Latest / The Family Teams Podcast / Ep. 39 | The Father's Responsibility to the Son

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Ep. 39 | The Father's Responsibility to the Son · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:06
  Hey guys, welcome to the 5-Minute Fatherhood Podcast. I'm your co-host, Jeff Beth Key, 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.
• 0:27
  Hey guys, Jeff and Jeremy here for 5-Minute Fatherhood, and we love to glean wisdom, ancient wisdom about family from wherever we can get it. There's all kinds of great places. We spend most of our time looking at the scriptures when it comes to gleaning this ancient wisdom, but I also like to just pull quotes, look at other old books, because back 100-plus years ago, or even in most parts of the world that's outside of kind of the Western world, people just thought about family differently a lot more,
• 0:56
  in that classical context, a lot more multi-generationally. And so I'm always curious about the way that this was set up. And one of the places that I wanted us to look at today is the Talmud. And the Talmud is this ancient, voluminous,
• 1:12
  Jewish writing that really interprets the Torah. Orthodox Jews believe it's the oral law. They call the Torah the written law. And so rabbis have talked, and there's different elements of the Torah that talk about what is the responsibility of a father to a son. And so there are these lists. And so I'm always like, when I read these lists, I'm always fascinated and just want to get Jeff's feedback. So the list in the Talmud of the responsibility that a father has to his son is to teach in the Torah...
• 1:41
  to find him a wife, to teach him a trade, and to teach him to swim. It's always that last one that always got me. But those are the four things. The Torah, find him a wife, teach him a trade, teach him to swim. That's the checklist. And so that's the way that a lot of—and I've talked to and I've heard Jewish fathers actually think very intentionally about this particular checklist. And they think about it, how are we doing this? How am I going to do this as a dad?
• 2:10
  I like the idea of having kind of these little lists of things that we're responsible for. And this is a really interesting one. So I'm curious, Jeff, when I read that or what jumps out of you with that list?
• 2:22
  Yeah, well, I feel like the swim one makes total sense since I live in Maui, and that is integral. You see people tossing four-month-old babies in the ocean and trying to teach them to swim here as locals. And so it's very funny to watch that, or it makes sense to us out here in Maui where ocean is integral to the way of life. I would say, yeah, I think the one that I think is actually – I don't think in the Christian culture we have that hard of a time of –
• 2:45
  relating to marriage, trying to... And if you're listening to this, you're probably married. Finding a wife and then teaching them a trade, that's something our culture does. But I think teach them Torah or teach them scriptures, I don't think that's one we do well. And so I think I actually love that. And it's no... I always like to say, I mean, Jewish people...
• 3:02
  just crush us at how well they know their scriptures, how well they incubate a space that puts the scriptures at the forefront. Obviously, the Midrash structure and some other things with how they go about their way of life, I think just we have a lot to learn. And so I think we need to make sure that's at our forefront of our checklist.
• 3:23
  of not just like the little verses, not just the, this is the command, but like actually understanding the narrative, the story, the scriptures, God's heartbeat, being able to navigate them, study, be well-approved, well-seasoned. And that comes to a, through a lot of discipleship and mentorship and families. And I think, yeah, that's just one thing that stands out to me is like, I, I want that to be as high of a value to...
• 3:45
  us in the Western evangelical church as it is in the Jewish faith. I don't know, Jeremy, what would you add to that? I've been pondering a lot this one, find him a wife. And I think this might come from Genesis, I think, 24, 23, 24, where Abraham...
• 4:03
  took personal responsibility to find a wife for Isaac. And it is an interesting story. I've thought a lot about that story. It's the longest story in the entire Bible with regards to actually locating a spouse, which is a question that we're interacting with all the time with singles that are in our lives. And also, you know, my girls have been saying, asking this question, Dad, is it your job to find us a husband? You know, and it's a good question.
• 4:33
  Again, I don't assume that the way that the Western or even Western Christian world is doing things, which the way we do things is 50, 70 years old, is necessarily any better than the way that ancient cultures did these things or the way they might have been described in Scripture—
• 4:51
  or in books like the Talmud. So anyway, I don't have a great answer to that. I have been growing, I would say at least in maybe a percentage sense, feeling like maybe I'm more responsible for that than I thought, not in the sense of arranging a marriage, but in the sense of really participating in the process of I have a much larger network than my kids do. And so maybe that's something that I should consider or think about and not just sort of let them think that that's a
• 5:20
  Something they have to worry about all on their own. Also, this idea of helping your son or daughter with a trade or really thinking through, okay, what's our responsibility as parents to make sure our kids are set up for the future? I love the quote that a father doesn't meet every need, but a father sees that every need is met.
• 5:41
  I think about this a lot when it comes to education or particularly with trade. Again, I have a large network. My daughter, Kelsey, she's right now interning at a startup with one of my close friends. And it's great. I have this amazing network of friends, and I can bring my children into apprenticeships with my friends and...
• 6:01
  And, uh, and that's, if I, again, if I, if I just assume that's their responsibility personally, uh, or there's some other system like a college system, uh, and that I, I can abdicate that. I'm not sure, uh, I'm doing everything I could to set up my kids. So, so anyway, these, this list has really kind of burrowed its way into my, my thoughts. Um, and I haven't taught my kids how to swim, so it hasn't gotten that far, but I don't live in Maui and it's literally six degrees in Cincinnati. So we don't worry that much. You don't want to swim in the Ohio river, by the way.
• 6:30
  Uh, so maybe I can get a pass. I don't know where they were living maybe when they wrote this, but, uh, I can understand in your culture, Jeff, that might make a lot of sense.
• 6:39
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