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Why Mature Dads "Coach" (Not "Babysit") Their Kids · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  One of the things it's made me hypersensitive to is premature death. Because I think that it's very difficult. When I think about the difference between dying when I'm 60 or dying when I'm 90 and trying to lead a multigenerational family, it is night and day. Because you can imagine that those 30 years that I might or might not have, we'll see, God willing. But if I have those 30 years, I will meet at the rate my family is multiplying probably two to three times more of my descendants in those 30 years.
• 0:30
  Hi, welcome to the Family Teams podcast. Our goal here is to help your family become a multi-generational team on mission by providing you with biblically rooted concepts, tools, and rhythms. Your hosts are Jeremy Pryor and Jefferson Bethke, and we can't wait to chat about all things family.
• 0:48
  Hey everybody, welcome back to the Family Teams podcast. So we are going back and forth, talking to mothers about family teams, talking to dads about family teams. So we want to hit some more fatherhood topics today that I think would be helpful. Again, this is for moms and dads. We both care equally about both sides of the equation, but sometimes it's nice to just dial into one or the other. And so I've got a couple of dads on the line with me right now. We got Phil Goodwin from Athens, Georgia.
• 1:15
  And Phil Cottenoir from Canada. Thank you guys for jumping on here today. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Excited to get to interact. So Phil's been on the podcast one other time. Phil, he's got this awesome design service at jam.co, J-A-M-M.co. If you guys want a subscription design services, go check out what Phil's got going on over there. And then Phil Cottenoir.com.
• 1:37
  He's got an awesome blog at philcottnoir.com. His last name is C-O-T-N-O-I-R. One of the things that's awesome about Phil is he has been helping me for months to really work through the editing on my new book, The Ruling of the Household. So it's been really fun to interact with Phil. We've...
• 1:53
  talked through some articles he's also written over at the Gospel Coalition Canada. So yeah, excited to be able to talk to you guys today. So we're going to dive into a couple topics. We're going to hit a couple videos. There's one that I've been really trying to understand, and there's a lot of conversation around attachment these days, and I think this has been mostly helpful. There's a guy, Adam Lane Smith, who's probably been leading the charge on this conversation,
• 2:18
  And so he was on the spillover and he talked about fatherhood in a way that was actually kind of unique, you know, in this topic of attachment that I was like, man, I need to really think that through. So I wanted to get the Phil's their take on on this one today. So I'm going to share this and and dive into it with you guys and see where this takes us. So, all right, here we go.
• 2:38
  Now, the angry people that hear you talk about daycare and mothers really needing to try to make it a priority to be home zero to three years old for those first three years of your child's life is the most crucial. I would argue if you can do it longer, do it longer. But for at least the first three years, try to be home. And the women will get mad and say, well, I don't hear you saying this about men. Why aren't you saying that men need to be staying home zero to three years old? But...
• 3:04
  I've heard that a child's attachment is almost entirely created due to the relationship they have with their mother at first in those few years. So is that true or? Men need to step up. They do. So those women are right. They're not wrong. Here's what happened is over the last hundred years, men died. Men died in World War I. They died in the Dust Bowl. They died in the Great Depression. They died in World War II. They died in wars and dead and dead and dead. And women had to step in. So our great, great grandmothers for.
• 3:32
  multiple generations had to step in and become essentially masculine figures to hold everything together because the men were dead or the men were so broken that they checked out.
• 3:42
  One of the things that just he's saying here at the beginning that I find helpful is when you, if we exist, if families are by nature, multi-generational, then oftentimes the things we struggle with are generational in nature. And it's really important to actually take that into consideration. And so a lot of the times when people are angry with masculine culture, they don't oftentimes even think back to, oh, that generation grew up without fathers or with broken fathers for the most part, and how that can impact kids.
• 4:11
  what happens downstream. So I think what he's saying is really interesting. I just don't see people emphasize this, but the more you think about multi-generational family, the more you think about, I want to bless my generations, the more you believe that there's a connection between generations and that you want to be a part of that connection, the more you need to acknowledge that there's also the other side of that. And that is that there could be negative impacts generationally and that not everybody starts with a,
• 4:34
  the same mom, the same dad, the same generation, the same blank slate. And man, he's pointing out, imagine what it was like to grow up in a culture where an entire generation of men were just either dead or broken. So, uh, we'll continue to listen to what he's talking about here. There was a failure in masculinity and a failure. And not even just that the death toll trauma masculinity almost died in America and trauma and attachment issues got so bad that the baby boomers didn't understand what love and connection really was. All they knew was trauma.
• 5:04
  which is why about half of them went out and started destroying the family system, right? They're currently tripling divorce rates in their 70s and 80s. Those are the ones who are getting divorced instead of just waiting each other out, seeing to who's going to die first. But you have an entire generation tripling the divorce rate or waiting for their partner to die.
• 5:21
  So, yeah, that idea that the boomers have tripled the divorce rate, I think it is really important to try to source back. What he's saying is that you had a group of people who were broken from World War II who came back from the war. And these men were sort of shallow and or like hollow. Maybe it's a better way to say it, like that they were hollowed out by a lot of the trauma they experienced in the war.
• 5:43
  And so they were sort of distant fathers. And that was a really common experience. And so you grow up and find it very difficult to attach to fatherhood, very difficult to touch to your own father. And you're not seeing the best model. And so you're like, you know, this whole family thing just doesn't work real well. And then you blow it up. So that's kind of his hypothesis for what happened with the boomers. That's the boomers. Not all of them are broken, but a lot of them are. And they started really ripping apart that family system. Then you have Gen X and Gen Y.
• 6:11
  You have the millennials, you have Gen Z, and it's got worse and worse through every system because nobody has seen a functioning system. So masculinity died and then it was reborn in a child form where women were essentially trying to govern it.
• 6:24
  And then it reached a juvenile form. And we see that a lot with red pill. We see it with the Tate brothers right now. We see it with, look at me, look at my muscles. I'm sleeping with 10 girls. Aren't I so cool? Juvenile masculinity. There is a mature masculinity that's emerging now onto the world stage of being a father, being that present father, being that man who steps forward and takes ownership, not domineering, but leading, guiding, calling people to follow you when they are ready.
• 6:55
  So that's really important, I think, to look at these stages as like the recovering of masculinity. And this idea that's kind of going through a juvenile phase that we're trying to get out of. And even the phase that he described as sort of the present father, I would say, is itself a
• 7:15
  you know, part of almost that juvenile phase where we've never gotten all the way back to the, the visionary leader, leader as the father, um, at least as a culture, I just see that very rarely even understood as a element of fatherhood. And so, um, so I think, I think, but I do think that having a lot of grace for what happened is really helpful. Okay. Just a little bit more and then we'll discuss.
• 7:35
  Millennial men, millennial husbands have done a really good job of trying harder to have a work family balance, spending more time with their kids, being more present, helping their wives with their kids, which is great. But my question is your attachment that is created as an infant, is it more...
• 7:56
  based on, you know, how often your actual mother is changing your diapers and feeding you and stuff, or is it equal mom and dad? If we look at the research and say that attachment style, your attachment whole approach is survival adaptation for the world that you are in, then yes, your mom plays a significant role for that in the first several years, right? The oxytocin bond. Am I cared for? Am I nurtured? Am I loved? But your father is,
• 8:23
  In every situation on the planet, your father creates safety and stability. Having a father, right? The research shows that having a father and a married couple and a father in your life shoves off most of the horrible experiences that we have. Even poverty, even mental illnesses, mass shootings, everything goes down when a present father is in the home.
• 8:46
  Because it, yeah. So, uh, yeah, we can really understand how critical, you know, that is, but I was curious what you guys thought. I'll start with you, Phil Cottenhoir. I'd love to get your thoughts on. So as he's describing any element of this, the generational, um, sort of trauma, he was describing the impact that has had on our definition of masculinity, our experience of fatherhood. Yeah. What does that start for you?
• 9:10
  Yeah, it's really interesting. I haven't heard that narrative laid out like that before. It has the ring of truth, but it also has the ring of maybe oversimplification. But I really think there's something to it and it's worth thinking about.
• 9:27
  The idea that when you lose a generation or two generations of men in the two world wars, there's kind of this collective social heritage that's lost, this embodied knowledge of how to be a man.
• 9:42
  home, how to raise children, how to be that authority and say figure for a family. And, uh, and what he's saying was that we, women had to fill that gap. And so then it's like, since that time, it does kind of feel like that center hasn't been there. Uh, what you were saying about that. Mature fatherhood figure, not really being present in our culture, I think
• 10:08
  I think you're right. And I think the thing that jumped out at me is it certainly never, it seems like it's never celebrated. It's not highlighted. It's like culture and denial of the need for it brought us a lot of problem and otherwise. But there's, there's something really profound there and bed to the question for us young fathers, um,
• 10:31
  How do we recover? How do we go from here? How do we build and restore what was lost? And that's something a lot of us are picking through. Yes. Yeah. We have to be honest about...
• 10:47
  Where the foundation or what circumstances our generational family found itself in when we were born, what we experienced, what our fathers experienced. I know that one of the things that when I've studied multigenerational family life, one of the things it's made me hypersensitive to is,
• 11:04
  is premature death. Because I think that it's very difficult. When I think about the difference between dying when I'm 60 or dying when I'm 90 and trying to lead a multi-generational family, it is night and day. Because you can imagine that those 30 years that I might or might not have, we'll see, God willing. But if I have those 30 years, I will meet at the rate my family is multiplying probably two to three times more of my descendants in those 30 years. I'll also be available to share wisdom and
• 11:33
  and offer support and be able to guide like financial decisions. I mean, on and on and on. You just think about the impact that the kind of foundation of having a father who is at a 60 year old level of maturity with access to their resources and ability to coach and lead their family for 30 more years.
• 11:52
  That is an absolute game changer. And you can imagine the opposite of that. Imagine losing your father when he's 35 in a war, or he comes back just so traumatized that he just can't emotionally engage. And so he just checked out all the time. Now, it's difficult to overstate the kind of impact that would have. Now, what that actually means generationally is difficult to really understand, but I just think there's a lot to what I think he's describing. I agree. It could be oversimplified if you think about this as the overarching...
• 12:22
  like diagnosis of a generation. I think it's an A variable, but it's a variable that the more you're into multi-generational family life, the more you're going to really pay attention to. So yeah, I feel good. And what did this stir up for you? Any thoughts that you had when you're hearing this? The family plan calendar is the new way to keep your family team organized. Plan your rhythms, menu, household chores, and notes for the family all in one place. Visit familyteams.com to purchase.
• 12:50
  It made me just think about my own family history, I guess. My grandfather was in World War II, and so I know that my dad grew up, you know, kind of... So my granddad was in World War II starting when he was like, oh, 16, 14, 15, 16. I mean, he might have gotten...
• 13:06
  kind of in super early. He was like the mailboy on an aircraft carrier. I don't think he saw as much of the traumatizing type stuff. I mean, his boat did get bombed, I think, one time. But I think about, like, they... So he came back, married, you know, they had four kids, my dad being the youngest, and they divorced, right? My dad was...
• 13:25
  pretty young and so um i just think about kind of that and then my dad becoming a christian at like 19 meeting my mom and then me growing up in that household right knowing my grandfather and kind of ask him about you know the war time but knowing my dad also who had like a really radical life
• 13:42
  conversion, you know, it's like this college football player that came to Jesus, you know, and kind of raised me and my three siblings. And then kind of what I'm what I was used to there. Right. He was very involved in our life. Right. So he was not a disconnected father, but he was. But his example of fatherhood was half there. Right. Because his dad and his parents divorced. He was with his mom most of the time. You know, he didn't really have
• 14:06
  a father who was super in his life. And so I know he was also trying his best to reverse that thing that he experienced, you know, with us. So having experienced a father who was pretty present, you know, compared to most, probably of my friends that I had growing up. But, you know, and noticing in, you know, my generation too, not wanting to swing so far the other way of like where the dads become like mother figures, you know, and the temptation to be like, yeah, I want to be like,
• 14:34
  nurturing, you know, like, I don't know, you see like cartoons and shows. And yeah, I know you're not a big fan of Bluey. I think about Bluey, though, is like this, like, oh, man, I, you know, man, should I be more involved, like playing with my kids with their games? I really enjoy like wrestling and stuff, which I think is very good and very like appropriate with the kids. Like, I feel like it really helps our relationship. But but obviously some of the other things on that show are.
• 15:02
  Not really where I want to get into, but I'm, um...
• 15:06
  But yeah, trying not to swing too far the other direction, right? Where you become like a second mothering figure in the household, as opposed to kind of being like a father where you're really, you know, trying to bring what that guy mentioned. I mean, the stability and the security of, you know, the father in the house. And combined with the vision of like Abraham and what we've kind of talked about in multi-generationally and trying to cast vision for your family. That's a very new idea for me. And my dad didn't do that, right? That's a very like brand new concept for me.
• 15:36
  These are all the things that kind of come to mind as I listen to that of not wanting to like I totally resonate with this idea of like being more present and I've tried to be way more intentional. I think our generation, like you said, the millennial generation has become more aware that there's been this this idea of like work life balance is definitely on the minds of.
• 15:52
  you know, my generation and maybe the one after, um, a lot more than it was on my parents, you know? Yeah. Um, so yes. Well, this framework that basically sometimes masculinity goes through a process of maturity. And I think that that's really a good way to describe it. The way he's saying, look, there, when you, when you lose masculinity, when essentially a generation is, is, um, being raised by men who are absent, um,
• 16:18
  you're really not learning almost anything about what the role of father is. And so you sort of are having to rediscover it. And of course you're going to go through generations of confusion. And then he's suggesting that it goes through these phases. And it's interesting that, you know, he he's referring to what's going on with Adam Andrew Tate and, you know,
• 16:35
  some of these influencers about sort of the juvenile phase of masculinity. They're sort of stuck in a, the way a 15 year old boy that hasn't been properly fathered might think about what masculinity is all about. Um, but then even I think what we're talking about in terms of like the playful present father, I would say that that's all of these things are some, somehow foundational. Yes. You want the father who knows how to win and attract a woman. Like that's not a bad thing. That's an important part of masculinity.
• 17:01
  it certainly doesn't stop there. And then when you have a playful present father, absolutely. That's a critical element of masculinity and of fatherhood, but it doesn't stop there either. If it does, then it starts to look a little bit, you know, too close to a second mother. And that's where I think you want to have the visionary leading father, the father who understands that he's the difference between sort of the present father and the, the Abrahamic visionary father really comes down to if the family as a team is trying to accomplish something.
• 17:30
  really difficult and important. So anytime that, and this is where oftentimes we talk about, we use the language of like babysitter, sort of the heart of a babysitter versus the heart of a coach. So a babysitter is like, Hey, let's just play. And you know, when you come home and the babysitter's done a really good job of entertaining your kids and everybody's safe and healthy, you're like, Oh wow. You just, you crushed it like a hundred percent, you know, here's an extra amount of money, you know, please come back. Like that's what you want from a babysitter.
• 17:54
  But if you showed up to your son's sports and that's all that was happening, like, well, we didn't really practice anything. We didn't really develop anybody, but we had a lot of fun. You'd be like, I don't know if I want to send my kid to that team anymore. I was hoping a little bit more from the coach than what I would expect from a babysitter. And I think we're sort of in the babysitter phase of masculinity or fatherhood. Like we're beginning to expect more from fathers and,
• 18:21
  than absence, right? Let's at least be present. Let's at least engage, right? But also that's not, that's not the essence of what you're, you're looking for as a father. That's what we're aiming at ultimately. So if you're, now a lot of times I'm talking to fathers who I think are ready to have the conversation about what are we actually aiming at? And this is where I will, like, I want to stir up in them the heart of a coach and a visionary leader, right?
• 18:45
  So you have to start to look into the future like Abraham and see something different and say, I'm going to lead my family into sometimes unsafe territory to take ground that our family has never taken before. And as a team, I'm going to lead my family into that world. And my wife has an amazing helper that can come alongside me and really provide a lot of the nurturing and support that our family needs so that we can go to the next level and I can lead our family into difficult situations.
• 19:11
  uh, difficult areas, um, that, that we can take new ground. So that, that's, that's the tension that I'm oftentimes experiencing. A lot of times what's happening is we don't, we don't, we don't have a proper understanding of the, of sort of the ideal of fatherhood.
• 19:24
  which, you know, when people, we talk about that, that can really freak people out. But this is why I find Abraham so important. I'm not saying like that, that I have the ideal or that I've seen a single example of fatherhood that represents the ideal other than what I see in scripture in Abraham himself. I really think that's the whole point of why we have his narratives in scripture. So yeah, Phil, Cotton Noir, anything else this is stirring up for you?
• 19:46
  That's a really compelling vision you laid out. I love that contrast you drew between the babysitter and the coach. I think that really, like, we all think to it, that difference. But even as I think about my own role with my kids, you know, that's clarifying. That's helpful to think about how to evaluate.
• 20:06
  the time and the influence I have over my children, do I pat myself on the back if we all had a good time and they go to bed happy? Or am I evaluating my role as a father more in terms of the coach and how each of them is developing towards the
• 20:26
  future version of themselves that's flourishing in all these areas of their lives. So I like that a lot. Um, I want to, I want to touch on something that the guy mentioned, and I think it's something that we hear so much, so much conversation these days. And that's he, he's referring to research shows, research shows. This of course is the highest authority that, right.
• 20:47
  that culture has right now is sort of scientific research. But I've had this recurring experience, I'm sure you do as well, of listening to the best, most insightful social scientists. They're always newly discovering the things that the scriptures have always taught. It's like...
• 21:08
  It's like someone with amnesia, you know, sort of discovering that he has a home and he has a wife and he has children. He had all these things that are part of his heritage and what was given to him in his life. But, you know, because of the way our culture right now is this deep secularism and a serenation from sort of the wisdom of the past,
• 21:34
  like we have to rediscover these things, uh, fresh new tools that we have. And you know, it's not for no value. I think there's, you know, it sheds new light into the things that we've always done, um, and it, it can help also, it can help us see things in the scriptures or perhaps we're there, but we didn't see. And that's the thing I'm like, I've often noticed.
• 21:56
  Even when I first heard you lay out the vision of family teams, multi-generational teams, and your experience, you shared of asking people in Israel, well, where did you get all these ideas? And they said the Old Testament. Yeah.
• 22:12
  You know, it's amazing that we, you know, there's something profound to be noticed when you think about how much scholarship in the Old Testament has gone on in North America, let's say in the last hundred years, probably an unprecedented amount.
• 22:27
  And yet this vision for the family is not picking root in the American church, in the North American church. So it's very easy to study something and not see what's there. That's right. So it was pretty good. That's a really well, yeah, that's a really important topic.
• 22:45
  I do think that there is an obsession with the way we discover new truth is through research. And the problem is, you know, this has been pointed out by famously by the social scientists who wrote that book about, they call it, they use the acronym weird, Western educated. Basically what they uncovered was that every single one of these social science studies were being studying the same 5% of the population.
• 23:10
  And they were saying, look, you're it's sort of like that famous story of the guy who lost his keys and is looking underneath the light. And somebody comes back and says, hey, why are you only looking there? The keys could be anywhere on this driveway. And he said, well, this is the only place I can see. And I think that's what's happening to so many of these studies is that fatherhood, the actual ideal of fatherhood might be in the dark somewhere.
• 23:32
  It may not be represented with the kinds of people we're studying. And so, unfortunately, research can't discover what they're not looking at. And this is why I think that there really are two ways to sort of go about a lot of these questions. One is that you can try to discover new knowledge through research.
• 23:48
  you know, scientific research. And like you said, there are uses for that. And certainly we should let that voice, you know, consider that voice as it's coming up. But there's also scripture itself, right? Which actually, you know, shines the spotlight, you know, it takes the spotlight and actually looks, says, no, no, look over here. Like, well, that's like a mile away from where our culture is. Yeah, it doesn't matter. Look over here. This is where you're actually going to find the blueprint for what you're looking for.
• 24:12
  I have found that so helpful. I think this is where a lot of it. So you might cite a study that could say the opposite of what the Bible is describing. The problem is oftentimes it's studying a particular context. That's not the biblical context. And so you might say like an example is any kind of study about
• 24:31
  how children are disciplined, I am incredibly skeptical of, because I know that they're not necessarily studying, you know, the biblical family, you know, these loving parents who've really thought this through. No, they're looking at somebody who's whacking their kids out of anger and saying, we're gonna lump that in with everything else and say, this is all negative. You should absolutely never correct or discipline your kids in any way, because look at these people. And it's like, hey, you shine the spotlight at one tiny area and then discovered, I think probably accurately,
• 24:59
  that the way that's being done in that tiny area is inappropriate. And then you broaden that out and say, see, Scripture doesn't know what it's talking about. Hey, whoa, whoa, whoa. That's not exactly the best way to think about research, especially as believers. We have to be aware this is often happening. So, yeah, I find Adam Lane Smith and a lot of his conversations to be a nice balance. He does seem to be able to pull from both.
• 25:21
  both sources of knowledge. Like he seems to be trying to pull from scripture and some ancient traditions. And also he tries to be really clear and up to date on a lot of the sociological research. So it's a really fun conversation he's having with Alex Clark here. So Phil, good one. Anything else this is stirring up for you?
• 25:38
  Need a blueprint to revise your family to be a multi-generational team on mission? The book Family Revision by Jeremy Pryor is the book that summarizes all the big picture ideas you hear on this podcast. Available on Amazon or FamilyTeams.com.
• 25:55
  I'll tell you that the same, the babysitter coach thing was like really convicting listening, listening to that. And then even hearing Bill kind of talk about it and bringing it back up like, man, this is like really convicting for me. I am way more comfortable being a babysitter than I am being a coach. Like just in real life, I've never really been a coach of a team or anything like that. So there's kind of I'm like very much in a learning environment.
• 26:16
  phase right now of like, how do I be a coach to my kids? And even as a dad, like being a coach, because I'm I, I easily can fit into the babysitter. Let's try to have fun and make the kids like smile and laugh. And honestly, like, if I'm totally honest, my wife is better at being a coach than I am. And so and she's, you know, she's got a lot more
• 26:38
  practice at that professionally. She led camps and, you know, did all of that. So she's kind of coming in with like more equipped from her professional side. I'm like, man, you got to teach me. Like I'm way better at being a babysitter. So yeah, it's just convicting. This is an area that I really want to get better at and improve in. So.
• 26:57
  That's really good. Yeah. And my marriage, you know, April is, she is such a, such a good manager and directive leader. There's elements of coaching that she is so much more advanced in than I am. We've had this conversation with each other because, you know, there are elements where it's like, wait, are, you know, we're swapping potentially some, some of the traditional gender elements in the way that we parent our kids.
• 27:19
  Is that appropriate? And one of the things that we've learned now after parenting our kids for 24 years is that even when she's better at something, my kids take the things that are traditionally delivered by the masculine father better from me than from my wife. And we watch that happen over and over again. And so oftentimes if she notices because her skill is actually better, she'll actually now...
• 27:44
  Almost like equip me or try to teach me, Hey, Jeremy, look, a good coach in this situation would actually like, you know, engage right there. Um, and we, we, we, and so, and she knows that if she were to do it, she could do it. She's more skilled at some of those things that I am, but it actually isn't better for our family or our kids. Um, so we just watch that over and over again. And so we both help each other.
• 28:05
  in areas where I might be a little more aware than she is, because my skillset is just wired more for some elements of the maternal, um, in the family, then I try to point that out. And then similarly that she does that for me, but man, kids, there is, there's, there's no replacement and there's no swapping. Um,
• 28:25
  the masculine energy and the feminine energy, the kind of way that that is experienced by children, the kind of way that that works its way out in a family. God just did an amazing job of designing that. And so when we decide to individualize or atomize the family and then just ask the question about skill or who's got more skill in this area, let's just swap everything out. There's something missing in that attempt that's being done, I think, culturally. And to what you guys are saying, I think part of what...
• 28:54
  you know, this babysitter coach distinction that we really need to try to understand. And this is something that Jeff has helped me with a lot. Jeff Bethke, he really went way down the rabbit hole on this in his book and has thought about this so deeply and take back your family. And that is like, look, when you're,
• 29:13
  The thing that's missing, and what I think when we talk about, and what Alex Clark said, maybe mature fatherhood is becoming that playful, present father. I think that we need to understand that if you're looking to recover the sense of being a coach, I think a really good place to start is with vision. And to allow yourself the freedom to look into the future. This is what made Abraham so interesting. He saw...
• 29:37
  hundreds of years into the future. Like he had this conversation with God about 400 years into the future, specifically 400 years. Um, you know, just, this is part of what, when I was studying Genesis, I got so amazed by, right. That when even the very beginning of Abraham's story, this Avram, this exalted father, that's what the word Abram, his original name meant. And he was, his name was Abram in Genesis 12.
• 29:59
  when he first heard the voice of God and then began to lead his family into this very, um, this very new place. And so part of what you want to be able to do as a father is you have to start looking at the future. And I think one of the things that's really counterintuitive for Western fathers is that when they think about leading their family into the future, they think about their, their exhausted wife and their two, three, four little kids. And they're like, okay, I'm going to lead that team into the future.
• 30:24
  And what Abram saw and what was happening back then wasn't really that way. You really spent the first 18, 20 years developing your kids. And really the fathering visionary, visionary father is the patriarch or the grandfather who's leading
• 30:39
  adult children into the future. Now this is very hard for us to imagine in our culture, but every single parable that Jesus describes a leading father in the gospels, it's always the leading father of adult children. And when he uses the word son in the gospels, he's always talking about an adult son. He's not talking about a three-year-old, you know? And so I've studied those, those parables are, they're so interesting just to, just to get a glimpse of the way that Jesus saw fatherhood. Um, and so there's a lot of what we are wrestling with and a lot of the reason why we, we can't imagine coaching our.
• 31:09
  our family is because we're still imagining coaching and bringing into maybe even unsafe or difficult arenas, a six-year-old and an eight-year-old. And it's like, okay, they're still being developed. But if you have a vision for where you're headed as a family, or where we might be able to go once our kids get married and start having kids, and we start to really think about what it means to partner with my sons-in-law or my adult sons or
• 31:31
  you know, what it looks like when, when my daughters, you know, are, have the ability to really contribute, um, as a fully developed adult to the family vision. What might that look like if we work together? Of course, voluntarily, all of these things should be done with a spirit of, of really, um, casting a vision and seeing if your children get excited, but man, you know, kids, when they are raised by a father who has done incredibly skilled job of attaching, um,
• 31:57
  and then casts a vision that is the best vision they've ever heard, then it's not surprising when adult children want to follow that vision, when they get excited about the fact that they might be able to, that the who might matter even more than the what, right? That I get to do this with my dad, with the family, with my siblings. Yeah, again, we tend to think that, no, no, no, the real...
• 32:17
  The real way that we need to be raising kids is to attach to strangers and spend all of their work life and all of their skills in partnership with strangers, people that they will almost never see again or they won't have deep relationships with.
• 32:33
  And so I'm like, why do we favor that idea? Why do we want to raise our kids to be great workers or servants of another man's family? It's only because we lack the vision, I think, to imagine what it could look like for us to lead our children into some kind of future that could involve them and their skills. Now, again, there's controlling, really unhealthy, toxic ways of doing this. But I think that we've been maybe overtold those stories and just haven't seen what this could look like.
• 33:02
  in a really healthy family. So yeah, anything else that this is starting up for you guys before we, you know, one more topic I want to hit with you guys before we go today. No, that's good. Believe it, yeah, I mean, that's compelling and we're still set convicting as well. But I guess one thing that just jumps to mind is, you know, that's, it's a beautiful vision and I see, you know, in my own heart,
• 33:31
  I want that. I want to learn how to do that. It makes me sad to think that not only is so much of our world so distant from that fusion, but even so much of the church, it seems, has very little notion that this is possible.
• 33:53
  Yeah. And so, yeah, I'm thankful for your voice and others who are making this argument. Yeah, it's outside the imagination of the Western mind. And I think, therefore, oftentimes lost by Western Christians. So, all right, one other quick topic I want to hit with you guys before we go. I've been super fascinated by what's going on with some of these...
• 34:17
  these atheists, they call it, they call themselves often a group of lapsed atheists. These are people who are coming to faith. Um, and so I want to highlight one example. So Jordan Peterson had Russell Brand on, he said some things, um, in his typical, uh, Jordan Peterson way that I thought I found interesting specifically about Jesus. So I want to leave you guys with, with these thoughts.
• 34:36
  I think Jordan Peterson is on his own journey. I'm not lifting him up as like the paragon of what it means to be a Christian man or father. I just see him as an incredibly intelligent, incredibly honest person. And so he's able to reflect certain ideas in ways that I've never heard, you know, reflected. And he's able to tap into even some biblical insights that I think are, you know, culturally, we really struggle with finding. So yeah, let me, let me play this with you guys, for you guys and see what your thoughts are here.
• 35:03
  And you see, this is where the atheist types get it so wrong, you know, because they tend, like the more literal Protestants, to assume that what religious practice is, is the mouthing of a set of propositions, right? It's like a theory of the world. And that's not the case. It's
• 35:19
  a manner of conducting yourself, directing your attention, and acting. And then there's representations of that in imagination and semantically, but the fundamental issue is the actual pattern of action. You know, that's why the highest level of religious devotion in the Christian tradition, it's the same in Buddhism with regard to Buddha. It's the imitation of Christ. It's the attempt to act out the archetype in the confines of your life. And the offering there is that,
• 35:46
  this is a strange offering. The offering there is that that's possible. It's possible for each person to operate as a center of divinity in the world. And I believe that... I don't believe that there is a more reliable truth than that. And I also think that's true scientifically, by the way. Yes, it's beautiful that the word conduct obviously has those connotations of being a carriage for energy, or for heat, that you can connect to the source through conduct.
• 36:14
  Regarding atheism, tell us a little of your recent challenge. We did a video on it.
• 36:21
  and they get into the conversation Peter's had with Richard Dawkins. But I just wanted to highlight this one challenge that he offers to Protestant theology. I know, Phil Cottenoir, you've thought about these things from a theological perspective, and I'm really curious what your thoughts are. Because he's basically making the case, he's pitting these two worlds against each other, and I'm not sure that it's fair to do that exactly, but he's saying, look, Protestants tend to talk about their faith as mouthing people,
• 36:50
  a set of presuppositions or just, you know, here are the things I believe. Let me declare them, you know, a creed. I believe that, you know, Jesus was born of a virgin. I believe that Jesus died and rose again. And that as soon as you say the magic words, you become a part of the Protestant community and you're saved. And if you can't say the magic words anymore, this is a caricature, obviously, then somehow you've lapsed in your faith. And he wants to pit that against Jesus.
• 37:16
  practice. He wants to pit that against imitating Christ. He wants to say, part of what we need to be doing is really recovering another more ancient tradition of imitating Jesus as a central part of our faith and stop propping up simple adherence to propositional truth statements as being the center of the faith. He sees this as a reason why people are going and becoming atheists. They struggle, and Peterson struggles a lot with
• 37:43
  mouthing any kind of propositional truth statements. He hates being cornered in that way. And so he's just saying, I'm trying to follow Jesus. I'm trying to obey Jesus. Now, I found myself really compelled by that vision because I feel like we are struggling with that. But how do we do that without losing the fact that we believe in salvation by faith, which does involve actually agreeing with
• 38:06
  you know, certain things that were done for us on the cross, as opposed to salvation by works. I've been curious. Yeah. So Phil, if you want to start us on, what does that start for you?
• 38:15
  Yeah, I mean, it's really, this stirs up a lot. I have a lot of thoughts. So I'm going to try to breathe. But my thoughts on this are really formed by a couple of key sources. My understanding, limited though it is, of church history. And then what it is for me was a book called Dynamics Spiritual Life by Richard Lovelace. He traces out, you know,
• 38:44
  in scripture and then in church history, sort of what might be a little bit intangible, but the power of the spiritual life of the church and of different churches, different strains of the church throughout time. And as he notes, you know, that right about a generation after the Reformation,
• 39:03
  know this which was also a a spiritual revival because of the um the errors and and the excessors and the corruptions of the people church that even just the generation after that revival you know so much of the lutheran churches and protestant churches were basically what you described as dead orthodoxy so exactly this problem where you have the right beliefs in your statement but the spiritual life is not there
• 39:32
  And then you have these revival movements, you know, in the 17th century, the Great Awakenings through the Wesley brothers and others, you know, who take and they breathe life into these churches who had become so stale.
• 39:47
  And then you have this flame of spiritual life, which is really compelling. It's, it's, it's got a charisma, it's got a power about it. Um, and yet, you know, through the second great awakening, the way I understand that is kind of derolves into revivalism and emotionalism. And then you get some of the, some of the worst aspects of the evangelicalism, which kind of like an anti-indirectoryism.
• 40:12
  And that hasn't born good fruit either. So it's complicated. You know, when he says it's about what you do, that's exactly what the emerging church guys were saying in the early 2000s, that it's about following the way of Jesus. You know, Rob Bell and guys like that. Right.
• 40:26
  And they walk right out of orthodoxy, you know, into kind of new age attitudes. And so I really believe my deep vision is we need the fire of the Holy Spirit. We need that dynamic spiritual light, which comes through a living relationship with Christ, walking with him, yes, become a relation. We also need the guardrails of historic orthodoxy and strong institutions that preserve the faith once for all the saints.
• 40:54
  in the apostolic tradition so i think if you have one and not the other of those you you quickly within a generation or two are indeed trouble yeah well said yeah i really want to tease this out i think that part of what you guys will hear me bring up from time to time is i like talking with fathers about how to work through some of these challenging theological problems of our day or topics that are coming up and i i agree 100 with what you're saying phil
• 41:22
  This has got to be something that we balance. And I would say that in my life, I have really struggled with having rhythms that have caused me to understand and challenged me to follow Jesus. I started this rhythm a couple of times.
• 41:41
  um, a couple of years ago. Um, and feel good when he's joined me on my following Jesus Friday. Sometimes I love getting to do this with, with, uh, my friends where we just gather, um, and try to read a little bit of the gospels and say, what does it mean to imitate Jesus? Like, I just realized that most of my faith was being shaped by religious traditions and not by Jesus himself. Um, but I think I don't want to go to what you're saying, Phil Cotton, where I don't want to go all the way to what
• 42:08
  happened with what, where Peterson's going or certainly where the emerging church went with, look, it's all about practice and has nothing to do with beliefs because we do have a faith that rests on beliefs.
• 42:20
  And it's our conviction from the New Testament that beliefs actually do transform the heart. But I do think they need to be paired somehow with discipleship, like discipling people into a life of following Jesus. So, all right, guys. Well, yeah, I just love getting to stir up some of those conversations. And thank you guys so much for joining me today and having this conversation as we just try to encourage fathers and get closer to an understanding of what biblical fatherhood looks like. So I appreciate you guys doing this with me.
• 42:49
  Thanks, Sharon. Thanks for having us. Thank you for listening to the Family Teams podcast. If you're enjoying this content or have learned something new, please make sure to leave a rating and review and share with a friend. To stay up to date with our events, new content, and products, you can follow us on Facebook and Instagram at FamilyTeams.