle physics. 00:51:37.520 --> 00:51:43.840 And while it may be seemingly devoid of any human character, when 00:51:43.840 --> 00:51:48.480 certain breakthroughs are made in disciplines like that, suddenly new sources of 00:51:48.480 --> 00:51:52.880 energy are discovered and everyone's electricity potentially gets cheaper. 00:51:52.880 --> 00:51:57.200 And so entirely new forms of living and of there all sorts 00:51:57.200 --> 00:52:00.800 of things are made possible by someone having some geeked out love 00:52:00.800 --> 00:52:03.680 that most people can't possibly understand. 00:52:03.680 --> 00:52:08.000 The problem is the the disordered form of intellectual love is very 00:52:08.000 --> 00:52:12.960 common today because with the advent of the internet, we've all been 00:52:12.960 --> 00:52:17.600 segregated it so frequently into these little buckets and especially after COVID 00:52:17.760 --> 00:52:21.520 and with an entire generation of kids now being raised in front 00:52:21.520 --> 00:52:26.720 of screens, actually interacting with humans for some people is alien. 00:52:26.720 --> 00:52:30.240 If you're below a certain age, like I said uh last week, 00:52:30.240 --> 00:52:33.840 I think, making eye contact is actually difficult for some people. 00:52:33.840 --> 00:52:36.960 And it's not even some sort of psychological disorder. 00:52:36.960 --> 00:52:38.720 It's just a complete lack of experience. 00:52:38.720 --> 00:52:42.320 You're used to chatting with someone online, having some sort of intellectual 00:52:42.320 --> 00:52:45.200 love for someone, but it would never occur to you to go 00:52:45.200 --> 00:52:46.640 help that guy move. 00:52:46.640 --> 00:52:49.280 And I think that's maybe an illustration that works here. 00:52:49.280 --> 00:52:52.000 Is think about, you know, we're all in DM groups at this 00:52:52.000 --> 00:52:54.880 point. You have your people you chat with maybe they're all over 00:52:54.880 --> 00:52:55.600 the world. 00:52:55.600 --> 00:52:58.960 Maybe they're friends from school or that you've just met in some 00:52:58.960 --> 00:53:01.680 community and you have an intellectual love for them. 00:53:01.680 --> 00:53:04.880 How many of those guys would you show up to help move? 00:53:04.880 --> 00:53:07.120 Probably not many in most cases. 00:53:07.120 --> 00:53:08.000 I am particularly 00:53:09.040 --> 00:53:12.880 not good about going and looking for opportunities to help people, but 00:53:12.880 --> 00:53:14.800 I will always help anyone who asks. 00:53:14.800 --> 00:53:15.760 I will always help. 00:53:15.760 --> 00:53:18.640 I go over the top to try to help people when they 00:53:18.640 --> 00:53:19.280 come to me. 00:53:19.280 --> 00:53:20.960 In part because it happens so rarely. 00:53:20.960 --> 00:53:23.920 I don't know if I'm unapproachable or whatever, but like I've put 00:53:23.920 --> 00:53:26.960 myself in a box where I usually rarely get bugged for help. 00:53:26.960 --> 00:53:28.240 So I'm eager to do it. 00:53:28.240 --> 00:53:29.120 And I'm doing it. 00:53:29.120 --> 00:53:29.920 I really enjoy it. 00:53:29.920 --> 00:53:33.040 But I never I go home like, okay, let's did that for 00:53:33.040 --> 00:53:33.600 a year. 00:53:33.600 --> 00:53:36.320 It never occurs to me that I should go look for opportunities. 00:53:36.480 --> 00:53:39.360 Something I'm bad at. 00:53:39.360 --> 00:53:44.480 With the disordered intellectual love that so many people have online, the 00:53:44.480 --> 00:53:49.600 intellectual pursuits, the intellectual love scratches the itch for having some sort 00:53:49.600 --> 00:53:55.200 of passion that ends up displacing actual human relationships. 00:53:55.200 --> 00:53:56.800 And we see that a lot now. 00:53:56.800 --> 00:53:58.880 And it people call things like autism. 00:53:58.800 --> 00:54:01.920 and it's I I've said before, I just find that crap tedious 00:54:02.080 --> 00:54:04.160 because it it's a cop-out. 00:54:04.160 --> 00:54:08.400 There are certain people that have a certain very specific collection of 00:54:08.640 --> 00:54:10.960 things that they're genuinely autism. 00:54:10.960 --> 00:54:15.040 I think it's crappy to just bucket someone who is really into 00:54:15.040 --> 00:54:16.800 trains and say, Oh, that guy's autistic. 00:54:16.800 --> 00:54:17.440 Like whatever. 00:54:17.440 --> 00:54:19.760 You know, it's that that's a classic example of it. 00:54:19.760 --> 00:54:20.880 But who cares? 00:54:20.880 --> 00:54:24.240 If somebody's really has an intellectual love for something, that's great. 00:54:24.240 --> 00:54:28.320 It does not exclude them from being able to also have amour, 00:54:28.320 --> 00:54:32.000 to also have an emotional love for people, to have brotherly love, 00:54:32.000 --> 00:54:35.200 to be the guy that would show up to help someone move. 00:54:35.200 --> 00:54:40.640 And so the disordered form of delactio in particular manifests itself as 00:54:41.360 --> 00:54:44.720 somebody who just only ever reads books and only ever listens to 00:54:44.720 --> 00:54:49.360 podcasts and only ever argues on the internet and never actually experiences 00:54:49.360 --> 00:54:53.120 human human interaction and not on a human scale or a human 00:54:53.120 --> 00:54:56.160 way. And you end up missing out and you don't even necessarily 00:54:56.160 --> 00:54:59.200 realize it because you're engaging in love all the time. 00:54:59.200 --> 00:55:01.040 But it's not the whole thing. 00:55:01.040 --> 00:55:04.160 You get so narrowly focused on that one facet, like Corey was 00:55:04.160 --> 00:55:06.000 saying, you missed the whole picture. 00:55:06.000 --> 00:55:08.480 There's a lot more there that God has given us. 00:55:08.480 --> 00:55:14.080 And at some point, you have become sinful by becoming without natural 00:55:14.080 --> 00:55:18.400 affection. Even if it's just through ignorance and disuse of the idea 00:55:18.400 --> 00:55:19.840 that, you know, I have family. 00:55:19.840 --> 00:55:22.240 I should check and see how my neighbor's doing. 00:55:22.240 --> 00:55:26.240 That's stuff that we easily get bad at because we get tunnel 00:55:26.240 --> 00:55:29.200 vision on doing the one thing that we're really enjoying. 00:55:29.200 --> 00:55:33.440 So So all loves can potentially be disordered in different ways. 00:55:33.440 --> 00:55:36.480 But I think one of the chief ones that we see today, 00:55:36.480 --> 00:55:40.560 frankly, even now in the younger generation, even beyond what we're gonna 00:55:40.560 --> 00:55:45.040 get into next week, where you have disordered romantic affections. 00:55:45.040 --> 00:55:46.960 A lot of people can't even get to that point. 00:55:46.960 --> 00:55:51.200 They can't even have a disordered romantic affection because they have disordered 00:55:51.200 --> 00:55:53.440 intellectual affections. 00:55:53.440 --> 00:55:57.920 And there's this displacement, like I said, it scratches the itch in 00:55:57.920 --> 00:56:01.200 some ways, but it also leaves you empty because you're missing an 00:56:01.200 --> 00:56:04.240 entire part of the human experience that God has created for us. 00:56:04.240 --> 00:56:06.640 And He's created order for all these things. 00:56:06.640 --> 00:56:10.640 These don't fit in a discrete boxes, but it's part of the 00:56:10.640 --> 00:56:13.360 menu of a healthy human life. 00:56:13.360 --> 00:56:19.040 And when we withdraw from life by whatever degree, sometimes we're gonna 00:56:19.040 --> 00:56:23.040 in a disordered fashion chase the one thing that's most accessible because 00:56:23.040 --> 00:56:24.160 it's easy for us. 00:56:24.160 --> 00:56:27.040 And sometimes we just need to remind ourselves, you know what, the 00:56:27.040 --> 00:56:30.400 thing that's easiest for me, maybe it not only is it not 00:56:30.400 --> 00:56:33.520 doing everything I need to do, but it's costing me the opportunity 00:56:33.520 --> 00:56:35.440 to go do some of the other things that I should be 00:56:35.440 --> 00:56:38.080 doing. And so that's, you know, one of the reasons for pointing 00:56:38.080 --> 00:56:42.320 this out is that for individuals, for some of you listening, maybe 00:56:42.320 --> 00:56:43.440 that's a personal check. 00:56:43.440 --> 00:56:44.640 You're like, Yeah, you're right. 00:56:44.640 --> 00:56:48.400 You know, I spend eight hours a day reading books and zero 00:56:48.400 --> 00:56:51.600 hours a day doing anything else. 00:56:51.600 --> 00:56:53.120 That's not a personality. 00:56:53.120 --> 00:56:56.560 At some point your intellectual love can actually harm you. 00:56:57.120 --> 00:57:00.560 I think a good example that will resonate with a certain percentage 00:57:01.600 --> 00:57:07.520 of our audience with regard to the overlap of emotional and intellectual 00:57:07.520 --> 00:57:10.880 love would be hiking and camping. 00:57:10.880 --> 00:57:14.640 Because first and foremost, if you're someone who's an avid hiker or 00:57:14.640 --> 00:57:18.080 camper, there's going to be a love of the outdoors of the 00:57:18.080 --> 00:57:22.720 natural world, and that is more of an emotional love. 00:57:22.720 --> 00:57:26.960 But to that you can add that intellectual love. 00:57:26.960 --> 00:57:27.920 You can add 00:57:28.880 --> 00:57:35.840 the love of zoology or geology, hydrology, dendrology, botany, really, if you 00:57:35.840 --> 00:57:37.520 want to use the more expansive term. 00:57:37.520 --> 00:57:42.720 You can add the various specific forms of intellectual curiosity and love 00:57:42.720 --> 00:57:47.760 of the natural world and its constituent parts on top of and 00:57:47.760 --> 00:57:52.000 in addition to that emotional love that you have for the natural 00:57:52.000 --> 00:57:56.320 world. And I think that's just going to be one of the 00:57:56.320 --> 00:58:00.880 examples that'll be the easiest to grasp for most people. 00:58:00.880 --> 00:58:05.520 Because if you go for a hike, you're doing it obviously in 00:58:05.520 --> 00:58:09.040 part for exercise, but also because you have that love of the 00:58:09.040 --> 00:58:09.840 natural world. 00:58:09.840 --> 00:58:14.160 You go out and look at God's magnificent creation, which everyone should 00:58:14.160 --> 00:58:15.920 do with some frequency. 00:58:15.920 --> 00:58:18.960 It is not good to be indoors all the time, for instance. 00:58:18.960 --> 00:58:24.320 As Wo was saying, too many screens, too much time staring at 00:58:24.320 --> 00:58:26.000 things like that these days. 00:58:26.000 --> 00:58:29.920 It's important to go out and experience the actual world. 00:58:29.920 --> 00:58:33.440 If you go out for that hike or for that camping trip, 00:58:33.440 --> 00:58:36.640 you're doing it to experience God's creation. 00:58:36.640 --> 00:58:37.760 Because you have 00:58:38.640 --> 00:58:43.680 an appropriate, a naturally ordered love of it, you have that emotional 00:58:43.680 --> 00:58:48.880 attachment to what God has created, in part, yes, of course, to 00:58:48.880 --> 00:58:50.880 his glory, but for us. 00:58:50.880 --> 00:58:54.560 He gave it to us to be stewards of it. 00:58:54.560 --> 00:58:58.160 And so it is a gift to us from God, we should 00:58:58.160 --> 00:59:01.200 love it, we should enjoy it, we should care for it a 00:59:01.200 --> 00:59:04.640 topic for another episode, at some point. 00:59:04.640 --> 00:59:08.080 But you can add to that the intellectual love, because you can 00:59:08.080 --> 00:59:12.720 take up a hobby of learning about the plants in your region. 00:59:12.720 --> 00:59:14.160 That's an intellectual pursuit. 00:59:14.160 --> 00:59:16.320 That's an intellectual love of that. 00:59:16.320 --> 00:59:20.400 Or learning about the geology of your region, or any of the 00:59:20.400 --> 00:59:23.440 other things that can fall under that 00:59:24.400 --> 00:59:29.120 very broad umbrella of the natural world. 00:59:29.120 --> 00:59:32.720 And so I want to make sure that we've been clear that 00:59:32.720 --> 00:59:36.800 this isn't a firm distinction, it's not a bright line between an 00:59:36.800 --> 00:59:39.680 emotional love and an intellectual love. 00:59:39.680 --> 00:59:44.960 Both of those aspects can be present with regard to pretty much 00:59:44.960 --> 00:59:47.440 any other form of love. 00:59:47.440 --> 00:59:53.920 You can have an emotional friendship with another person and also have 00:59:53.920 --> 00:59:57.840 an intellectual aspect to it, or you can have the reverse where 00:59:57.840 --> 01:00:02.800 it's mostly intellectual with maybe some emotional aspect. 01:00:02.800 --> 01:00:08.480 The different relationships are going to emphasize one over the other just 01:00:08.480 --> 01:00:10.160 naturally because that's how it works. 01:00:10.160 --> 01:00:13.840 That's how the relationship developed over time. 01:00:13.840 --> 01:00:17.920 One form of love is going to be emphasized over the other. 01:00:17.920 --> 01:00:22.080 Sometimes it'll be extreme, sometimes it'll be minimal. 01:00:22.080 --> 01:00:25.600 That's the reality of human relationships. 01:00:25.600 --> 01:00:30.080 And so just bear in mind that those are aspects of love, 01:00:30.080 --> 01:00:33.680 they're facets of love, they're types of love, but they can both 01:00:33.680 --> 01:00:35.120 be present at the same time. 01:00:35.120 --> 01:00:37.600 It's not one to the exclusion of another. 01:00:37.600 --> 01:00:40.960 It's not if you have emotions for this person you can't also 01:00:40.960 --> 01:00:45.360 appreciate the person intellectually, or if you have a primarily intellectual relationship 01:00:45.440 --> 01:00:48.800 you can't have any passion, any emotion in it. 01:00:48.800 --> 01:00:52.640 Again, it would be inhuman to think that these have to be 01:00:52.640 --> 01:00:55.040 completely discrete. 01:00:55.600 --> 01:00:55.760 So 01:00:55.840 --> 01:00:58.320 the last pair that we're going to talk about are the definition 01:00:58.320 --> 01:01:03.520 that Corey gave earlier of piety, which is effectively a duty upward, 01:01:03.520 --> 01:01:06.320 and paternalism, which is a duty downward 01:01:07.520 --> 01:01:10.400 One of the episodes that we did just over a year ago 01:01:10.400 --> 01:01:14.880 on scripture and slavery, I think, is really a part of this 01:01:14.880 --> 01:01:18.080 argument that we're making to conclude this episode. 01:01:18.080 --> 01:01:20.560 Because the master-slave relationship 01:01:21.520 --> 01:01:26.160 is in a way the purest form of the paternal and piety 01:01:26.480 --> 01:01:29.040 relationship that we're talking about here. 01:01:29.040 --> 01:01:30.400 There's a duty. 01:01:30.400 --> 01:01:33.360 The slave has a duty to his master. 01:01:33.360 --> 01:01:37.200 It is a type of love, and that's something that God literally 01:01:37.200 --> 01:01:41.200 commands to slaves that they are to love and obey their masters, 01:01:41.200 --> 01:01:42.880 even their bad masters. 01:01:42.880 --> 01:01:48.080 God specifically says, if your master beats you, you can't disobey him. 01:01:48.080 --> 01:01:49.840 You still have to obey him. 01:01:49.840 --> 01:01:54.400 And that your love and obedience to a faithless and wicked master 01:01:54.400 --> 01:01:57.680 will demonstrate God's love in that household. 01:01:58.480 --> 01:02:03.920 Now, obviously God condemns that sort of treatment, but it's still acknowledged 01:02:03.920 --> 01:02:08.080 that even when there is a disordered failure to have paternal love 01:02:08.080 --> 01:02:13.520 in a hierarchical relationship, the those who are in the lower inferior 01:02:13.520 --> 01:02:17.840 position still have not only a duty of love upward, but they 01:02:17.840 --> 01:02:20.880 have a duty to demonstrate God's love in doing it. 01:02:20.880 --> 01:02:24.000 And that's why I think it's really a great illustration of the 01:02:24.000 --> 01:02:28.480 point that we're making here is that these facets of love, including 01:02:28.480 --> 01:02:34.240 those in inferior and superior social positions, are part of it. 01:02:34.240 --> 01:02:40.640 It's not some weird first century fluke, and it's not some wicked 01:02:40.640 --> 01:02:43.760 institution, as we've been told for the last hundred and fifty odd 01:02:43.760 --> 01:02:48.160 years. It is a part of human society. 01:02:48.160 --> 01:02:51.120 And it doesn't have to be called slavery. 01:02:51.120 --> 01:02:53.920 This sort of hierarchy is always natural. 01:02:53.920 --> 01:02:57.120 There are always men who are superior and inferior. 01:02:57.120 --> 01:02:59.760 In the episode we did a few weeks ago on leadership, we 01:02:59.760 --> 01:03:01.360 talked about that at some length. 01:03:01.360 --> 01:03:04.080 Some men are naturally superior. 01:03:04.080 --> 01:03:07.120 And the worst thing that you can do as a civilization is 01:03:07.120 --> 01:03:09.440 to try to tear the man down who's superior and say, no, 01:03:09.440 --> 01:03:10.480 you're just like everybody else. 01:03:10.480 --> 01:03:12.240 Or you know what, you've had your turn. 01:03:12.240 --> 01:03:14.560 Let's take someone inferior and put them in charge. 01:03:14.560 --> 01:03:16.960 Is other gonna do nearly as well. 01:03:16.960 --> 01:03:20.640 When you talk about things like superior and inferior, everybody freaks out 01:03:20.640 --> 01:03:24.880 because it's the most anti-egalitarian way to describe anything. 01:03:24.880 --> 01:03:27.280 We're basically forbidden to think that way. 01:03:27.280 --> 01:03:28.560 God's doesn't. 01:03:28.560 --> 01:03:30.400 God talks about it all the time. 01:03:30.400 --> 01:03:34.320 It's very clear that there's superior and inferiors in many types of 01:03:34.320 --> 01:03:35.840 relationships, not in all. 01:03:35.840 --> 01:03:38.000 And that's why we have these other facets of love. 01:03:38.000 --> 01:03:41.120 There's no superior in a brotherly relationship. 01:03:41.120 --> 01:03:44.400 There's not even really a superior in the sort of agape love 01:03:44.400 --> 01:03:49.040 relationship. There's a giver and a receiver and there's some disproportionality, but 01:03:49.040 --> 01:03:53.840 it's not structural in terms of power dynamics to use the you 01:03:53.840 --> 01:03:58.880 know, kind of the Marxist framework that unfortunately we all understand. 01:03:58.880 --> 01:04:04.160 They're frequently power relationships and what God says is not tear them 01:04:04.160 --> 01:04:07.600 down. What God says is paternalism is good. 01:04:07.760 --> 01:04:11.120 He says that the house father has a duty to everyone under 01:04:11.120 --> 01:04:14.560 his roof, not only his wife and his kids, but any slaves, 01:04:14.560 --> 01:04:20.480 any servants, whatever whoever is beneath whoever is under his authority is 01:04:20.480 --> 01:04:22.320 his responsibility to God. 01:04:23.520 --> 01:04:25.840 Which is the other point that we make in the slavery episode 01:04:25.920 --> 01:04:30.480 that's crucial to understanding the duty up and the duty down loves, 01:04:30.480 --> 01:04:34.720 is that ultimately we all have a duty upward to God. 01:04:35.600 --> 01:04:39.760 Whether it's a king, whether it's a slave owner, everyone who thinks 01:04:39.760 --> 01:04:43.760 he's on top of somebody because he's superior socially in and in 01:04:43.760 --> 01:04:47.760 whatever other fashion is always inferior to God. 01:04:47.760 --> 01:04:52.320 And fundamentally, any attack on the paradigm of superior and inferior is 01:04:52.320 --> 01:04:53.760 always an attack on God. 01:04:53.760 --> 01:04:57.760 It's always ultimately that attack on God's headship. 01:04:57.760 --> 01:04:59.600 It'll be cloaked in all these other ways. 01:04:59.840 --> 01:05:04.160 But whether it's slavery or feminism or any other flavor that you 01:05:04.160 --> 01:05:06.800 want to pick that we've all seen blow up in the last 01:05:06.800 --> 01:05:09.920 two centuries, it's always an attack on God. 01:05:09.920 --> 01:05:14.800 Because God uses leadership, he uses headship as his means in the 01:05:14.800 --> 01:05:19.200 world, in society, in our lives of preserving good. 01:05:19.200 --> 01:05:23.520 And when those things are torn down, we see unlimited evil immediately 01:05:23.520 --> 01:05:24.480 in the wake. 01:05:24.720 --> 01:05:26.800 Made the case many times. 01:05:26.800 --> 01:05:34.240 The Black Lives Matter mantra included destroying the nuclear family, destroying heteronormativity, 01:05:34.240 --> 01:05:36.080 destroying the patriarchy. 01:05:36.080 --> 01:05:38.720 What does that have to do with Black Lives Mattering? 01:05:39.040 --> 01:05:42.800 Absolutely nothing, if you think that they were honest, but they were 01:05:42.800 --> 01:05:44.880 liars. They were satanic. 01:05:44.880 --> 01:05:48.480 What they were doing was they were destroying all of the properly 01:05:48.480 --> 01:05:49.840 ordered loves. 01:05:49.840 --> 01:05:53.120 It was fundamentally an attack on every facet of love. 01:05:53.120 --> 01:05:54.800 That's what BLM was. 01:05:54.800 --> 01:05:59.760 It was a satanic, demonic inversion of godly love, which is why 01:05:59.760 --> 01:06:03.760 it was such a polarizing issue, because it was spiritual, it wasn't 01:06:03.680 --> 01:06:07.520 political, it wasn't about ideas where you could have different opinions. 01:06:07.520 --> 01:06:09.440 It was good versus evil. 01:06:09.440 --> 01:06:13.040 And it's always cloaked in terms that are gonna sucker people, because 01:06:13.120 --> 01:06:14.960 as soon as you start talking about oh well you need to 01:06:14.960 --> 01:06:18.800 love this group and that group, someone who has been trained, well 01:06:18.880 --> 01:06:21.280 yes, of course I need to love, is gonna buy a hook, 01:06:21.280 --> 01:06:22.240 line, and sinker. 01:06:22.240 --> 01:06:24.720 They're gonna love the taste of the Jesus butter, and they're not 01:06:24.720 --> 01:06:27.040 gonna pay any attention to the fact that that's not love at 01:06:27.040 --> 01:06:30.560 all. It is not love of my neighbor to let black people 01:06:30.560 --> 01:06:35.440 burn down neighborhoods and destroy communities and kill police. 01:06:35.440 --> 01:06:36.880 That's not love. 01:06:36.880 --> 01:06:39.280 There's nothing remotely like love there. 01:06:39.280 --> 01:06:42.240 And so just because somebody slaps the word on it doesn't make 01:06:42.240 --> 01:06:43.200 it love. 01:06:43.200 --> 01:06:46.400 When you look at these various facets that we're discussing over these 01:06:46.400 --> 01:06:49.760 couple weeks, it becomes clear that when you look at what love 01:06:49.760 --> 01:06:53.120 actually is, what God has created, there's no room for any of 01:06:53.120 --> 01:06:53.920 that crap. 01:06:53.920 --> 01:06:57.520 And there's no possibility, once you understand what love is, to ever 01:06:57.520 --> 01:07:01.680 be ho hoodwinked by somebody saying that something like Black Lives Matter 01:07:01.680 --> 01:07:04.560 is anything other than the demonic invocation. 01:07:04.560 --> 01:07:06.720 Because everything surrounding it was evil. 01:07:06.720 --> 01:07:08.480 It was all fundamentally evil. 01:07:08.480 --> 01:07:09.600 That's not love. 01:07:09.600 --> 01:07:11.280 It's never love. 01:07:11.280 --> 01:07:15.280 And that's another reason that we're doing this particular series is because 01:07:15.280 --> 01:07:18.320 love is one of the most deadly words that's ever used in 01:07:18.320 --> 01:07:22.720 the English language in this century, because it's used to deceive when 01:07:22.720 --> 01:07:25.680 it's doing the least loving things possible. 01:07:25.680 --> 01:07:29.360 When we are told that we are to despise and be without 01:07:29.360 --> 01:07:32.400 natural affection, we're told to do it in the name of love. 01:07:32.400 --> 01:07:34.640 We're told that that is the only way to be loving, is 01:07:34.640 --> 01:07:36.960 to live without natural affection. 01:07:36.960 --> 01:07:39.440 Or told that point blank. 01:07:39.440 --> 01:07:42.160 You have to know what love actually is to be able to 01:07:42.160 --> 01:07:44.240 see that they're not talking about love at all. 01:07:44.240 --> 01:07:50.560 And so the master slave relationship, the political relationship between actual superiors 01:07:50.560 --> 01:07:51.760 and inferiors. 01:07:51.760 --> 01:07:53.840 And I'm not talking about Congress here. 01:07:53.840 --> 01:07:57.120 I'm not talking about the form of government that we have. 01:07:57.120 --> 01:08:00.320 I'm talking about in the leadership sense from that episode. 01:08:00.320 --> 01:08:05.280 The actual hierarchies that emerge where some men naturally lead and most 01:08:05.280 --> 01:08:10.320 men naturally follow, that is a hierarchy that in some cases is 01:08:10.320 --> 01:08:14.560 paternal. Now, I was a fairly senior manager at Apple for over 01:08:14.560 --> 01:08:16.240 a decade. 01:08:16.240 --> 01:08:19.360 Much of my job was fundamentally paternal. 01:08:19.360 --> 01:08:23.760 It was shielding the guys underneath me from the problems above me 01:08:23.920 --> 01:08:25.360 so that they didn't know about it. 01:08:25.360 --> 01:08:26.560 They didn't have to deal with it. 01:08:26.560 --> 01:08:29.920 I fought battles so that they could do their jobs. 01:08:29.920 --> 01:08:31.760 That was paternalistic. 01:08:31.760 --> 01:08:33.200 It's not portrayed in that sense. 01:08:33.200 --> 01:08:35.360 I didn't really even think of it in that sense, but that's 01:08:35.280 --> 01:08:36.640 fundamentally what it is. 01:08:36.640 --> 01:08:39.360 That's a duty that a father has over his household. 01:08:39.360 --> 01:08:42.400 The father has to worry about things so that the wife and 01:08:42.400 --> 01:08:44.560 the children never have to think about them. 01:08:44.560 --> 01:08:48.640 They can relax because the father is doing some sort of battle 01:08:48.640 --> 01:08:50.640 against the world to protect them. 01:08:50.640 --> 01:08:55.040 And when we let these things play out the way God commands, 01:08:55.040 --> 01:08:57.600 society is structured in such a way that there aren't nearly as 01:08:57.600 --> 01:08:58.560 many battles. 01:08:58.560 --> 01:09:02.880 The reason we have so many battles waging simultaneously today against us 01:09:03.120 --> 01:09:06.480 is because so many of these different facets of love have been 01:09:06.480 --> 01:09:10.640 inverted and torn down and used as weapons against us in what 01:09:10.640 --> 01:09:13.360 will be the final destruction of our society if we let it 01:09:13.360 --> 01:09:14.080 keep going. 01:09:14.080 --> 01:09:17.120 We don't have another three generations to clean this stuff up. 01:09:17.120 --> 01:09:21.040 And if we love our future generations, if we love our kids 01:09:21.040 --> 01:09:24.400 and our grandkids, we have to stop the evil today that's being 01:09:24.400 --> 01:09:26.800 done in the name of love. 01:09:27.120 --> 01:09:32.480 For paternalistic love and in the other direction, piety, there are a 01:09:32.480 --> 01:09:37.440 handful of different areas in which this shows up most saliently. 01:09:37.440 --> 01:09:40.000 Well mention some of them. 01:09:40.000 --> 01:09:43.280 But just to sort of list them, you have the social, the 01:09:43.280 --> 01:09:47.760 political, the national, which is really related to the two I just 01:09:47.760 --> 01:09:50.560 mentioned, and then the familial. 01:09:50.560 --> 01:09:54.240 Much of this flows from the family and from the nature of 01:09:54.240 --> 01:09:55.280 the family. 01:09:55.280 --> 01:10:01.120 And so the most immediate example with which everyone should be familiar, 01:10:01.120 --> 01:10:04.640 would be a father for his family. 01:10:04.640 --> 01:10:08.000 That is the fundamental nature of this sort of love. 01:10:08.000 --> 01:10:12.320 It is it is of course agape, because it is a self-sacrificing 01:10:12.320 --> 01:10:17.040 love. But it has a different aspect to it. 01:10:17.040 --> 01:10:21.280 Not in the sense that we use in the modern world paternalistic 01:10:21.280 --> 01:10:25.600 as a pejorative, which I recommend that everyone stop doing that because 01:10:25.600 --> 01:10:27.360 it is not a pejorative. 01:10:27.360 --> 01:10:30.160 It is a term that we should have to describe something that 01:10:30.160 --> 01:10:34.480 is fundamentally important to human nature and to human society. 01:10:34.480 --> 01:10:41.920 But paternalism, paternalistic love is care for the lesser. 01:10:41.920 --> 01:10:46.320 The first instance again is family, because the father cares for his 01:10:46.320 --> 01:10:50.960 wife, who is inferior to him in that relationship, and in most 01:10:50.960 --> 01:10:54.880 other ways typically, not least of all strength, God has sort of 01:10:54.880 --> 01:10:59.360 built that into the system and made some of that hierarchy undeniably 01:10:59.360 --> 01:11:05.200 obvious. Children also are inferior to the father of the household. 01:11:05.200 --> 01:11:07.920 Just naturally, that is the way God has built the system. 01:11:07.920 --> 01:11:11.040 There is a hierarchy there, there is a higher and a lower. 01:11:11.040 --> 01:11:13.760 The father is to have paternalistic love. 01:11:13.760 --> 01:11:15.120 The children are to have piety. 01:11:16.080 --> 01:11:19.120 They are to respect him, they are to honor him. 01:11:19.120 --> 01:11:24.640 The fourth commandment, of course, is in play here very obviously. 01:11:24.640 --> 01:11:29.440 I would read a short section of scripture with regard to husbands 01:11:29.440 --> 01:11:34.720 and wives, not to get into that topic specifically this week because 01:11:34.720 --> 01:11:38.480 next week we will be covering marriage, but it is relevant here 01:11:38.480 --> 01:11:44.240 because it touches on both faith, paternalistic love and piety, and so 01:11:44.240 --> 01:11:49.920 from Peter, likewise wives be subject to your own husbands, so that 01:11:49.920 --> 01:11:52.880 even if some do not obey the word, they may be one 01:11:52.880 --> 01:11:56.480 without a word by the conduct of their wives, when they see 01:11:56.480 --> 01:11:58.720 your respectful and pure conduct. 01:11:58.720 --> 01:12:02.320 Do not let your adorning be external, the braiding of hair, and 01:12:02.320 --> 01:12:05.840 the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear, but 01:12:05.840 --> 01:12:09.120 let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart, with the 01:12:09.120 --> 01:12:13.600 imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight 01:12:13.600 --> 01:12:17.280 is very precious, for this is how the holy women who hoped 01:12:17.280 --> 01:12:22.000 in God used to adorn themselves, by submitting to their own husbands, 01:12:22.000 --> 01:12:27.040 as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord, and you are her children, 01:12:27.040 --> 01:12:30.800 if you do good, and do not fear anything that is frightening. 01:12:30.800 --> 01:12:36.160 Likewise husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honour 01:12:36.160 --> 01:12:39.680 to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with 01:12:39.680 --> 01:12:42.880 you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not 01:12:42.880 --> 01:12:45.360 be hindered. 01:12:45.760 --> 01:12:49.840 In this passage we very clearly see both in the first section 01:12:49.920 --> 01:12:55.440 primarily piety of the wife toward her husband, but then we also 01:12:55.440 --> 01:12:59.920 see the paternalistic love of the husband for his wife. 01:13:00.320 --> 01:13:05.360 Both of these aspects are vitally important to a marriage, and we'll 01:13:05.360 --> 01:13:07.760 get into that next week. 01:13:07.760 --> 01:13:11.760 But part of that you can see here, holy women, you can 01:13:11.760 --> 01:13:13.280 sub in the word pious there. 01:13:13.280 --> 01:13:15.760 They mean roughly the same thing. 01:13:15.760 --> 01:13:18.320 And that is what we are talking about here, because of course 01:13:18.400 --> 01:13:23.520 the terms impious or impious, whichever way you prefer to pronounce that, 01:13:23.520 --> 01:13:29.760 and pious are the adjectives describing this sort of love, or the 01:13:29.760 --> 01:13:32.080 lack of this sort of love. 01:13:32.080 --> 01:13:36.240 Those who have a proper piety with regard to those who are 01:13:36.240 --> 01:13:38.400 superior are pious. 01:13:38.400 --> 01:13:40.960 Those who lack it are impious. 01:13:40.960 --> 01:13:42.080 That's wicked. 01:13:42.080 --> 01:13:43.360 That is a sin. 01:13:43.360 --> 01:13:47.360 That is something you should not have. 01:13:47.360 --> 01:13:51.680 To briefly address a tangentially related issue because I know that some 01:13:52.080 --> 01:13:56.560 listeners, particularly perhaps some of our female listeners, will have this in 01:13:56.560 --> 01:14:00.560 mind. Well, what happens when you have an abusive master in the 01:14:00.560 --> 01:14:04.880 master slave relationship, or an abusive husband, in the relationship of a 01:14:04.880 --> 01:14:06.400 husband and wife? 01:14:06.480 --> 01:14:10.800 The answer to that is that generally speaking there is still that 01:14:10.800 --> 01:14:12.400 duty to love and obey. 01:14:12.400 --> 01:14:16.000 However, it comes with a very important caveat. 01:14:16.000 --> 01:14:22.400 God has placed others in higher offices to deal with those problems. 01:14:22.400 --> 01:14:27.440 This has been the case in every society, because it is partly 01:14:27.440 --> 01:14:32.720 the duty of depending on your system, either the local aristocrat or 01:14:32.720 --> 01:14:38.480 the king, to deal with abusive slave masters and abusive husbands. 01:14:38.480 --> 01:14:42.080 That is an issue for those higher up the chain, higher in 01:14:42.080 --> 01:14:44.320 the hierarchy, to address. 01:14:44.320 --> 01:14:46.480 And it should be addressed. 01:14:46.480 --> 01:14:49.600 It is properly addressed. 01:14:49.600 --> 01:14:53.360 A master who beats his slaves should be punished. 01:14:53.360 --> 01:14:57.120 That's not to say you can't punish your slaves with corporal punishment. 01:14:57.120 --> 01:15:00.800 That is permitted in Scripture, explicitly permitted in Scripture, and so a 01:15:00.800 --> 01:15:02.720 Christian cannot say that is sin. 01:15:02.720 --> 01:15:06.560 But if you beat your slaves without reason, or you are excessive 01:15:06.560 --> 01:15:11.600 in how you punish them, those who are above you, your masters, 01:15:11.600 --> 01:15:16.160 should punish you, typically in part by taking away your slaves so 01:15:16.160 --> 01:15:17.600 you can no longer abuse them. 01:15:17.600 --> 01:15:20.480 The same is true with regard to husbands and wives, those higher 01:15:20.480 --> 01:15:25.280 up the hierarchy have a duty to ensure the husbands are acting 01:15:25.280 --> 01:15:30.000 appropriately with regard to what has been entrusted to their care. 01:15:30.000 --> 01:15:33.040 Yes, to some degree your home is supposed to be a castle 01:15:33.120 --> 01:15:35.760 is supposed to be inviolet, and you are supposed to be master 01:15:35.760 --> 01:15:37.360 of the house. 01:15:37.360 --> 01:15:40.800 But that comes with duties, and you answer to those who are 01:15:40.800 --> 01:15:44.160 superior, just as those who are superior answer to those up the 01:15:44.160 --> 01:15:48.240 chain, and eventually there is a man who answers only to God. 01:15:48.240 --> 01:15:52.400 You probably shouldn't envy that man, because answering only to God should 01:15:52.400 --> 01:15:54.320 be terrifying. 01:15:54.320 --> 01:15:59.600 But that is part of this, because that really shades into the 01:15:59.600 --> 01:16:02.240 social and the political. 01:16:02.240 --> 01:16:05.280 You could consider the political a subset of the social if you 01:16:05.440 --> 01:16:10.480 consider the social to be an expansive term, but to distinguish them 01:16:10.800 --> 01:16:11.120 for 01:16:12.000 --> 01:16:16.400 the purpose of describing both sorts of hierarchy that I mean with 01:16:16.400 --> 01:16:20.400 regard to piety and paternalistic love. 01:16:20.400 --> 01:16:25.680 The social hierarchy would be those who are simply higher in society, 01:16:25.680 --> 01:16:30.640 so an aristocrat aristocrat not simply in the political sense, but just 01:16:30.640 --> 01:16:32.080 in the social sense. 01:16:32.080 --> 01:16:35.600 Because those who are, for instance, wealthier have certain duties. 01:16:35.600 --> 01:16:40.240 There's a certain form of paternalism, of paternalistic love they should show 01:16:40.800 --> 01:16:44.400 for others, for those who are lower in the hierarchy. 01:16:44.400 --> 01:16:47.760 God has entrusted you with more, you are to do more 01:16:48.960 --> 01:16:53.360 with your goods, with your resources, with the things entrusted to you. 01:16:53.360 --> 01:16:55.840 God's gifts come with duties. 01:16:55.840 --> 01:16:57.680 That is simply the nature of it. 01:16:57.680 --> 01:17:00.640 Don't think of it as being, oh, it's a burden and I 01:17:00.640 --> 01:17:01.600 have to do X, Y. 01:17:01.680 --> 01:17:04.320 No, think of it as God has given you a gift. 01:17:04.320 --> 01:17:05.120 Use it. 01:17:05.120 --> 01:17:07.120 You have the privilege of doing good. 01:17:07.120 --> 01:17:07.920 You have the privilege of 01:17:08.800 --> 01:17:12.640 being a blessing in the lives of others, because God has given 01:17:12.640 --> 01:17:14.240 you the ability to do so. 01:17:14.240 --> 01:17:15.680 That is a great privilege. 01:17:15.680 --> 01:17:18.320 It is a duty as well, but you should see it as 01:17:18.320 --> 01:17:20.480 a good thing, you should do it joyfully. 01:17:20.480 --> 01:17:24.240 Of course, scripture, God loves a joyful giver. 01:17:24.240 --> 01:17:30.480 The political, meanwhile, is the strictly political, so those who report to 01:17:30.480 --> 01:17:33.760 the king, those who report to those who report to the king, 01:17:33.760 --> 01:17:35.200 etcetera, down that chain. 01:17:35.200 --> 01:17:39.120 That is the strictly political that is the hierarchy that runs the 01:17:39.120 --> 01:17:43.920 nation. It is almost militaristic in terms of the strictness of the 01:17:44.320 --> 01:17:46.960 hierarchy of who reports to whom. 01:17:46.960 --> 01:17:49.920 And of course the military is probably the best example of a 01:17:49.920 --> 01:17:53.360 strict reporting hierarchy. 01:17:53.360 --> 01:17:58.480 There's a little difference there in how how that functions with regard 01:17:58.480 --> 01:18:03.280 to piety and paternalism, because it's the military. 01:18:03.280 --> 01:18:05.920 But it is a good example of a strict hierarchy. 01:18:05.920 --> 01:18:09.760 Politics is probably the closest that we come in a properly organized 01:18:09.760 --> 01:18:14.480 system Where you still have a very clear sense of the piety 01:18:14.480 --> 01:18:18.800 owed those higher and the paternalistic love owed those lower. 01:18:18.800 --> 01:18:23.840 Because the king, first and foremost, is in the office of the 01:18:23.840 --> 01:18:26.080 father of the nation. 01:18:26.080 --> 01:18:31.120 Not in the sense of perhaps capital F and the rest of 01:18:31.120 --> 01:18:34.560 the relevant letters capital for that title. 01:18:34.560 --> 01:18:37.440 Because that would be assigned to the man who was seen as 01:18:37.440 --> 01:18:40.800 founding the nation, so perhaps Bismarck for Germany. 01:18:40.800 --> 01:18:43.200 Every nation has their example. 01:18:43.200 --> 01:18:48.400 Israel being old Testament Israel at least being Israel, conveniently. 01:18:48.400 --> 01:18:51.520 But the office of the King of the man who holds the 01:18:51.520 --> 01:18:56.400 highest office in the land is first and foremost and fundamentally that 01:18:56.400 --> 01:18:57.680 of a father. 01:18:57.680 --> 01:19:01.680 He is the father of his nation, he has a paternalistic duty 01:19:01.680 --> 01:19:05.280 to all of those under him, and those under him owe him 01:19:05.280 --> 01:19:06.640 piety in turn. 01:19:06.640 --> 01:19:11.280 That is why historically, the church, as part of her liturgy, has 01:19:11.280 --> 01:19:15.680 prayed for the king, has prayed for the health of those who 01:19:16.160 --> 01:19:18.560 rule over the nation. 01:19:18.560 --> 01:19:23.520 Because that is piety that is owed to those in those offices. 01:19:23.520 --> 01:19:26.640 Those offices are created by God. 01:19:26.640 --> 01:19:30.240 Those men are placed into those offices or at least permitted to 01:19:30.240 --> 01:19:33.040 hold those offices by God. 01:19:33.040 --> 01:19:37.280 And part of our duty as subjects is to be pious toward 01:19:37.280 --> 01:19:41.360 them, and their duty in turn is to be paternalistic with respect 01:19:41.360 --> 01:19:44.320 to the nation to seek the good of those who are under 01:19:44.320 --> 01:19:47.360 them, which fundamentally is what this is. 01:19:47.360 --> 01:19:51.200 It is important to remember that this shades into agape even though 01:19:51.200 --> 01:19:53.680 it is distinct from it. 01:19:53.680 --> 01:19:58.880 Paternalistic love is a love that seeks the good of the lesser. 01:19:58.880 --> 01:20:01.840 It is a love that seeks the good of the inferior, a 01:20:01.840 --> 01:20:05.040 love that seeks the good of those who are placed under the 01:20:05.040 --> 01:20:09.840 one who is exercising who is pursuing that kind of love? 01:20:09.840 --> 01:20:14.880 It comes with a certain sort of control depending on the office. 01:20:14.880 --> 01:20:19.520 It comes with authority, which agape doesn't really do that. 01:20:19.520 --> 01:20:24.400 Agape is not necessarily between peers, but it is not a relationship 01:20:24.400 --> 01:20:28.240 with regard to authority and submission. 01:20:28.240 --> 01:20:29.760 Paternalism is. 01:20:29.760 --> 01:20:30.800 Piety is 01:20:33.200 --> 01:20:38.720 To some degree, it's helpful that this is called piety in English, 01:20:38.720 --> 01:20:44.480 because we fundamentally understand piety in the religious context. 01:20:46.240 --> 01:20:51.200 But that gives us a true sense of this sort of love, 01:20:51.200 --> 01:20:54.640 of the inferior for the superior, because we are supposed to have 01:20:54.640 --> 01:20:57.840 piety with regard to God. 01:20:57.840 --> 01:21:02.960 And God does indeed have a paternalistic love with regard to us, 01:21:02.960 --> 01:21:06.240 because He is the one who provides us our daily bread, He 01:21:06.240 --> 01:21:08.800 is the one who provides us air to breathe, and water to 01:21:08.800 --> 01:21:12.880 drink, and sunlight, and everything else that is good in our lives, 01:21:12.880 --> 01:21:16.160 He provides for us because He is our loving Father. 01:21:16.160 --> 01:21:20.080 That is paternalistic love on the part of God toward us. 01:21:20.080 --> 01:21:25.040 Our duty is to show piety back to him is to show 01:21:25.040 --> 01:21:27.840 that form of love back to God and other forms of love 01:21:27.840 --> 01:21:32.480 as well, but in this specific case, we are to be pious 01:21:32.480 --> 01:21:37.520 with regard to the superior, the ultimate superior, God Himself 01:21:38.960 --> 01:21:42.880 and that gives us the anti type of which all of these 01:21:42.880 --> 01:21:46.000 other relationships are types. 01:21:46.000 --> 01:21:47.680 That is what they are. 01:21:47.680 --> 01:21:51.440 Think of that when you think of this sort of relationship because 01:21:52.000 --> 01:21:55.920 the father of the household is supposed to be the type of 01:21:55.920 --> 01:21:57.840 God in his household. 01:21:57.840 --> 01:22:00.960 That is the role he has, that is the office that he 01:22:00.960 --> 01:22:04.080 holds. And the same is true of the king with regard to 01:22:04.080 --> 01:22:09.200 his nation, the aristocrat with regard to his territory, the manager with 01:22:09.200 --> 01:22:11.760 regard to his employees. 01:22:11.760 --> 01:22:16.400 All of these relationships are types of that. 01:22:16.400 --> 01:22:18.480 They're not necessarily the fullness of it. 01:22:18.480 --> 01:22:21.280 They may emphasize different aspects in different ways. 01:22:21.280 --> 01:22:25.040 The father, of course, is the fullest sense of it, and the 01:22:25.040 --> 01:22:28.720 king would be in some ways, the king is even a fuller 01:22:28.720 --> 01:22:32.240 sense than the father because the king wields more ultimate power with 01:22:32.240 --> 01:22:35.360 regard to punishment, which God does. 01:22:35.360 --> 01:22:38.560 But it flows fundamentally first and foremost from the family, that is 01:22:38.640 --> 01:22:41.680 the unit that makes up the nation and everything else. 01:22:42.240 --> 01:22:46.240 And so that is a type of this office. 01:22:46.240 --> 01:22:50.320 It is a type of that love, of this relationship. 01:22:50.320 --> 01:22:54.320 The father owing the paternalistic love to those under him, those under 01:22:54.320 --> 01:22:57.920 him owing piety to him, being a type of what we owe 01:22:57.920 --> 01:23:00.960 to God and God doesn't owe to us but what God gives 01:23:00.960 --> 01:23:01.840 to us. 01:23:01.840 --> 01:23:05.200 In a sense, perhaps you could say God owes it to us, 01:23:05.200 --> 01:23:10.000 but only in so far as God has bound himself with promises 01:23:10.000 --> 01:23:11.520 in his word. 01:23:11.520 --> 01:23:15.440 Because of course no man can bind God, but God can bind 01:23:15.440 --> 01:23:19.520 himself, because God can make a promise, and God does not lie, 01:23:19.520 --> 01:23:22.640 as I've mentioned before, it's incoherent to say it that way, but 01:23:22.640 --> 01:23:25.040 it is sufficient for our purposes. 01:23:25.040 --> 01:23:30.000 God does not lie, God cannot lie, and so when God promises 01:23:30.240 --> 01:23:33.360 he is binding himself. 01:23:33.360 --> 01:23:36.880 He is essentially establishing a duty. 01:23:36.880 --> 01:23:40.800 He is saying this is owed because I have promised it and 01:23:40.800 --> 01:23:44.720 so we can compare it to the relationship that a father has 01:23:44.720 --> 01:23:47.360 with his family, to the relationship that a king has with his 01:23:47.360 --> 01:23:51.120 country, because there are duties there, there are things owed to those 01:23:51.120 --> 01:23:54.560 under those individuals, under those offices. 01:23:54.560 --> 01:23:58.720 In the same way, because God is bound himself, he owes certain 01:23:58.720 --> 01:24:01.920 things to us in that specific sense. 01:24:03.200 --> 01:24:07.200 And the negative case of piety and paternalism, I think is the 01:24:07.200 --> 01:24:12.960 one that is the most directly under assault today, writ large. 01:24:12.960 --> 01:24:16.640 It used to be that the idea of noblesse oblige was just 01:24:17.040 --> 01:24:19.760 a part of Western civilizations. 01:24:19.760 --> 01:24:24.560 Those who were in these superior positions had an inherent moral obligation 01:24:24.560 --> 01:24:25.520 to those beneath them. 01:24:25.520 --> 01:24:27.760 Even if Even if they looked down on them, even if they 01:24:27.760 --> 01:24:31.680 thought, you know, those dirty peasants, I gotta do something for them, 01:24:31.680 --> 01:24:34.640 those in the superior position understand that they still had a duty 01:24:34.640 --> 01:24:35.520 to do it. 01:24:35.520 --> 01:24:40.000 It was a type of love that wasn't necessarily a pure manifestation 01:24:40.000 --> 01:24:44.800 of agape, although in practice it would often take the form of 01:24:44.800 --> 01:24:48.320 charity, as we talked about last week. 01:24:48.320 --> 01:24:53.120 But what we have today is a despising of all hierarchy. 01:24:53.120 --> 01:24:57.920 It what's interesting is that the term that's synonymous with piety in 01:24:57.920 --> 01:25:02.640 the New Testament is usually translated as ungodly or ungodliness. 01:25:02.640 --> 01:25:04.400 And that's absolutely the case. 01:25:04.400 --> 01:25:07.600 If you are impious in the sense that we're talking about here 01:25:07.600 --> 01:25:12.640 today, it is an ungodliness because it's fundamentally rebellion against God. 01:25:12.640 --> 01:25:17.200 When God speaks to slaves, telling them to obey their slave masters, 01:25:17.200 --> 01:25:20.880 he's talking about them obeying as though they were obeying Christ. 01:25:20.880 --> 01:25:23.920 He gives the same command to wives and to children. 01:25:23.920 --> 01:25:26.960 Obey your husband as though you're obeying Christ because you are. 01:25:26.960 --> 01:25:31.280 Because whoever God has put in the superior position is in the 01:25:31.280 --> 01:25:34.560 stead of Christ for the purpose of that office. 01:25:34.560 --> 01:25:38.560 Whatever they have, whatever power that they have and authority that they 01:25:38.560 --> 01:25:41.760 have, it is for those beneath them to do good and not 01:25:41.760 --> 01:25:42.800 to do evil. 01:25:42.800 --> 01:25:46.160 And there are many other places in Scripture where the admonitions to 01:25:46.160 --> 01:25:50.560 those in those positions is that they will have the greater amount 01:25:50.560 --> 01:25:53.280 to answer for to God if they fail to do what they're 01:25:53.280 --> 01:25:54.080 called to do. 01:25:54.080 --> 01:25:57.120 A slave doesn't have much to answer for except piety. 01:25:57.120 --> 01:25:59.840 All the slave has to do is what he's told. 01:25:59.840 --> 01:26:02.240 In a way, that is a kind of freedom that someone who's 01:26:02.240 --> 01:26:04.560 much further up the ladder doesn't have. 01:26:04.560 --> 01:26:09.920 Because the man who has far more authority has far more obligations. 01:26:09.920 --> 01:26:12.240 He's obligated up and down. 01:26:12.240 --> 01:26:15.360 The man at the very bottom is only obligated upwards. 01:26:15.360 --> 01:26:19.280 And so his piety is the fulfillment of all of his moral 01:26:19.280 --> 01:26:21.040 duties for this type of love. 01:26:21.040 --> 01:26:23.920 Whereas someone who's in the middle, who's up at the very top 01:26:24.000 --> 01:26:29.600 of these sorts of hierarchies, the paternalistic hierarchy, has far more to 01:26:29.600 --> 01:26:31.280 lose if he gets it wrong. 01:26:31.280 --> 01:26:33.440 He has far more ways to fail. 01:26:33.440 --> 01:26:37.120 And yet what we see in society today is tearing that down, 01:26:37.120 --> 01:26:40.880 saying all men are created equal, that no one is superior. 01:26:40.880 --> 01:26:45.120 To even use that term superior and inferior will get you excommunicated 01:26:45.120 --> 01:26:46.240 from churches today. 01:26:46.240 --> 01:26:47.600 Isn't that fascinating? 01:26:47.600 --> 01:26:49.440 That's not scriptural. 01:26:49.440 --> 01:26:50.480 It's wicked. 01:26:50.480 --> 01:26:52.880 And it's what's happening in our churches. 01:26:52.880 --> 01:26:58.960 Because despising, being ungodly, being impious is exactly what the world has 01:26:58.960 --> 01:27:00.400 trained everyone to do. 01:27:00.400 --> 01:27:03.440 And if you talk like that, if you talk like an egalitarian 01:27:03.600 --> 01:27:05.120 and you'll fit in everywhere. 01:27:05.120 --> 01:27:08.560 No one's gonna yell at you if you talk like an egalitarian. 01:27:08.560 --> 01:27:11.520 You will be patted on the head, you're gonna sit right in 01:27:11.520 --> 01:27:14.960 the middle and everyone's gonna like you, and you're gonna just be 01:27:14.960 --> 01:27:18.640 the perfect example of everybody being like everybody else. 01:27:18.640 --> 01:27:20.960 Why? Because everybody says exactly the same crap. 01:27:20.960 --> 01:27:24.880 Even though it's lies, even though it's burning down the world, when 01:27:24.880 --> 01:27:28.720 you do what the new global religion says to do, you're gonna 01:27:28.720 --> 01:27:30.080 have an easy life. 01:27:30.080 --> 01:27:32.400 And the guy who comes along and says, Well, actually, there are 01:27:32.400 --> 01:27:35.360 those who are placed in superior positions by God and they have 01:27:35.360 --> 01:27:37.600 a duty to God to be paternalistic. 01:27:37.600 --> 01:27:40.800 And those who are beneath them have a duty of piety to 01:27:40.800 --> 01:27:41.840 those above them. 01:27:41.840 --> 01:27:43.760 That's the guy who's gonna get shot. 01:27:43.760 --> 01:27:45.920 That's the guy who's gonna get excommunicated. 01:27:45.920 --> 01:27:47.600 That's the guy who's gonna be a target. 01:27:47.600 --> 01:27:49.840 Because that is what God says to do. 01:27:49.840 --> 01:27:53.120 The order that we're talking about when we're looking at the inversion 01:27:53.120 --> 01:27:55.680 of this love is the order that we're seeing in the world 01:27:55.680 --> 01:27:58.960 today, which is fundamental disorder at every level. 01:27:58.960 --> 01:28:01.760 That's part of the reason for the leadership episode is to just 01:28:01.760 --> 01:28:06.240 kind of begin to get guys thinking about what would proper leadership 01:28:06.240 --> 01:28:08.320 look like in any generic situation? 01:28:08.480 --> 01:28:11.680 It wasn't specific guidance for being a father or a husband or 01:28:11.680 --> 01:28:12.880 a political leader or anything. 01:28:12.880 --> 01:28:17.600 It's like what are the principles undergirding when men lead and other 01:28:17.600 --> 01:28:18.560 men follow? 01:28:18.560 --> 01:28:22.720 And clearly one of those is that some men are inherently superior 01:28:22.880 --> 01:28:23.920 in some ways. 01:28:23.920 --> 01:28:26.560 And in some ways, at some point you just gotta pick a 01:28:26.560 --> 01:28:28.000 guy and back him. 01:28:28.000 --> 01:28:32.080 Whether he deserves to be in a superior position, if he's the 01:28:32.080 --> 01:28:35.280 guy who is promoted above you, it's his problem now. 01:28:35.280 --> 01:28:36.640 It's not your problem. 01:28:36.640 --> 01:28:39.200 Your problem, your duty is one of piety. 01:28:39.200 --> 01:28:41.440 And his is one of paternalism. 01:28:41.440 --> 01:28:42.720 And then that's the end of it. 01:28:42.720 --> 01:28:44.320 Do you fulfill those duties? 01:28:44.320 --> 01:28:46.000 Whether he deserves to be in the position or not. 01:28:46.400 --> 01:28:49.440 Once it's his, the question is, can he live up to it? 01:28:49.440 --> 01:28:52.720 And sometimes the best thing that we can do, as we're in 01:28:52.720 --> 01:28:57.120 some ways kind of starting from scratch here, is just picking a 01:28:57.120 --> 01:29:02.240 guy and going and setting expectations and hoping and supporting those to 01:29:02.240 --> 01:29:04.160 live up to those expectations. 01:29:04.160 --> 01:29:05.520 That's piety too. 01:29:05.520 --> 01:29:06.800 Like this is my guy. 01:29:06.800 --> 01:29:08.320 I'm gonna back his play. 01:29:08.320 --> 01:29:13.200 I'm gonna support him because he's responsible for everything that happens. 01:29:13.200 --> 01:29:17.360 I was responsible as a manager for everything that my guys did. 01:29:17.360 --> 01:29:19.680 I was a myth of the 20th century over the weekend. 01:29:19.680 --> 01:29:21.520 You can we'll put a link in the show notes if you 01:29:21.520 --> 01:29:23.920 want to hear me talk about stuff totally unrelated to this. 01:29:24.160 --> 01:29:26.720 But I talked a bit about management at Apple. 01:29:26.720 --> 01:29:29.360 And one of the things that I didn't understand until I was 01:29:29.360 --> 01:29:33.360 a manager was that when you're in the middle like that, your 01:29:33.360 --> 01:29:36.000 job is your guy's job. 01:29:36.000 --> 01:29:38.560 My job was their work output. 01:29:38.560 --> 01:29:41.440 I was responsible for everything that they did. 01:29:41.440 --> 01:29:43.600 They weren't responsible for what I did. 01:29:43.600 --> 01:29:48.320 They had only a pious duty to deliver what expectations I set. 01:29:48.320 --> 01:29:52.400 And I was accountable upstream for their duty to do to do 01:29:52.400 --> 01:29:54.880 what they had to do or when they failed to do it. 01:29:54.880 --> 01:29:59.440 If something went wrong, my management chain didn't yell at my guys, 01:29:59.440 --> 01:30:02.560 they yelled at me, even though I hadn't done anything wrong, because 01:30:02.560 --> 01:30:03.760 I did do something wrong. 01:30:03.760 --> 01:30:06.640 My guys did something wrong, which meant that I did something wrong. 01:30:06.640 --> 01:30:09.200 Because either I let it happen or I didn't know about it. 01:30:09.200 --> 01:30:10.400 I was responsible. 01:30:10.400 --> 01:30:12.080 That's how accountability works. 01:30:12.080 --> 01:30:16.640 And so the person who's in the superior position has a lot 01:30:16.640 --> 01:30:18.080 more going on. 01:30:18.080 --> 01:30:21.840 And when someone's in that position, the duty of piety is like 01:30:22.000 --> 01:30:22.880 help the guy. 01:30:22.880 --> 01:30:25.360 And the duty that he has to those beneath him is to 01:30:25.360 --> 01:30:28.960 be paternalistic, to look out for and to protect and help in 01:30:28.960 --> 01:30:30.480 whatever way you can. 01:30:30.480 --> 01:30:35.760 And the value of understanding these hierarchies and understanding that there's a 01:30:35.760 --> 01:30:39.280 scriptural and there's a spiritual aspect to the structure of the thing 01:30:39.440 --> 01:30:41.360 is that this isn't man-made. 01:30:41.360 --> 01:30:41.760 God God 01:30:42.880 --> 01:30:46.960 gave this stuff to us because God designed the universe this way. 01:30:46.960 --> 01:30:50.160 And the rebellion that we see against the design of the universe 01:30:50.160 --> 01:30:52.080 is ultimately impiety. 01:30:52.080 --> 01:30:56.160 It's ultimately ungodliness and rebellion against the Creator. 01:30:56.160 --> 01:30:59.360 Which again is why BLM had that laundry list. 01:30:59.360 --> 01:31:05.120 BLM's impious laundry list of rebellion against all hierarchy was because Satan 01:31:05.120 --> 01:31:07.040 knows what he's doing with that stuff. 01:31:07.040 --> 01:31:08.960 He knows how to burn everything down. 01:31:09.120 --> 01:31:12.640 And is by going after this stuff that the world says, yeah, 01:31:12.640 --> 01:31:14.160 that's that's evil, that's wrong. 01:31:14.160 --> 01:31:16.960 You can't say the one group is better than another group. 01:31:16.960 --> 01:31:19.440 What could possibly be worse than that? 01:31:19.760 --> 01:31:21.440 No one cares if it's true. 01:31:21.680 --> 01:31:25.600 If you say, well, here's proof, they get even madder because now 01:31:25.680 --> 01:31:29.040 you're committing even more sins against the new global religion. 01:31:29.040 --> 01:31:33.680 Like, well, if being honest and saying the truth is a sin, 01:31:33.680 --> 01:31:36.560 then you need to sin as hard and as loudly as you 01:31:36.560 --> 01:31:39.920 can, because you have a duty, we all have a duty of 01:31:39.920 --> 01:31:45.040 piety up the stream to God ultimately, and to tell the truth, 01:31:45.040 --> 01:31:47.120 even when others are lying. 01:31:47.120 --> 01:31:47.680 So So 01:31:48.800 --> 01:31:51.440 one of the reasons you know we Corey and I in the 01:31:51.440 --> 01:31:55.600 past have gone after pastors a lot is not hatred or despising 01:31:55.840 --> 01:31:59.120 or a lack of respect for what that office should be, but 01:31:59.120 --> 01:32:02.960 it's an acknowledgement that those men who were put in positions to 01:32:02.960 --> 01:32:07.360 do these things have failed, almost universally have failed to do the 01:32:07.360 --> 01:32:11.680 things that God told them to do, and that we as parishioners 01:32:11.760 --> 01:32:13.040 need them to do. 01:32:13.040 --> 01:32:16.960 Christian men need the spiritual leaders to be leading. 01:32:16.960 --> 01:32:20.080 And when they quit showing up, or when they start shooting us 01:32:20.080 --> 01:32:24.800 in the back, when they cease to have their piety to God, 01:32:24.800 --> 01:32:28.400 we are still on the hook as Christian men with our pious 01:32:28.400 --> 01:32:29.760 duty to God. 01:32:29.760 --> 01:32:34.640 And if the paternalistic duty, whether it's in a political or a 01:32:34.640 --> 01:32:39.200 religious context, if they're failing to look out for their flocks or 01:32:39.200 --> 01:32:44.320 their neighborhoods or their nations, the duty devolves, you know, to effectively 01:32:44.320 --> 01:32:45.760 the lesser magistrate. 01:32:45.760 --> 01:32:48.960 He usually who's in the lesser role still has to put up 01:32:48.960 --> 01:32:50.000 and or shut up. 01:32:50.000 --> 01:32:51.760 This stuff has to get done. 01:32:51.760 --> 01:32:54.480 There's the impetus for creating stone choir. 01:32:54.480 --> 01:32:57.520 Stones crying out because the men were silent. 01:32:57.520 --> 01:33:01.760 Sometimes duty is going to look a little bit strange when the 01:33:01.760 --> 01:33:05.440 duties upstream have been failed by those who were put in positions 01:33:05.440 --> 01:33:07.040 to do them. 01:33:07.040 --> 01:33:10.560 So just keep in mind that a lot of what we see 01:33:10.560 --> 01:33:13.840 in the world is inversion of these things, even when it's being 01:33:13.840 --> 01:33:14.880 done in their name. 01:33:14.880 --> 01:33:19.120 Egalitarianism is sold as the most loving thing ever, saying everyone's exactly 01:33:19.520 --> 01:33:21.760 the same, we love them all exactly the same. 01:33:21.760 --> 01:33:22.880 That's BS. 01:33:22.880 --> 01:33:23.840 It's horse crap. 01:33:23.840 --> 01:33:25.520 It's completely false. 01:33:25.520 --> 01:33:28.400 And it's impossible and it's a lie. 01:33:28.400 --> 01:33:32.720 But as long as they rig rigorously scream and shout and enforce 01:33:32.720 --> 01:33:37.520 it just by hysterics and not with reality, people will either go 01:33:37.520 --> 01:33:38.960 along or they'll rebel. 01:33:38.960 --> 01:33:43.760 And then when you rebel against evil leadership, it's It looks like 01:33:43.760 --> 01:33:47.440 impiety. And that's the reason to talk about these things in a 01:33:47.440 --> 01:33:50.880 kind of structured fashion like this is that when you understand what 01:33:50.880 --> 01:33:55.360 the actual definition of a pious duty upward is, you understand that 01:33:55.360 --> 01:33:58.800 the pious duty upward is not to put up with lies that 01:33:58.800 --> 01:34:01.440 are going to destroy your family and your nation. 01:34:01.440 --> 01:34:02.960 It's to protect it. 01:34:02.960 --> 01:34:06.720 And if you have to protect it from those who are in 01:34:06.720 --> 01:34:10.480 what should be paternalistic positions, then that's what you have to do. 01:34:10.480 --> 01:34:14.160 Because ultimately we all answer to God for our own actions. 01:34:14.160 --> 01:34:18.480 And someone at the very bottom still has duties, even if it 01:34:18.480 --> 01:34:21.440 means leapfrogging over someone who has failed to do them. 01:34:21.440 --> 01:34:23.680 And that was part of the reason for the leadership episode. 01:34:23.840 --> 01:34:25.360 Not everybody's equipped for it. 01:34:25.360 --> 01:34:27.440 But there are gonna be guys that are lower. 01:34:27.440 --> 01:34:29.840 They need to say, you know what, this isn't getting done. 01:34:29.840 --> 01:34:31.120 I need to step up. 01:34:31.120 --> 01:34:32.240 I need to do it. 01:34:32.240 --> 01:34:35.280 It's not usurpation, it's filling a void. 01:34:35.280 --> 01:34:39.840 There's a void of love that is not occurring because the men 01:34:39.840 --> 01:34:44.080 who are tasked by God to do it have done the opposite. 01:34:44.080 --> 01:34:48.560 The inverse case is often the most instructive case, whether it's the 01:34:48.560 --> 01:34:55.040 inversion of familial love, the inversion of paternalistic or pietistic love, it's 01:34:55.040 --> 01:34:58.320 always about either doing what God said to do or doing the 01:34:58.320 --> 01:35:01.840 opposite. And when you run these things backwards, you only get backwards 01:35:01.840 --> 01:35:02.800 results. 01:35:03.040 --> 01:35:08.960 This is one of those episodes, as is somewhat often the case, 01:35:08.960 --> 01:35:12.240 where we could have made a twenty hour episode if we had 01:35:12.240 --> 01:35:16.160 gone over all of the places in Scripture, or even just a 01:35:16.160 --> 01:35:21.600 significant number of the places in Scripture where these issues are mentioned. 01:35:21.600 --> 01:35:25.600 Even just going over all of the instances where love is explicitly 01:35:25.600 --> 01:35:30.240 mentioned, not just implied, not just addressed tangentially or as a concept, 01:35:30.240 --> 01:35:34.960 but explicitly mentioned, quite frankly probably would have taken much longer than 01:35:34.960 --> 01:35:37.200 twenty hours. 01:35:37.200 --> 01:35:40.320 And so it may seem like we didn't use that many citations 01:35:40.400 --> 01:35:45.440 to scripture, but as we've mentioned, that's not always the point of 01:35:45.440 --> 01:35:46.560 this podcast. 01:35:46.560 --> 01:35:49.600 It's not always the point of being a Christian. 01:35:49.600 --> 01:35:52.960 Because there are certain things that God has simply made evident Evident 01:35:52.960 --> 01:35:55.600 in nature to all men. 01:35:55.600 --> 01:35:59.200 And that is one of the reasons that lacking that natural affinity 01:35:59.200 --> 01:36:05.280 for family is so abhorrent, because it is contraum, it is against 01:36:05.280 --> 01:36:10.880 nature. It is something that is alien even to the lower animals. 01:36:10.880 --> 01:36:14.720 And so you don't need a citation to scripture to know that 01:36:14.720 --> 01:36:18.080 you are supposed to love your parents, that you are supposed to 01:36:18.080 --> 01:36:21.200 love your siblings, that you are supposed to love your nieces and 01:36:21.200 --> 01:36:24.880 nephews and your cousins. 01:36:24.880 --> 01:36:28.560 Some of these things are simply obvious. 01:36:28.560 --> 01:36:33.280 And yet, Scripture does actually address them as well. 01:36:33.280 --> 01:36:35.280 God doubles down as it were. 01:36:35.280 --> 01:36:38.080 He wrote it in his first book, his greatest book, which is 01:36:38.080 --> 01:36:41.680 to say creation, and I know that some people object when I 01:36:41.680 --> 01:36:45.600 say that, and I'll continue to say it in part against the 01:36:45.600 --> 01:36:47.280 people who object. 01:36:47.280 --> 01:36:52.640 But when God appeals to something in order to show his greatness, 01:36:52.640 --> 01:36:54.960 he doesn't appeal to his word. 01:36:54.960 --> 01:36:57.440 He appeals to creation. 01:36:57.440 --> 01:37:00.480 And so if you have a problem with saying creation is the 01:37:00.480 --> 01:37:05.120 greater book, feel free as Job to take it up with God. 01:37:05.120 --> 01:37:08.240 See how that goes for you. 01:37:08.240 --> 01:37:12.000 But God doubles down and he mentions it in scripture as well. 01:37:12.000 --> 01:37:15.760 And so to read from another section we have from Colossians three, 01:37:15.760 --> 01:37:19.440 wives submit to your husbands as is fitting in the Lord. 01:37:19.440 --> 01:37:22.800 Husbands love your wives, and do not be harsh with them. 01:37:22.800 --> 01:37:27.920 Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord. 01:37:27.920 --> 01:37:32.240 Fathers do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged. 01:37:32.240 --> 01:37:36.800 Slaves, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters sisters, not 01:37:36.800 --> 01:37:40.880 by way of eye service as people pleasers, but with sincerity of 01:37:40.880 --> 01:37:42.880 heart, fearing the Lord. 01:37:42.880 --> 01:37:47.440 Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for 01:37:47.440 --> 01:37:51.680 men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as 01:37:51.680 --> 01:37:56.400 your reward, you are serving the Lord Christ, for the wrongdoer will 01:37:56.400 --> 01:37:59.360 be paid back for the wrong he has done, and there is 01:37:59.360 --> 01:38:01.120 no partiality. 01:38:01.120 --> 01:38:06.240 Masters, treat your slaves justly and fairly, knowing that you also have 01:38:06.240 --> 01:38:09.440 a master in heaven. 01:38:09.440 --> 01:38:13.040 We can see many of the forms of love that we have 01:38:13.040 --> 01:38:17.760 discussed so far, and some that we will discuss next week in 01:38:17.760 --> 01:38:22.880 just this passage, and we see in particular many references to piety 01:38:23.040 --> 01:38:27.840 and to the duties owed in reverse to that paternalistic love. 01:38:27.840 --> 01:38:31.680 Slaves are to be pious with regard to their masters, and it 01:38:31.680 --> 01:38:36.400 doesn't matter what office the master holds, because you may be a 01:38:36.400 --> 01:38:40.480 slave with regard to social order, you may be a literal slave, 01:38:40.480 --> 01:38:43.920 working on a plantation somewhere. 01:38:43.920 --> 01:38:47.680 You are to be pious with regard to your masters. 01:38:47.680 --> 01:38:50.560 And it says that you are not just to do it for 01:38:50.560 --> 01:38:53.440 a show you are to do it as if you are serving 01:38:53.440 --> 01:38:58.560 the Lord Christ directly, because ultimately that is what you're doing. 01:38:58.560 --> 01:39:03.280 Just as with good works, good works are rendered to neighbor in 01:39:03.280 --> 01:39:04.800 praise of God. 01:39:04.800 --> 01:39:08.480 God doesn't need your good works, God doesn't need your service, God 01:39:08.480 --> 01:39:12.240 doesn't need slaves, and yet we are slaves of God. 01:39:12.240 --> 01:39:14.720 And so all of these duties, all of these things that we 01:39:14.720 --> 01:39:19.120 owe and we render to others, ultimately we are rendering them to 01:39:19.120 --> 01:39:22.640 God God, because we are doing what He has told us to 01:39:22.640 --> 01:39:26.960 do, we are obeying the structure that He has created. 01:39:26.960 --> 01:39:30.080 To some degree it is a place for everything and for everyone, 01:39:30.080 --> 01:39:33.200 and everything and everyone in His place. 01:39:33.200 --> 01:39:37.200 Because all Because all of life is structured, because God has built 01:39:37.200 --> 01:39:39.200 a universe that is ordered. 01:39:39.200 --> 01:39:42.400 There is a hierarchy in everything. 01:39:42.400 --> 01:39:46.880 And so it is important in particular to think of the strict 01:39:46.880 --> 01:39:49.440 hierarchies that we mentioned. 01:39:49.440 --> 01:39:53.760 So in the political sphere, there is a strict hierarchy. 01:39:53.760 --> 01:39:58.400 Sometimes it's important to recognize that strict hierarchy because as Wo said, 01:39:58.400 --> 01:40:02.720 sometimes those higher up the hierarchy fail in their duties, and so 01:40:02.720 --> 01:40:05.360 it falls to those lower down the chain. 01:40:05.360 --> 01:40:09.040 The Magdeburg Confession, we've referenced a number of times, will eventually do 01:40:09.040 --> 01:40:13.840 an episode on that, undoubtedly tying into Romans thirteen. 01:40:13.840 --> 01:40:19.600 But there are times where the lesser magistrate, where the man further 01:40:19.600 --> 01:40:25.600 down, that chain, further down the hierarchy, has to perform the duties 01:40:25.600 --> 01:40:29.280 of an office that is higher than he would naturally have. 01:40:29.280 --> 01:40:33.280 Because those who hold that office have failed. 01:40:33.280 --> 01:40:37.360 That happens in the political sphere, it happens in the social sphere. 01:40:37.360 --> 01:40:41.200 Unfortunately sometimes that sort of thing happens in families as well, where 01:40:41.200 --> 01:40:44.000 perhaps the oldest son has to step up because the father has 01:40:44.000 --> 01:40:46.960 failed in his duties. 01:40:46.960 --> 01:40:48.640 That's not the ideal. 01:40:48.640 --> 01:40:51.680 That makes for a very messy world when that sort of thing 01:40:51.680 --> 01:40:55.520 happens regardless of the sphere in which it happens, and yet is 01:40:55.600 --> 01:40:59.040 the reality of living in a fallen world. 01:40:59.040 --> 01:41:03.600 In a properly ordered world, every man higher up the chain would 01:41:03.600 --> 01:41:08.720 have paternalistic love for everyone under him, and everyone under him would 01:41:08.720 --> 01:41:11.520 be pious with regard to him. 01:41:11.520 --> 01:41:16.080 That's simply not how we find the world. 01:41:16.080 --> 01:41:21.280 Certain violations rise to the level where it is incumbent on us 01:41:21.280 --> 01:41:23.440 as Christian men to act. 01:41:23.440 --> 01:41:26.400 Others we can let slide. 01:41:26.640 --> 01:41:30.160 It is a judgment call This is again a matter of wisdom, 01:41:30.160 --> 01:41:33.040 and we will get more into that when we eventually do an 01:41:33.040 --> 01:41:37.200 episode on, as I promised, and as we've said, the Magdeburg confession 01:41:37.200 --> 01:41:40.000 in Romans thirteen, because those are very closely related. 01:41:40.000 --> 01:41:44.720 That's a topic for that particular episode. 01:41:44.720 --> 01:41:50.080 But at a very basic level, what we are covering in this 01:41:50.080 --> 01:41:53.280 episode and in this series, and this is I guess sort of 01:41:53.280 --> 01:41:58.080 a conclusion for the mini version of the series because certain of 01:41:58.080 --> 01:42:01.680 our audience will not listen to the third one because it is 01:42:01.680 --> 01:42:05.840 going to be explicitly on marriage, and so is not suitable for 01:42:06.080 --> 01:42:12.240 certain listeners, and perhaps others will not want to listen to that. 01:42:12.240 --> 01:42:16.960 But to a very real degree, and in a very real sense, 01:42:16.960 --> 01:42:18.560 much of this is simple. 01:42:18.560 --> 01:42:23.120 It is very easily understood and it comes naturally if you simply 01:42:23.120 --> 01:42:29.440 jettison the false teaching, the propaganda, the programming that the world would 01:42:29.440 --> 01:42:32.240 like you to hear and obey. 01:42:32.240 --> 01:42:35.360 Because God gave you a natural affection for your parents. 01:42:35.920 --> 01:42:39.600 God gave you a natural affection for your siblings. 01:42:39.600 --> 01:42:45.040 God gave you a natural affection for your neighbor, for your friends, 01:42:45.040 --> 01:42:48.960 even for those with whom you just work, you should try to 01:42:48.960 --> 01:42:52.240 develop a friendship there if you can, because we shouldn't be spending 01:42:52.240 --> 01:42:55.120 our lives every day with complete strangers. 01:42:55.120 --> 01:42:57.200 That's unnatural. 01:42:57.200 --> 01:43:01.520 That's antithetical to the way that God designed human beings to exist 01:43:01.840 --> 01:43:05.280 among other human beings. 01:43:05.280 --> 01:43:09.120 But all of these affections, all of these loves, you get them 01:43:09.120 --> 01:43:12.880 for free just by being a human being, because God built them 01:43:12.880 --> 01:43:14.240 into your nature. 01:43:14.400 --> 01:43:18.240 And so you love your family because they're your family. 01:43:18.240 --> 01:43:20.240 You love your friends because they're your friends. 01:43:20.240 --> 01:43:22.720 You love your neighbor because he is your neighbor. 01:43:22.720 --> 01:43:25.920 You love your nation because it is your nation. 01:43:25.920 --> 01:43:28.320 Because they are of the same blood as you. 01:43:28.640 --> 01:43:32.640 Because they are your extended family, because God has given you that, 01:43:32.640 --> 01:43:35.600 because it is a blessing from God, and so you love it 01:43:35.760 --> 01:43:37.920 because that comes naturally. 01:43:37.920 --> 01:43:42.800 Yes, you can cultivate it it isn't necessarily just the emotional love, 01:43:42.800 --> 01:43:46.640 which we can call patriotism, but we can call the intellectual aspect 01:43:46.640 --> 01:43:50.000 patriotism as well, because you can fall in love with the history 01:43:50.000 --> 01:43:54.640 of your country, with the accomplishments of your people. 01:43:54.640 --> 01:43:58.720 But these things come naturally, they are part of simply being a 01:43:58.720 --> 01:44:02.640 human being who is not acting contrary to nature. 01:44:02.640 --> 01:44:06.400 As Wo said and as we've emphasized in this episode and others, 01:44:06.400 --> 01:44:10.000 the modern world wants you to act in ways that are totally 01:44:10.000 --> 01:44:13.920 antithetical to what it means to be a human being. 01:44:13.920 --> 01:44:17.120 They want you to be an abomination, to be something that is 01:44:17.120 --> 01:44:22.960 so contrary to nature, so contrary to God's design, that you would 01:44:22.960 --> 01:44:28.480 be unrecognizable to any of your ancestors, and you are certainly not 01:44:28.720 --> 01:44:31.200 what God wants you to be. 01:44:31.200 --> 01:44:34.800 What God wants you to be is in line with the nature 01:44:34.800 --> 01:44:36.400 He created. 01:44:36.400 --> 01:44:41.600 Yes, our nature is fallen, and we have certain desires that are 01:44:41.600 --> 01:44:45.440 sinful. And yes, desire itself can be sinful. 01:44:46.400 --> 01:44:52.320 Concupiscence. We do have disorder as part of living in a fallen 01:44:52.320 --> 01:44:57.120 world, but our nature is not replaced by original sin. 01:44:57.120 --> 01:45:01.200 Our nature is not corrupted to the point where nothing good remains. 01:45:01.200 --> 01:45:03.520 Everything is tainted. 01:45:03.520 --> 01:45:09.440 That is true, we are thoroughly sinful, but even in our fallen 01:45:09.440 --> 01:45:15.120 state, our nature itself as a creature of God is good. 01:45:15.120 --> 01:45:18.720 And so if we act in accord with the good parts of 01:45:18.720 --> 01:45:24.160 that nature, with what remains of the good nature that God created, 01:45:24.160 --> 01:45:28.800 we get all these things for free because they simply flow from 01:45:28.800 --> 01:45:30.080 that nature. 01:45:30.080 --> 01:45:33.440 Yes, you have to suppress the desire for the woman who is 01:45:33.440 --> 01:45:34.800 not your wife. 01:45:34.800 --> 01:45:38.320 You have to suppress holding on to a grudge with regard to 01:45:38.320 --> 01:45:43.360 your siblings or your parents or your friends, you have to forgive. 01:45:43.360 --> 01:45:47.600 We know that from scripture from many places. 01:45:47.600 --> 01:45:52.560 But these loves flow naturally, because they are part of your nature, 01:45:52.560 --> 01:45:56.160 they are built into you by God. 01:45:56.160 --> 01:46:00.160 No man naturally hates his parents. 01:46:00.160 --> 01:46:03.920 No man naturally hates his brothers and sisters. 01:46:03.920 --> 01:46:05.840 No man naturally hates his neighbor. 01:46:05.840 --> 01:46:08.640 No man naturally hates his nation. 01:46:08.640 --> 01:46:10.800 All of that is unnatural. 01:46:10.800 --> 01:46:14.400 All of that has been programmed into many of us 01:46:15.280 --> 01:46:20.560 in this society by our wicked rulers, by those who control our 01:46:20.560 --> 01:46:24.080 society and are in service of Satan. 01:46:24.080 --> 01:46:28.160 They want to destroy, they want to subvert, they want you to 01:46:28.160 --> 01:46:37.120 have utterly unnatural, abhorrent desires and preferences. 01:46:37.120 --> 01:46:41.600 It is not that difficult to jettison those things, because they're unnatural 01:46:41.920 --> 01:46:47.760 unnatural. All you have to do to have these loves, to have 01:46:47.760 --> 01:46:51.600 things that are rightly ordered, is act in accord with the good 01:46:51.600 --> 01:46:53.680 nature that God has given you. 01:46:53.920 --> 01:46:57.840 And with regard to the perversions in our nature, with regard to 01:46:57.840 --> 01:47:02.640 the sinful desires, God has given us scripture, and if we spend 01:47:02.640 --> 01:47:06.560 time in his word, we will recognize all of these things in 01:47:06.560 --> 01:47:08.160 our fallen nature. 01:47:08.160 --> 01:47:12.560 that are from sin, that are from original sin, that are from 01:47:12.560 --> 01:47:15.600 the devil, that are not from God. 01:47:15.600 --> 01:47:19.600 And so all that remains, if you jettison those things, is the 01:47:19.600 --> 01:47:26.560 good. And ultimately, that's what this is. 01:47:26.560 --> 01:47:30.480 Love is the good, because the attributes of God, as we have 01:47:30.480 --> 01:47:37.200 mentioned before, are interchangeable as it were, they are identical, because God 01:47:37.200 --> 01:47:40.160 is not composed of parts, and so the good, the beautiful, the 01:47:40.160 --> 01:47:44.320 true, love, all of these things are God's nature. 01:47:44.320 --> 01:47:45.600 They flow from God 01:47:46.560 --> 01:47:50.880 And so love is good, and good is love. 01:47:50.880 --> 01:47:55.680 And if you have that focus on the good parts, on the 01:47:55.680 --> 01:48:00.160 natural parts, in the full sense of nature, in the sense that 01:48:00.160 --> 01:48:05.760 God created it, then these are not challenges, these are not hard 01:48:05.760 --> 01:48:09.360 things. There may be work involved, because of course there's work in 01:48:09.360 --> 01:48:12.320 building any human relationship, and we'll get into that more More next 01:48:12.320 --> 01:48:17.040 week in the marriage episode, because marriage is hard work. 01:48:17.040 --> 01:48:19.600 But at the same time it comes naturally. 01:48:19.600 --> 01:48:25.120 All of these forms of love come naturally. 01:48:25.120 --> 01:48:29.760 And so really in sum, this episode and the full series on 01:48:29.760 --> 01:48:32.000 love is quite simple. 01:48:32.000 --> 01:48:48.880 Love your family, love your nation, love your neighbor, and love God.