Latest / The Family Teams Podcast / Ep. 338 | Love is Taught in the Family

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Ep. 338 | Love is Taught in the Family · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  Well, I think that's why I think that's not to overstate the problem, but I think almost every single problem in society today can be traced back to that. What's up, guys? Welcome to Five Minute Fatherhood. So there is a tome of a book that Jeff and I both like. It's called Family and Civilization, written by Carl Zimmerman, who's a sociologist. And he from like the 1940s. Yeah, it's an old book, but it's like it's like the book about about all the different kinds of families that have existed throughout history.
• 0:29
  And so he said something that I don't know if I've ever heard before, and I even tried to find this quote and I couldn't find it. So I wanted to tease this out because I'm also really getting into some more trying to understand Greek philosophy, especially when it comes to family better. But he says here, Aristotle's dictum, that if children did not love their parents and family members, they would love no one but themselves—
• 0:53
  And this is kind of like his quote, and he goes on to say, In the absence of strong external forces, no human society could long exist without the attachments, basics to human society, that all arise and take their orientation from the human family. So Zimmerman is saying, that Aristotle is saying,
• 1:09
  that if a child doesn't learn to love their mom and dad, then they will only love themselves. I found this really, really interesting because our culture actually thinks that if a child only learns to love themselves, then you've won.
• 1:28
  as parents. But the Greeks were really worried about this problem, and we really are. It's interesting to read these studies. I've read several sociologists that really have made the point that we're the first civilization in history that's ever even come up with this theory that to love yourself is...
• 1:48
  is ultimate, and that that's the pathway to loving others. That's not the way the Bible talks about it. That's not the way that you read about it in other societies. The way that most societies, and the way Aristotle is making this point, is that when you're in the family, when you learn to love your family members, particularly the parents he's describing, but I think also the siblings, what that does is it helps you transcend self-love.
• 2:17
  And that self-love is kind of endemic to just being human, but loving others is not. Loving others requires you to oftentimes have experienced a family environment in which you were trained and inspired to love, in particular your parents. So I thought this was interesting. I'm curious, Jeff, how you think about kind of this tension in a society that really does champion self-love as kind of the ultimate.
• 2:42
  Well, I think that's why I think that's not to overstate the problem, but I think almost every single problem in society today can be traced back to that. The individualized selfishness that kind of corrodes and collapses in on itself with no, you know, institutions left with no sacrifice, with no kind of committal commitment to the other or a group or an organization or a team.
• 3:04
  For this exact reason. And I love how I put it at the end. The attachments basic to human society all arise and take their orientation from the human family, meaning it's the first training ground. You're going to be working with teams your entire life. You're going to be in community your entire life unless you just live on an island, which no one does, you know, unless you're Tom Hanks in that one movie. And so, you know, and even then you obviously don't want to be there, but it's not.
• 3:25
  Yes, exactly. Wilson. Touche. Touche. And thankfully, Tom Hanks maybe had a loving good family, so he knew how to love Wilson. But yeah, it's just everywhere, and you see it everywhere. And so, yeah, I think just make sure that – I think it's a really good –
• 3:41
  Framework or indictment or also just encouragement for fathers, parents listening of make sure you're, you're raising and training kids to actually, to love themselves in the, in the, in the truest, most pure sense of that word. But even like someone like not Carl Zimmerman, but who's the spiritual guy like David Bennett talks about at some level, the Christian version of loving yourself is intertwined with loving Jesus. There's a, there's a weird symbiotic relationship where the more your eyes are taken away from yourself and,
• 4:11
  and put on Jesus, the more that you begin to see yourself through the lens of Jesus, which is a form of like the pure self-love that is like that all of us have distorted and wanted. Yeah. And I love that framework that he talks about, that you have to take your eyes off yourself, point him towards Jesus. And then what it does is it actually then kind of bounces back towards you in a true reflection of yourself, essentially.
• 4:33
  Um, but yeah, but I love that. And I think you, and family is the place where you get to workshop that first for lack of a better term. So I think it's highly, highly necessary. Yeah. And I think what this also does is it gives you permission as a father to be concerned when your child doesn't, isn't demonstrating love towards you. Um, you know, not, not in a weird way. Right. But it's just, it's, it's, it's okay for you to, to work, to inspire, um,
• 5:00
  your children to love you, not to become a selfish tyrant over their emotions, but to prepare them to love others and transcend self-love in the same way that hopefully you as the father are transcending your love for yourself and loving your wife and your kids.
• 5:15
  It's the constant sort of cycle of self-sacrificing love for one another that is the training ground for really learning all the one another's that the Bible talks about, about how we're supposed to love each other and support one another and encourage one another and forgive one another. But just to see that there is going to be a tension, particularly now that we're going to all experience between...
• 5:43
  motivating self-love in our kids and motivating our kids to transcend self-love, which I think is more basic to what they're going to need in the future.