Latest / The Family Teams Podcast / Ep. 69 | Why Is Family So Complex?

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Ep. 69 | Why Is Family So Complex? · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  It is more complicated than that, guys. It's clear it's more complicated. We need to be investing and trying to figure this out.
• 0:12
  Hey guys, welcome to the 5-Minute Fatherhood Podcast. I'm your co-host, Jeff Bethke, along with my friend and mentor, Jeremy Pryor. Join us Monday through Friday as we chat about quick tips, skills, and ways to help equip you on your journey as a father to build your multi-generational family team on mission. Stay tuned.
• 0:34
  What's up, guys? Jeff and Jeremy here for another 5-Minute Fatherhood. You might be asking yourself, why do I have to listen to a whole podcast on fatherhood? Why do I have to think about this so much? Why would I even want to join a Facebook group? Or isn't family simple? Isn't life just simple? Why is family complex? Is that a bad thing? Is that a good thing? And I want to tell you guys, family is complicated.
• 0:54
  You can do this, but it's not simple. And one of the passages in Scripture that speak to the complexity that we're dealing with in building a house or building a household, building a family, trying to integrate all these things. How do I help my wife to thrive? How do I help my kids to thrive? How do I pay the mortgage? How do I work hard? It's a lot to manage. It's a lot of work, and it's not simple. But one of the passages that I like about this, Proverbs 9 says, "'Wisdom has built her house.'"
• 1:23
  She has hewn her seven pillars. She has slaughtered her beasts. She has mixed her wine. She has also set her table. She has sent out her young women to call from the highest places in the town. Whoever is simple, let him turn in here. To him who lacks sense, she says, "'Come, eat my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed.'"
• 1:45
  Leave your simple ways and live and walk in the way of insight. I love this passage. It's really describing wisdom like this woman, and she's trying to explain to people, one of the problems that you don't understand about life is you think it's simple and it's not. You think that if you, and life in its complexity is,
• 2:07
  Really, it has to be mastered through wisdom. And so all the time you guys are spending investing and listening to Jeff and I talk, reading other books, talking to other dads, trying to understand and puzzle out the complexity of this role of being a dad. I just want to dial in expectations. That's normal.
• 2:25
  It is complicated what we're trying to do, you guys. Raising kids and creating flourishing houses. And one of the things I, there's a lot of elements of this that I love. Even the idea that she has hewn her seven pillars. Like when we created our family mission statement and wrote our pillars, we decided to write seven pillars, which came directly from this verse. Oh, that's cool.
• 2:43
  trying to talk to our kids about, it is complicated what we're trying to do. And here are the seven pillars we're trying to build our house on, because wisdom has hewn her seven pillars, the mixed wine, the setting of the table. All of this stuff speaks of the complexity and the beauty when you can master the complexity through wisdom, the beautiful stuff that results. And I think that that's what we want to encourage you guys to think about. Don't think about family and fatherhood as simple.
• 3:13
  So many, if you look at a lot of families and houses that are suffering, there's oftentimes a dad who thinks it should be simple. Like there's one principle, like serve me or one principle, let's just love each other. Like one, it is more complicated than that, guys. It's clear it's more complicated. We need to be investing in trying to figure this out.
• 3:34
  Yeah. And I feel like just remind just it's we all need to hear the reminder, especially in our culture that we're swimming upstream in the sense of like a culture of knowledge versus wisdom. Right. Knowledge is easily accessible. It has nothing to do with another person. You can usually gain it fast.
• 3:50
  I do have a fascinating theory on I feel like the ratings of jeopardy have kind of slowed and gone down since the era of the Internet and Google and smartphone because it's not that awesome anymore to know a bunch of random facts because Google can just give them to you. Yeah, right. That's a random theory that we do another episode on. But we are in that era now where you have just the dispensability of all knowledge at your fingertips.
• 4:12
  But we don't have wisdom. And wisdom, like you said, the difference is it's more complex. It takes an actual life lived. It takes an actual formation. It takes an actual path to get there. And it's the long haul. And so that's what I just feel like I always get encouraged by when I re-realize that truth. And hopefully dad's listening will too, is that it...
• 4:33
  It takes a long time and that shouldn't depress you. That should actually like help you. That should impress you. That should lift you up in the sense of, man, like you can, you can relieve some of your stress of thinking that you're going to get some life hack to fatherhood or that you're going to get some trick or tip. And now wisdom is kind of accumulation of all these little nuggets of truth and wisdom and insight, but over a long period of time. And so I know for me, yeah, that's what's huge. And just like a pillars of a house there, there's multiple of them. There's not just one. And at the same time, like you have to have all of them and they kind of,
• 5:02
  Think about how complex it is to actually like do pillars, right? You have to actually kind of be building them all at the same time in an even way or else it would be really lopsided, right? If just one went up and there was no other ones or if one got removed, they're kind of that's hard to actually build something. You need a blueprint, right? You need to actually like map it out. You need exact measurements. You need to plan it. Then you need to actually do it. Then you need to actually assess while you're live in the field, things that go wrong and change it and adapt it. Like it's literally just like building something. It takes an enormous amount of planning.
• 5:29
  and time and resources. But if you do it right, if you do it calculated and you stay the path, then you have a really, really beautiful house that you can live in and that your family can live in and that the generations after you can live in.
• 5:41
  Hey guys, if you like this short content on 5-Minute Fatherhood, then you're going to love long-form interviews that Jeremy and I do with other dads just like you over at Dads Building Teams. We go much more in-depth hearing the stories, challenges, and journeys of different dads who are trying to build multi-generational teams on mission. Just go to whatever podcast platform you use and search for Dads Building Teams.